We’ve been in Malaysia for a couple weeks now, and it’s been quite an
adventure! The scenery and mode of transportation aren’t the only things that
changed when entered Kuala Lumpur – the people, weather, and religion are also
completely different:
·
Walking down the streets of El Nido, everyone
greets you with smiles and waves. Not so in Malaysia – at least in the city. We
smile, they return the gesture with blank stares…
·
While the Philippines were hot and humid,
Malaysia has more of a dry heat (we’re very happy about that fact!).
·
The Philippines were mostly Catholic/Christian.
In Malaysia, the national religion is Islam – the government is very against
Christianity.
Oh, another difference: they
drive on the left side here, and actually obey traffic laws!! LOL.
What have
we been doing here for the past 14 days, you ask? I’ll tell you! Our first
couple days here we stayed with Peter and Carol – awesome people of God! They
own a restaurant called The Can’teen, and use it as a ministry to get to know
people, pray for them, and share the love of Christ with them! They own the
rooms above the restaurant (which is where we stayed), and use them to host
Bible studies during the week. Right now they’re opening another restaurant in
another part of KL (Kuala Lumpur). At this one, fondly named Kennedy’s (after
our president), they will be serving American cuisine. One team has been
helping them this month as they complete the finishing touches for Kennedy’s
grand opening.
My team
and I were sent on a much different sort of mission. We packed our bags, were
stuffed into a car like sardines, and were driven to the other side of KL to
stay with Pastor Tony and his wife, Lisa. Tony, like Peter, is a businessman, but instead of owning
a restaurant, he distributes fruits and veggies to grocery store chains all
throughout Malaysia! His business is a ministry as well. Tony goes to towns and
villages where people need an income, and teaches them how to farm their land
and grow a large variety of fruits and veggies. He then picks up their produce,
packs it, and distributes it for top price. His company is expanding! They just
moved to a new building, and that’s where we came in. The “cold room” is where
all the produce is stored once it has been packaged. One job was to move the old cold room to the
new one! This required a lot of hammering, nailing, measuring, cutting,
climbing, thinking, gluing, and tying… Another job was painting a few rooms,
inside and out. We split up and conquered both tasks in about 17 hours! Here
are some pictures from those 3 days:
After we removed all the styrofoam 8’x4′ boards, we had to glue and nail them to the walls of the new cold room, AND glue and tie them to the metal-framed ceiling. We were basically given no direction and free range to do whatever worked, so we went with it. =)
“please stay up there! Pleeeease don’t fall”
glue war!
we were getting creative with the glue…
Aimee and Erin painting =)
Our finished product! =D yeah, yeah, it’s not perfect, but pretty good for amatures!
Our next
mission was to visit one of Tony’s farms – deeeeeep in the heart of the
Malaysian jungle, where kids swim naked, rice is the special for every
meal, and electricity is scarce. We lived in the jungle with the villagers for
the past week. We’re about an hour away in the town of Raub for now, but will
be returning to the same village on Tuesday to help out for another 5 days.
I’ll write more about our time in the jungle when we get back, but to sum it
up, it’s basically right out of The Jungle Book (you’ll understand when you see
the pictures/videos)!
In fact,
to get a better idea, why don’t you just watch the Jungle Book while we’re out
there! Hehe.
