I know it’s been a long time since I last blogged and I’m really sorry for that, so I’ll start by just letting you know a little bit about what’s been happening since Guatemala. I’ve now been in Malaysia for about 6 weeks and am loving it. Leaving Guatemala I got a new team, Rerooted, and it’s made up of four girls I didn’t really know and one from my old team. At first, my new team seemed extremely random and I honestly didn’t know what God had in plan throwing us all together. I’m still not completely sure what He was thinking, but I do know that we get along and love each other more than I ever would have expected or imagined. We push each other closer to God every day through our worship sessions, bible studies and just by encouraging words so I couldn’t imagine being in S.P. with anyone else.
We’re living in Sungai Petani (S.P.) which is a city that is about 6 hours from the capital, Kuala Lumpur. Though we live in “the city” we don’t live right in the center, we’re more in the outskirts, living amongst all the auto-body and car repair shops. Bethel Assembly, the church we’re working with and living above, is located between a motorcycle shop and a repair shop. The closest place to get anything to eat is a gas station that’s about a 5 minute walk away, but sometimes you just need some chocolate, so it didn’t take us too long to find that.
Bethel Assembly is the church that is ran by our contact, Pastor Thomas (we call him PT). We love being able to go to church and getting to lead worship on some of the days. The church is made up mostly of Indians, the community we live in is mostly an Indian community. That’s been kind of hard to adjust to, living in a culture that’s completely different than anything I’ve ever experienced at home. We eat Indian food almost every day, the church services are all in Tamil, we’ve learned Indian dances and we spend most of our time with PT’s family, who are all Indians. I’ve never experienced really any other culture before leaving for the World Race, so in Guatemala it was a little different than home, but not extremely different. Here on the other hand, it took me a little while longer to adjust to everything (the heat was something that I’m still not really adjusted to).
One of the biggest blessings that we’ve gotten since being here is definitely our host family. They’ve taken us in since day 1 and we couldn’t be more grateful. They have taken us to their family reunion, take us to family weddings, family outings, baby dedications and just to their houses all the time to eat supper and watch movies with them. They have now started calling us part of their family and it’s just been such a blessing that they care enough to consider us part of their family.
One thing that has been really tough is the fact that I am constantly out of my comfort zone and I’m being pushed almost every day to rely solely on God. Because I’m always being pushed I’m learning that it’s not easy to constantly rely on Him, even when I want to. Being out of my comfort zone means that I’m usually uncomfortable. And it’s not easy to be uncomfortable. It’s not easy to not have any expectations, or to be constantly pushed in ways that you don’t want to be pushed. The thing is though, you have to be uncomfortable to grow. And boy is God causing me to grow here.
If you know me, you know I hate public speaking. When I know I have to speak ahead of time, I get a ton of anxiety, I stress out about it for the weeks leading up to my speech, when I eventually get up there I get extremely red, I start stuttering, I speed talk, it’s just really bad. After knowing all this you can probably imagine my joy when day 1 of being here Pastor Thomas (PT) tells us that we’re all going to be preaching in front of his church. Believe it or not though, I wasn’t worried about it for the 3 weeks leading up to my time to preach. I did start to worry a bit the morning before it was my turn to preach, but as soon as I started my nerves instantly disappeared because I had been forced to trust God. I’m out of my comfort zone because of all the performances we’ve had to do. Christmas Eve service- we danced. New Years Eve service- we danced. The 8 parties we went to (in 8 nights) after New Years- we danced. Whenever people see us, they assume the Americans want to perform for them. Again, if you know me, dancing is not something I do. Ever. It makes me uncomfortable, and honestly I just don’t like dancing. So it’s been pushing me a lot to be dancing at every party we go to.
Another way I’m growing is just in my trust in God and His power. I think because of this I’ve gotten to see more miracles here than I ever did in Guatemala. On day 1 (day 1 was pretty memorable), I got to see my first miracle here in SP. I was upstairs writing an email home when PT came upstairs and told me that he needed 2 of us to come down and pray for 3 new families that have never came to the church before. So at 11:15 ish, all the rest of my team was asleep (being exhausted from our 6 hour bus ride), so me and Kayla (one of my squad leaders) went downstairs and ended up casting demons out of 2 people. I could completely feel God’s presence and was so humbled to see how powerful my God actually is. Since then I’ve also seen physical healings and more demons being cast out of people, so it’s just a constant reminder of how big God is and how He’s still at work today.
Ministry is pushing us all too, we are worship leaders for some songs on our Thursday night services, we preach on the Thursday and Friday services, we visit a orphanage every day, we’ve taught English classes to the kids of the church and we just spend time building relationships with all of their family members. Let me explain a little about the orphanage though. It’s not an orphanage filled with kids. It’s filled with people who just don’t have any family that wants them, so there’s elderly people, mentally handicapped people, physically injured people and 3 kids that we spend most of our time with, so that’s been a lot to take in too.
So if you would have told me a year ago that I would be living in Malaysia with an Indian family doing ministry that I would’ve never expected, I would have NEVER believed you. Since being here though, I couldn’t imagine not getting the chance to spend Christmas with this new Malaysian family I’ve gotten. I couldn’t imagine not being on this new team. I couldn’t imagine going to school this year instead of traveling the world getting to share God’s good news. I just couldn’t imagine not being exactly where I am right now and I am so glad that God knew that this was exactly where I needed to be.
