Let’s talk Malaysia:
This month the Fruits have been living on Penang Island, right off the coast of North West Malaysia. We’re in a small community called George Town, and our home (the YWAM base) is situated right between Little India and Chinatown.
Our main focus this month has been a local drop-in center for homeless people called Kawan Friends located on Love Lane 🙂 Coincidence? I think not so much. This center serves breakfast and lunch 3 days a week and provides free facilities for showering and doing laundry as well as a place away from the scorching sun for people to come in and sleep or just sit during the daytime. Their goal truly is to love the people of Penang and show them Jesus through their every move.
We help prepare and serve the breakfast and lunch and then move on up to the 2nd floor of the building where we are assisting with their construction project. They are completely renovating this area of the building and our part has mainly consisted of chipping paint and sanding walls for hours and hours and hours on end 🙂 We come home every day COVERED in white dust and with mega sized dandruff looking paint chips stuck in our hair. It’s lovely. Although it’s definitely not the most exciting work in the world, we’re happy to do it because we know that these rooms will be so useful when they are completed and will be such a blessing to everyone at the Kawan center!
Katy and Kasey working in the kitchen
lunch is served at Kawan!
the main room that we are working in upstairs – walls are almost paint free!
you can hardly see Kasey through the white dust from scraping and sanding! yikes!
Another opportunity we’ve been given is to work at a place called the Door of Hope. This is a place that offers FREE after-school and weekend care for kids, FREE health screenings for the community, and FREE “basic needs” provision for single parents and families who are struggling to make ends meet. The woman who runs most of the programs there is Deborah, and she is definitely something else. Let’s be real… she kind of reminds me of my mother. She’s awesome. She is very direct, super funny and loves to get the job done, and I’m right there with her. But she is also wearing herself into the ground working all day every day to be sure that these kids are taken care of, so being able to take some of the burden off of her has been a complete joy for the Fruits! We have been there 3 times a week, cleaning, organizing and helping tutor all of the kids in English and doing whatever else they need.
Justin and Birdy playing with some of the Hope kids
One of the cool things about DOH is that it is a Christian run facility that serves an almost entirely Muslim community. God has opened some serious doors for them to be able to do what they do, and I’m so glad! Deborah has told us about the attitude and behavioral changes of some of these kids during their time attending there and I can tell that the love and attention they give there makes a huge difference in their lives! Deborah is able to teach them English through Bible stories and songs and they even took the kids to church on Palm Sunday! And the kids LOVED it and want to go back every week 🙂 Praise the Lord!
my kids on the day we talked about Noah, then drew pictures of rainbows 🙂
the Fruits outside the DOH
precious Deborah on our last day!
So those are just a few of the things we’ve been doing this month! I can’t believe that my 4th month on the Race is coming to a close and that U Squad will be heading to INDIA next week! Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we travel!
I’ll have more updates coming soon, thanks so much for taking the time to keep up with me 🙂
Peace&Love
Brianna
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