When life gives you lemons you pray to God for a man of peace or in this case, “women of peace”. It all started as we sat in our hostel in KL, Malaysia. It was the Thursday right before “Good Friday”. We had all decided we were going to Singapore for the weekend to go to a church called “Kingdom City” for Easter. With only a good idea of when we want to head out we would leave that night around 11. We headed to the bus station and bought our tickets. We decided we would save money if we took a bus through the night so we wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel. Our expected time of arrival was around 5 or 6 in the morning. As we loaded on the bus the interior was welcoming and my seat was calling my name. The sound of the engine roared and we were off. My team and I said a quick prayer that we make it safely to our destination point. After that, I made myself comfortable and fell asleep.
Suddenly, I was awakened by an abrupt stop with shouts from the front of the bus. We were at the boarder of Malaysia and Singapore. The man that had been driving was now standing and shouting to bring all our stuff and go through customs. Only he spoke no English which meant I would follow his hand motioning in the right direction and get a good idea of what we would be doing. My team and I stumbled out the bus around 2 in the morning, two of my teammates so disoriented and put off by the man shouting at them to get off that they couldn’t find their shoes. Resulting in them walking barefoot through customs. The bus was almost loaded when the bus driver decided he had waited long enough, my teammates barefoot and the last people in line started to run as they saw all chances of leaving the border driving away. While it wasn’t as dramatic from the inside of the bus my friend Jenny (team leader) stood up and yelled to the front of the bus to wait. It took a few shouts before the bus would stop. Once it did my other teammates tried to regain their posture before stepping back on the bus. We waited few more minutes and stopping once more to go through the Singapore customs, same drill as the last. We again reloaded and this time I almost didn’t make it onto the bus. As I rushed to make it on I made it to my seat. The driver hasn’t been messing around he was determined to make it there and be there early. We all rolled up to our stop around 4 in the morning, while it was still pitch dark and in the quiet of the morning. Only one or two taxis drove by with the occasional police car passing. We made the group decision to try to find a hostel and see how much it would be to get a room and sleep for a few hours and be at church by 10.
We walked a few miles in search of a hostel or anywhere that would give us a discount because we would only be there for a few hours. With nothing in budget, we eventually found a Starbucks and decided to sit right outside the dark building and try to connect to the WIFI. At this point in the morning it’s now about 5 in the morning and feeling the weight of my eyelids slipping shut I let it take me. Some of the girls continue to look for place but soon realize it was hopeless and conclude to sleep outside of Starbucks till closer to the time church started. Homeless, we slept outside and for the first time. The verse Mathew 8:20 which says, “and Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” And it holds so much more weight than ever before. It humbled me to see a microscopic glimpse into Jesus life.
Waking up to the bright morning sun it was 8 in the morning and it was time to start finding an ATM and pull out money for food and transport to the church. I started my journey by going into the building connected to the Starbucks. Soon my team was kicked out for sitting inside while I figured out there was no ATM by then I wasn’t welcome back as well. Jenny and I soon found a subway and made our way down and found a beautiful ATM machine that held the money to feed us breakfast and to get where we so desperately wanted to be. Strapping all our day packs on we walked down the road to discover no one in all of Singapore is open that early. Okay that might be a little dramatic but you get the point. Everywhere we looked we had no luck. We weren’t expecting it to be this hard and some of the girls regretted our decision to come. We walked two miles back to Starbucks to connect to WIFI. Once we did we called an uber and attempted to find the church. We all sat down and decide to pray and ask God what’s going on. We prayed for wisdom and guidance, and a butt load of patience as all of us began to get testy. Emily requested the uber and we played the waiting game. Twenty minutes went by and the uber had been driving in circles and was now at a standstill. The uber driver cancelled it and when we would call another one the same man picked up the same request. Again, we stopped and prayed, angry and at the end of our rope Molly began to ask for a “women of peace”, she had prayed it that night that we had gotten off at the bus stop. In the quiet of the night we didn’t want a man to take us in, heck that was dangerous. We were tired of hitting dead end after dead end. We needed a friend someone God had chosen to take care of us and take us in……all 6 of us. Emily again called a different uber and we got picked up within 5 minutes, that’s the moment the day started to do a 180.
We got dropped off at a mall and found food, coffee, bathroom, and that’s right….KINDGOM CITY!!!! Things are about to go down!
That ends part 1 of my Singapore blog please stick around for part 2 to see who God chose to step out in faith and make my faith grow.
I’m around $4,200 short of being fully funded and to continue to stay out on the field. Please help me stay and continue to help, pray for and with people around the world. Also, please continue to keep my new team and I in your prayers as we are traveling to Myanmar and will have very limited wifi. If you would like to donate please go to the top of the page and click the “donate” button. Thank you again for all your support I wouldn’t be able to do things without amazing supporters like you. Thank you! God bless <3
