Malaysia 🇲🇾

My last country has come to an end, and now I’m headed back to where I started—in Georgia! We’re taking a 15-hour flight to San Francisco and then an 8-hour flight to Atlanta. After a couple of days, we get to return to Black Mountain, North Carolina, where the landslide happened. I truly believe it will be such a redeeming time. I can’t wait to be a part of the recovery. It’s definitely not going to be easy, but it’ll be so sweet to finish the race there.

Malaysia was one of my favorite countries I’ve been to! At first, it was hard—the culture is very different. It’s mostly Chinese and Indian in ethnicity, and we ate a lot of Chinese cuisine: tons of rice, fried eggs, fried chicken, slimy chicken, spicy noodles. It wasn’t bad, just tiring after a while.

They have a nightlife culture. We had church from 7–11 p.m. and often visited people’s houses from 7–10 for House of Prayer. The bathrooms were different—squatty potties, showers next to the toilet, and sometimes no toilet paper (they use bidets). Also, you take off your shoes before entering many places like schools, churches, and laundromats.

They speak Malay, Tamil, and English. The only words I learned were terima kasih (thank you) and bandas (bathroom). The words were so long, it was hard to learn them. Also, it’s illegal to share the gospel openly. The main religions are Islam and Hinduism.

We stayed in classrooms at a church, which was a huge blessing because other teams had to stay in a different church and pack up their things every morning. The place we stayed felt pretty homey—we had a little kitchen and everything we needed! It was close quarters, but I’m still so grateful.

The people here were so hospitable, and we built a lot of relationships. We got to do something called House of Prayer—this is where we visited people’s homes, whether they were new believers, non-believers, or couldn’t attend church. We would worship, give a short teaching, and pray every Tuesday and Wednesday. God showed up every time. We’d pray about what to share, and it always ended up being exactly what the household needed—sometimes, multiple people had the same thing on their hearts.

At one house, I got to share the gospel and read Psalm 131. As I shared, they started weeping. We prayed the salvation prayer with them, and they both cried in awe of God. One man shared how God had saved his life—he had brushed it off before, but now he recognized it was truly God. He had been bedridden with no hope, but after a pastor prayed for him, he was completely healed. We saw five more salvations!

We also had a prayer meeting where a man from Australia came and shared testimonies—it was so faith-building. That night, many people were healed: back pain, deaf ears, vision problems, depression, and even cancer were healed. All glory to God!

One woman had cancer and we got to pray for her the first week we were in Malaysia. She was Hindu, so we couldn’t share the gospel directly, but we got to encourage her.She came to the prayer meeting with the man from Australia. That was 7 weeks after seeing her. She got saved that night! It was crazy because they day before we were interceding for salvation and the next day we saw so many!

For the last two months, we taught refugees from Myanmar Monday through Friday. It’s been amazing! I’ve loved it so much. Next year, I’m going to GCU to pursue a degree in elementary education, and this experience has made me so excited for it. I taught the kindergarten class and got to take the lead, which was such an amazing opportunity. We did so many fun crafts, worksheets, and activities—we ran the whole class. The school is short-staffed and fully volunteer-run, so it was a big help.

We fundraised and were able to buy all-new school supplies for my class of 26 students—for only about $150! Everything is much cheaper there. We also helped fundraise for a few students’ school fees.

God opened so many doors. We met a guy named Sandra while hiking, and he invited us to his public school. That was a big deal because they usually don’t let outside organizations in. Now they’re planning to partner with future Race teams! Sandra is also retiring next year and plans to volunteer at the refugee school, which will help bring in more teachers.

Even getting to Malaysia was intentional. We were originally supposed to go to Indonesia, but it was too expensive. So they sent two teams to Malaysia and three to Indonesia. It came down to numbers, and I’m so grateful I was on the team that got to go to Malaysia.

We partnered with a ministry that’s been operating for years, and our host said this was the most doors that have ever opened during a team’s visit! The Indonesia teams worked with a newer ministry, which involved a lot of building relationships and hosting kids’ clubs.

As for adventures—we took many beach trips to Penang and George Town! There’s a huge mall and lots of little shops. The ocean was beautiful. We also visited a strawberry farm resort, which was super fun and random!

I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to travel to all these countries. These last nine months were so worth it!