In a country with such a high Muslim population, a country with many rules and regulations especially for Christians, you wouldn’t necessarily consider Gua Musang, Malaysia a place of freedom. We are not allowed to openly share our faith or even to do Christian practices such as praying, reading our Bible, or even talking about God in public without using our code words. It could be easy to feel discouraged when you feel limited in ministry when you can’t share such a large part of your life. But it’s also possible to feel a sense of freedom and authenticity in our actions. Here in Malaysia we love people to love them, there is no pretense and expectation that there are strings attached when we love. We will most likely never share the name of Jesus this month, but we will preach the gospel loud and clear with our life.
Malaysia is a cultural melting pot with the three main groups being the Malay people, the Malaysian-Chinese people, and the Malaysian-Indian people. Seriously, we live in/near a part of Gua Musang that is called “Chinatown.” This month in Gua Musang we are blessed to live at a hotel with beds, air-con, and a hot shower. We have the squatty potty again but I’m not complaining, this is luxury. We are responsible for our own food this month so we use our small food budget to eat out at local shops, restaurants, and 7-11 for lunch and dinner with a whopping $2 per meal budget. We are also blessed with Wi-Fi pretty much everywhere (including the place we are working at this month, thanks to a grant of sorts making the internet affordable to set up and maintain, which is a blessing). We walk about 15 minutes to where we work every morning and 15 minutes back every night.
We usually start our day at the center about 10am and we wrap up around 10:15 or 10:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we wrap up around or right before 8PM. Saturdays and Sundays are pretty much our off days.
At the center we teach 1.5 to 2 hour english classes that meet once or twice a week, or some one on one tutoring classes happen five days a week, as well as Kayla’s music class that happens five days a week, and potentially a basic computer class that may happen five days a week. One on one tutoring begins as early as 10am and English classes begin between 3 and 5:30 pm depending on the day, Music classes begin at 2 pm. I know you could probably care less about these specifics, haha, but this is the sea of logistics that is my mind this month.
I love schedules, plans, structure, and organization; this month is perfect for me. While I am here I have agreed to help with a variety of administrative tasks on top of teaching. I am excited to help create a more efficient system for attendance records, payment records, lessons taught logs, and progress tracking for each of the 40+ students they help. Along with creating a paper system I will be helping to computerize attendance and payment records. Finally, the major project is creating a syllabus and curriculum for the resource center for 3 – 1 year English programs (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced). As part of that I will also be reevaluating and trying to find an effective way to implement a placement test system to ensure that student’s are learning English at a level that is appropriate for them. With these syllabi and teaching resources they will be able to grow their program because they will be more official in the eyes of the government. As part of their English classes they teach character building as well to indirectly reach the students. Also, I will be working on a small syllabus/curriculum for a 2 week computer class that we will hopefully be able to get up and running before we leave.
This is by far my favorite month in by far the most beautiful place we have been. I can’t believe I almost left this … It’s true, sometimes you have to get through your lowest times to really appreciate the times where He blesses you. Even in those low times you are being blessed, but it’s harder to see … but this month I have so much joy and so much renewed passion and excitement for The World Race. I am ready to finish strong, and I am excited for the new direction my future may take because of this month, it will be so hard to leave here in two weeks, but I am going to enjoy each day and not worry about the future.
Thank you for helping me to reach the month on the Race that will forever change the course of my future! More details to come, sometime, after things are more thawed out. (PS: Don’t worry, I’m not moving to Malaysia … haha … though I do love it here in Gua Musang!)
