I have never been to Asia in my life, but now somehow I will be living here for 3 months??
YES!! I live in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia.
On Monday December 7th, we flew from Guatemala City to Atlanta, Georgia. From there, we traveled to New York City where we had a 13 hour layover to rest. Tuesday morning we left to Dubai! We were on the plane for 12 hours and with the time difference in Dubai, we arrived early Wednesday morning. We took one more 7 hour plane ride and finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We stayed in KL for 2 nights and explored the city. It was absolutely beautiful.
The last 3 months, I was on a team with 6 other amazing girls and we were the infamous Binti Beans! Coming into Malaysia, we got team changes. Now I am on a team with 5 other super cool ladies, 2 of which were on my last team. We traveled by bus to Penang, a small island off the West coast of Malaysia. My team is staying at the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) base here with one other team. It is super cute and reminds me of a tiny New York City apartment. Penang is known as the street food capital of the world and while trying to find things that weren’t spicy was a bit of a challenge, the food is outstanding! We are centrally located and can walk to most places, but we also can take the bus to the grocery store and malls in the area. The weather is hot and humid, all day long. Because of this, most everyone comes out at night when it’s cooler and the streets are full of people and street food vendors.
It is very tricky here in Malaysia to talk about Jesus or to say that you are a Christ follower. There is quite a diversity of people who live here. Predominately there are Chinese Malay, Indian Malay, and Malaysian Malay. Although there is religious freedom in Malaysia, the Malaysian Malay people are Muslim by law. Those who are born Malay, are born into Islam. When someone is or converts to Islam, they are under Sharia Law and it is illegal for them to convert to any other religion. Islam represents over 60% of the population in Malaysia.
My team and I will be doing a few different types of ministry here in Penang. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s we will be working in a refugee school teaching English, Math and Science. (If you read my last blog you could probably guess how excited I am to be a teacher!!). There’s not much I am able to say about it but what I can say is that it is definitely going to be amazing.
A few days a week we get involved with the Penang House Of Prayer or PenHOP. Here we spend hours, mostly in the evenings, in prayer, worship and in the Word. It is so cool to get to spend personal and intentional time with the Lord in that building.
On Wednesday evenings we will be going out to do street evangelism. We break up into small groups of about 2-4 and walk the streets of Penang. We talk to people we come in contact with and pray over them if we can. At around 10pm, we meet back up and talk about who we met or talked to and our experiences. We have already done this once, and my group talked to three homeless Buddhists. We asked them a lot of questions about Buddhism to get a better understanding of it, and were able to share more about Jesus with them.
There are a few things you can pray about for me, my team, and my squad.
-Boldness: My team and I need boldness as we go out and spread God’s love.
-Discernment while talking to others about Jesus
-Passion and love for all the people in Penang, and also for the kids we will be teaching
-Due to lack of ministry contacts in Malaysia, two teams are currently in Thailand for a little while. There do not have plans for the entire three months so please pray that it all works out and that God directs their paths.
-One of the girls on my squad, Suzanna, found out that her 9 year old brother unexpectedly passed away upon getting here to Malaysia. Please pray for her and her family during this difficult time as she is back in the states for a few weeks
I LOVE Penang!! We have already made so many friends. These next few months are going to be so busy but so very amazing and I’m excited!!
