Seven crew members and 155 passengers were aboardalmost one-third from the same Christian denomination.
There was no single reason that members of Mawar Sharon, a Protestant faith with about 45,000 members around Indonesia, got on the AirAsia Airbus plane Sunday, beyond a common desire to get to Singapore in time for New Year’s Eve. They weren’t heading to one event. They didn’t all necessarily know one another, having attended services at different churches mostly around Surabaya, the Indonesian city where the commercial airliner took off.
Still, their religion tied them together. And pastor Lianggone Tejo Bunarto says he hopes that those shared beliefs help their loved ones cope now, as the search for more crash victims continues in the Java Sea.
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That doesn’t mean they lose faith.
According to the pastor, “We just put our trust — everything, completely — in his will. Because he’s going to bring everything (that is) the best in our life.”
