My team this month is living in Kulim. We’ve been here for almost a week and already it has been very exciting and challenging. We are working with Pastor Mark Shan who is a Hindu turned Christian whose vision for the community is to basically just show the love of Christ, which is exactly what is needed.
While walking down the streets of Kulim, you get a pretty good variety of religion. I see small Buddhist shrines almost everywhere we go, and the occasional Muslim call to prayer. There are three main people groups here, the Indians, Malays and Chinese. Most of the Indians are Hindu, some of them are Christians, and some are Buddhist. Most of the Chinese are Buddhist, but there are a few Christians; and the Malays are all Muslim. Indian and Chinese people groups here have their choice of religion as individuals, but the Malays here do not, if you are Malay, you are Muslim and that’s it.
In most of Malaysia it is not illegal to be a Christian but it is illegal to evangelize, so being a missionary can make it a bit challenging. The country is not exclusively ruled by the Islamic Sharia law, so the people here are allowed to practice other religions, but the people who do rule are the Malay people group who do not have a choice of religion. So, since the people who rule the government are under strict Islamic law themselves, the country as a whole does not accept any sort of evangelizing.
Like I said, this makes it a bit of a challenge for us here, but The Lord would never put anything on our plate that we couldn’t handle. This month is going to be all about building relationships with the people around the community by just showing the love of Christ so Pastor Mark and his family have more foundations to keep building relationships. It is very evident that there have been amazing world race teams here in the past, there are relationships already built that we can keep pouring into for the sake of The Lord. The laundry lady who is Muslim is so excited to see us as well as the couple who runs a food stand who are Hindu.
I am very excited for this month, to keep pouring into these relationships as well as build new ones here, so please keep praying for our team and that our eyes will stay open to whatever The Lord has for us!
Also, I have 17 more days to raise just over $1,500. If The Lord has put it on your heart to donate you can follow the ‘support me’ link on the left hand side. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support!
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