Fund an All-Terrain Vehicle for a Parish in Indonesia

With over 272 million inhabitants, Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation in the world. An island nation, Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 separate islands, some 6,000 of which are inhabited, and this distribution affects the religious makeup of local areas. The island of Flores, for example, is mostly Catholic, while a majority of the close-to 50,000 inhabitants of the island of Sumba are Protestant Christians. The reason for this goes dates to 1913, under the Dutch colonial period, when the government sought to avoid religious rivalries and therefore assigned Catholic missionaries to the island of Flores to and Protestant missionaries to the island of Sumba. Even with this distribution, a considerable proportion of the population still follow the traditional Marapu religion, which is characterized by a strong element of ancestor worship.

While the island of Sumba has many Protestants, Catholics are also present there.  In 1957, German Redemptorist Fathers arrived to spread the Good News, and by 1994 they established the Parish of Saint Andrew Ngallu in the eastern part of the island. At the time, there were close to 1,000 Catholic faithful, but today there are more than 3,700, and their numbers are growing each year.

The parish covers a wide area, with 21 chapel-based communities at distances of up to 35 miles from the parish center. Given the poor road conditions, which worsen in the rainy season, the journey can take two to three hours, with some villages only accessible in the dry season, when the river levels dry up or are low enough to allow vehicles to cross safely.

Father Yakobus Umbu Warata, the Redemptorist Provincial, has asked our help for his priests here, who urgently need a suitable all-terrain vehicle for their ministry. We are proposing to help with a contribution of $22,000.

Will you help Father Warata purchase a suitable vehicle so that his priests can better minister to the people of Indonesia?

We are sure they will gratefully remember you in their prayers.

Aid to the Church in Need commits to invest your funds where they will have the greatest impact for the Church we serve. Funds donated to Aid to the Church in Need’s projects will be used towards the greatest need in our programs to help keep the Faith alive.

Code: 318-01-29