Goodbye, Malaysia!

Wow, it’s so crazy that I’m already through my first country on the race! Our 40 days in Malaysia are complete, and tomorrow we leave for Thailand. It’s a bittersweet time of goodbyes while also looking forward to a new season.

Last House Church

Instead of our normal house churches (well, maybe not normal considering I never went to the same one twice…), we had a house church party! Everyone came to the same house and packed in to share a meal together and some fellowship time. I had had kind of a rough day. I kinda forget why, but I remember I was pretty tired. The food was actually really good, which is impressive because I don’t usually get too excited about food. Except soft pretzels at Plum Creek, but I won’t be having those for a while. But I got almost that excited about the orange I ate at this house church party. It was absolutely delicious.

Anyway, my friend Aliya (not to be confused with my teacher buddy Alleah 😉) was aware of the kind of day I was having. Actually, she asked me if I was upset with her, and I told her the honest truth that I was just grumpy that day. Anyway, she came up to me and pulled me inside and sat me down in the massage chair (not on), and then she surprised me with a foot rub. I think I looked at her like she was crazy. I was like, “Girl, you’re going to rub my dirty feet?!?” And she was like, “Yeah!” That is not something I grew up with, so I was quite surprised. And then today she brought me a banana muffin! It was delicious. She is so kind, and I’m so glad she’s on my team, so I get to keep her all 9 months!

School is out!

Since it was our last day of school, Alleah, Bella, and I approached the week a little differently. Monday and Tuesday we continued to reinforce what we had already taught the boys. We kept going over multiplication and worked on their English skills, too. On Wednesday we gave them some small parting gifts, (gift giving is not one of my top love languages, so I felt very accomplished for going gift shopping and finding things they liked 😁) and then wrote thank you notes to Teacher Jess, who will be continuing to teach all of them now that we are gone.

We wanted one last time to see the kids, so we visited them all at one of the villages many of them are from. We hung out for a while and played with the kids. They fed us a meal, and then some of my friends led some water games. The kids had a lot of fun! I managed to stay pretty dry. They pulled out bubble wands at the end. It was nostalgic to watch them blowing and popping the bubbles together. It was honestly really hard to see all their little child innocence and know that we couldn’t share the gospel with them. It’s a whole new level of trusting God that He’s orchestrating their stories and He will bring them to Himself in His timing.

A lot of the racers cried, and some of the kids, too. Not all of the kids really understood that we’re actually leaving and most of us won’t be coming back. We got in the van and waited quite a while to head out, which was hard because I and several others were still crying and we just needed to rip off the bandaid and leave. My little boy came up to the widow and reached in for one final goodbye, which was really sweet, but did not help with the crying.

Chinese Pastor Lunch

We left and went straight to lunch with a bunch of Chinese pastors. We got there, and they started out with one of the pastors leading “This is the day that the Lord has made” if that song has an actual title. It’s kinda old. Do songs that old have real titles? Anyway, that’s beside the point. The next thing they did was ask for one of us to lead a song. I’m sure you all know by this point whose name started coming up. But…

Plot twist! I didn’t have to go up there because I have great friends. Jackson was aware that I was not exactly in the mood to go lead a worship song, so he took my place! I was so incredibly grateful. Actually I still am, because that was so kind. He led us in the doxology, and it was perfect!

We ate lunch and then did a little more worship. By that time I had recovered some, so I led “Gratitude” by Brandon Lake. I just felt like it expressed how a lot of us were feeling about the opportunity we had to work with and get to know the kids. It really was a sweet time.

Overall Processing

I honestly don’t know if I’m more sad that I’m leaving the kids and many of my new racer friends or more excited to go to a new country and meet new people and get more connected to my team. I am definitely looking forward to having a whole bed to myself. My bed seems to have gotten progressively smaller and smaller as our time here went on. 😬 I’ve always managed to get to sleep, though, so I’m not gonna complain.

I’m really thankful for the kindness of all of the people I’ve gotten to know in Malaysia. It’s meant a lot to me. So saying goodbye is hard, but I’m satisfied with my time here. I look forward to getting to do it all over in a new country with a new group of people!

Prayer Requests

• Pray for our travel day tomorrow. It’s going to be quite a bit with bussing to Thailand and then taking a train to Bangkok and then another train to Chiang Mai and then I actually don’t even remember how my team is getting the rest of the way to Chiang Dao, but I’m sure there’s a plan for that. So please pray that everything goes smoothly and we all get into the country fine and to our respective destinations.
• Pray for our transition as we continue to process from the last country and move into new ministry opportunities.
• Pray for the hearts of the people we work with to be receptive to what the Lord is trying to teach them. Honestly, same for all of us racers.
• Pray for humble hearts as we seek to serve the Lord with gladness regardless of our circumstances.