Mission: Malaysia

Left to right: Doreen, Brad, Loraine, Angela, Meredith, Eric.


I wanted to tell about two amazing angels of mercy we have met on this trip. The first is Doreen. Doreen is our pint-size Malaysian grandmother who has blessed up immensely with all 90 of her pounds! This week the church hired her to be their first secretary, which is a good idea since she was already doing that job anyway. She cares for us and cleans up after us and keeps us smiling. We all get the biggest kick out of Doreen! The first day we were here for our information meeting she literally paced back and forth in the church building all day long for hours repeating over and over again in her adorable little voice how excited she was that LST had come to Malaysia. ("Praise God! It finally come to Malaysia! It make me sooooo glad!," she would say.)) Doreen knows the Bible like the back of her hand and she's one of those people who never meets a stranger. I think every time I've seen Doreen she's either been studying her Bible or making a new friend. But soon she's going to branch out by leading the bunny hop at our upcoming Easter party (hopefully!) Stay tuned for the footage!

Angela is our Malaysian auntie. She took off work the week of our information meeting so that she could call all of our prospective readers and remind them to come. We would not have had such amazing reader response without all of Angela's recruiting! Since we have started the reading sessions, she has come to the church building each evening to get to know our readers and to encourage us. Angela has shared a very touching testimony with us. Through some very sad circumstances, Angela was never able to have children of her own as she had always dreamed. For many years, she was sad and even angry about this and was only minimally involved in church. About a year ago, someone introduced her to the idea of spiritual children and told her that it wasn't too late for her to "raise children." God put it on Angela's heart to come to Wangsa Maju and help them plant their campus ministry, where God would bless her with children. And as many of you know, LST is helping to launch this campus ministry in many ways. I literally don't think it's an exaggeration to say that God has used this LST program to change Angela's life because she believes that each of our college-age readers were sent to her by God to be her children. At the LST meetings, she glows and says, "I prayed to God for children and he made the mother of 70!" Even after we leave to go back to the U.S., I know that Angela will make sure that her children/our readers are in good hands.

When we came to Malaysia, we were hoping to be a blessing to our readers and the church members, and we were expecting to be blessed by LST, our hosts, and all our supporters back home. All of that has been true, but true to His nature, God has been even better to us than we expected. He has filled our cups to overflowing with Angela and Doreen. Interestingly enough, Doreen and Angela are both coming out of some very hard seasons in their lives. God is not only using LST to introduce 70 college kids to the gospel, but He's also using it to lift 2 of his treaured daughters out of their season of discouragement! Praise Him for His abundant blessings!

posted by crittermer @ 3:11 PM