Participating in an Unsung Hero month means agreeing to the unknown even more so than months with actual contacts. It means completely abandoning your “need” to know what every day will hold or what “success” even actually means. Some teams define a successful Unsung Hero month as one where they submitted multiple new contacts per week, while other teams would define it as a month where they discovered how to discern the Holy Spirit’s guidance, while others would say success means creative evangelism, or internal team ministering, or complete vulnerability with one another.
So what does a team aim to do during a month of Unsung Hero? Much like most of life experiences, I can’t give a perfectly defined answer to that question. I can, however, tell you that our team could not have done this month without Holy Spirit leadership. Without God’s Spirit guiding us daily, this month would have been tense, boring and unfruitful. However, with the daily direction we discovered new ways to minister to the city of Penang in ways we would have otherwise never discovered.
After spending a week in Penang, we sat down together as a team and prayerfully considered if we should stay in Penang or if we felt a leading to another city. Together we strongly felt the Holy Spirit telling us to stay in Penang and continue to grow the relationships there.
Every morning we wake up and go to the same restaurant for breakfast. It quickly became one of our favorite relationship-building opportunities, as we know each of the servers’ names and love to laugh with them. We had a few Bible studies there as well and got to share our compassion for studying and search for truth.
Four of the girls on our team (Brandi, Katie, Krystle and Becca) met a Christian artist who runs a gallery in Penang and oftentimes asks for help with her gallery. The girls have loved listening to the woman’s stories, aiding in her shows any way they can and volunteering with various tasks. A couple days they even got to help her run a creative outreach by playing with nerf guns and inviting others to join them.
Chenea and Destiny met a woman who connected our team with an International Christian school, which three of us (Destiny, Chenea and Sarah) were able to attended their open day for the beginning of the school year. Through that connection, we were able to connect with more ministries by word of mouth. The three of us also took a trip to the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, and connect with ministries there as well. We met with two women on fire for Jesus, who hooked us up with all the ministries they know.
Our team has also had opportunities to volunteer at a school and an orphanage. They allowed us to share stories with them, love the children and play with them. For their protection, we cannot share much about those particular ministries, but the Lord really blessed our team with these opportunities to reach out to His little children suffering here in Malaysia.
Overall, the P31s loved Penang and lived well in community with one another in a lifestyle of listening to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and loving on his children. It was a short and sweet month with the team, and we said goodbye to Penang and shortly after said goodbye to one another as we changed teams in Bangkok, Thailand.
Thank you for your prayers and support throughout that month! May the testimonies of God’s provision and guidance challenge and encourage you in your relationship with Abba!
