Getting Again the Good Life

Evangelist, once reported killed, has his life and family back

by John Filiatreau

LIQUICA, East Timor - Leonito da Costa's death and resurrection took place
shortly after Aug. 30, 1999, the day he and hundreds of thousands of other East Timorese trooped to the polls to vote for independence from Indonesia.

In the days after the United Nations-sponsored referendum, pro-Jakarta militias [sic] went on a rampage, killing as many as 2,000 civilians and destroying an estimated 80 percent of East Timor's buildings and other infrastructure. One-third of the population, more than 300,000 people, left the country.

A hundred fearful Christians, the remnant of the Protestant church of East Timor, were led into the wilderness by the last four Protestant ministers still on the job.

One of the four, the Rev. Francisco de Vasconcelos Ximenes, general secretary and acting moderator of Gereja Kristen di Timor Timur (the Christian Church of East Timor, or GKTT), had had to choose for the group between seeking protection at a local police station and taking to the bush without food or water. He prayed about it. Then, realizing that he couldn't bring himself to trust the police, he led the group into the mountains.

Protestants have always been a tiny minority in East Timor, which has been predominantly Roman Catholic since the first Portuguese colonists arrived in the 16th century. Generally speaking, Catholics were considered pro-independence, while Protestants were said to be more sympathetic to the country's Indonesian occupiers. But these Protestant leaders had been vocal supporters of independence, so their names were being checked against "death lists" at roadblocks all around Dili, the capital.

When it was reported a few days after the independence vote that Ximenes
had been captured and killed, it was also reported, almost as an afterthought, that da Costa, a lay "evangelist" in the GKTT, had been executed alongside him.

This was easy to believe, because da Costa had become Ximenes's right-hand
man. Whenever one saw Ximenes, a big, bearish fellow by Timorese standards,
there at his side one always saw da Costa, a small, slight man who carried
himself like a servant. It was Leonito who every morning killed and swept up dozens of cockroaches as big as my thumb, cockroaches mice could saddle up and ride.

It was reported that Ximenes's dying words were, "Please voice our voices."

I assumed that that was a poor translation, that what he'd meant to say was
something like, "Please make our voices heard."

Da Costa's last words were not recorded.

When word of their deaths reached me, I was shocked but not surprised. Death had been in the air when I'd last seen them. The roads around Dili had been crowded with people trying to get out before nightfall. Parts of the city were already burning. Truckloads of soldiers and militiamen we re rushing here and there, helicopters whop-whopping overhead.

As I shook their hands at the airport, I thought: I'll soon be safe and warm in Kentucky - and you'll be waiting for the militias to come and kill you. I gave da Costa most of the money I had left. I didn't feel too good about getting on the plane, but I got on the plane.

I'd met Ximenes and da Costa in the days before the independence vote, when
I was in East Timor as an election observer for the United Nations, part of a small delegation organized by the Asia-Pacific Center for Justice and Peace in New York City. We'd spent a few days together in an unfurnished house in Dili while anti-independence militias sprayed the neighborhood with bullets.

On the day of the referendum itself, I'd gone to watch a polling station in a tiny village at the top of a mountain shrouded in clouds. I was thrilled. How often does one get to witness the birth of a nation?

But when things got dangerous, we Westerners bailed. I was pretty sure I'd
never see Ximenes and da Costa again. Whether they survived or not.

I'd written a story about da Costa, how he'd lost his wife, Leonarda, and their three daughters, and didn't know where they were, or whether they were alive. He'd told me about his village, Potubo, in Liquica, west of Dili. He'd told me about his church, Bethel Christian, which once had 185 members. He'd told me about the wealthy farming collective in his village that once had 25 goats, a milk cow, two fattening calves and ripening crops of vegetables and cassava.

All that had been lost one morning when anti-independence militiamen armed
with axes and machetes and escorted by Indonesian soldiers waded into a crowd they had herded into the yard of the Catholic church in Liquica and slaughtered more than 60 people.

Leonito was smashed in the head with a gun butt and only survived because
of the kindness of a police officer who happened to be an elder in his church. When he awoke, his home, Bethel Church and the village of Potubo had been burned to the ground. The militias had killed all the livestock and burned all the crops. His old life was gone. He'd heard third-hand that his wife and three daughters had got out with the clothes on their backs and made it to a refugee camp in the jungle.

Yet da Costa said he was was "very happy." He said he had "died and
experienced the resurrection," and his Christian faith was "very strong."

That was well before news of his death was broadcast worldwide - and reached Leonarda, who was living in a camp in West Timor with her daughters, then 9, 5 and 1year old. That was in September 1999. She hadn't seen him since that spring. She wouldn't see him again for more than two years.

"I give thanks to Jesus Christ," Leonito says today. "It is because of Jesus Christ, the love of Jesus Christ, that I got my family back. I had lost everything, and even though it was a difficult time, God took care of my family. I always felt that Jesus Christ was with me."

Ximenes says of Leonito: "He is a great man, a very great man. He is happy
now, even more than before. ... He was always hoping his family could get
again the good life."

And it has.

Leonito and Leonarda have another child, now 1 - a fourth daughter. They live in a small house in Liquica. They have a little garden. Chickens run around the yard.

When I visit, all the neighborhood children are there. They touch their noses to the back of my hand, a respectful greeting. Some also want to touch my white skin. They think my camera is magic; pictures of themselves make them giggle uncontrollably.

Leonarda serves me hot tea. We chat about Leonito's brother and how many
cows and hogs it will cost him when he finally takes a bride. These days, he says, rolling his eyes, when you marry a woman, you marry her whole family, there's no end to it. Still, a man needs a bride ...

Leonito teases his brother. The older brother grins, the younger one blushes. They could be any two brothers, anywhere.

They take me to Bethel Church. It is a small, plain, solid-looking building in a little clearing hacked out of the jungle. We'd call it a shed.

In it are three fire-engine-red plastic chairs; a metal folding chair for me, the guest of honor; and a rough wooden table. On the wall is an outdated calendar with a picture of the Last Supper on it, the only sign of the building's religious purpose. Although it is raining, the interior is bone-dry, which seems to give everyone satisfaction.

The pastor joins us, happy to show off his church. I get a fleeting sense of deja vu and realize that I had exactly the same experience just a few weeks ago, in Fort Myers, FL, except that the church was much bigger and better-appointed, and the pastor wore shoes.

All three men glow with pride that there is once again a Bethel Church.

But now, they say, hardly anyone comes to worship; four or five people on a typical Sunday, sometimes only Leonito and his wife and the pastor and his wife.

The people stay away because the church has nothing, not even a cross. No Bibles, no hymnals, no Sunday school. There is almost nothing to pay the pastor; what little he does get comes through the synod in Dili, not the collection plate.

When Leonito goes door-to-door in the villages, "teaching the people about what the Bible says," mostly they are nice to him, and listen politely, and give him tea; but they say they prefer the Catholic churches now, or the charismatic Christian ones, because those churches have altar cloths and hymnals and stained glass and framed pictures on the walls, and feel more like real churches.