A letter from Rebecca Young in Indonesia
Fall 2013
Dear friends in Christ,
Our beloved Dr. Lucy Ruth Montolalu, Executive Director of the Disaster Relief Unit of the Indonesian Communion of Churches, died on June 27, 2013, of a brain tumor. Surely heaven has a special place for this dedicated Christian and servant of God.
When I came to Indonesia for the tsunami response in 2005, one of the first people to welcome me was Dr. Lucy Ruth Montolalu, known to many as “Bu Lucy,” which means Mother Lucy.
When the tsunami hit on Dec. 26, 2004, Dr. Montolalu and her disaster relief team were on the ground immediately. They began by funneling donations from churches across Indonesia to their Muslim neighbors in Aceh, the province worst affected by the tsunami with over 200,000 people lost and one million left homeless.
Before the tsunami, Dr. Montolalu’s relief unit had dealt with floods in the Jakarta area and earthquakes in other parts of Indonesia. Nearly overnight, instead of managing a disaster unit with a budget of around $25,000 a year and a staff of four people, Dr. Montolalu was suddenly responsible for funds over $12 million and a staff that expanded to include several hundred people, including volunteers from all over Indonesia who joined them. Yet Dr. Montolalu didn’t have a background in disaster relief. Her education, doctoral degree and professional background were in the Indonesian language. So her ability to adapt to the demands of the tsunami response were remarkable, and her accomplishments worth noting.
Because the international donations, including those from our own PC(USA), were so generous, Dr. Montolalu and her staff were able to work past the standard six-month time limit for disaster response, during which they provided supplies, temporary shelters, and psychological support. With surplus funds, they remained in the area for six years, providing reconstruction and development. Thanks to worldwide generosity, they were able to “build back better,” helping improve the Acehnese people’s lives far beyond their pre-tsunami conditions.
The number of programs that Dr. Montolalu’s unit and staff provided were astonishing: they provided houses, nets and boats, health centers, community centers, micro-financing, and training in disaster preparedness. These things were done by many of the other international disaster response organizations as well, but all left within a year. As Dr. Montolalu’s team remained and continued to help people, they asked in astonishment, “Why are the Christians the ones who are staying? Big secular organizations have abandoned us, but this Christian agency keeps returning with new ways to help.”
One of the innovative ways that Dr. Montolalu and her unit helped was the replanting 500 acres of mangrove trees in an area where the coastline had been destroyed. The idea came from a small church congregation that happened to be located in a coastal community. First they organized a group of women to grow and tend seedlings. Once the seedlings were grown, the team recruited a Muslim youth group to plant and protect the young trees that were constantly battered by waves and debris from the ocean.
When the coast was replanted with mangroves, the fishermen were able to harvest crabs, which lay eggs in the mangrove roots. In this way not only was the coast protected from erosion, but the local people had improved income from the abundance of fish and crabs. One fisherman, whose house was in the midst of the new mangroves areas was so successful with his crab harvest, he turned down a brand new government house built especially for tsunami survivors.
Besides the mangrove trees plantings, Dr. Montolalu also built new pre-schools in places where they had never had them before. The government had built many new kindergartens after the tsunami, but they now require all new students to have a pre-school certificate to enter. Without Dr. Montolalu, many of the children would never have been able to go to school.
When the Haiti earthquake hit, Dr. Montolalu had the children of the pre-schools write letters of support to the children of Haiti. The letters were delivered to Haiti through an international network of Christian disaster agencies. The Indonesian children were able to provide supportive words and prayers for the Haiti children, since they had also experienced extreme devastation in their homeland. The letter-writing was not only good for the Haitian children, but it helped the Indonesian children to feel that they could make a meaningful contribution in a disaster on the other side of the world.
What very few people knew about Dr. Montolalu was that in late 2004, she had been offered the prestigious position of full professor at the University of Indonesia. She was in the process of attaining that position when the tsunami struck. According to her close friends, she faced a dilemma: should she continue with the academic career, which would bring her personal success and achievement, or should she give it up to serve tsunami survivors? She could not do both, and had to choose one or the other. After an intense period of prayer and Bible study, Dr. Montolalu decided to join the tsunami response, because she was in a unique position to make a difference for people who otherwise might be left without hope. And so she did, in ways both big and small, for the rest of her life.
One of the differences Dr. Montolalu made was not only in the life of tsunami survivors, but in my life personally. Those of you who know my story will remember that I couldn’t get a job as a professor in the US after getting my doctorate in theology. With her university connections, Dr. Montolalu recommended me to the president of Jakarta Theological Seminary, and is the main reason that I am able to be your mission co-worker in the place where I am today. Thanks be to God for the life of “Mother Lucy,” and for the loving care she shared with needy people throughout Indonesia.
Becca
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 199
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