I am in Malaysia safe and sound living in a calmer part of the city Kuala Lumpur. It is beautiful here, the city is clean and could easily be mistaken for America. Their malls are ENOROUS! If you think the King of Prussia Plaza is a big mall, which it is, these ones blow it out of the water. Inside you will find bowling alleys, movie theaters, grocery stores, laser tag, merry-go-rounds, day care centers…get my drift, they are big. We have even stumbled across a few Starbucks.
The staircase in one of the malls
This month is womanistry month. This means we are with ALL women!!!!! WHAT WHAT!!!!! The girls from The Plunge are with the team Talitha Koum (a normally all girls team) creating a team of eight. We literally have a slumber party every night because we are living with 10-12 Malaysian girls as well. We are at a girl’s home that the church provides for, and this is just our living quarters not our “ministry”…but in reality it is our ministry.
We are living in their house, they invited us in and have been generously supplying EVERYTHING! (they got upset that we brought stuff home and didn’t ask them to buy it…strange ay?) I am still speechless with their generosity and feel weird accepting these gifts so freely. They do so much for us and all we can do is receive to show our gratitude (they are allowing us to stay here for free and if we want to donate to the church we can, but they are not expecting anything…how nuts!). I have something to learn from this culture!
The girls and us in their shirts they let us wear to church
The girls are letting us sleep in their room and have given us sheets and mattresses for the floor. In the room I am in there are four Americans on the floor and eight Malaysian girls in bunks. Ear plugs are definitely needed, especially with their 5:30 wakeup call that makes me want to punch somebody (not literally, but at times literally).
So in Malaysia the people are generally a mix of Malay, Chinese, and Indian. Muslim is the dominant religion, but there is also Hinduism and others I do not know. Christianity can be practiced freely, but there are not many Christians.
I am staying in a house with many people who are Indian…lots of curry!
As a team we have all adopted the same name…sister…it is polite in their culture to call girls our age that I think…I now call the girls here my little sisters in return. I truly am falling in love with these young teen girls!
My “real ministry” will be with a home schooling program with refugee kids. I have only been with them one day, but my teammate, Kenra, and I will be doing crafts and drawing with pre-school/kindergarten aged kids. There are only four of them in our class, but I already had to pull a kid away from drawing on the walls and running rampant through the room. They sound nuts, but for a good 15 minutes they just stared at us and didn’t talk or move…they were afraid of us…I would be afraid of tall, happy, white people who speak English too!
This is how we got the kids to like us…we let them break the rules…woops
