Edwin, our contact, meets us in the morning and I remember how much joy was bubbling off of him. He is an older Malaysian Indian who talks fast and has a childlike countenance about him. He has his hands in countless ministries throughout the country as well. He gave us the low-down about Malaysian culture and life and the numbers of our new contacts who he was sending us off to. Problem was that those contacts wanted to split our team up, have half of us in the jungle and half in the city. We did not want to be split up since we just gained a new team member, Beka, who filled the void that Steph left when she became a team leader.
We met with our new contact’s wife (who I will refer to as ‘Sally’) at the base of the Petronas Twin Towers. This was where she explained their work in the country and we also evangelized for a couple hours.
So after hearing from Sally about their intentions to split the team up, Angelique, my team leader, had to make a decision to keep the team together which meant that Edwin had to find a ministry for us to do for a week while our new contacts, ‘Jack’ and ‘Sally’ reworked their plans.
Phew, all within the first three days!
So Edwin plans on shipping us off to the city of Port Klang with some pastor friends of his to do ministry with them for a week. God is so sovereign over us, we don’t even realize it more than half the time.
The day before we left for that city, largest port in Malaysia, it was Jason-Angelique-Beka-Me, who met with Sally at the Towers and evangelized for a couple hours. The girls went with Sally to evangelize other women and Jason and I walked toward a mosque with the intent to talk with Muslims about Jesus.
Jason and I prayed that Jesus would encounter the people at the mosque as we walked back-and-forth in front of it in prayer. I saw a man taking pictures of the Towers and approached him. He was this single Italian guy traveling the world because the economy is so bad in his country. He hopes to find work in Australia after his travels. I told him what I was doing but did not get the chance to share the gospel. I prayed for him as we both walked away.
Jason had a cool encounter with a Muslim. The man saw his shirt which reads “It’s about a relationship” – talking about Jesus and how He is never far from any of us. He looks at Jason, smirks while nodding his head and says “I like your shirt.”
I start praying for a divine encounter because I was tired and hot and sweaty. I notice a younger man walking in front of me and I ask God if he is the one I am there to talk with. He is limping and his left hand is curled like he is afflicted with cerebral palsy. I wanted to ‘test the waters’ and see if God sets up the scene. So I walk ahead of him so that I can walk back past him, and if he acknowledges me, I will use that as God telling me to reach out to him – if that made any sense. He smiles at me when I walk past him and we both do that weird head nod thing where it’s like you’re saying ‘yes’ but you are actually saying ‘hello’ or ‘sup?’
I don’t remember if I talked to him immediately, but I don’t think I did. Yeah I chickened out. So I walk past him again and ask God to do the same thing. This time he asks me if I speak Arabic. I laugh inside because God definitely was prompting me to talk to him. Granted, I should be talking to everyone about Jesus, but I have been curious to see how the Spirit moves in specific instances like when you look for ‘divine appointments.’
I tell him that I don’t know Arabic but ask him to sit down and we start talking, him in broken English and me sounding like I am a beginner English speaker – all slow and really well pronounced. I find out that he is Libyan and that his hand is curled up and he walks with a limp because part of his brain was blown out by shrapnel in the war in his country. He is 18 years old. War has greatly injured him and I immediately start praying for healing and make excuses to touch his head. I ask where the stitches are and he shows me, I ask over and over so I can keep praying and placing my hand to the place where he was injured. Jason shows up and I fill him in.
While we are talking, a younger man who was sitting nearby comes over and asks Jason if we are trying to speak Arabic, because he knows Arabic! Ha! He is an Albanian student in Malaysian University and knows French, English, couple Albanian dialects and Arabic, all at age 21! Destroyed all my sense of pride right there.
Our new friend, Wyed, translates for us and we also talk about how Liverpool is awesome (that was just me actually, they supported lesser teams that don’t need to be mentioned).
As we are all talking and laughing, the girls with Sally show up and we tell them all about our friend’s horrible state. Turns out that Arabic is one of the languages that Sally is attempting to learn, oh yeah- forgot to mention that she is a genius basically. Sally calls her friend, someone who she constantly pleads with her over the supremacy of Jesus Christ while the friend tries to convert her to Islam. She arrives and is fluent in Arabic and we get the full story of why my new friend is here and what is going on.
He is here with 40+ other Libyan refugees who have been injured in the war and are looking for good medical care in Malaysia and Europe.
I told my teammates how we should be praying for his brain the whole time and we all are praying for a miracle. Our friend does not get healed in front of us, but we talked about Jesus, got to love on him by talking and being his friend, connected him with Sally and her friend, and blessed him with lots of prayer not only over his current physical state but most importantly over the state of his soul.
All in an afternoon!
