What could be more fun than some caroling around Christmas? How about dance party caroling. The Malaysian people really know how to party. They love their food, fun, and families.
This month was spent in Sungai Petani, Malaysia. It is about one hour north of Penang. It is difficult to answer whe people ask how my month went. I want to say great and frustrating al at the same time. You se our hosts, amazing people that they are, have a completely different concept of what constitutes a day. They stay up until 3,4,or 5 in the morning and then sleep until noon. Everyone does. One night we drove by s park at 1:30 in the morning and their were kids playing everywhere. It was incomprehensible to me how this is the norm
I absolutely loved our ministry hosts and our ministry this month. We may have been out until 2AM every day, but we were doing some fun and awesome things. We went to a home for the mentally and physically disabled. They had people of every age there. The younger ones were all mentally handicapped and the older were mostly physically handicapped, and some were suffering from dementia. We did work around the facilit, helped cook, decorate for Christmas, and spent time with the residents. We also visited a children’s home with about six children. We cleaned the house and played games with the children from the home and their neighbors. All of them together was closer to twenty.
The caroling, however, was the crown of our month. We spent four nights, 8PM – 2AM going from house to house singing carols. We sand some familiar ones: “Joy to the World”, “We wish you a Merry Christmas”, and even “Feliz Navidad”. Most of the time we sang local carols. These songs were in the peoples language and catered to the locals love for dance and partying. They had fast rhythms and some had actions and dance moves. We had so much fun singing for the people in Sungai Petani, many of whom were not Christians. I even dressed as Santa for a couple of the nights.
Sort of the culmination of the month was our Christmas Eve service. We sang worship, performed the Everything Skit, and learned a dance to perform. The service was more like a new years eve party. We went till Midnight, then hugged everyone and wished each other Merry Christmas . After that we then had dinner and danced the nght away. Our team went to bed around 2AM, but the locals stayed until after 5AM. Talk about a party.
We had such great responses to our skit and appreciation for learning a dance. The people of the Church and their families have such giving and loving servant hearts. I will miss them, but maybe not staying up until 2AM.
