Satan hates missions; an accident in Batam!

On our return journey from the proposed camp-site in Batam, I fell asleep in the back of the van. It was an hour-long journey to get back to Batam for lunch.

Suddenly, I heard the explosion of a tyre and felt the van swerving from side to side.  Before I could react, the van had flipped over and spun while it was upside down.

I found myself upside down with my head pressed against the roof of the van. Shattered glass fragments were all over. I wanted to get out of the van but first had to find my shoes. I had taken them off before I went to sleep. They were near my head. Then I looked for my passport, which had been in my shirt pocket, but was now also lying near my head.

My companions were all trying to get out of the van through the shattered windows. I shouted to them to be sure that they had their passports. Then I heard our China missionary shout out to her husband “V are you all right?” Then she shouted “Pastor, are you all right?” After than I heard her shout out in agony. When I got out of the van, I found that her left hand was almost separated from her hand. It was as if some strong person had grabbed her hand and tried to snap it off from her arm. The two forearm bones and lateral wrist tendons had completely snapped.

The rest of us were in different states of shock and pain. But we were all thankful that the van had not gone off the road down the slope. We were also thankful that no oncoming vehicle had crashed into us as we flipped over and spun on the road. We were all thankful just to be alive. The van was a total wreck.

Within minutes, other vehicles came by. A vehicle driven by a Christian Indonesian offered to take five of us to the nearest hospital which was 30 minutes away. He did not speak English and his injured passengers did not speak Indonesian but he played Christian songs on his cd player and kept saying “I love Jesus!”.

V, M, brother T from the Wilds and I went in a taxi. It was an agonizing ride for M. Bro T had used his shirt to wrap her wrist and he was doing his best to stabilize the hand but every bump on the road was agony to M. The sight of the blood and the wobbling of M’s hand was too much for Bro T and he fainted in the taxi.

On the way to the hospital, I believe we all realized that Satan is real and that we had failed to pray for a safe journey!

Later on when the Christian owner of the motor repair shop examined the tyre that exploded, he exclaimed “It’s Satan’s work!”. The steel wires of the tyre had ripped through the almost new Bridgestone tyre! This was certainly not something that would normally happen in a new Bridgestone tyre.