I find myself, once again, behind in my blogging. The question invades my mind, ‘What can I do to remedy this problem?’ I have yet to find a definitive answer. Maybe another day.
I think this blog will be a close of Malaysia. I really do need it for myself. We ended our month there performing in three different Indian Malaysian weddings our last three nights. That’s correct: performing not just attending. I’ll close it out in numbers and in thoughts. Your (my) favorite!
By the Numbers
Conversion rate: 3 Malaysian Ringett (RM) for every 1 USD
Number of hospital prayer visits during the month: 15
Cost of Malaysian tea: 1 RM
Number of Malaysian teas consumed: 30+
Average cost of Malay food: 3-4 RM
Number of days in a week the night market occurred: 2 days (Sunday & Thursday)
Number of times visited Penang Island: 2
Number of days of team worship: 8 days
Number of prayer walks taken in our neighborhood: 10
Average length of prayer walks: 1.5 hours
Number of houses we were invited to for a meal on our prayer walks: 5
How many different major people groups in our area: 3 (Malays, Indians, Chinese)
Number of languages our translator knew: >3 (Tamil, Chinese, English)
Number of Malaysian weddings we performed at: 3
Average attendance of each wedding: ~500
To me, Malaysia was the most westernized country we’ve been if only for the simple fact of the diversity, especially when you’re in a big city, and the fact that most Malaysians speak pretty proficient English. My team and I spent our days of ministry in a city called Sungai Petani, in the Kedah region of Malaysia. We were about an hour away from Penang Island, which according to one of my friends NY Times labeled it as the #2 place to visit. I don’t know exactly how true that is, but I’ll leave it there to stir in you some fascination :]
Our ministry consisted of hospital prayer visits. Through that we connected with this one patient especially. Her name is Glory. She’s not yet 2 years old but has suffered so many complications her whole life. From a constant fever to heart problems to fibrosis of the lungs, Glory was given not even a month to live just in September. But a World Race team was there and she fought through until we were able to see her last month. And even then she was still fighting when we left.
Glory was given up by her biological mother and adopted by a wonderful woman we saw almost every day, Rani (pronounced rah-nee). Let me tell you a little bit about Rani. She was at the hospital every day during visiting hours loving and adoring that sweet child. Through conversation, Rani tells us that there are 15 children she and her husband adopted. 15! What a woman. Later on in the month, we visit her house at an invitation to eat dinner. We come to find out that what we thought was 15 actually was 50 and the pronunciation got lost in their accent. Hello! Glory and Rani were those we visited every time in the hospital. Unfortunately, our time was limited to nightly visiting hours and our contact worked during the day.
So most of the days we spent sitting around watching movies. Kidding. We only did that the first few days. I’ll admit, it was frustrating knowing we came on the Race with a purpose for ministry, yet our time was confined to a couple of hours at most in the hospital. And here we discovered the practicality of the simple phrase: life is ministry. We knew a couple of things, that we were there for a specific time for a specific people for a specific purpose and that there is always ministry, if we have eyes to see and ears to listen. And that’s exactly what we did. We lived in a neighborhood, think a low-income American neighborhood, and every other day we would go on prayer walks around the neighborhood. To me, this was the most fruit we saw out of the whole month. Meet my neighbors..
Here’s LaReece (at least that’s what we think his name is). He’s the security guard at a private Chinese school on the edge of our neighborhood. We saw him every day and he loved asking us if we had breakfast yet. And every day we politely said we had because it was usually 11 or 11:30 when we’d see him.
This woman’s name is Sarah. She was a character with some spunk! Kim Canter, you would love her. She worked with Australians for 23 years and her English was phenomenal. Her kindness and generosity to us brought us into her house for food multiple times.
And StarMary. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get a picture with her husband Joseph. Her and her husband are one of my favorite couples on the Race. They were the first Christians we met on our prayer walks and man, did they radiate joy. Joseph knew English pretty well and would hold toothy smiled conversations with us while we drank our Miranda they provided for us. StarMary didn’t know any English but would sit in the corner just watching us. When we would leave, Joseph would give us a hearty handshake and StarMary forced us to her 4½ foot height so she could, with tears in her eyes, plant big kisses on our cheeks. I literally felt like a grandson to them in that moment. One of my favorite memories on Race by far.
