On Sunday, January 4th, a special service was held at Surabaya’s Mewar Sharon Christian Church to remember the passengers, and crew of AirAsia Flight 8501, and pray for their families. Fourteen families from this church lost relatives in the crash, totaling of fifty-two members. More than 2,500 people attended the… Read more

Mount Gamalama, the volcano that forms the entire island of Ternate in the Malukus erupted late on Thursday. The airport has closed because the ash can problems in the planes, as well as making it hard to see as the planes land. As long as there are no more eruptions,… Read more

In just a couple of months, Indonesia’s new president Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has already started working on a new law that will give religious freedom to religious minorities. Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim has stated that over the next six months, they plan to propose a law that will protect… Read more

On Thursday, August 21, Indonesia’s highest court announced that they were unanimously upholding Indonesia’s presidential election result declaring Joko Widodo (Jokowi) as the winner. Prabowo Subianto challenged the result, claiming that there had been cheating at several polling stations, and those stations should hold new elections. But as expected, the… Read more

In Indonesia, everyone is required to declare a religion. For a long time, there were five choices: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Catholicism, and Buddhism. A few years ago, Chinese religions/ Confucianism was added. And now, the Baha’i religion has been added. Like many other minority groups, the Baha’i have faced much… Read more

Late on Tuesday, July 22, Joko Widodo, known as “Jokowi” was declared the winner in Indonesia’s presidential election. The Elections Commission declared that Jokowi received 53.16% of the votes, winning by almost 8.5 million votes. However last Friday, the losing candidate, Prabowo Subianto filed an official challenge to the results… Read more

On July 9th, Indonesians went to the polls to vote for their next president. Unfortunately, a clear winner has yet to be declared. The deadlock has raised some fears of political instability. Jokowi came out ahead with 52 percent of the vote according to the three most credible quick counts.… Read more

In the final push before Wednesday’s election, Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo (Jokowi) spent the weekend touting their Islam credentials to the world’s largest Muslim country. About nine out of ten voters have already decided who they will vote for on July 9th, but that still leaves more than 15… Read more

With Indonesia’s presidential elections less than a week away, both Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo are furiously campaigning. On Tuesday, Prabowo was in Yogyakarta. About 1,000 people gathered, most being from Islamic organizations who are declaring their candidate as the “war commander of Muslims.” Muhammad Fuad, a Muslim leader, states,… Read more

The Dolly district of Surabaya is one of Southeast Asia’s largest red-light districts. Surabaya’s new mayor has pledged to shut down the area by June 18th. A few weeks ago, over 1200 sex workers marched through the district protesting the closing. They say they won’t be able to earn a… Read more

West Java is quickly becoming one of the most intolerant provinces toward religious minorities in Indonesia. Authorities in the Cianjur district, which is about 90 km from Jakarta, have ordered seven churches to close because of allegedly having irregularities in their building permits. Building a church in Indonesia is a… Read more

Joko Widodo, otherwise known as “Jokowi” is the favorite in Indonesia’s current presidential campaign. He has named Jusuf Kalla as his running mate. He made the announcement on Monday, May 19. Unlike Jokowi, who was a furniture seller turned politician, Kalla has been in politics for a long time, as… Read more

A year ago, Dr. Michael Youssef and Leading the Way Ministries did a revival in Indonesia. The ministry is continuing to impact this country. A team of 100 Christian leaders is still doing follow-up with each person who made a decision for Christ at the revival. On March 1st, they… Read more

A woman in Aceh was gang raped last week because she was accused of having an affair. She now faces being publicly caned for the affair. Ibrahim Latif, the head of the sharia office in her town says that both she and the man will be caned because they violated… Read more

The governor of Gorontalo, Rusli Habibie, has enacted a local law requiring all government employees to pray together regularly and to attend half-hour sermons every Friday in an effort to discourage them from cheating on their spouses. He states that he has heard many reports of civil servants cheating. He… Read more

Underage prostitution is booming in Bandung, the capital of West Java. Three different nongovernmental organizations have interviewed over 700 underage prostitutes and found that most are not in it just for the money. Most of them come from a broken family. Prostitution provides the girls with an escape from domestic… Read more

Two brothers from Papua, Demianus and Seth, have recently escaped pesantrens (Islamic boarding schools) and are now telling their stories. The brothers’ parents died when they were young, and their uncle approached them and said he had a way that they could receive a free education, but they had to… Read more

A second volcano has erupted in Indonesia. Mount Kelud in East Java violently erupted Thursday evening. The eruption could be heard up to 125 miles away. One Indonesian described it as sounding like “…thousands of bombs exploding.” The ash has spread as far as west as Yogyakarta, with some villages… Read more

The Aceh provincial administration and legislative council have approved the Qanun Jinayat (behavior-governing bylaw), which means that both Muslims and non-Muslims in Aceh must follow sharia. Aceh has enforced sharia for a while now, but it was only enforced for Muslims. Now, non-Muslims must follow it, and all violators will… Read more