Andrew Chan preached message of hope
One of the last times I saw Andrew Chan alive was in the grounds of Kerobokan prison.
Beefier than he was during his 2006 trial and with a newly shaved head, he stood behind the pulpit of the prison's small chapel.
I had been able to get into Kerobokan with the wife of Chan's Bali 9 accomplice Martin Stephens, and we were sitting watching Chan preach.
The only other Australians in the small congregation were Stephens and Melbourne man Angus McCaskill, who had just been sentenced to seven years for cocaine possession.
Chan smiled and touched the men gently on their shoulders. He swayed back and forth with a microphone and sang loudly to the hymns.
Pastor Thompson Manafe asked him: "One day you will come to front of the door of Christ's house and Christ will ask you, 'Why should I call you from here', Andrew . . . what do you say to him?”
Chan replied: "Because you're my God and I've been a good boy.
"I have sinned but I have come to you.”
Are you a good boy?
"Sometimes. There might have been one or two times I've done bad things.”
Chan said he had found religion behind bars. I believed him.
Andrew Chan in a holding cells after being sentenced to death. Picture: Steve Pennells/The West Australian
Seven months later, I was back at Kerobokan, watching Chan give a Christmas sermon in the prison hall.
He was evangelising about peace and love to a seated audience of about 300 prisoners and guards.
"Firstly, I want to thank the Lord that he's blessed us with this wonderful service," Chan said, raising his hands.
"It's about the birth of Jesus. And how he has given us life."
He preached enthusiastic messages of hope found in the face of the death penalty. From drug "kingpin" to pastor.
I thought then that if there was ever an argument for redemption, this was it.
Whenever I saw Chan in Kerobokan - and watched his slow path to the man he became - I never once got the sense that he was faking.
A woman places a candle on top of a picture of Andrew Chan. Pictrure: Getty Images
I never got to see Chan again after that Christmas night but I did see his coffin. It was driven past me at 5.04am yesterday.
Chan's body was inside.
Four-and-a-half hours earlier, with a dull bang that could be heard on the mainland, the 31-year-old's healthy heart had been hit by at least one bullet 500m from where a big crowd had gathered, waiting for him and seven others to die.
He was pronounced dead at 1.02am and his body was washed, any bullets removed and the wounds sewn shut.
Every one of us at Cilacap port yesterday - the Australian supporters with their anti death-penalty T-shirts, the DFAT staff, the locals - were numb.
Claustrophobic helplessness had tightened its grip as the deadline inched closer.
Indonesian authorities jammed the area's phone network just after midnight, making everyone's mobiles useless.
And in the absence of news - or hope - small groups had tried to do something. A box of candles was pulled out and lit. A stream of excited locals ran up, grabbed them and hummed along to the hymns being sung.
An ambulance carrying a coffin containing the body of one of the eight drug traffickers leaves Wijaya Pura port. Picture: Getty Images
One Chan and Sukumaran supporter rushed through the crowd and urged people to hashtag their tweets #PastorAndrew "because that's what he is and that's what he should be remembered as".
But when the news finally came that the men were dead, no one did anything.
Suddenly the fight, the hope, the prayers - and eight lives - had been extinguished.
"It's over," said a small woman who had greeted me at the hotel where we were both staying and had poured her heart out as the night wore on.
Waiting for someone to die is soul-destroying.
Nothing can prepare you for that. Not even nine years notice.
Witnesses said that when the condemned men faced the firing squad, Chan had led them in song, much as he'd done in the prison chapel in Kerobokan.
After his body and the seven others were driven away in ambulances, dawn broke over Cilicap. It was a searing red sunrise. On any other day, I would have called it beautiful.
