Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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When we arrived at our ministry in Malaysia, I felt (in a way) like I was back in Chickamauga, GA. Changlun is a really small town where everybody knows everybody, and with the exception of a couple of restaurants that serve rice instead of bbq, there isn't much else to see!

When we arrived, we were briefed on our ministry for the month..teaching in the kindergarten, working in the after school program, and teaching English to the older students a couple nights a week. We realized that we were not allowed to share our faith unless we were first asked. Between teaching the kids, trying to learn how to develop an ESL program, seeing that we would be in Malaysia for 5 weeks, and the heat, I thought to myself, "this is about to be a really long month."

Me, Jessa, and Laura with our wonderful afternoon class!


Juju and Lulu

Now I'm sitting in Cambodia, wondering where the last month went. It's crazy how time starts passing when the Lord starts working. Before arriving in Malaysia, God gave me the word "trust." I was confused because I felt pretty confident that I trusted the Lord with just about everything. I'll come back to where He went with that in just a minute..until then, here is a run down of my past month..

We were completely blessed to live in a large empty house where we could set up our sleeping pads upstairs and have some open rooms down stairs to use as community space. We created a prayer room in the back of the house and bought a few art supplies so that we could worship the Lord in ways we haven't before! We spent mornings and afternoons in the school, teaching children, and at Marybrowns (the local fast food restaurant with fried chicken and internet) trying to come up with curriculum. One night we had the opportunity to go share Christ with a local Hindu family, and pray over their son who had cancer. We celebrated Chinese New Year in Penang where we met Zionel..and man we met with an injured leg that God used to open the door for us to share about Jesus with him-really an awesome story so just write me if you want to hear more! We explored the city and got to spend New Years Eve watching a lion dance and fireworks! We worshiped at Penhop (IHOP of penang). There was access to the roof where we stayed so there were many mornings spent with the Lord where He displayed the greatest artwork ever created. My team had an increadible month together, learning from each other and just learning to be truly thankful for the time God had given us together. It's cool now looking back, because all along God knew our team was about to change, and we spent the last month as Shekinah celebrating Him! So thankful for those girls.

Favorite Memories from the Month:
Team time on the playground and toasting to good memories
Hiking Penang Hill
Nights of prayer that would go well into the morning
Jackie's Birthday
Worship nights with Thomas and Shemilla (our contacts) 
Chinese New Year
Hafiz's Chicken Fried Rice
Exploring Caves with huge spiders and snakes
Visiting Hindu family and praying for Naden
Meeting Zionel
Worship through art-writing our own song 🙂
Lulu and Juju- two kids from the kindergarten
Spending countless mornigns at Marybrown
Tashi playing the violin
CHINA HOUSE


Outside of the cave

Lessons Learned:
If I'm truly desperate for more of Christ and less of me, I need to reevaluate my prayer life.

I'm very selfish sometimes through my actions, but often through my thoughts. I need not only to take my thoughts captive, but to replace them with His truth if I want to please the Lord

God. Team. Ministry. Sometimes the people God wants us to love and minister to most are those right beside us. And sometimes they're the ones who will minister to us most.

I need to get on my knees and my face.

Importance of fellowship. Spending a month with a family who is one of maybe 3 Christian families in their town taught me a lot about how much I take Christian fellowship for granted.

I am not my own. My team is not my own. I need to hold everything/everyone with open hands.

I can trust God. I can trust Him at 3 am when I get woken up with an overwhelming sense of fear that there is evil present and I need to pray against it. I can trust Him when I find out 2 of my sisters, new best friends are going to be on another team after I lived with them and grown to love them more that I could ever imagine in 6 short months. I can trust that He is doing something new and amazing with discipleship among my teammates, our squad,  and myself. I can trust that He is my provider, sustainer, and healer. In just about 10 minutes God provided $12,000 for 2 of my squadmates to stay on the race. Something we've all been praying for since September, and He provided through the very people who have no source of income at this point. L squad. (Read Jen's blog for more details!)

What a month. God is good. All the time. In every circumstance. He is enough. I need to get over myself so that I don't only become less, but nothing, and He doesn't only becomes more, but everything.