Monday, October 23, 2006

Reflections from Malaysia

I realize I haven't posted anything from my trip to Malaysia yet.

Here's a picture of my small group during my time there.
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From left to right: Me, Gildo (Mozambique), Ranno (Estonia), Brad (mentor from USA), Renier (South Africa), Charles (Tanzania), Remo (India).

I think the picture best summarizes what I learned from the trip: There are cross-cultural missionaries from everywhere in the world. In one of the messages, I had learned that only 36% of the world's Christian missionaries come from the continent of North America. I had heard that the Christian movement was shifting away from the West, but I had no idea that it had already shifted significantly.

Otherwise, I met a lot of really important people. It seemed like everyone had a business card. "President of such-and-such ministries," "CEO of such-and-such company." There were just a lot of important people. So you can imagine my feelings of inadequacy when I would meet somebody new (which was all the time). After shaking the person's hand, he or she would had me their business card, I'd look at it, see that they were really important, and follow it up with, "Hang on, lemme make you my business card (which would be a piece of paper torn out of my notepad with my name and email address on it)." Oh well.

On a related note, I just finished writing a newsletter that talks briefly about the trip. If you'd like a copy, gimme a holla.

2 comments:

Bob said...

Your "lemme make you my business card" resourcefulness made me chuckle.

I'm interested in a newsletter.

Haven't seen you on Sundays in a while (perhaps it was this trip, eh?)

Warriors season coming up!

JumboBody said...

hi, my name's joe and i came across your blog, and just wanted to say hello since there are so many things on your blog i can relate to. (i can totally relate to a student of theology that's into fantasy football). i'm an old seminary friend of michael oh, who gave the first msg at the lausanne younger leaders conference in malaysia and actually will be joining him as a missionary to japan when i'm finished with my studies. anyways, just stopping by to say hello~ many blessings to you.