As you get together with friends and family today and stuff your turkeys for a Thanksgiving feast, I sit here in Malaysia with 90 degree weather at the Penang Adventist Hospital. We are not stuffing turkeys, though; we are stuffing whales and rabbits and ducks and cats for the children here.
Ministry in Malaysia has been vastly different than in Cambodia and the Philippines. We don’t have interactions with street kids, orphans, or the poorest of the poor. We are in a place with large shopping malls and Starbucks, working at a hospital much like you would find in the US. Nonetheless, as we put fluff in stuffed animals, cut hundreds of old ID cards, and sell tin hearts around the hospital to raise money for children to have free heart surgery who can’t afford it, we are expanding the Kingdom. It has been a challenge to find worth in all the little things that we are doing, continually having to remind ourselves that in God’s eyes, it is all ministry, and that what we are doing does indeed matter.
We also are managing to have a lot of fun together on this Thanksgiving day. After we finished our stuffing, we had a “snowball” fight and built a “snowman” Malaysian style.
I miss you all and hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving! If you see my family, give them a big hug for me. Oh yeah, and eat an extra piece of pumpkin pie for me, too! Love you all!
