Back to School
We started our teaching Ministry on Monday! We spent the first day just getting to know the kids and playing some group games. A lot of them have very limited or no English skills beyond “Hi, my name is ______. What’s your name?” With the help of Jesse, one of our wonderful hosts, we were able to communicate the rules of some games and have a lot of fun with the kids. We finished the morning with pairing up the racers with the kids we’ll be working with over the next month. My boy is 10 years old. He’s very sweet and can read a little bit and do basic addition and subtraction, but he doesn’t know a lot of conversational English. That’s pretty common among the group. By Wednesday I had joined forces with Alleah to teach my boy and his two brothers. We had them doing flashcards to practice their English, their spelling, and their subtraction. They had a lot of fun competing to get the answer first, and they worked really well together. I’m really looking forward to continuing working with and getting to know them.
I went back to school shopping with some friends to get more blank flashcards, paper, pens, and all the necessities. I can’t wait to put it all to good use! If anyone has resources for teaching English to beginners or to people who are learning it as a second language, please send them to me or put them in the comments section. I’m not exactly fully equipped, so anything helps!
Thursday
Thursday was absolutely packed. It was probably my most eventful day of ministry yet. Let’s see how much I can stuff into one post…
Sharing my Testimony
Our team has been in the process of all of us sharing our testimonies. My turn was on Thursday morning. Not gonna lie, guys, I was not excited about it. I had never shared my full testimony like that before. I was pretty afraid. I wasn’t sure if people would judge me or understand where I was coming from, so I did not come into it with a good attitude. However, it’s not optional, so I just jumped into it. God was so faithful to give me the strength to share my story even when it was scary. He also blessed me with a focused atmosphere and attentive listeners. My fears of rejection and judgement were not founded. I have had at least three people come up to me since then to tell me that they related to some part of my testimony. God is already using my story for his glory, despite my resistance to sharing it. He is also showing me that He has given me a supportive community, and I can lean into that and experience His blessing through those people.
Expectations vs. Reality
We were expecting Thursday to be a pretty low key day. We don’t have our teaching ministry on Thursdays, so we didn’t have as much going on in the morning, and we were expecting to just have a music class with our host, PT, in the afternoon and then dance class for an hour in the evening (we’re going to be in a music video…or a wedding with 1000 people…or both?) followed by worship practice for church on Friday. Now that I think about it, that doesn’t sound very “low key.” But anyway, none of that ended up happening because our leaders informed us in the late morning that we were going to be going to an event in the evening for a Hindu light festival and we needed to prepare a skit including the entire squad and presenting the gospel.
So instead of music class, we spent a couple of hours brainstorming and planning a skit. Our first decision was what Bible story to act out. We thought up a bunch of options including the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lanterns, and healing a blind man, before we finally landed on (my brilliant idea 🙃) the Christmas story. It was pretty hectic trying to get from an idea to a skit with so many voices involved. I think most of us were pretty disappointed with our lack of good teamwork. We dispersed at around 3:00 so that people could do laundry and whatever else they needed to do. We made an agreement that we would all be back by 5:00, dressed and ready at 5:15 so we could practice one more time and be ready to go by 6:00. I was a little frustrated, so I took some time to prayer journal and bring it to the Lord. It was really helpful for me to come back to God and remember that He is powerful enough to use our squad even in our disunity and to bring us to a place of greater humility so we could work together as a team.
At 5:32, we got back to work on our skit, this time with so much more cooperation and grace for each other. We had a pretty simplified Christmas story complete with Mary, Joseph, a stuffed monkey Jesus wrapped in a pack towel, shepherds, angels, wise men, sheep, a donkey, a star, and two people playing the stable. We had a skit!
We loaded up the cars and headed to the festival with no idea what it would be like. We arrived at a beautiful venue with decorated tables and hanging lights and a fountain in the courtyard area. It was like a prom venue. I felt severely underdressed compared to the women who were dressed in beautiful, brightly colored Hindu cultural dresses with intricate designs. I wasn’t even wearing mascara. The event turned out to be primarily a dance competition with different performances from a local college. There were games between performances such as guess the song, finish the song lyric, guess the movie based on a picture clue, and a raffle. They didn’t use a lot of English, so we tried to focus on prayer.
After a dinner break, we continued with the performances and games. They did one game where they played a clip from a song and you had to go up front and keep singing where they left off. That got interesting when a couple people from my squad decided to participate. The whole room was cracking up watching them try to guess how to sing in another language. They ended that game playing “Baby” by Justin Bieber and we all scream sang the whole song. Well, I only sang the chorus because that’s the only part I know, but most of my squad knew the whole thing.
