His twinkling eyes and shaggy white hair are a testament to his survival skills. As usual on a Christmas Day, he had celebrated mass in central Banda Aceh then taken a bus down the west coast to Meulaboh.

There, in a town since made famous by disaster, he held a Christmas mass. The next morning, as he was at the bus station ready to go back to Banda Aceh, he heard the people shouting in panic. With everyone else, the priest ran away from the coast trying to escape the tsunami, but he couldn't run fast enough.

He took refuge in one of the few buildings left standing: on the second floor of a mosque.

It was a fitting place. ``Yes of course, why not! I have also been giving refuge to Muslims for many years,'' he says, in reference to his church's program of importing foreign doctors to operate on Muslim children with cleft palates along Aceh's north coast.

``I spent four days in Meulaboh,'' recounts the priest, ``moving from one house to another. First we stayed in an Acehnese house, then in a Chinese house, then in a school with many policemen.'' He slept under a peasant house, with soldiers, so close to a chicken coop he feared getting bird flu, he jokes.

His odyssey reveals the tolerant and cosmopolitan aspects of life atop Aceh's Islamic bedrock. This is where Islam first came to Indonesia half a millenium ago - and it has generally been confident, erudite Islam rather than its paranoid, more radical cousin.

Even in the midst of what Father Fernando calls ``an apocalyptic vision'' of destruction, the ties that bound humanity were stronger than those that divided.

But some Indonesians and aid workers worry that the need to let Acehnese think for themselves may be lost in the enormous aid push underway, some of it by ambitious religious groups with agendas that go beyond shelter and food.

One United States Agency for International Development (USAID) official says it's the perfect opportunity for aid groups - faith-based or not - to make funding proposals based around the tsunami. ``Even in the first week we saw a flood of proposals, with high expat salaries, the works. This disaster will make careers,'' she says. A key goal early on was to get USAID stickers on to every shipment to make sure the publicity was clear. Some staff have been seen giving autographs.

For many groups pouring into Aceh, it's not only a time to harvest the big bucks of aid flowing in, but to harvest souls.

Veteran aid workers say they are not surprised by the onslaught of unusual groups appearing at the scene of disaster, but fear their impact.

``It's the first time I've run into so many different people from so many different agencies in one place,'' says Wayne Ulrich, emergency coordinator for Catholic Relief Services, a non-evangelical, pragmatic aid organisation.

Many long-term aid agencies might have roots in a particular faith but have decades of experience and they work irrespective of others' race, creed or religion. These ecumenical churches offer broad acceptance of varied faiths and aim their good works at a multicultural world.

Some groups are widely seen as cults, pushing a quasi-religious doctrine of healing and feeling. Other groups, particularly American evangelicals associated with the conservative politics of the Bush administration, focus on a personal and direct relationship with a defined God through literal adherence to ancient texts. Their temptation, say critics, is to use disaster as an excuse to make converts.

``There are elements here which shouldn't be here,'' says the director of one of the largest international aid agencies working in Aceh. ``There are lots of faith-based groups, and some of them are explicit about the need to spread the word. People will get sick of that pretty quick.''

In a city famed for its gracious mosque, built according to an Italian design with Dutch money in 1881, still standing alongside colonial and Chinese buildings, a rich history has survived the tsunami. But it has yet to weather the spiritual after-shocks.

Directly across from the Pendopo, the old Dutch Governor's House in Banda Aceh built in 1880, is a cluster of large green tents with foreigners sitting around in bright yellow T-shirts. The logo: ``Church of Scientology.''

``We're focusing on emotional stress and trauma,'' says Gregory Churilov, an Argentinian convert to the cult which promises new life for hard cash.

``Here, it's as if everyone's been in a huge car accident, whole families have been wiped out, and Scientology offers a methodology to handle loss and trauma.''

He disclaims any intention to garner converts: ``We really frown on that. You can look at all this in two ways: that we are getting more exposure because we are greedy for converts, or that we are getting more exposure because we are willing to help.''

He and his cohorts are offering the so-called science of ``Dianetics,'' a cathartic form of therapy which includes a form of massage ``to get the person in communication with their body.'' Churilov claims to have mastered a ``basic technique to orient people into the present, to snap them out of the past, making them more alert.''

But one group of men gathered around a cooking fire at the university's mosque were merely bemused, feeling no need for massage, they said, and having no idea what Scientology might be.

In an unusual twist on the notion of bringing aid to the destitute, Churilov says his group arrived in Aceh with nothing and were given tents by the army and food by friendly locals. Unfazed that the aid flow was meant to go the other way, he used this as an example of how well accepted the Scientologists were by the local people, rather than an example of traditional manners.

But the notion that catching people in a weakened state and exposing them to ideas and practices they have never felt the need for before is disturbing.

``I was at a meeting and I was surprised at how many groups there were saying they were into psycho-social and trauma recovery, and we've never heard of them before,'' says Indonesian psychologist and London graduate Livia Iskandar. She helps run a group called Pulih (literally To Recover), of professional trauma experts who focus on the need for community-based solutions to conflict or disaster.

``There is a danger of pathologizing people and not giving time for normal recovery to take place. This is a collective trauma - it's too early to label individuals as traumatized.

``We know the Acehnese are very strong people. Aceh has special characteristics in its culture and religion that even as Indonesians, we need to be aware of. We really appreciate efforts by the international community, but there is a need to respect the traditions already in place,'' she says.

Radical Islamic groups have received the most attention so far, but aid workers at established agencies also wonder what Christian evangelists, including Mormons, on the streets of Banda Aceh might have to offer.

