After getting off our two-day, three-bus, one tuk tuk, two-van travel day, we made it to our ministry location in Malaysia. But, before I get into the specifics of this month, let me explain our Thailand to Malaysia travel experience because it’s a good one.
We caught two vans for our two teams from the hotel in Phuket to the bus station at 7:20. Angelique’s team (Team Salt and Light), and my team managed to just make our 8:30 bus. Even though it was definitely 8:26, it was just about to pull out; we had to sprint to make it and throw our bags onto the bus. Once settled, we had a 6 hour bus ride to Hat Yai. Once there, this guy who looked very unofficial called someone on his mobile phone and told us that he could take us to our next bus. We then loaded all 12 of us with our bags into a tuk tuk and drove for about 10 minutes. We were dropped off at a travel company, where we were told that our bus would be leaving in an hour and a half. Lucky for us, there was a McDonald’s right across the street as well as a place to exchange money. Jess and I exchanged our Thai Baht for Malaysian Ringgit, then went and got ice cream at McDonald’s. After an hour and a half, the bus came to pick us up. We were only on the bus for a little over an hour when we got to the Thai-Malaysian border. Almost all the squad was there, stuck in line, because we were over our visa and had to pay a fine to get out of Thailand. They said that they had been there waiting for three hours. We decided that we would have to take a hotel for the night because the border was closing in a couple of hours. After a while, Drew’s team and Shelley’s team made it to the border, and our four teams took a hotel near the border for the night. We woke up at 4:30 the next morning so that we could get to the border right when it opened: 5:00AM. After a little confusion, our four teams made it through the border and were able, by the grace of God, to make it onto a 10:00 bus that would bring us to Kuala Lumpur. Once there, our contact sent a church van to come pick us up, and we headed off to our Malaysian ministry.
This month, Rooted Freedom will be working with Rev. Arul at Rumah Shalom Children’s Home, Tabernacle of Shalom Church in Subang Jaya, which is a suburb of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Tabernacle of Shalom is working with the UNHCR for this project. We will be teaching English in the schools, as well as doing street ministry, and working in the slums. We four girls are living in a two-story house with 14 Sri Lankan refugee girls. There is also a house mom, who just arrived here from India back in January. The two boys on our team are living in a house a couple streets over also with around 14 Sri Lankan refugee boys. Between the two houses, the children range from 5 years to 16 years old. There are also some older girls that speak really good English and have helped us to get settled.
It’s going to be a great month. Even though our team is somewhat split up, I know that God is going to grow us together through ministry and the kids. Yeah Malaysia! Bring it on!
