Today we started ministry in Ipoh with some manual labor at a home built by Lina and Morris, a couple with seventeen adopted boys. They are Indian-Malay, which is common here, where many people from different countries come to make a life for their families in Malaysia. Lina and Morris have been working with/parenting orphans for fifteen years and, throughout that time, have become parents to over 60 boys.
The home is still in the construction process. The downstairs level has rooms for Morris’s office, a computer room, kitchen and dining room, a visitors’ room and laundry room. Upstairs, there are ten bedrooms, each with adjoining bathrooms. They are empty now, with white walls and no flooring, but it’s easy to picture them full of light and laughter and love as individual homes for boys who never really had a place to call home before.
I like Lina and Morris very much. They are both mild-mannered and gentle; Lina has a wonderful smile and Morris likes to crack jokes, kind of like my stepdad, Dave, back in America. It’s easy to see how they could be incredible parents to both their own daughters and the boys they have adopted over the years.
Before we started the day’s work of painting and mixing cement, I found myself in a room alone with Lina. We made small talk for a while about the beauty of the house they had purchased and the boys they are ministering to. She told me, to encourage our team, that they had come to a point in their construction where funds were running low and she and Morris were worrying and praying about workers to complete some of the tasks in the house. They knew they couldn’t afford to pay anyone, so they had been asking God to send them some volunteers to help with the work. And it was right about that time that they learned from our contact that we would be coming to Ipoh and would be more than willing to help with anything they need.
Then Lina told me that, when she and Morris put their vision to house more and more orphans into effect, she thought that God would provide the money in one large sum and they would be able to accomplish all their tasks at once. But instead, the money came in in small amounts. Sometimes they had to stop construction while they waited for more money to come in.
Lina said that God was teaching her a lesson through providing the money in small amounts as they went along. She had to rely on God and fully trust Him to provide exactly what she needed at the exact time she needed it.
As she told me this, I had to stop myself from almost laughing out loud, because I knew, I absolutely knew, that God had orchestrated this conversation. Lina didn’t know it, but she was saying exactly what I had been needing to hear.
Since I posted a blog in May about Japan and my next steps after the Race, I’ve received $30. And I’ve been freaking out pretty consistently because I expected, I wanted, I sometimes demanded, that God would provide a huge sum of money at once. In my mind, not only would that large amount of money stop me from worrying, it would also confirm in me that this plan of going to Japan is exactly what God wants me to do.
But as I thought about Lina’s conversation, I had a few eye-opening (read: painful) revelations about myself:
- I’ve been wanting to become a better steward of my money. Okay, I’ve been talking about wanting becoming a better steward of my money, but I haven’t actually been putting it into practice.
- I’ve never been good with money. When I have it, I spend it, with no regard for saving or the future. When I don’t have it, I worry about it. I have a lot of debt from college and bad decisions in my early twenties. And I know that God is wanting to do work in me to become a better steward and a better budgeter, so I can worry less in my singlehood and be a better partner in my future married life.
- If God had suddenly provided me with $2000, $5000 or even $10,000 for Japan, all at once, out of nowhere, I have a feeling (and this is embarrassing to admit) I probably would spend it quickly and unwisely, leaving myself, well, pretty much screwed in the future.
So, with those revelations in mind, I retreated to God with my tail between my legs, licking my wounds of painful self-awareness. I blinked up at the beauty of Him, my ever-present and ever-patient Father, and whispered, “What now?”
And I don’t know if I heard a clear and audible voice – truthfully, I can count on one hand the number of times I think I maybe might have heard God’s audible voice – but we (me and God) came to this conclusion:
If I can master that, maybe I’ll have the opportunity to be a good steward of bigger amounts of money. We’ll how it goes.
And I need to stop worrying already.
I truly will be living donation to donation in Japan for three months as I try to figure out my place there and do some good work along the way. And it’s time to get serious and put all my talk into action. God is doing some painful and much-needed refining in me when it comes to money during my last month of the Race and into months 12, 13 and 14 in Japan.
And I think I’m ready for it.
If you want to learn more about what I’ll be doing in Japan, click here.
And if you want to help me become a better steward and support me, donate through PayPal ([email protected]) or Western Union (Malaysia until July 27th and Japan until late October. Send me the MTCN code and secret question and answer).
