Welcome to MANistry month in Malaysia. This month I am in Ipoh (It’e pronounced ‘E-poh’ not ‘I-poh’), working with a Malaysian ministry called BUG. BUG is a sports program that teaches and organizes sports teams/competitions in local communities. BUG stands for ‘Big Ultimate Games’ to the outside communities but really stands for ‘Bless U God’. My team this month is completely comprised on men, yes all four of us on V-squad and another 4 guys from B-squad. It has been really fun to play sports and bond with them over the last month.
Our main ministry this month is participating in sports, football (aka soccer) and ultimate Frisbee, but we have had the opportunity to serve at a local Dementia center every day. At the Dementia center we hang out with all the seniors and sing songs, play bingo, and go for very short walks. Sports and seniors were our ministry for the month.
When I think about the month I think about 3 things: sports, seniors, and stomachs. Sports and seniors were our ministry for the month; stomachs are the place where all the food we ate goes. Ipoh is a very foodie city. In Malaysia there are three dominant cultures: Malays, Chinese, and Indians and each have their own foods. We ate so much rice, chicken, and noodles. This month instead of someone cooking for us we went out to eat. Over the course of the month, we kept a tally, we called it our ‘Restaurant Score’, for every NEW place we ate at we added a mark. This score doesn’t include any restaurant we ate at 2 or 3 times or even 7 or 8 times, only the NEW ones. The score was… drumroll please… 40! We ate at 40 different restaurants this month.
Overall this month was a blast; it was a refreshing change to do life with only guys for a month. And yeah, when we weren’t playing sports or hanging out with seniors we were filling up our stomachs.
