Hello again everyone! I apologize for not blogging as I hoped to, but the last month was a little rough on that front – and a couple of other ways as well. Cambodia as a place was great, the people were beautiful and the kids we worked with in the village were the best. As a squad many of us (including myself) spent a good portion of the month sick therefore not nearly as effective as a whole. Additionally many people lost many valuables to the ancient art of thievery – including my computer, camera, and some other valuable items in a busy Phnom Penh market. We had a debrief meeting in Siam Reap, Cambodia however and regrouped and recharged as a squad. God did some big things there and the squad feels much more unified with a vision for the next few months.
This month is our ATL (ask the Lord) month and so all the teams dispersed from Siam Reap to all over southeast Asia. My team felt led to Malaysia and we’ve arrived now in Kuala Lumpur. Talk about culture shock – this city is wild! We’ve been talking a lot about the crazy contrasts you go through on the World Race and this is one of them. We’re going from living in a small village of maybe a few hundred people to living in the heart of a city of millions that looks and feels like an Asian Los Angeles. On top of that we’ve been in the mindset of ministering to predominantly Buddhist people and making the shift to an officially Muslim country is proving challenging.
The good news – our contacts are wonderful! We are living in a lovely open air loft a few stories above their restaurant in the heart of this massive city. We eat three meals a day straight from their amazing menu and the food is great! Their focus is on the displaced peoples of the inner city who are from all over this part of the world for various reasons – mostly work. This includes an outreach to the somewhat more discreet (at least compared to the absurdity of Thailand), but still pervasive issue of the sex-trade and human trafficking. Please be in prayer for our team about this as although our team is well equipped with some power players whose life calling is possibly to this type of ministry, it still leads to inserting ourselves into some rather dark places that most people would never dream of going.
So, things are going well – we are finally a full team again and we expect big things for the month. Internet is widely available here, I’ve barrowed a computer from a teammate for a week or so and I’ll hopefully be able to share more things via this blog. To everyone at home I thank you for reading, for your support and encouragement – it is vitally important to me and my team.
