Where in the World is Crash of Love??
Hello all! Team Crash of Love is currently in Malaysia!! If you are like me, I knew nothing about Malaysia prior to this month, and even Wikipedia-ed it before coming so I would know at least a little about the country we were headed to next.
Here are a few fun facts about Malaysia:
1. Malaysia is made up of 3 culture groups: Chinese, Indian and Malay. (Most people we have interacted with have been Indian.)
2. There are many religions practised in this country: Muslim (official religion of Malaysia), Buddhist, Daoist, Hindu, Christianity, Sikh, Shamanism. We’ve really enjoyed getting to study the different religions!
3. At different times it has been ruled by the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. Malaysia received independence in 1957.
4. While it is a multi-cultural society, the different ethnicities tend to stick to their cultural traditions, religions, and ways of life. Churches even tend to be done separated within ethnicities- We have been visiting churches classified as “Tamil Methodist Church” (Indian population), “Chinese Methodist Church” (Chinese population), etc.
5. As far as we have seen, choices for restaurants are Chinese or Indian. We have come to like Singapore Mee Hoon chicken and noodles at Chinese restaurants, and Roti which you can get for 30 cents a piece at Indian restaurants. For each of us to have a serving of Roti and Teh Ais (Iced Tea which is delicious) our whole team can eat for only a couple of dollars! (Needless to say parents at the church are shocked we are living off of Roti (fried bread) for mulitple meals a day.)
6. Kuala Lumpur is the capital and a fairly developed city with 1.8 million people.
7. To our excitement, people here speak English as a second language!! They have a national language as well (Bahasa).
8. It is illegal to openly evangelize to a Muslim in Malaysia. It is also illegal to have a Bible in the national language. I have noticed most churches do not have Bibles in the pews.
This month we are traveling to different parts of Malaysia, spending one week in each location helping assist the local pastor. Our days have consisted of: teaching Sunday school, prayer walks, helping with office work at a Christian organization called Open Doors, visiting homes, spending time with the elderly, and preaching/ sharing testimonies at Sunday services.
We have really enjoyed our time so far in Malaysia! The people are so warm and welcoming and extremely generous. Every night we have been invited to a different home for dinner. To our surprise, the Indian food is eaten without utensils, so the dinner table is funny with a bunch of Americans trying to figure how to get rice into our mouth using our fingers without it
spilling onto our laps. And they don’t use napkins, so your hands are dirty until you are finished and go wash them.
Squatty pottys have been adventurous as well… we often go searching for a Western toilet before dealing with the issues involved in successfully using a squatty. And toilet paper is no longer a given. Leaving McDonald’s the other day I took the extra napkins to use for toilet paper later… you learn to get resourceful on the Race! Our first week was spent at the Tamil Methodist Church in Port Klang, but this week we are an hour away in the town Bentong, in the jungle. When we heard jungle we thought pretty remote town, but rather it’s a town of over 100,000 people. We are staying at an empty parsonage and are enjoying the quietness of the mountains and being woken up to birds singing. We have even spotted a few monkeys in our drive way and apparently there are boars as well!
We were not affected by the earthquake that happened in Japan, and as far as we know, there weren’t any tsunamis that hit Malaysia either. However, our news availability is very limited.
Hope you are doing well and thanks for reading! More to come…
