Since we’ve been here in Malaysia, we’ve been doing prayer
runs in a small park about 5 minutes from the church we stay in. The first day we asked if it was safe
to run around the neighborhood, and our host told us that if we ran down any of
the streets, somebody would chase us.
We didn’t really ask why, but just assumed that people don’t really run
around the streets of Malaysia simply for exercise. I suppose that if someone is running down the street, it
means that they have done something worthy of being chased, i.e. stealing. He told us that there were several
parks around, and that we should run there instead.
Our park takes about 1 minute to run around, and we
generally run for about 30 minutes.
You can imagine that this could get a bit repetitive. The sidewalk that we run on around the
park barely fits two people, so when I run with one of my teammates I try to
stay on the outer edge of the sidewalk.
On the outer edge is this strip of lighter colored concrete that is a little
raised up from the ground. It is
my goal for most of the run to balance on this part of the sidewalk. This morning, I took my focus off of
the sidewalk to look at Beth for just a few seconds. This was not a good idea, because I totally busted it! I rolled my ankle over the right side of
the sidewalk and scratched my knee all up. It was not a good feeling or a pretty sight. However, I do wish somebody had gotten
it on camera! When we got back to
our room, and I got all cleaned up, all I had were Finding Nemo band-aids. My scratch on my knee was not a small
one at all and definitely needed more than one band-aid. So, I put 3 Finding Nemo band-aids on
my knee and called it a Finding Nemo mural!
Although this is kind of a funny story, these prayer runs
have been extremely important while we’ve been in this country. We have also started 24-hour
prayer. Somebody on our team is in
prayer each hour of the day for Malaysia, this church, God’s Will for our team,
our ministry, as well as many other things. We want to know how to love the people in this country with
Christ’s love. We want to
understand their religions, and be able to tell them about the One, True God. We want to speak life and love to them
in wisdom. It has been especially
difficult for our team this month because of the ways that Satan has tried to
attack. He has brought back lies
from our pasts, tried to create disunity in our team, and brought on feelings
of overwhelming tiredness and depression.
However, we refuse to be silent. We refuse to quit or give in to the lies and schemes of
Satan.
Please be in prayer for my team: Beth, Brian, Eric, Eryn,
John, Lyndsay, and Taniuska. When
you read this blog and throughout the day when you think about us, just shoot
up a little prayer about these things.
