Honestly, I haven’t had much to say.
Malaysia has been a good quiet month.
Prior to arriving in Malaysia, our squad went through team changes. The seven people I had been doing life with for the last 3 months was now changing. Despite my lack of excitement about this it was all to God’s glory. My former team leader was being called to lead a new team. Another team member, who had led us for month was being called to be our new squad leader, and another one of my teammates was being called to lead a team for the first time. He is the leader of my new team now.
After all the God ordained shifting, my team now consists of my new leader Kevin, my former teammate Kelsi, Bekah and Josh Spurgeon (a married couple that I love), Justin (a friend I got to know while doing ministry in Thailand, and Alex (a girl I had connected with during our training camp back in July).
(left to right: Kelsi, Justin, Kevin, Josh, Bekah, Alex, and Me!)
With that, I present to you Team HaHa. It’s crazy how prophetic team names are. We have experienced more laughter with one another in this one month then we have the entire race.
S/N: Before finding out who my new team was I was planning on having a silent rebellion and maybe going AWOL but after learning who my new teammates were, that became a little difficult since I actually really liked these people. 🙂
Moving on to Malaysia. We lived in a city called Gua Musang in Kelantan state. We were blessed to be serving an amazing family.
Once we settled in, they briefed us on the city. Gua Musang is a city run by fundamental Muslims. The result is a fairly strict way of life even for people who are non-Muslim. For us that meant we had to be careful of what we said and who we spoke to for the sake of our contacts. We couldn’t say a lot of the Christian buzz words we are used to saying. So “Praise the Lord,” “Amen,” etc was out of the picture. We also learned we were not allowed to directly evangelize to people of the Muslim faith.
Our tools for evangelism this month was prayer and carrying the spirit of Christ with our lives wherever we went.
We worked as English teachers in a community center and also helped in teaching various subjects to the children of the family we worked with. It was a lot of fun. I got to teach various subjects from math to golf. I never thought I’d be saying I taught golf to kids as a ministry in Malaysia. Haha!
(This is Joash…Our family's super smart, youngest child. )
During our time here we also go to visit some indigenous people in the neighboring mountains. We learned that some of the people there were Christians. This is a big deal because in choosing so they have chosen to give up land rights and face being ostracized by some of the people in their community. It was such a sweet time getting to encourage them and be encouraged by them and also getting to love on their children as well.
In our last week of the month, we moved to a new city called Kuala Lipis. We stayed at a hotel owned by this amazing, Jesus-loving, Chinese family. From the moment we arrived they loved us so well. They welcomed us right into their family all because we were part of the body of Christ. Our ministry with them involved putting on a Christmas production. For them, this was a great opportunity to openly preach the gospel by explaining the reason for Christmas.
We also had the pleasure of spending Christmas eve and day with them and it was probably one of the best times I’d ever had during the holidays. They cooked us an amazing meal, we ate delicious food, and we were merry well into the night. On Christmas day we helped them decorate the hall and finalized the songs and skit we were to perform that evening.
The time finally came and the Holy Spirit was all over it. After performing the skit I gave a little explanation about it. Then in that moment our contact there decided to go right into giving the message they had planned for later. During that time we kept the children entertained. We later found out that four people raised their hands to learn more about Christ and the gift He offers us.
God is seriously good. Our time in Malaysia was such a blessing to me. Not only did I get to serve but God totally showed His love for me in these families.
