November was spent in Malaysia. This month was manistry
& womenistry. Which is a strange way of saying that the boys & girls
did separate ministry. The girls were separated further as the 27 of us got
split into two teams. Carly Cronin led my team with all of the women of
Shabach, X-Stream & Liberators. And she did an amazing job of it, I might
say.
We didn’t exactly have a defined month of ministry. We had
the opportunity to travel around to different places in Malaysia and serve
where they needed us, which meant that we did a large variety of things. Once
we arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Siem Reap, we took a train to Port Klang. We
slept on the second floor of a church building for about 5 days. In our 5 days
in Port Klang we visited a nursing home, did a prayer walk in Little India,
went to an area Pastor’s Conference, set up for & worked at a 2-day
International Food Festival, spent a day at a school for disabled children, and
led Sunday School, among other things.
On Sunday we split into 2 groups of 6 and each group went to
a different church. My group stayed at Tamil Methodist Church, where we were
staying for the week. From that group of six we separated one last time into 2
groups of 3, one group to stay with the youth group and one with the younger kids.
Alecia Dockery, April Payne & I were left in charge of the youth group. All
that was asked of us was every person be involved in whatever we decided upon
doing. We weren’t really sure what that was going to look like, but we trusted
that it would come together as they should. There was a group of 12, some in
their teens & some in their twenties. We decided we wanted to start with
worshipping together & we elected 3 girls to be singers, 4 to be singers
and dancers, one of the boys headed to the computer to work the PowerPoint so
we could all sing along, another of the boys went straight to the drums and
started playing along, and 2 people went off to find their guitars to plug in,
and before we knew it we had a full band with backup dancers & all! We sang/played/danced
to a few songs and, just as we had been asked to facilitate it, everyone was
heavily involved. After we were finished singing we gathered around in a circle
and April shared what God had taught her about Matthew 14:22-33, where Jesus
walks on water and calls Peter out of the boat to join Him. It was really all
quite wonderful.
I think I was so affected by it because it held so many
reminders of the body of Christ. We all have a different purpose and not one of
us could do what the other does in the same way the other does it. How
incredibly beautiful is that?
1 Corinthians 12: 14-27 “Even so the body is not made up
of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do
not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the
body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to
the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the
whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body
were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the
parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they
were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but
one body. The eye cannot
say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I
don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be
weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we
treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with
special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God
has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so
that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have
equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it;
if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of
Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
