Malaysia, oh how I love you. you are filled with funny things and are quite different from what I expected, but that’s pretty typical, I guess.
This month my team and I are living in Penang, Malaysia, a touristy coastal city, just a ferry ride from Georgetown. We are staying at a YWAM base and living with another WR team from our squad. This month has been interesting in that it has felt more like what my life was before the race than any other month. We are living independently, cooking for ourselves (or we eat street food), doing our laundry, living in community, our ministry is a 9am-5pm gig and there is the freedom to plan outings on the weekends without having to go through a third party. It’s an interesting difference and it has been good preparation for easing myself back into what life could possibly look like when I go home. It’s definitely a life that provides more distractions than say, a month in Cambodia with little to no internet and full dependence upon the staff we are living with, so this lifestyle has to be taken with caution. It’s a good learning month. Am I still living dependently on the Lord, even though my lifestyle is much more independent, in a sense? That’s a question I am asking myself and at times struggling with every day. But I’ll take it in stride, one day at a time.
This month, our ministry definitely looks a little different than past months. We are working in a home for the blind, doing various jobs. Majority of us are working in home’s braille library, filing and re-categorizing their books. It definitely is not a job that I expected for this month, but that’s the thing about expectations, they are usually never accurate. My teammates and I joke that if someone had described our work to us for this month, before we left for the race, we would have laughed and had a response like “no way, we will be holding orphans and rescuing the widows the entire race” (which a good portion of our race did look like). Before coming on the race, I thought of life on this trip as being a magical, almost transcendental experience. And many things have truly been so special and unlike any thing I have ever experienced. But I have also realized that life is life. I can travel all over the world, spreading the gospel, living as a missionary and life may still feel relatively similar to life back home. We are always learning, always growing, always stumbling, always loving, always living, regardless of where we are. This month has brought this to life in new ways for me. Our ministry may be much less personal and much more mechanical, but we are still furthering our Father’s Kingdom. A worker at the home told my teammate the other day how much of an answer to prayer we are. That they have been asking the Lord for laborers, so that they can further their home and mission. It really is a privilege and an honor to be an answered prayer in that way.
To end my blog, I want to leave you all with a few interesting observations I have made on the culture here in Penang.
-Penang is truly the “mixed salad” of Malaysia. When we walk out of our doors, there is “Little India” directly on our right, “China town” to our left and a whole bunch of Malaysians strewn throughout. Majority of the Malaysians are Muslim, so it leaves you feeling vibes of the Middle East. It has been really fun living amidst so many cultures, especially when deciding where to eat!
-They have VIP McDonald’s stickers on almost every car here. I guess there is only one McDonald;s with a drive through and if you frequent it enough, you get the prize of a VIP sticker. It makes me chuckle.
-Stray cats are the new stray dogs. We see cats every where (which is probably a good thing considering the amount of rats we have seen on the streets), but it makes this place unique in that almost every other place we have been to, we have only seen dogs running around.
-They have the best juice here. And I’m not talking about bottled juice from 7-11, I’m talking about the fresh juiced apple juice for 50cents from the local street vendor. I’m absolutely addicted. My first purchase once back in the U.S. may be a juicer.
-There has been some slight racism. I think because this place is so packed with Westerners (Penang is a backpacker’s dream), the natives are probably less likely to tolerate us. It hasn’t been super outright, but it has been interesting (and I think a bit good for us) for us to experience it.
-Penang is beautiful. We had the opportunity to visit the World’s smallest National Park and after hiking through it, stumbled upon a gorgeous white sand beach. We may have gotten extremely burnt because of it, but it was definitely worth it! Also, for all you runners out there, Malaysia is the start of the Hash House Harriers, and my teammate ran into a group of them, so we may be able to join them for a run later this week!
We have until Friday here and then we leave for Kuala Lumpur, and from there we leave for China! My team will be in Harbin, China for about three weeks, and then we have our 8-month debrief in Beijing. China will most definitely be a shock to our system, especially my team, as we will be transitioning into zero degree weather, haha. Quite a difference from the perpetual Summer I have been living in since the start of the race. We will not have access to internet for security reasons, so all my blogs will come after our time there!
I love you all, thanks for reading!
