A Snakey Lenten Reflection

Lisa preaching on Sunday, March 10, for our church in Kuala Lumpur, Holy Trinity Bukit Bintang, all three services with over 1200 in attendance.

Dear Friends,
This past Sunday, I (Lisa) had the chance to preach for our church here in Kuala Lumpur and, guided by the lectionary, I landed on this challenging passage from Numbers 21:
​“From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became discouraged on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So, Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So, Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
While at first I found it challenging to find good news here, I was struck by the severe grace that God brings, turning the people’s hearts back to trust in him, and delivering them from death even as they looked it squarely in the face. I was struck by the Hebrew expression, “their souls were shortened,” and noted that many of us can identify with the feeling of our souls having been put through the dryer and shrunk a bit by the challenges we currently face.
I worked with the text in conversation with Jesus’ use of it in John 3:14. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”   I loved Jesus’ willingness to identify himself and his mission with one of the darkest stories in Israel’s history, letting it tell a new story as he embraced the cross. Here’s a link if you’d like to give it a listen! (The intro and her sermon starts at 13:20 and goes about 23 minutes.)
In general, we don’t seek out opportunities to preach in Malaysia since we are here to equip emerging leaders and want to focus our energy on that. (We do preach when we go to Nepal and India because it is a way to model what we teach and bring a word of good news in situations of greater adversity.) But I was glad to do this, filling in for a pastor who was ill, and it was a chance to see up close the remarkable work of our church, which has services in four languages, hosts several conferences each year to equip ministers throughout Asia, and baptized 48 new Christians just two weeks ago.
We remain grateful to be able to live in KL and do this work. Read on for three simple joys of life here, three challenges we’re currently facing, and how you can pray for us in the month ahead.
Three Joys:

• Teaching Greek: I (Lisa) am co-teaching New Testament Greek for a dozen students with a colleague at St. Paul’s Theological College. It’s an elective for no credit, so we’re quite impressed with their dedication! Though it’s via Zoom, we have managed to keep it lively, and the students are rising to my challenge of sight-reading 1 John together after only four sessions. This has propelled me to rebuild my own knowledge of Greek and spend daily time in the Greek New Testament.

• Every Night is Game Night: On one level, our day-to-day lives here are fairly simple. We don’t have a car, so we walk to the store and to the train to get to meetings, classes, and our church. One or both of us teaches most evenings, but we often have time after dinner to go down (17 floors) to a patio area in our apartment complex that is covered (this is key since it rains 118 inches per year), has refreshing ceiling fans, and lush greenery like plumerias and bougainvillea nearby. We cycle through one of our five games: Quiddler, Quirkle, Speed Scrabble, Backgammon, and Codenames Duet. (We’re open to suggestions for a new game or two!) We are so grateful to enjoy each other’s company and a little friendly competition.
• Preparing a New Class in the Gospel of John: (Rich) I am teaching John’s Gospel next term and have been soaking in the gospel and academic writings on it. I have not spent as much time in this rich gospel as it warrants and am glad for this chance to make a deep dive.

Three Challenges:

• Nepal: Our recent trip to Nepal (and then on to India for Rich) was harder than we had anticipated. It was to a rural Bible college in a very poor part of Nepal. The building we both stayed and taught in was still being built, so loud banging and sawing made it hard to hear in our classrooms and made us worn down by the end of the day…when loud Hindu chanting began.  One night it lasted until morning. The farmers were clearing their fields by burning, which made the air quality quite poor. Watery eyes and dry coughs set in. The students were great, and the vision of the school is inspiring, but to be honest, it was a tough week.
• Visa challenges: We have not updated here about our visa in a while. We learned a few months ago that the long-term visa we applied for many months ago had changed its requirements, including requiring a deposit of over $70,000 into a Malaysian bank. This was not realistic for us, and we had read that while long-term visas were difficult, 90-day “social passes” were being liberally granted. Between the need to visit Lisa’s mom and other travel to India, Nepal, etc., we thought we could work with these 90-day visas for the remainder of our time here. However, when Rich returned from India recently, he was only given a 30-day visa. He is returning to Nepal and India again in two weeks, and then meeting me in Los Angeles, so he will leave in 30 days anyway, but this was a troubling development. Is it a permanent change, from 90 days to30 days? That would obviously be unsustainable. Our friends in immigration offices believe it was a fluke and not a policy change, so we are not too worried, but we will learn a lot when we return in mid-April.
• Financial Hits: We lost our tenants for our home in San Gabriel and needed to pay for several costly repairs and repainting. It has proven more difficult than it did initially to find renters. The combination of this with some other cost increases has meant we are a bit stretched these days. 

As you pray for us, this is our schedule for the next month:

• March 15: Rich heads to Nepal to serve as a consultant for the Nepali IFES board meeting, and then on to India. We are excited that an Indian Malaysian student from SPTC here in KL, Aaron, will join him there! Aaron is discerning a calling to teaching and is preparing several inductive Bible studies that he will lead for pastors and congregations there, and he is excited for his first visit to India. Please pray for Rich and Aaron’s safety, health, and fruitful labor as they seek to equip and empower the church in a southern region of India.
• March 21-23: Lisa has a little more luxurious posting! SPTC’s annual retreat is usually in simple digs, but this year a generous donor is making their lovely retreat center available to us at no cost. With the money we’re saving by this free-though-fancy retreat locale, we’re able to fly in five students who attend online from a nearby country where the church faces significant challenges. We’re excited to meet them in person!
• March 28: We fly separately (Rich from India; Lisa from Malaysia) to Los Angeles, where Lisa will teach an intensive D.Min. course for Fuller Seminary April 8-12. We’re eager to see Southern California friends during the week of March 30—April7.    
• April 15: We return to KL, and we will be very eager to see what sort of visa gets stamped on our passports. Please pray for favor and grace so that we can continue to do the work we enjoy doing so much here!

Thanks as always for your prayers and to all who give to make our work here possible. Hit reply and share how we can be praying for you if you have a moment.
With much affection and gratitude, Lisa and Rich


Below: HTBB Online Has Sermons. Click on the image to watch Lisa’s prerecorded sermon…