Page 109 - Introduction to New Jerusalem Evangelism

tied to the anchoring tree. At this point the team was almost divided on what to do
next.
Half of the team sticked to the original plan: “move forward, walk on the tree
stem and cross the river”. The other half preferred to back off and find the dried place
and spend the night in the forest. And the bad news was the more time we took for
arguing one to another the situation got worse and worse! Not only the floodwater
got higher and higher but also the river water current became stronger and stronger.
The last-but-not-the-least problem was found by the two swimmers who had plunged
into the water and held the bridging tree-stem beam by their hands. They clung on the
beam and, as they moved towards the middle of the beam, they found out that the
tree beam had twisted to the middle. It might be broken sooner or later. Ooohhh, our
Lord Jesus, please lead and help us! Make us united and protected! Then, after praying,
‘come on, come on, everybody move closer and let’s discuss a plan!’ And the planned
steps were implemented below. Thank God, again and again!
The first step was performing the river crossing test i.e. to cross the river by
walking on the tree-stem bridge. One of us had been chosen and the test was
successfully done, despite the near-miss accident, by Ps J. Rengkung. The good side
was the fact that some hanging roots of the inter-twined and over-arching branches of
the two anchoring trees were also inter-twined one with the other making several
cable-like parabolic sagging hanging roots from above. This ‘natural’ structure could
function as the holding bars from above so that when one walked step by step on the
tree beam one also could hold the cable-like hanging roots. The second step was 3
young guys who were good swimmers had been instructed to swim near the bridge
beam, while holding it sometimes to check its condition, and guarded the people
walking one by one on the beam. This was intended to catch any people who might
fall down to the river for any reason. The third step was one had to guard one’s balance
by always holding the (cable-like) hanging roots over them while walking along the
beam.
Despite the threatening, highly-suppressing and very scary condition that
haunted NJE’s team, there were also some good news in the middle of the crisis. In
this case, the hanging roots suspended from overhanging branches of the two
anchoring trees were long enough to hold easily. Their numbers were a lot so it was
always available at each step taken by us while walking on the beam. Even some of
them were inter-twined well one to another creating a long suspended cable-like rope
which could be grapped and hold easily by us while walking on the beam. It was not
clear how the inter-twining hanging roots could happen (were made).

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