Malaysia - Day 14

Day 14 - Saturday 29 September:

I was still quite tired when my alarm went off at 7.30am, so I lay in bed while others used the bathroom, and so I kind of missed breakfast. So at 10am when Vicki and Jesse went out to try and find more props for our Waltzing Matilda performance I tagged along and had Maccas for breakfast. I had an egg McMuffin with a chicken roll (no bacon). 

Our booth

While Vicki was in the newsagency grabbing a few supplies Jesse and I wandered through a small Tech Mall. We met up and then headed back to the Luther Centre. We all helped set up our booth for Australia and managed to recruit a couple of youths from 'Germany' to assist in our play - Rebecca and Henry. We had a couple of quick run throughs up on level 5 so they knew their cues. 

Shortly before 1pm our booth was ready, we had our Passports and were excited for the afternoon to begin!

We had an influx of people looking at our display, trying our vegemite (as a reward they got a chocolate) and Anzac biscuits, and playing a handball competition. About 1.45pm Jesse and I took a lunch break (Terrance had gotten some pork and rice for us). 

Brazil's booth

From about 2pm I started my way around to see all of the booths. It was such a fascinating experience. I learned all about Brazil, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Napal, Philippines, Germany, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Japan, USA, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Zambia. I made origami in Japan,did calligraphy in China, tried on traditional outfits in Korea, and tried different foods from about half of the booths. I have notes of prayer points for various countries to keep in mind. I managed to get back and help out in our booth for the last hour & a half, and it went so quickly! Before we knew it it was almost 5pm and I was palming off the remainder of our food snacks.

Me in a traditional Korean outfit

We had a break for 2 hours, during which we dismantled our booth, and a couple of people went for dinner. I had eaten enough during the afternoon so I just went to level 5, got changed and relaxed by reading.

At 7pm everyone who was performing met down in the chapel for a technical run-through. We were all instructed on where to sit, the order we were in, and then did a quick run-through of what would happen before and after our performances. The actual run-through itself went for about 20 minutes. The Ps Calvin led us in a prayer and we all had about 10 minutes to relax while the audience was seated before the show began.

Indonesia began with a hilarious shadow puppet show. We were sixth in line for the night, and very glad we were following Germany, and not Korea. Korea did a traditional bow with the traditional outfits, and then a dance routine featuring Gangnam Style - everyone was very enthusiastic! India did a traditional dance, Cambodia did the story of Mr Richard Chong, an elderly man who decided to cycle in order to raise money for the starving children in Cambodia. His wife was in the audience to receive the thanks on his behalf.  Germany did a hip-hop breakdancing routine, it was pretty impressive. And then it was our turn. Our performance went flawlessly! And the audience was so very enthusiastic about singing with us in the chorus (we had a powerpoint presentation with all of the words and pictures of what the slang meant). And everyone laughed at our costumes. In my opinion, it couldn't have gone better!!


Other acts to follow were Egypt who sang as a choir (and part in Hebrew!), China who did a flag dance, USA sang a Jason Mraz and Justin Beiber song (I guess they don't understand Canada is different to the USA), Brazil danced (and the audience all joined in with them), Nepal did a song, and Japan sang as a choir.

The last performance of the night was Malaysia. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what it was about. I know part of it was about the 3 main races in Malaysia living in harmony, but after that the whole dialogue was in Malay. Apparently it was hilarious (the whole audience, save us Australians) were laughing quite hard.  It finished up with the Malaysia national anthem, and then a representative from each country took up a flag and held it up while Ps Calvin led a prayer.

Then the praise and worship began! It was such an invigorating experience. It was in both Chinese and English (and a bit of Malay) - sometimes both languages at the same time - and my throat became dry and sore from singing so much! The night ended on such a massive high and the most amazing joyful feeling (I'm still struggling to find words to describe it!).

The people were amazing and it was such a great experience to worship God with people from all over Malaysia (and a few from Nepal). Eventually, after we swapped Facebook details and email addresses, we headed up to level 5 for our final sleep in Malaysia.

I managed to get most of my packing done before I went to sleep, because after we left in the morning, we weren't coming back.