Malaysia – Friendship with Jesus

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

– John 15:15 NIV

This whole year is basically going on a journey with our best friend, Jesus. What better travel companion to have than him? As we go along, our friend is making new things known to us and enabling us to extend friendship to strangers.

We set off to our first overseas country, Malaysia from Johannesburg, giddy with excitement. After 42 hours of travelling, which included 2 flights, a layover, 2 busses, walking and a ferry ride, we arrived in George Town, the capital of the Malaysian Island, Penang.

The whole team stayed together at the same location, in a multicultural city area called Little India. The team did however split into our smaller Blue and Green teams for ministry.

We, the Blue Team, were assigned to the Kawan centre. Kawan simply means ‘friend’ in the Malay language. The centre is a place where people that are homeless or lonely can come to have a meal, take a nap, wash clothes, take a shower or simply have a conversation with someone that cares.

We did some cleaning, helped to make meals, sort clothes at the secondhand store and sang a lot to the elderly that visit the centre. The real ministry actually happened when we had conversations with the people coming to the centre. In God’s kingdom it’s always amazing to see that ministry blesses the one being ministered to as well as the person doing the ministering. Consequently we learnt a lot and got to experience God’s heart for people we wouldn’t normally interact with.

The people in George Town are friendly and quite a number of them were open to having conversations, which resulted in many wonderful encounters and testimonies.

Here follows a testimony from Theodore:

“While in Malaysia, we went to serve at a new church called Cornerstone. We helped them move furniture and painted some of their walls. On one of the days, we were traveling there to help clean the church before having service that evening. Before we got on the bus, a man asked me my name and what I was doing. We started talking, and as I was telling him about Jesus, our bus flew past us. I looked at the team, and we all started running, I told the guy to run with us. We finally all made it on the bus, and he seemed really interested. So I invited him to come to church later. And he actually came! He grew up Hindu, but he had a really good experience. He said he cried during the service, and he gave money to the church.

He also told me that he will let us camp on his property in India when we go to India this year and that he’ll show us around his village and villages around there.”

Another testimony from Michaela:

“Before going to do street evangelism in the streets of Penang, the Lord gave me a picture of bananas. While walking I found a lady with a stall with bananas that is Catholic. I got to explain to her that she could pray to God directly to ask him for forgiveness for her sin and we read the Bible together, which she showed great interest in. When we parted she even gave me some bananas.”

During our time in George Town we not only learned about but experienced our Father’s provision in finances, food and good relationships. We were sad to say goodbye but grateful for our time in Malaysia.

Until we write again, love

The Blue Team