Every now and again there’s a gap in the conversation, the only sound to break the hot heavy silence the raking of the hoe through the sand, and the splash of the water as yet another pile finds its mark. Mist rolls over the mountain in the distance, smeared with streaks of light, the sun crawling higher and higher in the sky. Shade is scarce now. Resting behind one of the pillars is the only respite from the heat, growing harsher and harsher as the morning wears on. Everything is dirty. Blisters have begun to form on your hands and your fingers, beads of sweat lining silvery trails down our foreheads and our arms. The evening rains have carved huge puddles into the still sandy foundation, and every once in a while, we’ll still hear the screams of surprise as another patch of quicksand is discovered, a teammate buried up to their knees. The shovelfuls pass, one, two, four hundred, a thousand, time measured in the slowly shrinking size of the puddles, since the minutes are hardly moving. And all the while the wooden cross in the corner stands guard, as our comfort and our drive, and you can almost see Jesus Christ himself sitting there on the cement wall behind it, smiling down at us wryly.
This is our morning ministry, before the real heat sets in for the day, before the relationship building and the house visits and worship meetings and discipleship can happen. This is our worship every morning. This is our worship, and it’s our family time, and our exercise, and our service, and our choir practice, and our game time, prayer time, quiet time, problem solving exercises, devotional meetings, logistical planning sessions, and one on one time.
Our ministry contact, Jesudason, has one of the most incredible hearts I’ve ever seen. His last nine years spent ministering in Kelantan, the remote, northeast rainforest region of Malaysia, have been an enormous testimony to the Lord’s faithfulness in blessing our obedience. During the days we fellowship, with him and his wife, sister Gloria, and others they have met and painstakingly built relationships with over the years. At night our focus shifts to active ministry, leading worship and services, accompanying Jesudason on house visits in his ambitious desire to bring the Gospel and the saving hope of Jesus Christ to the 650 Tamil families scattered throughout the state of Kelantan. Yesterday our work brought us to the house of a beautiful girl, Saraswathi, who had a huge growth on her arm. And as we prayed for her, the lumps moved violently, scrambling under the weight of the word of the Lord. Jesudason’s work will take us all over the state, to every soul hungry for the hope he provides, and every soul that doesn’t know it yet, for God is indisputably behind every visit, every action, every service, and every prayer this humble man has done over the years. Where the Lord is working, Jesudason is there, ready and eager, brimming with joy and laughter, that huge goofy grin breaking out under his glasses and silvering mustache, rolling around in his ancient red shell of a van, spreading the Kingdom wherever he sets foot. His body has been broken many times, but that can’t contain his overwhelming energy. This man is blessed, I tell you.
Church is small but it is glorious. We met to worship in a room above the street last night, 11 of us gathered from all different backgrounds to praise the name of the Lord. The lights were installed by Jesudason himself, the curtains sewed by his incredible wife Theresa, dinner graciously made by Sister Gloria, the banners handmade praising the Lord in Tamil and English, while Sheri led worship and I bounced around on the bongos, Jesudason praising the Lord wildly on the drumset he almost certainly had no idea how to play. No instruments. No common language. But the Lord was worshiped that night.
Sheri Funk and I at the river
And the people here, I tell you, they are so beautiful. We have been greeted by nothing but smiles and waves, eager questions of ‘HI HOW ARE YOU” pouring out around us like rain as we make our way around town, splashing around the river and drawing a crowd in the main shopping center as Sheri forced us to try durian, the nastiest fruit in the world. It tasted like spilled garlic and old bleach on a potato that was then soaked in rancid pineapple juice. But even through these small opportunities, we have had the opportunity to meet so many incredible people here, and Jesudason’s diligent work is such a blessing to remind us, they are all God’s children, and all of them loved outrageously, to an incomprehensible degree.
This morning was only our third day of working at the new church, a building Jesudason’s been dreaming about and building by himself for years, brick by brick, shovelful by shovelful. And his vision for the place fills it, of tens and hundreds of people in the community being blessed and welcomed into the church, a broader base for a wider ministry, until all of Kelantan is reached for Christ. He builds on faith, that God has called him to build a house for the Kelantan army He’s raising up. Two days ago I helped lay bricks. Honestly, who’d have ever thought that the ‘Material Properties of Cement’ class I took junior year would be the most useful class I took at Princeton. Yesterday we moved large piles of sand to level out the interior, filling in puddles one shovelful at a time, reclaiming this land for God’s holy name. And today we moved rainwater, bucket by bucket, building a rather creative irrigation system to dry out the foundation, reclaiming this place. By faith this church is built, that the Lord will fill it and His name will be glorified by the people that do. By faith these mountains of sand our moved and cast into the water, and by faith this land is reclaimed, grain of sand by grain of sand and soul by soul, for the Kingdom of God that is surging through this nation like a flood. The more I help build this church, the more this starts to feel like my church. And God reminds me, every second of the morning, that in quite a real way, it is my church; and every person we meet a brother or a sister.
Love,
Danny
