Blog after blog I keep promising to write a DETAILED update…ahhh, how things don’t always go according to our plans. Honestly it’s difficult because my laptop keyboard broke, so unless I am able to snag someone else’s laptop, I’m trying to type with an onscreen keyboard (WHICH TAKES FOREVER TO TYPE!) but eventually I will get some stories up here 🙂
Well, we have left Africa! After finishing our last 2 weeks of ministry as an entire squad back in Mozambique, our squad headed back to Nelspruit, South Africa for a few days of debrief (comfy beds, hot showers, indoor plumbing, grocery stores, etc–) At the end of debrief our squad leaders decided to change things up a bit and change the teams completely!
My new team consists of the following amazing men and women of God:
Ashley Haub
Kristin Helms
Heather Duke
Matthew Ruple
AJ Peters (back from my Team Abandon days!)
Leah Leckman
and myself 😉
Ashley and myself are co-leading our team…an opportunity that we are both so thankful and excited to do together!
Anyway, so after debrief we drove to Johannesburg and flew for 11 hours to Quatar and then took a 9 hour flight from there to Kuala Limpur–the capitol city of Malaysia. The day after our arrival, the new teams headed off for their respective ministry assignments. Three of the four teams are remaining around the capitol city, but my team was given the assignment to head out to the jungle!
We are about four hours outside the city of Kuala Limpur, living in a remote village with a population of about 300 people. We are living inside the church building, which is directly next to the home of our contact, Pastor Hen.
Jess ventures into the jungle!
Our ministry there consists mostly of a construction project to assist the village. We have already spent a few days clearing out trees and debris in the jungle, and aided in building a bridge across the river, so that building can begin on a eco-chalet; a chalet made out of local resources such as bamboo and palm fronds. The vision is that with the chalet, the village (along with the assistance of our main contact, who had worked with Habitat for Humanity) would be able to host people to aide in their agricultural work. In addition to the building work, our team will be leading the church services, children’s sunday school and teach english.
building a bidge
I absolutely love Malaysia–the people are so kind and hospitable, the food is delicious (hot & spicy!) and the landscape is gorgeous. Please continue to pray for me and my new team. Pray that we would get every last bit of what God intends for each of us while on the race as well as for our ministries. We desire to be more vulnerable with each other, to go deeper with the Lord and truly live every moment of our lives for Him.
cooking rice in bamboo!
We are on enjoying our day off now–we drove into the nearest town so that we could get electricty and check our email. More updates to come next week when we come back in to town.
