As some of you know, for fundraising I created the option for people to have “sponsor days”. The cost of the trip broke down to roughly $50 a day and so someone could sponsor a day for $50 and I would blog about what happened on that day. This month 7 days were picked out to be sponsored and they were all in a row. So the following is a brief snapshot into what each day looked like. Thank you to the Wirth family for sponsoring the 17th and to Bob and Lisa Hooker for sponsoring the 18th-23rd!
May 17th:
This was the first day of Ramadan which Google accurately describes as
“the ninth month of the Muslim year, during which strict fasting is observed from dawn to sunset.”
Due to this being a Holliday in Malaysian culture (as it is predominantly a Muslim country), we had the day off of ministry. We had a fun off day of going to the movies and bowling (where I bowled my best game ever of 163) at the local mall. Before all of that though I had the opportunity to introduce who Jesus was to a Muslim man. The conversation started with me telling him this was the first time I had been to a Subway since I was home 8 months ago and that it was actually my first job in the U.S.. He asked what I was doing in Malaysia and after I told him I was sharing the love of Jesus on a missions trip he was hooked. He said, I have heard about Jesus but I don’t know much about him aside from how the Islamic faith views him. From there he sat down with me as I ate and we asked each other questions and gaining a greater understanding of what we each other believed. Though this man did not convert to Christianity he heard the good news for the first time on his own Holliday which gets me excited and we are now friends on Facebook.
May 18th:
We helped run an afternoon children’s program with students ranging from 5-16. As it did last month having camp experience with throwing together games and activities really came in handy. After the program we prepared food bags which we gave out the next day.
May 19th:
We went to a nearby village to help our host pass out meals and food bags to locals who were struggling to make a living. I had two interesting observations that really stuck out to me in this time. The first was when we were giving out the meals. One lady when she was given the food asked (in Malay) “where is the water bottle?” This lady had just been given a free meal and she was complaining about not getting a water bottle to go with it. It made me think how much in our life are we given, take for granted, and ask God why didn’t you give me more? It was just a humbling thought to be continually greatful for both the non physical and physical blessings we have been given. The second thing I observed was a different lady who was offered more food to take home refused. I was really moved by this because she recognized her needs and did not go beyond it even when it was to be freely given. It made me think about the blessings I do have that I don’t need.
May 20th:
We had been staying in a different city for the week and on the 20th we took a 7 hour bus home and got back in time for the last hour of the ultimate frisbee and soccer ministry.
May 21st:
We had an adventure day to the beach. We took a ferry to an island and had a fun day on the beach throwing frisbee and playing spikeball. The best part easily though was when a monkey stole my teammate Ethan’s peanut butter. The day ended with traveling home in time for another couple hours of Ultimate ministry where we did team USA (plus our host) vs Malaysia. We didn’t keep track of the score but I must say it was probably really close.
May 22nd:
The day started off with me staying behind from ministry to take a work day to do a lot of treasure work that I needed to get done. Then after a restful afternoon we went a member of the church’s house named Ong for dinner. It was amazing and we had my favorite spaghetti! Overall it was a great relaxing time.
May 23rd:
Our last full day at our ministry. Ong blessed us again by taking us out for lunch and we went to another restaurant with “western food.” We were clearly not the first World Race team he met. Later that day, unfortunately our soccer ministry got cancelled because of storms so we went bowling and went to a video game lounge with one of our awesome hosts, Michael.
Today:
Today is our first full day of our month 8 debrief and it’s crazy how we are almost out of Asia already. Our time Ipoh, Malaysia and our hosts their were great. Though I wish our sports ministry wouldn’t have gotten rained out so much I really valued the time we had to play and the relationships we got to build while we were there. I hope to have both my Thailand video and Malaysia video out in my next blog! Thank you for following along!
