This month we’re in Georgetown, Malaysia. This is month 11.
We’re staying with YWAM and we get to serve in several different areas; at Kawan homeless shelter, at the hospital, at Door of Hope kids care, at Just Café and a thrift shop.
My favorite place to hang out is Kawan. It means “friend” in Malay. Each morning we’re there, we open the doors at 10am and welcome our friends off the street and into the dining hall for hot coffee and some breakfast or a hot shower and a nap upstairs if they prefer. I love when the doors open and the friends begin coming in. We hear different variations of “Good morning! Thank you!” in different accents and languages. We get to chat with the men and women who come in and hear parts of their stories. Bible study begins at 11 for those who are interested and then lunch is served promptly at 12:30.
I like Kawan. I like the idea of friends joined around the table for meals, sharing story and life. I like that often in my life, times of sweetest companionship have happened with dear friends around the table, and that translates across cultures.
[my new friend, Felix]
One of the friends I meet is a grandfather aged man named Felix. He could chat for hours, so he does. He talks about where he’s from and where I’m from and what he reads in the news and what he’s heard on the street. He’s a never-ending index of fun facts about seemingly useless knowledge. Did you know there’s a place called the Malieu Basin? Do you know why it’s special? I didn’t either until Felix told me all about it.
Another friend is a sweet, sweet woman whose name I cannot pronounce, but it starts with an X. She comes for lunch and then stays for an hour after to help clean up and make sure everything is ready for tomorrow. I think she’s about 80 years old but she insists on sweeping the floor and God help you if you get in her way.
There’s a staff member named Les whose joy is absolutely contagious. He’s also grandfather age and from Australia. He told me that he met the Lord 13 years ago here in Georgetown. The 14 years before that he had spent backpacking around the world. Now his home base is mostly here except for when He and his wife get the travel bug again and make their way to distant lands. We exchange travel stories and laugh over silly things and I feel like I’m talking to a friend. I think while his body grew old, this mans internal clocked stopped somewhere in his 20’s. I hope I’m as fun as he is when I’m older.
Ed and his wife Afka are my age. They (and their 3 kids) are from the Netherlands and have dedicated their lives to helping these friends here in Georgetown. Sometimes they don’t know where the money for their next meals will come, but they do know that God is faithful and so that’s the promise they live on. “And if we know that God is faithful,” Ed says one morning, “we know enough to get us through the day.”
The people we spend our days with at Kawan are often referred to by society as “those people,” whatever that means. “Those people” who are poor and dirty and uneducated and lazy. But it seems that here at Kawan, it’s forgotten that they are “those people” and they just become “the friends.” Friends who share a meal and life and story around the table. Friends whose lives are being transformed every day and friends who aren’t quite ready to have their lives transformed yet, but who have the courage to stay at the table anyway. I like “those people” because they remind me of how life should be done. They remind me of my people, my friends around the table, and they remind me to have the courage to be real and stay at the table.
[37 Love Lane. Hot meals and good conversation with friends]
