This is the story of two siblings, brother and sister, who became miserable orphans in their early age as a result of the "dark times" prior to the second half of the 19th century when Christian missionaries came to Tano Batak (Batakland or Tapanuli) and initial evangelization took place in three small villages, Sipirok, Bungabondar and Parausorat, Northern Sumatra.  The boy namely Helung Siregar who was baptized as Samuel, and the girl, Parmahan Boru Siregar, later rechristened as MAria, both as young teens were found and taken care by the missionary institution.

Fate and faith took Samuel to the Netherlands as early as 1869 where he obtained initial training in preaching the Gospel, evangelization works and teaching schools. Then he continued and finished it at Rheinische Missios Gesellschaft Seminary in Barmen, Germany.  thus he became the first Christian Batak native to complete such studies in Europe.  Samuel returned to his homeland, Tano Batak, to start the on-going missionary drive at the end of 1873.

Maria herself became foster daughter of chief missionary mission, Nommensen in 1864.  Nommensen moved northward from Sipirok to Silindung and took Maria with him.  There he married his daughter off to Daniel Hutabarat, an orphan, son of a powerful witch doctor of the late 1840's.  Daniel became one of the first four evangelists and concurrently school teachers in northern Batakland a couple of decades before the coming of more properly trained native teachers, and later native ministers, all working under the Barmen Mission, later known as Batak Mission.

Part Two

It tells the story of the children and grandchildren of the Daniel-Maria couple. The birth, education process and ministerial services of five sons and four sons-in-law of the couple who also became mission teachers and ministers are presented in this part. This big family was involved in expanding evangelization and enlightenment to the Northern Batak region which started in the 1880's.  No less than 17 out of 69 grandchildren of the couple dedicated their lives to the ongoing spreading of the Gospel, mission schools and new civilization, all still during the pioneering era.

As part of history in the early years of the missionary works, disputes and frictions among native evangelists/teachers, as well as between the native ministers and their European supervisors were unavoidable.  However, the introduction of the new faith and horizon had transformed  virtually the whole northern Batak natives into religious society of higher civilization as we see it today.