Mission Trip (part 10) (Kg Lotong)

let me first clarify that some of the timeline maybe out of order in this post due to my forgetfulness. hehe. dunno wat was wrong with me :P

we woke up at 9 which was a fresh new change in our schedule because we have always been waking up at 7 or 8 to get ready for our transport but since we were already in our location, we got the extra sleep. i woke up aching at the neck and freezing because i was sleeping on the top bunk and i was really really close to the celing fan. plus, the place gets really cold at night so i kena tembakan sejuk by the place. but hey, who says u dun get air con when u’re in mission trip
right?

so we all woke up and got ready by 10am. the toilets are a separate building by itself. the men are in one side while the girls next to them. theres also a sink outside the toilets for you to brush your teeth and stuff. the bathroom was a bathroom in a room next to the kitchen which was a separate building from the main building. i know. confusing, isn’t it? actually its not. its just the way i explained it. thats why bernice says my words are too hard to be understood. haha. we met in the meeting hall for breakfast which was mee goreng with egg omelets and fried rice and milo. all this was done by pr juiliana herself. a really good chef and self-sacrificing pastor if i may add. while we were eating, pr tom anounced that he was going to the pekan to shop. we were allowed to follow if we wished or we could stay back in the asrama. our answer: oh yeah!
so we all got ready and by 10.30am, we left the asrama without kevin and bernice coz for some reason they didnt want to follow. kevin was in his room when we left while bernice was standing at the main door, telling us as we walked away to “oi! remember to buy snacks ya!” good reminder. i was wondering what to do there other than to just jalan for fun. haha.

we walked along the road for a while. we passed by some buildings you don’t really see in penang. such as, a milk collection plant, a driving range (i have no idea what’s it do but its defitnetly not learning how to drive), a latex collection plant and such. we walked somemore into the pekan and it really is a nice place. the place is like a park, with trees and grass and concrete “benches” that u can sit on and u’re oso surrounded by shops. pr tom went into a cyber cafe to check up on his email. because the cyber cafe is kinda small, we decided to keep on walking and stopped by a coffeshop nearby.

i ordered my usual kopi while freda had tea and matt had some sort of lemon tea thing. its made by themselves thats why penang dosen’t have it. its even more sour than “sui kam peng”, he claims. oh well, i could never tahan sour anyways the tv in the coffeeshop was on and the channel was WWE. we watched the ppl doing smackdowns, punches, fake kicks and bla bla bla. we saw pr tom wondering around looking for us outside the coffeshop so we called out to him. he came and sat with us while watching WWE with us. there was a whole story going but none of us couldn’t figure out what was going on. so we basically watching all the fighting for fun. then we left to buy essentials.

we went to a kedai runcit to buy snacks and stuff. we almost paid when some1 anounced that there was a superstore nearby. so we dropped everything and went to it. i was wondering what was a superstore until we reached the place. its a supermarket. yes i should have known from the word “store” but i thought it was something different, you know? we even went to this place where its a wet market downstairs and a supermarket upstairs where everything is bought in bulk. bernice thought that penang dosent have this kinda stuff. obviously she havent been to mydin. haha. well, except the wet market but yeah, you get the picture.

so we walked over to the supermarket and bought our stuff. i bought cereal fun packs for only 6.90 when the kedai runcit was selling at 7.20. talk abt timing! yi lin and freda bought some sort of sunsilk hair repair thing and some snacks and mee cup (i think). after all the (white chicks style) “shopping”, we all headed back to the asrama for lunch.

we had a nice lunch at 1 so we were quite stuffed. later we went to the church in front for devotion. after praying for Kg Soronsob and stuff, we had our devotion which was led by pr tom. (fast forward to sometime later) we went back to freshen up for the next kampung. we (the girls) had snacks for tea and we all were preparing for the next kampung.
our transport then came at 4 (i think). there were 2 vehicles: one was a mini van while another was a car. i got into the car with yi lin, matt and kevin if i’m not mistaken. the journey there wasn’t as long as the one to the previous village. in fact, we went past a KFC so we were all kfc……. haha. the road was dusty again but it was ok coz we were all covered up in the car and we went by lots of padi fields.

