sorry it has taken me so long to get this written. i have a lot to catch you guys up on. phuket was really beautiful. there were multiple reasons for going to phuket. one reason was because it was on the way to malaysia and was a nice place for the squad to meet up. another reason is because we had team changes. this is something that we knew was coming at some point (and will most likely come again) but we werent sure when. so my team has changed. i am still with jenifer and cassie, but the other three are new. drew is my new team leader. then there is ginelove and emilee. after a couple of days in phuket we left for malaysia. after many buses, trains, vans, and a night stay at the border, we finally made it to gua musang, malaysia. my team and another team traveled together and knew that we would be working with the same contact this month but did not know exactly what we would be doing. our contact picked us up and took us to where the other team would be staying for the month. that night, emilee decided not to continue on the race. the next day our contacts filled us in on what our ministry would look like. our contacts names are kumar and josephine. they started an organization called KJ generation resources. for those of you who dont know, malaysia is a muslim nation run by a muslim government. they do have freedom of religion but it is illegal to try and impose your beliefs on other – you can be a christian but cant share the gospel. they are two of the most amazing people that i have ever met. they have such a passion for God and for the things that they are doing. God called them a few years ago to step away from the life they had and to move to a place they had never been. the result was KJ generation. at KJ, they teach english to kids while instilling in them principles to build character. their slogan is "build character, build lives". unlike the other ministries ive been a part of, they dont have the luxury of being able to simply share the gospel and letting the Holy Spirit do the work. they have to BE the gospel. they have to BE the mirror image of Christ. through their work, they have seen countless doors open. people see the difference in them. its impossible not to. the children see it and begin to try and model themselves after it.
a few months ago a man from a town about two hours away came to kumar. he said that he had heard about the work they had been doing in gua musang and that his town needed the same. he offered them a space to use if they would consider opening up a second location. the most amazing part of this story is that this man isnt even a christian. he is a devout hindu. they prayed about it and decided to take that next step and began setting up their second location in kuala lipis. that is where my team was sent. we are only the second team to work in this area and it is far different from the work in gua musang. in gua musang, they already had an established building and location, but here, no one knows who they are. in gua musang they have classes almost every day. here they are holding weekend "english camps". when we got to kuala lipis we were told that we would be staying with the family of the man that offered the space to kumar. the family has been extremely accommodating and generous, but like their father, they are devout hindus. so this month i am living a mere 15 feet from a giant hindu shrine. to be honest, its been really cool getting to live with them and watch the ways in which they practice their faith. their devotion to their god is something to aspire towards. i have often caught myself thinking about how radically different the christian church would look if we were even half as devoted to living out the gospel as these people are to the rituals of their religion.
our ministry for the month has been all over the map. we have passed out at least 500 flyers trying to get the word out about KJ. we have painting four murals (they really like murals in malaysia). the indigenous people of malaysia live mostly in the jungles. many of the tribes actually are christians. kumar has a friend that is a pastor to one of the tribes and he arranged it so that we could go meet a couple of the different tribes. the first tribe we visited was very deep in the jungle. we were the first foreigners to ever visit them. they were very poor and lived in tiny huts. our plan was to play with the kids and try and teach them a little english. when we got there, most of the kids ran away because they were scared of us. four didnt. they were still scared of us but i think that their curiosity won out. we tried to communicate with them but that proved rather difficult because the pastor doesnt speak english either. we taught them a couple of songs but then realized that the other things we had planned werent going to be possible. we remembered that we had brought a frisbee with us and so we spent the rest of the time teaching them how to throw frisbee. they caught on very quickly. it was amazing to see how over the course of a few hours they went from cowering in a corner to engaged with us completely. we went to the pastors village that night and stayed in his church. his tribe was a little more modern – cement houses, ceramic latrines, ect. the next day we painted a couple of murals in his church and did an english class for the kids.
this past weekend was our first english camp. kumar and josephine came in to help us with registration on the day before the classes started. we taught two classes on saturday and two on sunday. the first was for 4-6 year olds and the second was for 7-9 year olds. we ended up having about 10 in the first class and 8 in the second. we arent teachers by any means but it was a lot of fun and i think the kids engaged well and learned a little bit. this weekend we will have our second camp for 10-12 year olds and 13-15 year olds. because we were sent to kuala lipis, we didnt have a chance to spend very much time with kumar and josephine prior to them coming for the camp so we were excited to be with them for a few days. they had told us that on sunday night they wanted to have a bible study with us. that is something that we dont get a lot of on this trip. we dont really get fed into because most of the time we are the ones teaching or sharing. most of the churches we go to arent even in english. they spent some time reminding us who we are, and the authority that we have, in Christ. after the study, kumar did something that ive never seen anyone do before. he prophesied over each of us individually. i have had people "prophesy" over me before but it has always been in generalities or meant more as encouragement than as something specific about my future. it was amazing. the presence of God was so palpable in that room as he began to speak. we had not talked to him very much about ourselves or our past but he talked with pinpoint accuracy about each of us and about our aspirations for the future. only time will tell if the things he prophesied come true but it was so clear to me that it was not kumar speaking but was indeed the Spirit of God in him.
next monday we will return to gua musang to help with a few things there and then we will leave for our month 4 debrief. i dont remember the name of the island we are going to. month 4 and 8 are our two biggest debriefs. not only our coaches, but AIM staff as well come out to talk with us.
pray for this ministry, and specifically for kumar and josephine. they dont have very much support but they have very high aspirations. pray that their ministry is fruitful. pray that God continues to open new doors and that they continue to have the faith to walk through them. pray for our english camp this weekend. pray that the Spirit moves through us. that He opens their hearts to Him. Pray for safe travels to debrief. we have teams all over the country travelling in myriad ways.
im going to post the blog links to my new team mates so that you guys can follow them if youd like.
austin
