This is Elise, aka “My Malaysian Mama”, from the night we arrived
for ministry in Port Klang we were instantly greeted with warmth and love.
Elise is a member at Tamil Methodist Church Port Klang where we were so
graciously given a home for about 5 days. She and her family and the church
members attended to our every need including making sure we had enough coffee
and food to eat every day.
Elise invited us into her home and cooked us an incredible meal, during
that meal we had a wonderful time of fellowship and story swapping. I truly
walked away feeling like a part of their family. What an incredible feeling, to
instantly feel as though you are connected with someone who you have never met
and may never get a chance to see again. God has been so incredibly faithful in
showing me that we are all part of God’s family, no matter what part of the
world we are from. This truth has been showing itself so clear through the
connection I made with Joy in the Philippines and now Elise in Malaysia, and
also another friend I have made here in Malaysia named Julia.
If you go back to the blog I wrote about Joy, you can read how it felt like
such a divinely appointed friendship, she truly is like a sister to me and
spending time pouring into her with God’s encouragement and truth was so easy
and fun! I miss her lots!
Elise quickly became one of my favorite people in all Malaysia. She very
naturally adopted us into her family and made me feel like one of her
daughters. She was genuinely interested in hearing my story and giving me her
Godly advice about leaning on the Lord as the source of strength and wisdom. I
respect her faith a lot! I pray blessings over Elise and her husband and her
two beautiful daughters that they will continue to grow in love with the Lord
and each other!
gotten to work closely over the last few weeks with Janet and Julia and our
stay has truly flown by. Julia is 20 and just got back from spending a year
studying in Australia and she has just applyed for Medical School here in
Malaysia. Please keep her in your prayers as she seeks what the Lord has for
her in this next season of her life. Julia is full of fun and loves to sing
along to the radio while speeding us around town in her little car. We have had
some great talks and I’m sooo blessed to have gotten to know her and her
amazing heart for Jesus.
As I came into the Race I wondered how deeply friendships/relationships
would form since we were spending such a short time in each ministry site each
month. I feared it would be difficult to allow myself to open up and truly
engage in creating meaningful relationships with the locals because I knew we
were leaving a few short weeks later.
I realized this month, that I never needed to be anxious about how deep my
friendships would go, the friendships I just listed were so natural and
completely God inspired. They did not come from me “trying” to
“do ministry” they simply formed out of our mutual love of God which
easily flowed into a love for one another. I also am discovering a love for discipleship that I never knew was in me. I have found that I love sitting and sharing my faith with college age women. I love hearing their stories and discipleing them through life’s confusion. It’s funny to me that God took me out of Ashland (a college community) to the other side of the world in order to discover my love for college age discipleship. I feel so blessed to have met these
three amazing women and look forward to all the other divine appointments to come
this year….
