I recently returned to Sihabonghabong, a small rural village in the north part of the Island of Sumatera and the location of the GKLI central office. The journey begins with a 5:00 a.m. taxi ride to the Medan Airport, continues with a 40 minute flight to the mountains around Lake Toba, and finally concludes with a two hour drive over about 40 miles of rough mountain roads. The difficult travel is eased by the sunshine and 70 degree weather, which is a welcome break from the relentless heat and humidity of Medan.
I met Deaconess Sandra Rhein at the Silangit Airport and we were greeted by GKLI Bishop Esra Sinaga and Pastor Sitepu. On the way to the offices in Sihabonghabong Bishop Sinaga was excited to show us us a famous site where Ludwig Nommensen arrived in “Batak Land”. The Batak people are tremendously thankful for the ministry of Nommensen, and the site reflects reverence to God for his gracious work of bringing them the Gospel through his servant. We also visited a site commemorating two Christian martyrs Henry Lyman and Samuel Munson and one of the first Churches on Sumatera. You can read more thoughts and reflections on these sights at theseaside.asia. From here we finished the journey to Sihabonghabong.
The goal of the visit was to help the GKLI make progress on the Buku Ibadah Luther (BIL), their Indonesian hymnal project. With hymns and worship services mostly translated, they have asked us to help plan for publication. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done. So the GKLI Hymnal committee has set goals for selecting and translating prayers, bringing the liturgical calendar into Indonesian, adding some commemorations that are important to Christianity in Indonesia, acquiring copyrights, and proofreading. Their goal is to publish by Easter 2021.