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Family History


Extract from:
The Christian
31st March 1988.



Former killer is baptised

The man who led a massacre of 13 evangelists in Irian Jaya, Indonesia, has become a Christian. He was first out of 64 men and women to be baptised in a remote jungle ceremony last month.

Nipsan - scene of the atrocity 14 years ago - was the setting for the service. The ringleader had repented and come to faith, and spoke of how God forgave him for the past.

The local church's first baptism service since the massacre, it marks a major breakthrough in the region - where mission work has been hard labour for years.

Source of the report is Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot David Marfleet, based in Irian Jaya with his wife Mary and their four children.

Aged 37, Mr. Marfleet flies a Hughes 500 helicopter and a single-engine Cessna aircraft and had been helping the Nipsan congregation.

Unevangelised

Newly baptised men are now using the MAF helicopter to reach other areas, still unevangelised, in the lowlands to the north.

From Tonbridge Baptist Church Church in England, Mr Marfleet now lives at Bakondini, an Indonesian village and location of one of MAF's bases. The programme is run by MAF USA.

Christian work was pioneered at Nipsan 17 years ago by Gerrit Kuijt of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation.

With his wife and young family he endured attacks by hostile locals and the ravages of severe storms and earthquakes while carving out an airstrip from the rocky mountainside.

When the Kuijts were on leave in 1974, local people from the Mek tribe turned against the church and killed 13 evangelists, who were from Biak and Yalis tribes.

The mission station was destroyed and the Kuijts' home looted and burned. But the Dutch worker returned, rebuilt the base and carried on preaching the Gospel.

Hard slog

Said David Marfleet, 'It has been a hard slog for the Kuijts and the present missionary Henk Looijen'.

People in the northern region are helping to build two airstrips. Christian mission is only possible by air transport - Irian Jaya has some of the most wild and inhospitable terrain on earth.

'The men cut down the giant jungle trees, dig out the roots, burn all the undergrowth and clear and level the ground - all by hand.'

According to the prayer guide Operation World, one of the most significant movements to Christianity in history has been the past 20 years in the Indonesian republic.

Said author Patrick Johnstone,'The history and background of Indonesian Christianity is unique and can be significant for world evangelisation'.

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© Marfleet Family History 2000
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