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News Item: 2000 Jan 26 - Pres Hincklye Visit
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| 2000 Jan 26 - Pres Hincklye Visit | 10 Mar 2002 |
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26 Jan 2000 - Jakarta LDS Church president to visit Jakarta President Hinckley will be the first Mormon leader to visit the world's most populous Muslim nation. By HANNAH WOLFSON ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER SALT LAKE CITY (Jan. 25, 2000) ¯ LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley will meet with Indonesia's president in Jakarta on Friday, the first visit of a Mormon leader to the world's most populous Muslim nation. Officials with The LDS Church said Tuesday that Hinckley plans "a brief courtesy visit" with President Abdurrahman Wahid as part of a longer trip through Asia. But any visit is significant in Indonesia, where more than 2,000 people have been killed in a year of fighting between Christians and Muslims; the government has banned most foreign missionaries, particularly those outside mainstream Christianity. In addition, President Hinckley is expected to announce the formation of the country's first stake, or grouping of congregations roughly equivalent to a diocese. "It's a very big deal," said Chad Emmett, a geography professor at BYU who served a church mission to Indonesia in the 1970s and has helped coordinate Indonesian members for the visit. Emmett and others have raised $2,000 for Indonesian members to travel to Jakarta for Friday. As of Tuesday, 16 busloads were expected from across the main island of Java, where most of the church's 5,200 members live. The move is important both for the church, which has been reaching for more members in Asia and the Islamic world, and for Wahid, who has emphasized religious tolerance since his election in October. In fact, church officials began cultivating a relationship with Wahid well before he took office. The connection came by chance. A church member living in California befriended Wahid during a stay in Indonesia and recommended an LDS doctor in Salt Lake City when he learned Wahid was going blind. The link soon came to the attention of church leaders, who invited Wahid to Salt Lake City, where he underwent surgery at the University of Utah's Moran Eye Center. "Elder (Jeffrey) Holland, who oversees church operations in the Islamic world, was very aware we needed to build bridges and Indonesia, we needed to make friends there," Emmett said. At a follow-up visit in August, Wahid was invited to meet with Hinckley, and Wahid invited the prophet to his country in return. Mormons hope Hinckley's trip to Indonesia will open the door once again to their missionaries, who were expelled along with all foreign missionaries in 1981, 11 years after the first Mormons arrived there. Even before that, the government placed increasingly heavy restrictions on mission work. "We had to teach English and wait to be invited into homes, we met people on the bus," said Emmett, who started his mission there in 1977, a year before the government issued restrictions on proselytizing. "We maybe performed two to three baptisms a year. It was slow work," Emmett said. Now all mission work there is done by local members, with occasional visits from missionaries based in Singapore or American couples who have taught dentistry at a local university. Emmett said the state invitation from a president who heads the country's largest Muslim organization is a good sign Wahid may be willing to live up to his promise of a return to historical tolerance, even after a year of vicious fighting on the island of Ambon. "To me, Indonesia was always very proud of the fact that Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were able to live together peacefully," Emmett said. |
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| David Brewer | Send Email |
