When I signed up, for the world race I thought I would be busy all day long. When I heard we were staying in a house, I thought there was going to be beds, a kitchen, and furniture. I thought it would be easy without wifi. I thought I would adjust to the heat. I thought our teams would never change. I thought I would eat street food or traditional food. I was wrong. I thought a lot of things, I made standards for my self when I shouldn’t have. That was a big mistake, that was my mistake.
I always knew there was a chance that one or two of these things would be taken away. I was ok with it. I knew it would be hard and challenging but I definitely wasn’t expecting all of these thing to be taken away. I kept telling myself and my team everything was going to be ok. Did I really believe it though? Was I saying it because I needed to or because I felt like I should? It took me about two months to realize I didn’t believe the words I was saying. I didn’t think I personally was going to make it through Malaysia. I can’t count how many times I’ve called my friends angry or crying, I wanted to give up. I wanted so much more. Malaysia has definitely been a difficult journey for me. The Lord has tested me in more ways than I could have ever imagined.
Ministry is slow, the students show up somedays and other days they don’t. You never know if you will or won’t have school when you wake up. Days drag on and it breaks my heart because we only teach half of the day. Once we’re done teaching and all the kids leave, we stay there. We stay there because we live in the kindergarten. There are no couches, chairs, beds or a kitchen. We lay on the floor and watch the fans. (No exaggeration) We are all so used to wifi and our house doesn’t have any. I truly thought it was going to be the easiest, but it’s been the hardest. All we do is plan lessons, have team time (we try to stretch it out as much as possible) we watch movies and most of all we sleep. We don’t go outside too often because it is way too hot for all of us. Team changes are never fun, while being in Malaysia we have had one team change. It changed the whole dynamic of our team. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. It’s not always constant and that makes me nervous. I love food, I eat food all the time and I eat a lot of it. Here in Malaysia we live on the border which means we mostly eat Indian food, which is good but it is spicy and doesn’t always settle well with me team and I. Which means we mostly eat yogurt, Nutella and peanut butter sandwiches, and Ramen. I was let down because I can get all this stuff in America. Malaysia has definitely been a difficult journey for me.
As I said earlier the Lord has defiantly tested me. It hasn’t all been easy and that’s ok. I realized yes this is all hard, but the real question is would God put me in a place where I don’t belong? No he wouldn’t. He has a plan for me and I need to obey his plans. I may not understand why I’m here but I know he put me here for a reason. I’ll never have this chance ever again to pursue him as much as I can, dig into the word, build a relationship and friendship with him. It doesn’t matter that everything else is hard, what matters is that it forces me to rely on him and only him. I seek his attention and only his attention. Malaysia has been hard, tiring, and challenging. But it has all only made my relationship with the Lord stronger than it has ever been before, and I wouldn’t change any of it.
