Walking around Singapore the past few days has been a blast, on literally every corner there is a high end shopping mall, the architecture throughout the city is amazing, there are gardens on the tops of buildings, the streets are clean, people are nice, and the food is great……but where are the city’s less fortunate living?…. what does life look like for them? One has to dig a little deeper into Singapore to find the spots where people aren’t living fairly comfortably.
Yesterday, as I was doing laundry at a little hole in the wall self serve place…Luis and I were just kind of recapping our experience thus far here in Singapore… we began to wonder where the city’s less fortunate where, because on the outside Singapore seems to have everything packaged up really pretty with a nice bow on top….So I began googling and ran across a travel blog of a woman who had helped out at a local soup kitchen. As I read her blog my heart began to break for the elderly forgotten that live in the city’s McPherson neighborhood and in blocks around the Jalan Besar area. The government has programs that help the needy with food and housing but the thing that these people are lacking is relationship. The majority of the elderly living in these areas don’t have family to take care of them. We know that our Father is a relational dude so Luis and I decided we wanted to go serve with this soup kitchen; packaging portions and delivering them to apartments of these elderly. We set it up to serve with them tonight and what a sweet experience it was.
We showed up and there was maybe 10-15 people portioning out and packaging food from a local vegetarian Chinese restaurant. People from all walks of life….Malay, British, locals, Americans (us)….. faith was not the binding factor of the group as we are so used to though….The binder bringing these people together was love… a piece of the Father’s heart that most of them didn’t realize was from somewhere outside of themselves.
I was sent to deliver packages of food with a middle aged Malay man named Huk. He was a super nice guy and very well educated…an architect by trade. Huk and I got to talking about why Luis and I were still stuck in Singapore and he then began asking me questions about AIM and what we do etc. This transitioned into me being able to share what Jesus has done in my life……
At some point as we are walking, I share with Huk, that Luis and I like to pray for and hug random people that we meet and that it’s a way that the Father reveals His love to others. He then asked me….. “Culturally how do people react to that, are they accepting? Are they ok with the physical touch and the prayers?” I explained to him that most people are open to love being given to them in that way. The whole time Huk and I are talking we are delivering these meals to the less fortunate elderly…greeting them with smiles and warm hellos. We finish our initial route having had some really awesome convo and head back to the rendezvous spot.
There were some extra meals left so this time Luis joined Huk and I to pass out the remaining packages…. As we all walked and talked and dropped off packages, we were able to share a little more with Him about what we do and about how the Lord loves on people and then we reached the apartment of Raja an Asian Indian woman living with her mother in the 800 block. She was very sweet and even shared with us that she had stomach pain….there was hesitation at first but as we walked away she said “God bless you” to us and Luis immediately sprang back and asked if he could pray for her….. she said yes and she got the key to unlock the bars on her front door…… I couldn’t believe that the Lord was about to show Huk literally how people react to us wanting to pray for and hug them right then and there. So, Luis and I went in and prayed for Raja and then for her mother. Luis assured them that Jesus loved them incredibly and as I got a good look at the mother…she was in tears. Huk got to watch the Lord touch these ladies in only the way that He can.
As we left that apartment Huk made the comment that he felt like people were open to us because of the way we present ourselves. What he couldn’t see was that it wasn’t us…but Jesus that was being presented to the two women in the apartment.
We left Huk with no way to contact him in the future but knowing that through that turn of events the Lord had planted seeds in his heart that we aren’t responsible for harvesting. The Lord is in pursuit of Huk and it was sweet to be a teenie tiny part in that.
Currently we are still stuck in Singapore waiting on a decision regarding Luis’s Australian visa. We would love if you all joined us in praying that we would come up with good news from the Australian high council.
Also, I could really use prayer for the finances to come rolling in to fund this season of ministry out in the world.
If anyone is interested in donating.. you can do so on my blog home page.
Blessings!
