Day: July 16, 2008

It’s hard to imagine that three weeks have already passed since leaving Bangkok.  Most of the first week was spent with a pastor travelling up to Kuala Lumpur (450km) in his car to attend his meetings at a Tamil-speaking church there.  Since then i’ve been spending most of the time with the translator of the book into Chinese, helping make the book extremely faithful to the original.The pastor is one on my very short list of pastors i have personally spent some time with, that i would like to spend eternity with in heaven.  Not only is he mild-tempered, but humble.  This humbleness is a very very rare commodity among us Seventh-day Adventists – especially among church employees.  Almost everywhere i go the attitude is: “You’re a nobody. What can you possibly know about anything?”  But now i know 6 pastors who i will enjoy spending eternity with.  He asked me deep questions about the prophecies in Revelation, and it was nice to hear that we have similar beliefs on the mark of the beast and the seal of God etc.  I do hope tho, that there are no cars we have to drive in heaven!Malaysia is an Islamic country, so they don’t allow churches to buy land and build a new church.  Fortunately, the British ruled this place for a while, and some churches were built then.  The govt., probably fearing a backlash, doesn’t forcibly close down churches, so here and there you can see a cross on a building.  The new style for churches is to rent or buy space in a shop-lot.  These are long rows of buildings – usually 3 or 4 stories high.  Even then, the native Malays get first shot at purchasing them, but of course many are still available, so that’s where new churches meet for worship.