This is my first blog after leaving India and I now find myself in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I love the fact that every McDonalds has free WiFi.
So, as I mentioned, we left India behind with a sad heart. The kids at the orphanage grew on me as time went on and by the time I had to leave, they had crept deep into our hearts. The amount of love that they are getting and the amount that they need are two different things. This is not a reflection on the efforts of the staff, but just what a big hole the absence of a caring family leaves in a person’s life. I also learnt that the more you give of yourself, the more you will get out, a rule of life that applies to children as well. The more time and attention I gave them, the more they would respond to me and the more God could teach me.
In our last week there we also got invited to a local church to share with them and to pray with them. This turned into a two hour prayer session where we saw many healings, deliverances and recommitments to Christ. India is a very spiritual place and a conversation between two strangers about what they believe in is perfectly natural. Although this makes it easier to share your faith, it has big negatives when it comes to trying to tell them that there is only one God through Jesus Christ. The Hindus believe that there are many ways to salvation, so it is all relative. “You believe in Jesus, I believe in the 20 gods of my choice.” No wonder the Hindus have over 33 million gods... yes this wasn’t a typing error.
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Anyway, so after the prayer our energy levels were very low. The fact that we fasted for the service 3 days before the event could have also had an effect! Luckily our new found brothers and sisters in Christ treated us to some true Indian cuisine. What a feast!
We left early morning to catch our train to Kochi on the South Western coast from where we would fly out to Malaysia. After enduring the 50 hour train trip with your usual food and drink like chai, samoosas and... well anything deep fried, we arrived in Kochi and immediately went to the beach. Cherai beach is the most famous, so we headed there. Darko and Stoffel were in the water asap, while Ivan joined after a while. Anthony and I didn’t swim. Anthony because he didn’t like the colour of the water as he knew what the rivers looked like that we crossed and I had a bit of Delhi Belly and didn’t have all that much energy. After this it was off to the airport to catch a plane. We also weighed ourselves at the airport (period-mid January to end March): Anthony 96kg-91kg, Darko 86kg-85kg, Ivan 68kg-75kg!!!, Stoffel 75kg-69kg and me 91kg-82kg.
After arriving in Malaysia, we quickly settled in for the night on the airport. The next morning was one of the highlights thus far and also of my life!!! The Malaysian F1 Grand Prix is in town and we had the privilege of going to watch some of the practice rounds. Worth every bit of hearing that I lost. Yesterday and today we continued to be tourists and went into KL itself. Saw the Petronas Towers and spent time in Chinatown’s markets.
This morning we went to a local Chinatown church and were warmly welcomed and fed after the service. We built some good contacts and were also informed that Malaysia is under Shari’a Law, meaning that this is a dominantly muslim country and that muslim law is the highest law. Practically this means that it is totally legal to be locked up for preaching the gospel on the street!
We leave KL tomorrow to go find a contact we have about 2 hours’ drive north of the city and might make our way to Thailand after that.
Thank you for all your prayers and support, we appreciate it and cannot go without it.
Lots of love from a sweaty, humid KL.
De Necker