One of my best memories from the race so far happened in the most unexpected way. My team had just left from a meeting with another team about doing Unsung Heroes next month (which is now this month). On a normal month, we would have a ministry contact / host that we do ministry for and they guide us in that, but Unsung Heroes (UH) is a little different. For UH, you have no host or contact, nobody that gives you a schedule or to tell you what to do. The goal is to meet new people that are already doing work for the kingdom but probably don’t get much recognition or help (hence the name unsung hero). Once we find those people, we put them in contact with Adventures in Missions who then works with them to possible send teams to them in the future. So we’re basically out looking for new future contacts.
For some reason, after the meeting I was feeling very anxious and overwhelmed about the month to come. We will be doing unsung in Malaysia, where it’s illegal to evangelize to the locals, let alone find people who are doing what we’re looking for and partner with them to do said illegal thing.
As we left that meeting I was feeling like there was an impossible task in front of my team, something so unlikely to accomplish that we shouldn’t even try. I didn’t have a good attitude about it at all, and I certainly didn’t have much faith or trust in the Lord. We walked out of the apartment where we had the meeting and the security guard got a tuk tuk for us to take back to the school where we are staying. I told the guard “BBU” and “Build Bright University” which is near our school, and he told the driver “BBQ” and I knew we weren’t going to the right place. Turns out there actually a place called “Bee Bee Que” in Siem Reap. After a few failed attempts to try to explain where we actually needed to go, I just got in and hoped we would get to the right place.
Still not in a great mood, I explained how I was feeling to everyone in the tuk tuk, my teammate Mason and my two squad leaders Liz and Ashley. After talking a little about our meeting, our tuk tuk slowly went past a man on a scooter who was going a little slower than us. Tuk tuks have a bench facing forward and a bench facing backward, and I was facing backward, with Mason sitting next to me, and therefore facing all the drivers going the same direction. As we passed the man on the scooter, I had a sudden urge to smile at him and wave, so I did. When I waved at him with a smile he lit up with the biggest, most genuine smile and waved back at me. Immediately when I saw that mans reaction, I was filled with joy. So after that Mason and I started doing smiling and waving at everyone while Ashley and Liz found enjoyment in how we reacted to each persons reaction. When someone wouldn’t smile back, Ashley and Liz could see the disappointment in our faces and they could tell when someone smiled back because we would light up.
Mason and I were still doing this (Mason was also yelling mispronounced Spanish greetings to people, which was hilarious) and Mason started smiling and waving at two girls on a scooter next to us, and traffic was slow and she stayed next to us so we started talking. She asked us if we were Christians, and we said yes, and she was telling us about a mission team her church/organization was hosting from Austrailia. She told us the name of her church and invited us to come on Sunday, then we all said goodbye and she sped off on her scooter. Later, after our driver stopped and asked another driver to translate for us where we were going (all he said was “build bright” and the driver immediately understood, after I had said the exact same thing 10 times before) we drove past a scooter on the side of the road and it was the same lady. She quickly got on her scooter and came to where the driver dropped us off (finally at the right spot) and gave us a paper with her name, contact info, and church name. She said that she felt the lord wanted her to do that, and invited us to church again.
Here I was, getting on a tuk tuk thinking we would never meet people and find new contacts because we couldn’t talk about certain things, and God created a new relationship from a smile and a wave. That was the best tuk tuk ride I’ve ever been on, and I got on with very little joy and got off with such an immense amount of joy. God basically did without any effort what I didn’t think he could do next month right when I was thinking he couldn’t do it. Just by a smile and a wave. I can’t help but laugh at God’s sense of humor after that experience.
