WR Excursion 101

 
It’s a pretty common theme that Racers love adventure and the outdoors. Granted that is not true of everyone on the Race, but most have a bucket list that includes through hiking, caving, white water rafting, bungee jumping, etc. So it comes as no surprise that when our contact told us there were caves to explore within walking distance we jumped all over that. Our plans to explore started to develop in conjunction with our secret church meeting on our first Saturday here.
 
We are currently in the Malaysian state of Kelantan, a highly sensitive Muslim state. As such, we cannot worship openly, talk about Christ without extreme hesitation. We have to keep our curtains drawn, pray silently before meals out in public, and generally try to keep the front of simply being English teachers. Not so much for our safety, but for the safety of our contact, his family, and the future Racers who will be coming here.
 
So anyway, back to the caves. There are a few notes at the guesthouse my team is occupying left by the last Race team here. One of them said to take music or instruments up to the cave and have worship up there or make declarations over the city. My team leader, one of my teammates, and the team leader of another team that is serving in a nearby city also in Kelantan did church on the power of declaration on Saturday night. We had a time of meditation during which we wrote down truths we wanted to declare over this land the following day from the mouth of the cave.
 
Sunday: here’s where the adventure comes in.
 
We knew the cave was a bit of a walk away and that we’d have to do a little trekking to get to the entrance. I’m totally fine with that, considering the when we trekked through the rainforest in Costa Rica I was practically skipping with joy the entire way (despite the mud and rocks we were all slipping in and stumbling over).

As always on the Race, our expectations of “a little trekking” was obliterated upon arrival. We cross over the train tracks, ask a local as best we can where the path to the cave is. They point, we start walking through a neighborhood of wooden shacks, and ask someone else again where we are supposed to be going. Eventually we find a path of wooden stumps that lead into the jungle at the base of one of the mountains.
“Oh sweet,” I think, “it’s an established path, that’ll be easy to follow.”
Then we get to our first rock wall. Only about 4 ft tall, but it’s fairly steep and there is a rope to help us get up over it.
“This will probably be the hardest portion. I can’t imagine there'll be a lot of these scrambles for us to deal with.”
The ropes made it obvious that people travel the path fairly often and the rocks were worn smooth in many areas. Then we turn the corner—more rocks and roots to scramble up.
“Okay, I guess this is the norm, but the cave can’t be too much further ahead.”
 

Abby and I venture ahead of everyone else to scope out the path ahead, only to discover that the path just kind of stops. We look at each other, rather confused. We are at the base of a cliff that looks to go up to the peak, absolutely no way of climbing up that. So where is this cave we are supposed to be at? There is no path to the left. We look to the right. There’s a large crack in the rock wall there….
 
Wait. Are we seriously supposed to squeeze through that?! Abby goes over to inspect further. She hollers back at me to say there are wear marks on the wall here too, this has to be the way people pass. I hand her my headlamp so she can try to get through and see what’s on the other side. After some difficulty she makes it through and I don’t hear much from her.
“Yo, Abs. Is there a path to the cave there or is this like the cave entrance or something?”
I hear her chuckling to herself.
“Abby? What’s up?”
“This is it!” She hollers back to me.
 
Okay, cool. I have to squeeze through a tiny crack in the side of a mountain. No big deal, right? Wrong. I am totally terrified. Climbing up the side of sheer mountain face I am totally chill with. But inside the mountain? I haven’t done this before. I breathe. Throw my pack ahead of me so Abby can eventually grab it. I ask her to shine my headlamp into the crevasse so I can try to navigate the 30 some yards I need to shuffle sideways through. At one point I definitely almost got stuck, had a moment of sheer terror, but after that point the crevasse opened up more and I could move more freely. I came out into a massive cavern. The wall, full of graffiti from decades past. There are high ledges that lead out to open air, more ledges that people have climbed atop merely to sign their names or write messages higher up than other people, and it appears that over one ledge the cave continues into blackness.

 
Eventually everyone has climbed through the crevasse into the cave and has set off exploring in different directions. I climb up to one opening and see that the cave does continue into darkness. Huge vaulted ceilings, with stalagmites, awesome limestone walls, and darkness ahead. I can see the spotted headlamps of my squad mates all around the massive cave ahead.

 

The original plan was to stay in the cave and have our worship service there. However, we discovered that the cave continued and actually opened up to the other side of the mountain. Here we found yet another treacherous, and long, trail that took us to the top of the mountain. It took us about another hour to hike up from the cave, with many falls, bumps and bruises along the way. But the trail ended at the top of the cliff at whose base we found the entrance of the cave. The top revealed a complete view of our town and some of the surrounding area.
 
From there we praised our Lord for His magnificent creation and we declared a change in this land in Jesus’ name.

 

Mountain climbing, expectations completely changed, worship, Bible reading, prayer, declarations, caves, jungle, and slight danger?
 
World Race adventure: complete.

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Additional photos provided by Beka Hardy and panoramics by Jordan Treuter