Refugee | In the Paal Dua refugee camp in Manado, a young Christian refugee looks at a distant church.

For centuries, bloody wars were fought over the Spice Islands—now the Indonesian province of Maluku. Indian, Chinese, Arab and European traders came to claim rare and therefore valuable resources like nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, sandalwood and rubber.

Today a new war seethes, and people are dying again. But instead of fighting over a commodity, they fight and die over religion. This war would test Campus Crusade for Christ staff member Nus Reimas in ways he could not have imagined. Could he really live out Christ's love in the midst of hatred?

Nus' Christian family lived a seemingly idyllic life in the islands of Kei Besan, in Rerean-Weduarfer, a small fishing village of about 50 houses on the beach of Ambon Island. Unchanged for generations, they never had television, radio, newspapers or telephones, nor could they call for help in any way.

When Nus grew up, Ambon Island was a primarily Christian enclave, although most were nominal Christians. But the government policy of transmigrasi—moving people, mostly poor Muslims, from overpopulated cities to lightly populated areas—had changed the dynamics of the fishing village dramatically.

Even so, the Christians and the Muslims had always been friendly. When the Christians built a new church, the Muslims came to help. And the Christians returned the favor when the Muslims built a new mosque. But that all changed with the arrival of foreigners who stirred up the Muslim villagers across the islands and sent them out in a frenzy to kill Christians in the name of religion.

At dawn, the day before Good Friday in 1999, Muslim militants came to Rerean-Weduarfer with machetes, bamboo staves and clubs. Breakfast fires had just begun streaming smoke into the breeze off the Banda Sea. Some attackers came from the sea in outrigger canoes; some came down the beach, leaping over the boats and the nets drying in the breeze; some attacked from behind, through the coconut palm groves.

They burned every building in the village. They stabbed and hacked and clubbed the Christian villagers. Some they tied up and killed later. And they kept coming back. About 200 Christians died that week in the village, but Nus lost 38 family members including a brother, aunts, uncles and cousins.

At the same time, other Christian villages across the island chain suffered the same kinds of assaults, all part of an organized battle plan. One village heard about the offensive and fled before the militants arrived. With no one to kill, the enraged attackers dug up graves in the village cemetery and pulled out markers.

A cousin eventually called Nus with the bad news. He ticked off names of the dead, one by one. Relatives, childhood friends who used to sleep over at his house, schoolmates and teachers—murdered. "All I could do at first was cry," says Nus, pausing and looking down. "It was unbelievable."

Even though everyone knows the names of the people involved, there are no police on the island, and the army never arrested anyone. Today, when he talks about the murders, Nus speaks in a hushed tone, as if an assassin might be eavesdropping. "The killers claimed a provocateur stirred them up," says Nus. "They said it was all his fault."

Seeking peace, Nus turned to his Alkitab—his Indonesian Bible. There he read David's prayer and petition to God in Psalm 119:68, "Engkau baik dan berbuat baik" ("You are good, and what You do is good" [New International Version]).

"Then I realized that God didn't do this," says Nus, "but He controls everything and what He does is never wrong." While the hurt may never scar over completely, and all the questions may never be answered, God has given Nus His peace.

Nus, who directs Campus Crusade's work in Jakarta and West Java, wants the Muslim killers to come to know Christ. "I can't go back and change the past anyway," says Nus, "so I decided to forgive them."

"If I could talk to the killers," says Nus, his voice growing stronger, "I wouldn't ask questions. Questions just cause trouble. I would tell them, 'Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.' I pray for them."

Nus knows there will probably never be a just resolution to the murders of his family, at least not on Earth. And the attacks continue. CNN reports that almost 10,000 Indonesians have been murdered in Ambon since 1999, with no end in sight.

Last summer, the surviving remnants of Rerean-Weduarfer tried to return to their burned-out homes, but when they arrived they found armed militants waiting. The militants intimidated the Christians into leaving again.

Even so, Nus sees God's hand. He can honestly say, "Engkau baik dan berbuat baik."