A strange confluence of need and available money has also drawn groups focused on, say, the trafficking of women, which has rarely been an issue in cohesive Acehnese society.

``We're having money thrown at us by the United States government for trafficking programs we haven't even asked for!'' says a communications director of a large international agency.

One faith-based group intent on saving women from prostitution, whether they like it or not, is the International Justice Mission (IJM), a group of God-fearing, Harvard-trained lawyers. Describing itself as a ``Christ-centered'' organization on its Web site, it argues - and provides biblical references for - a doctrine of ``explicitly Christian'' direct intervention.

IJM's Sean Litton, speaking on the phone from Medan wouldn't talk about what he was doing in Sumatra and refers callers to his US head office. ``We're in the middle of things it would not be a good thing to talk about,'' he says.

Drew Bishop of Compassion International is more open and admits that its current work with local partner, PESAT, is a departure from its usual business of training local churches in child development.

``We are channeling funds through local partners and providing a framework for the many volunteers coming in who have no idea what they're doing,'' says Bishop.

``We had looked to contact Christians in Aceh but found most of the churches were filled with bodies. We're still looking, we want to get them involved.

``We want to distance ourselves from Christian groups who are trying to assign blame or judgment. We are here just because we care. We're not asking if recipients are Christian or not. We're saying we can help you to help your own people.''

Hans Geni, of PESAT, is an Indonesian Pentecostal Christian but insists his kindergartens all over Indonesia follow the national, not a sectarian, curriculum. The tsunami has given his group an opportunity to enter Aceh for the first time.

It's a different faith but a similar message over at the office of the World Association of Muslim Youth. Hamid Sa-ad from Jeddah has an ``open budget'' and is overseeing the work of loading piles of food and household kits on to trucks for distribution to camps.

``We have some Islamic programs in education, to explain what Islam is to non-Muslim people. But in Indonesia there is no need for this,'' he says.

But right next door is the office of a group which aided the rampaging Indonesian military-backed militias in East Timor in 1999. Young men lounging at the offices of the Laskar Merah Putih say they're defenders of Indonesian national unity.

``We are friends with the TNI [Indonesian Armed Forces],'' boasts Eddie Juliansyah, an Acehnese who helps run the Laskar Merah Putih office.

More recent Islamic entrants include the Front Pembela Islam (FPI), better known for trashing bars and other houses of sin in Jakarta, but now earning plaudits for their volunteer work in collecting Aceh's corpses for proper burial.

Camped out in the Heroes Cemetery on the same street as the expanding Unicef office in Banda Aceh, FPI leaders tried to expel two female reporters who refused to wear headscarves. ``This is an Islamic state,'' they insisted, although Acehnese Muslims rarely insist on such dogma.

Ploughing through the well-funded buffet of groups and ideas now on offer to the Acehnese in this vulnerable time of their lives, it's easy to reach overload.

That's why the non-evangelical, mainstream Indonesian Council of Churches, related to the liberal World Council of Churches in Geneva, has a special taskforce to track just what Christian groups are doing.

``We are sharing information about the activities of all these groups,'' says Frans Tumiwa, a leader of the Council of Churches. He and his colleagues worry that many conservative Christian groups are giving the rest of the church a bad name.

``The people in Aceh need to be helped, with practical things, with food and supplies. But when people come in saying they're representing this or that Christian group, well, there shouldn't be any talk about religion. Some of these groups can destroy the whole image of the church,'' he says. He too worries about the number of groups he's never heard of before, charging into Aceh with many thousands of dollars and an explicit evangelical agenda.

``They give a wrong impression about the real mission of the church, which is to be in solidarity with the people of Aceh,'' he says.

Samaritan's Purse is promising an airlift of a helicopter with crucial supplies. This group is run by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, and is overt about catering to the spiritual as well as the physical needs of victims of the tsunami.

Its Web site offers special prayers with biblical references to help make a difference for the tsunami survivors, promising to meet the needs of victims ``with the purpose of sharing God's love through His Son, Jesus Christ.''

Just as conversion efforts by radical Islamists have long been rebuffed in Aceh, so too has any other evangelism.

But the Samaritan's Purse promises to ``offer more than help. We offer hope. To suffering people in a broken world, we share the news of the only One who can bring true peace - Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace.''

World Relief is another one to watch. One veteran aid agency director recalled seeing World Relief on the Thai-Cambodian border years ago, filling ox-carts with bibles for Cambodians just emerging from the traumatic years of Khmer Rouge rule.

``The bibles became strangely popular and it took us a while to work out why, but it was because the paper they were printed on was such good quality that it could be re-used as cigarette paper. It burned very nicely,'' the agency director says.

Dr Galen Carey directs World Relief's work in Indonesia and insists he wouldn't dream of sending bibles into Aceh as it would be ``too sensitive.'' He says his work focuses on health, education, agriculture, refugees and trade.

Up to 20 percent of World Relief's funds come from churches, he says, some from private donations, and about half from USAID.

``This is not a time to take advantage of people. What we are explaining is that this is a time of tragedy, it's a time to provide help on a human to human basis,'' Carey says.

``We have no plans to bring in bibles in or any other literature. I can't speak for what has happened before.''

Meanwhile, the Taiwanese Buddhist group, the Tzu Chi Foundation, is bringing in tents and building homes for thousands of displaced people regardless of faith.

``We don't get involved in politics. We have Muslim, Christian and Buddhist volunteers,'' says Ji Shou, a Malaysian staffer with Tzu Chi.