Welcome to the Jungle!!

Hello from Malaysia!! So sorry for the delay in blogs! The lack of good internet and or access to internet in Africa made it hard to keep everyone as updated as I would have liked. I thought that once we were in Malaysia we might have better access here….BUT, God has other plans J. Our team has been assigned to partner with a pastor who works with a village in the jungle here! Today is our day off so our contacts came and picked us up to take us to town. So other than our day off once a week we will not have internet access….or power for that matter. We are all actually really excited about our ministry here this month! But….ok, before I get tooooooo carried away, let me get you caught up ;)……

After Malawi with Pastor Gama and his wife, we traveled back to Mozambique for another 2 weeks. There our whole squad (23 of us total) was assigned together to live with a woman who we called, Mama Rita. She lives in a small village there and cares for 25 orphan children. The people there are amazing…it was hard to not get attached to some of the kids. To put it briefly though, that was one of the hardest situations living condition wise YET. To begin with, the area we were staying in wasn’t exactly the safest (but no worries, we had people looking out for us and God protected us for anything happening J ). The house the kids and Mama Rita live in was shocking. There were rats GALORE living in the house, more flies than you could imagine (on top of all the mosquitoes in the area) and for that many people the house had only 3 small bedrooms, a living area, and a small kitchen (typical for a normal size family of the area….but Mama Rita doesn’t have a normal size family 😉 ). On top of all this, the roof was falling apart and there were many holes in the walls of the house. While there, Mama Rita would not let us pay for living expenses so needless to say, we had some extra money in the budget. We decided to use that extra money to repair the holes in their walls and give them a new roof. Things like this are not expensive at all in Africa….to US, but to them….well, I don’t know that they would have ever been able to afford to do that. It was such a great process to watch the roof being replaced and their home made more livable. We also bought them storage containers for their food to keep the rats away from it…..as well as killing a few rats along the way (ok….well, I didn’t, but the guys sure did, haha) and other “little” things like placing screens over the window to keep mosquitoes out. I am SO happy that God allowed us to help them out in this way!!

One of the rats that was killed

 

Sweet little Gina eating her lunch

 

Two of my absolute fav girls, sisters – Lucia and Lady (yes, Lady 🙂 ).  Fell in love with these girls!

So….where am I now, eh? Well, yes, like I said earlier….THE JUNGLE!!! Love it here! If any of you know me at all you know that I absolutely LOVE the outdoors! And so this, well, this is just even more exciting for me! J We arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after about 15 hours of travel on Tuesday the 2^nd – that includes crossing 6 time zones. Our squad stayed that night in the city with one of our contacts. The next day we all split off to go to different locations. We traveled another 4 hours or so to where we are now…..the middle of nowhere, haha. We are near a town called Raub (the town we travel to on our days off – about an hour and a half away). This month we are working with the pastor of the village helping him with some construction and teaching. The people here are not educated and there are many children in the village. We have started helping to teach them some English. We have also started to help them clear trees and bamboo from land that they are going to be building houses on and where they have been constructing a bridge over a river. I can’t wait to tell you what else we do while here – we have already had so many adventures with the people here and love them already!

Here are some of our norms so far while here:

–         hiking through the jungle everyday

–         bathing in the river (yep, no showers here!)

–         eating with our hands (it’s a cultural thing)

–         rice, rice, rice….

–         using banana tree leaves as plates and cut bamboo for cups (we’ve done this for one meal so far)

–         no electricity except for a few hours a night when they use a generator

–         sleeping on the floor in the church

–         bathroom? There’s a nice tree over there. No tree? (this happens) That tall grass looks good (don’t worry, we DO have toilet paper we brought, incase you’re wondering 😉 )

–         washing clothes in the river

–         I’m pretty sure we’ve eaten leaves here….there are a few green veggies we’ve been served that we have yet to identify.

–         Eating Ramen noodles for breakfast with hot chocolate to drink (no joke)

–         Surrounded by some of the most adorable kids ever!!   

–         Surrounded by some of the most hospitable people ever! J

 

Here’s a pic of part of the village we are living in….

 

The sweet baby boy that was born the day after we arrived to the pastor’s daughter!  Isn’t he ADORABLE 🙂  They haven’t even named him yet!

So….as you can read, it’s been quite the adventure so far J. We are SO EXCITED to be here and excited to see how God will work while here. Right now it’s just been so amazing as we’ve started to build relationships with the people here. Please continue to pray for us and the work we are doing here, for our protection and for God to continue to prepare the hearts and minds of those we encounter…..thank you ALL!