Within weeks of our arrival, clergymen read a letter from church pulpits warning against Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they handed out a copy of it to all in attendance. The local radio station even broadcast the letter. Then three clergymen visited us and demanded that we move inland to work among what they termed “the pagans.” A high-ranking Papuan police officer also urged us to leave, and a member of the secret police told us our murder was being planned.

So Christendom’s church officials visited the Office for Religious Affairs to pressure its chief to kick us out of Ambon. But there on the chief’s desk, they saw the Watch Tower Society’s books conspicuously displayed! Failing to budge the chief, they contacted officials of the Ministry of Religion in Djakarta, seeking our expulsion not only from Ambon but from all Indonesia as well.

This time they seemed to succeed, for February 1, 1968, was set as our expulsion date. However, our Christian brothers in Djakarta contacted a high Muslim official in the Ministry of Religion, and he helped to reverse the decision. In addition, a former policy was changed, and entry was granted to yet other missionaries.

Thus, during the next ten years, in a setting of magnificent mountains, forests, and lakes in northern Sumatra, we worked with missionaries from Australia, Austria, Germany, the Philippines, Sweden, and the United States. The preaching work prospered, especially among the region’s main ethnic group, the Batak.

However, religious schemers finally succeeded in having our preaching work banned in December 1976, and the following year most of the missionaries left for assignments in other countries. Finally, in 1979, we also had to go.