The last game was open karaoke. One of our hosts asked one of us to do a worship song, and several people looked to me to be the one to go up there. Grace picked a song for me because nothing was coming to my mind under pressure. She airdropped me a screenshot of the lyrics and I sang “Holy Spirit”. It started out fine until I ran out of lyrics, at which point I made up my own, which was also fine. God was so good to give me something to sing when the screenshot didn’t have the bridge. So yeah, I sang Christian karaoke at a Hindu festival. That’s so crazy to me. It was another opportunity to give God my “Yes.” A few minutes later we presented our skit and followed it up with a short gospel presentation. The whole room gave us their full attention. I suppose we’ll never know if any of the seeds we planted will take root, but our job was just to plant the seeds and let God handle the rest.
We got home at around 11:30, and I stayed up until about 3:00am chatting with squad mates. Late night conversations have been so fruitful. We discussed whether one sin is worse than another or not and the nuances involved. Our conclusion: all sin is equal in that it leads to death, but some sins have greater natural consequences than others. At 1:30, an angel from heaven (one of the church members here 😂) brought us fried chicken, French fries, and mashed potatoes from Texas Chicken. I was actually so happy to have just regular fried chicken. I had two pieces. It was so good. As I’m writing this, the same guy offered to get me something at the cafe I’m sitting in. I’m telling you, he’s an angel from heaven 😂). Update! His name is Jestus and he is 22 and he bought me candy and cake and hung out with Jackson and me. I’m sticking with the angel theory.
Friday Night Church
The service started out with the congregation singing worship in Malay, and then we transitioned to people from my squad sharing testimonies. All of that was well and good until they threw a curveball at us. The pastor spontaneously asked someone from our squad to lead a worship song in English. Of course, I had already set the precedent the night before that I can do solo impromptu worship leading (only by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s not me, I swear.), so PT and a couple other people started calling out my name. The pastor called me up to the stage. I quickly asked Grace for a reminder on how “Holy Spirit” starts, and I went up there and led it basically a cappella. The Lord was so faithful to give me the courage to do that two nights in a row. He was faithful to respond to our welcoming His presence through that song. I sat back down and then ended up coming right back up to co-lead “I Love You, Lord” with Carter on piano. It was just a beautiful outpouring of my heart for God.
After that, the service really took off. Reagan shared one more testimony, and it was so clear that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her as she shared scripture after scripture calling each of us to share the gospel with the nations and reminding us of God’s heart for the lost. All of us, Malay and American, were very moved by the scriptures and by her passion.
The church services are primarily in Malay, so I was randomly (as ordained by the hand of God 🙃) flipping through my Bible, and almost every page I landed on had some mention of imitating Jesus and following His example. Some examples are Philippians 2:5, 1 Corinthians 11:1, 1 Peter 2:21, Ephesians 5:1-2, and 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7. It was over and over again. So the next question is, “What does it look like to imitate Christ?” Fortunately, in Philippians 2:1-11, Paul explains:
Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
I’m going to be so real right now and say that the depth of that passage brought me to tears. The beauty of what Jesus did is just so far beyond my understanding, and God revealed that to me in a new and deeper way last night. It just blows my mind that GOD came to earth and died on a cross. HUUUHHHHH????!??!!!?? The highest most powerful and beautiful and perfect being in all existence came to hang out with a bunch sick and broken sinners and died, an innocent man, of the most humiliating death anyone could come up with because He loves us!!!!! That’s actually incredible! And now He tells us to follow His example, not so that we can earn His love, but because He already loves us so much and knows that living in humility as He did is the best thing for us. As my squad is still struggling some with unity, I think we could all stand to remember and be humbled by what Christ did for us. Truly, nothing we do in ministry is about us. It’s not about who can be the best actor in the skit or who’s the best English teacher with the best methods. It’s only about loving people because Jesus loves us. That’s the only thing that matters. One of the last things I read in my Bible last night was 1 Corinthians 13, which you probably know as the love chapter. I’m not going to share the whole thing here (you’re welcome to go read it on your own 🙂), but the bottom line is that nothing you do for God or for people matters even a little bit if it’s not done in love. So it is for ministry in Malaysia and so it is for you wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.
Prayer Requests
- Pray for my squad to grow in loving each other humbly out of an increased knowledge of God’s love for them.
- Pray for patience and boldness as ministry opportunities keep getting thrown at us with short notice.
- Consider praying about supporting some of my teammates who are still fundraising. Ella: blog, Venmo: @reannon0412 — she needs spending money for transportation and basic needs
- Pray for the children in the school to learn English well and to develop curiosity about Christianity. We’re allowed to talk about our faith, but only if they ask.
- Pray generally for God to empower His Church to move in big ways for His glory in Malaysia.
