This month, God asked my team to be sojourners, moving to a new place every few days. The past few months on the race my team has always had a desire to be planted somewhere and invest in the community. We were hesitant whether we’d be able to make an impact and create real change if we were leaving after only a few days. Then, Jesus reminded me of the way he and his disciples ministered. They were constantly on the move, stopping in towns for a night, sometimes only staying briefly for an afternoon. And they always left an impact, no matter how long they stayed.
So, our first stop after Kuala Lumpur was a town called Melaka on the southwest coast of Malaysia.
God did some awesome stuff during our time there. Our time consisted of a lot of dance, including:
Starting a spontaneous dance party and playing “Your Grace is Enough” in the town square
Joining a Zumba class with local men and women
And crashing a dance class full of middle-aged women (wish I had a picture of this!!)
One day, I was walking around the town and I passed a temporary tattoo shop that I had visited two days earlier. I waved to the woman working there, Doris, and I continued walking. I had just bought a cold bubble tea and was going to make my way back to our hostel. Until, suddenly, God brought Doris to my mind. He told me to go back and talk to her.
“But it’s so hot, I just want to go back to the hostel and be in the AC…” I thought.
He told me again, go talk to her. So I went.
I asked Him what he wanted me to say to her. He told me to get a tattoo and have her put it on me. While she was doing that I started asking her questions, like where she was from, what she likes to do for fun, etc. About a week earlier, God had told me to write “You are God’s treasure” on a note and he would tell me later who to give it to. It wasn’t until I was sitting at the shop talking with Doris that he told me to give the note to her.
She read it and smiled and said, surprised, “God really told you to give this to me?”
I shook my head yes and watched joy spread across her face.
I also got to meet the business owner and tattoo designer, C.F. He is crazy talented and he shared with me his passion behind designing and why he loves it so much.
On my walk back, I saw an older man standing outside his shop. I waved to him as I passed and he asked me where I was from. My first instinct was to answer him as I continued walking away, but God told me to stop and talk with him. His name was Arom. We talked about various things, he shared and taught me more about his Hindu faith, and I shared about my Christian faith. We found similarities in both and agreed on the importance of showing love to others, even amidst our differences.
In this time I was reminded of how important it is to be interruptible. I could’ve chosen to disregard what God had told me and gone my own way, but I would’ve missed out on an awesome opportunity to show love and receive love from these people. How can you be more interruptible in your life? What would happen if you took the focus off of getting from “point A” to “point B” and stopped to notice what’s around you?
Thanks for reading!
