We Made It To Malaysia!!
Oh my goodness we made it!! We made it to Malaysia last week and let’s just say that I’m so thankful for training camp. I didn’t realize how much of our training we would actually be using but it’s already been put to use. We’ve learned how to orchestrate our own squad worship (thanks to our worship team), and praise Jesus for bucket showers! We have a lovely ministry host PT (Pastor Thomas). He’s let us stay in the church for our whole ministry stay. He’s been a very active ministry host planning seminars we could attend, adventure days, and so many more ministry opportunities for us to have.
We started our ministry officially on Monday. We started off by playing games with all of the kids that would shortly be our students. We got paired off with one child each and today was our first day of actual teaching. Honestly, I feel so underqualified to teach English and math to anybody but here I am struggling to even communicate directions to someone who speaks little to no English. I am teaching a young boy who says he’s 14 but I’m not quite sure that’s his correct age haha. He’s actually so good with his alphabet and he can count to 100 so he’s pretty amazing with that, but I’m teaching him addition and subtraction along with spelling simple words for now. Each child is at their own different learning pace as well so you’re kind of on your own to figure out what you think your child can grasp and how to teach them.
We also have different teams each night head to another community to help teach those kids as well as play games with them. My team has yet to make a trip but at some point this week I will be able to go meet everyone. As for ministry itself, with sharing the gospel with others, it’s actually illegal to try and evangelize with Muslims here. You can evangelize with other cultures such as Chinese, Malay, and Indian, but not Muslim. So it’s definitely been a learning curve there. But it’s been so funny going out in public and most of them haven’t seen white people before so they will walk up and ask for photos with us and a lot of businesses we go to want us to take pictures with their product. Which makes it easy to talk with them. They love asking questions including about our faith which is a perfect opportunity to share Jesus in that moment. God has made these people so hungry to learn more and it’s so perfect and beautiful.
What God Has Been Teaching Me
God has been laying on my heart these past few months that I needed to surrender. Of course, in my head, I was thinking duh I already have like what does God want me to do? But since being at training camp and now in Malaysia, God has just opened my eyes to the things I haven’t fully given to him, and that’s allowed me to think more about it. I’ve walked in a lot of fear trying to control how my future had to look with things like my future career, my love life, college, and money. Once I realized what I hadn’t surrendered to him I was able to look at what fruits in my life have been produced as a result of trying to control it myself. Let’s just say the things I try and control myself always end up falling apart and you can tell God was not intending that for me. God’s plan is going to be so much greater than mine and he will provide what I need when I need it, so trying to control things I can’t control and operate out of fear only filled me with anxiety. I’ve been spending weeks now giving the things in my life to God and asking for him to be the provider this time instead of thinking I could somehow. Praise Jesus he is the one who provides because he is so good and he wants to bless his children. Psalms 20:4-5 “May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans! May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions!” Psalms 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Prayer requests
- safety
- No more sickness!!
- Funding
- The Muslim and Indian communities we are reaching in Sungai Petani
- That we could have Christ Encounters
