Trust Building in Jayapura
Trust Building in Jaya Pura Papua, 29-31 January 2016
Miftahul Huda and his Wife Nenden and litle boy Damai just got back from Jaya Pura Papua for the Trust Building Camp, 29-31 January 2016 together with SEARAH team from Bandung.
The camp was located at the beach of krempong, 2 hours from the city of Jaya Pura, it was beautiful scenery with the beach surrounded by the forest and mountain and beside it is the river. I got a little bit surprised as the local team prepared the program at the beach, a lot of work need to be prepared from the kitchen, meeting hall, prayer room, toilet and for the sleeping, all are like real camp.
The first night we were there it was humit and the second night was raining heavily and third night was beautiful evening.
The program was able to create safe space for both Muslim and adventist to get to know each other throgh sessions and sharing in a small group. I was touched by every stories I heard from local Papua and their genuine heart to live with their nature, hospitality and their faith as christian.
The camp was well designed by the local church led by young pastor Oschar to organize young adventist and invited some Muslim from Islamic University in the city as well as invited some local Muslim leader from NU and HMI like Dr. Tony Wanggai, Fadhel and the representatives from the interfaith network in Jaya Pura.
During the camp I also had a chance to talk to Muslim group, most of them are transmigrant from Java island, Sulawesi and Sumatra. They shared to me in the beginning they were not sure about the program and had some prejudices as all is organized by the christian but after meeting me they felt safe. one Muslim friend said that he thinks he knows all about Islam but when he was asked about his faith, he said " Now I need to leran more about my religion and I felt peaceful to have friends that are different from me as I used to be judgemental, my prejudices and assumption are broken toward them”.
I came home with the feeling of gratitudes and hopeful that I have a chance to be in Papua, seeing with my own eyes what and how Papua is as well as meeting Papua people and being connected to them and most importantly the beautiful nature of Papua that has been a gift and blessing and it matters on how we care and listen to each other as the people of Indonesia.
After 2 weeks, I saw people are still connected in social media like Face Book, many of the participants continue meeting in their church and their university to share and read the holy book using the scriptural reasoning, and also now they put in action to clean the mosque and plan for Community service together in the future.
This is the video made by a friend Andrew, a son of Pastor Daron who visited us a day and made the video. All in Bahasa Indonesia but you can understand by the body language and the view of our venue camp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WOYnPkcuRY&feature=youtu.be