You know when you think you know God’s plan, and you tell yourself which parts you will like and dislike? Then you find yourself absolutely in love with the part you secretly thought you’d hate? Good, me too.
Malaysia is the part I thought I’d hate. I was kind of unsure before, trying to force myself to hope for the best until I stepped foot here. I climbed down off the bus, took one look around, and all hope went out the window. I immediately reassured myself of my fear: this would be the worst month.
If you’ve known God for any length of time though, you know that He lovesss to play plot twist. I really believe it’s His favorite aside from a real-life version of “dead man, dead man come alive.”
We arrived here at midnight after 46 hours of travel (38 of those were spent actually on a bus). We fell into bed and were up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 7:15 the next morning and in a meeting at 8:00 where we were informed that we would have another meeting at 1:30 and begin ministry the following morning at promptly 8:00am. And just to clarify – our city and ministry were swapped only two days before, and we had no clue what we were doing.
Turns out we are working at a large and well-established foundation for underprivileged children. They had several volunteer positions open including assisting teachers in primary and secondary classrooms, working in their cafe, and one job in the Marketing & Communications Department.
If you know me, you can probably guess what job I chose… right, kids… my guess also… but unfortunately we did not win the lottery. See, this is one of those games of plot twist I was talking about. Before we got here, I felt The Lord telling me I wasn’t supposed to work with kids this month. So, I told my teammates. One immediately responded, “Do you want to do the Marketing & Communications thing because I thought of you when we read that description!!!” And I said… “well… yeah, I mean it kind of stuck out, but I don’t know… maybe the cafe or something. I know how to be a waitress.” We decided to head back to the hostel and pray about it. On our way back, our coordinator suddenly comes out of this random shop and says, “hey, I know I told you it doesn’t matter which person does what job, but actually the Marketing & Communications Department has specifically requested that Maeci be the person for that job based on her profile.” OKAY, JESUS, I HEAR YA.
So, I’m in the Marketing & Communications department, and I am L O V I N G it!!! It hurts my brain researching and writing all day, but I love it. I get to learn from the inside out the heart of the Foundation, and it will blow you away. I have to research in order to write, but I learn so much. I’m able to utilize the gifts and knacks God has given me, and I get to expand those and venture into new outlets and levels of creativity everyday.
I really didn’t think I’d love Malaysia though. It’s different and it’s challenging, but I’m able to see so much more of The Lord (ironically, but not so ironically) in a place where He’s not supposed to be seen. It’s really different this month because, well, you can’t really walk around talking about Jesus. We are so blessed though because the founders of this place (as well as a lot of the people affiliated with the foundation) are Christians. It may not seem like a big deal, but it’s so powerful because a) less than 1% of the population is Christian and I am around a good chunk of that 1% daily and b) there’s essentially no such thing as lukewarm Christians here. It’s illegal and definitely not socially acceptable or cool. (The foundation is basically Christian even though they can’t say that for legal reasons).
It’s also different because we live on this block that has everything we need practically, so we pretty much just stay in this one little area. It’s like we have real life jobs, too. I think it’s so good because we are able to learn that ministry really is just life. You don’t have to have some “ministry” job for it to matter for The Kingdom. Your ministry is wherever you’re planted, and here it forces us to learn that ministry truly is something you have to be really intentional about even in the everyday, mundane things. There’s this misconception that foreign missions eliminates the “everyday” and you literally just get to focus on ministry, but you have to make it just as much of a priority here as in America or wherever else you may be. It’s amazing and challenging also to see the example of Christians here who do live that out in their “everyday” and far surpass us often in that aspect because they are so powerful and wise and have such immense faith in the face of persecution.
So, let God play plot twist as much as He wants. You’ll grow and learn the most that way.
Love in Christ,
Maeci
