Posted by:
johanngambolputty
(
)
Date: July 24, 2018 06:50AM
So I was a pretty active observer of this website some years ago. I kept being cynical to my parents when we talk about faith and the church when I was observing this website. I stopped and deleted the account from my own decision and family relations was at a all time high which is good.So I deleted the account and never came back since until now.
So me and my parents was talking about the politics and the religion tension in my home country of Indonesia. One thing lead to another and then we ponder back to the good old times of in the late 90s and early 2000s. We were talking about Gus Dur, the "first" elected president of Indonesia, and how he was close and friendly to the Church. He allowed back foreign missionaries to serve in Indonesia after a long pause during the oppressive government of Soeharto. The grounds of for an Indonesian temple was first announced (yet to be built, I doubt this country would even have a temple, a mormon one too) in West Java.
Then I started to google about Gus Dur, since I only knew him from stories in the media and friends and not actual facts since I was born in 2000 (Gus Dur resigned from office in 2001). One google search led to another and then I began reading about LDS Charities in Indonesia and stumbled upon to this thread. I made a new account just to post this.
https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1081966you can read my response was in the thread, but I still want to say that saying dishonest things like that is counterproductive and distracts people from the actual issue, particularly about corruption. Living in Indonesia, you hear corruption in government officials literally every day in 24 hour news cycle. Corruption has become some sort of a culture in this nation.
We always knew that there are people playing money in the church administration office, I'm talking about the Church office representative for Indonesia, basically the legal and admin organization of LDS in the nation, and not the Area presidency or similar like that most of them are pretty honest since they're not Indonesian :), for a long time. But since the old, 20+ years Coordinator, similar to what a CEO do in a company but this is in a foundation (yayasan in indonesian), pensioned, the truths spread out like wildfire in the Indonesian LDS community. There are speculations of collusion, embezzlement, and activities out of the ordinary and not according to church standards that is happening for at least the last 7-8 years. The pensioned former coordinator was replaced by his close "subordinate". And the job position of the replacement was also accelerated passing through his bosses. Some employees resigned because of this.
Collusion mostly occurred in funds regarding to charities like clean water projects, renovation projects, etc. They were done by marking up either the amount of objects or the the fees in the budget. So for example:
In the budget:
PVC pipe knees needed: 1000 pcs
Sink and other sanitation equipments: High quality and durable brands
In Reality:
PVC pipe knees needed: 200
Sink and other Sanitation equipments: Cheap low quality brands
--You see the pattern here--
There were some people in the office reported these financial anomalies but that never reached to the higher up since you need to report to the coordinator meanwhile the coordinator is the one that is corrupt. There are so many speculation that information is pretty unclear and gossip spread like lighting gunpowder. I'm not being cynical to the church, I hope that the church can resolve this issue since corruption is bad in any way. And also Corruption, Collusion, and Nepotism is not acceptable in Indonesia.
Thanks