we then came a empty space with lots of houses and grass. we stopped in front of a wooden house with long tables and benches. we said thanks to both the drivers and greeted the ibu-ibu there. they were preparing tea for us so we went to the church to practice. the church was moderately big. there was a big alter space and a door by the side as well as a main door in front. after practice we prayed for the service as well as the people there. it was then the ibu-ibu had finished preparing tea for us so after prayer we went to eat.

we were served donuts and tea. we talked with some of the youths there as well as those who cooked for us. it was about 5 and the sun was going down so some kids came to play badminton outside on the empty space next to the church. we played with them and got to know the kids there as well. then some of the teenage girls went to the church stage and started playing the instruments. they played everything. the electric guitar, the bass and even the really new looking drums. wow. talk about an all female ensemble. some of us followed them and when it was too dark, the kids went back to bathe while the rest of us went inside the church to watch them.

some of the girls were also the dancers for their church so they started dancing. yi lin and bernice followed them in dancing and then hyper-high nat oso joined them. freda, who reconised the song they were playing to, decided to sing with them on the mike. kevin played along with the acoustic while aaron took over the bass. daniel tried to follow the beat in the drums but he couldn’t so pr tom showed him. when daniel tried again i also tried to follow by pretending to play air drum in front of him but all i got was yi lin filming both of us. don’t ask me why. i deny “it” all! matthew then took over the drum from daniel and i watched the dance. nat asked me to dance along but i refused because i know can’t follow the steps. he told me that he couldn’t follow it as well but he was following just for fun. these words encouraged me (thx nat!) and soon i found myself dancing the dusun dance along with them. my actions were really “rough” if compared to their graceful moves but it was still fun.

after all that jamming session, the girls left to bathe and get ready for church because there were people coming already. we took the time to cool off (it was really hot) and we greeted the people that came. while waiting for the service to start, nat met his aunt and cousin who was really cute and shy. i asked nat if he came from this kampung but he told me that only his aunt lived here, not his family. freda also spotted her brother who came just to see her ministry work with us so she was pretty…. i dunno what she was feeling. haha. but i knew the pain in my neck was hurting so much that i couldn’t even turn my neck to the right so i asked freda to help message it. it did feel better but i was making too much noise that she told me to keep quiet. so i bit my finger to muffle the noise. aaron was sitting next to me and judging by the intensity of me closing my eyes and the drool that he mistook for tears, he told freda that i was crying. she stopped immediately.
i was like no no u didnt! aaron was eh? not meh? i went no…… we would continue but service was starting already so we just got ready. we did the acceptance drama while daniel did the salvation testimony and bernice did the thanksgiving one. then elfreda’s group went to do children ministry in the house where we had our tea, leaving all of us to listen to pr tom’s sermon.

after the sermon, the pengerusi of the church asked us to do a performance. we were like, what?! what r we gonna do? so we ran and got freda, who was finishing up, to come over and help us. we sang of of the songs that was meant for arrangement 2 of the song list but the villagers were singing it more than we did. haha. we had to do one more but we had no other malay songs to sing so we decided to do a english song. we sang My Redeemer Lives (if i’m not mistaken pls confirm) and matt had to explain the song after singing it.

the remainder of elfreda’s team came back and distributed their sweets to the congregation. we were then invited for a very late dinner at the house where we had our tea with the other villagers. it was a very wide varity meal and we had a fun fellowship with the people there. bernice and i had a conversation with teachers and 2 sets of twins and few more people.
soon, we had to leave the place. some of the youth there took photos with us and we got into our transport. i got into the van with nat, aaron, bernice, yi lin, freda and daniel. pr tom sat in front with the driver. we waved goodbye to the people as we left and went on our way. it was a very dark place with no street lamps and the road was dusty. we joked all the way back to the asrama.

when we got to the asrama, freda went to the toilet first while we went to the church because the students who will be going to school the next day needs to wake up at 5 in the morning. we sat on the pews outside of the church had had our debrief. pr tom then told us that we can go to the pekan tomorow to do whatever we wanted. we could even eat kfc if we wanted, provided that pastor juiliana doesn’t cook lunch for us. can u imagine the feeling in our hearts? haha… and so we all went back into our rooms and went to bed, only to awaken to another wonderful day that God has made.

yes it's me
11:21 PM