This past week was an intro to round two for me in Malaysia.
It started off with a nearly 100 hour travel day. Complete with an entire day in Athens, sleeping in an airport McDonalds, sleeping on an airplane, and sleeping in a bus station because we missed the last bus to our new home city. It was crazy, and I was about ready to leave my pack on the side of the road.
Then we met our host.
He is pastor of the church we were working with and living in for the week. (This month we have a really cool opportunity because we are moving ministry sites every week instead of staying at one for a whole month.) He was quite possibly the most hospitable human I’ve ever met. I’m from the south people, I know hospitality!!! He told us all about how the elders wanted to feed us all these meals and how he had a full stock of coffee for us to drink at anytime. (You guys coffee!!!!!!!) We were all blown away and feeling so lucky and blessed and full of joy.
Our first two days were filled with being feed awesome Malay, Thai, and Indian food and painting the sanctuary of this little church. I got to learn how to hang Chinese curtains by our host, and hold the stack of chairs while he hung them. I got to try longan, this very Asian fruit they make a tea out of that is apparently a delicacy/really healthy for you. I got to eat with elders at authentic Chinese restaurants with a giant lazy susan that just spun around with TONS of different foods.
The third day was church. We got to be a part of both the English AND Mandarin Chinese services. You guys it was incredible. The pastor is filled with more Joy than anyone I know. He loves every person there, and he is INCREDIBLE with the kids. He asked us to do a testimony and a song for each service. Since month two, I’ve been learning the ukulele in a very armature way and pace.
So, I played How He Loves
With my team singing
At both services
1,000% something I NEVER thought would happen. I bought that thing in Athens a week prior. Not something I would have ever chosen to do on my own, so shout out to this team for pushing me to discomfort!
The next day, we got to do a program for the children’s ministry. We themed it with the parable of the lost sheep, complete with skit of the team crawling and “bahhhh”-ing around. This was a really cool day for me because most of these kids had never heard the greatest story ever told. (If you want to know more about what the culture is like regarding religion send me a message!!) This was also a super cool day because we got to do all of this with our host’s wife! She does the children things usually, and it was a joy to us to see her laughing at/with us the whole time.
The final two days where a grind. We painted an entire mural in two days. I am SO thankful for the two girls on my team that love art and painting. I have to be heavily monitored on art projects. One of my teammates, Annalea, gave me two jobs.
- Stay inside the lines
- Paint only one of the gorillas
Literally ten minutes later she comes by, “Alexis!!!! You only had two jobs” I painted both gorillas. It’s fine – no worries – we fixed him.
It took about 30 hours of the 48 we had, but we finished it!
We were so sad to leave our sweet host, especially after not having a lot of time with him and the church.
Finally, I have BIG news X 2.
1) We got a route change again! (Part 7) We are going to ZIMBABWE instead of Namibia!
2) So this is a bit of a story. I was talking to the Lord a few days ago about fundraising. I asked Him what He wanted me to do for the last bit of it, you know, who to talk to and such. He told me – Let me have it. I got it. I already did it. I hesitantly accepted the answer. One of my Rock-star teammates posted about me fundraising on some of her social media. And through that super small action it would like to announce
Drum roll please
I AM FULLY FUNDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(With a few donations to be processed)
Thank you people for supporting this ministry. Thank you for supporting me. 18k is huge and totally out of my control. I’ve never had to rely on the Lord to provide for me in a way like this or on a scale this big. Fundraising caused me more tears, happy and sad but mostly happy, than most anything in my life. Shout out to everyone that bought t-shirts and came to fundraisers and encouraged me when I seriously doubted everything would work out. I had no idea the level of support and love that surrounded me until this whole thing. Fundraising changed the way I view the church and community. I had more college students financially support me than adults with real jobs! (Not more money, but for sure more people.) It was totally unpredictable with timing, but any amount of money is so small to a God this big.
With so much love and thankfulness,
Alexis
