The Trip Begins! (On Monday....)

Hello Everyone!


Thanks for visiting the first blog entry for the CU Navs six-week trip to Malaysia! As some of you may know, we will be leaving for Malaysia on Monday June 15th at 9:47pm and will arrive in Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital, at 1:00 pm on Wednesday June 17th. (FYI- Kuala Lumpur is 14 hours ahead of Denver time.)

For the next six weeks we will be assisting a local collegiate Navigators ministry in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is largely a blend of three different ethnic groups: the muslim Malays which make up the majority of the population, the Malaysian Chinese, and the Malaysian East Indian. Although Islam is by far the most practiced religion, Buddhists and Christians do have religious freedom if they do not belong to the Malay ethnic group. About 9% of Malaysia's population are Christian.

The local ministry we will be assisting is mostly made up of Malaysian Chinese students. Most of the students in the ministry are relatively new Christians. For the first two weeks of the trip we will help run a "Summer Training Program" for these students. This will consist of running workshops and Bible studies designed to help the students enrich their relationship with God. After the two week program is completed we hope to continue to disciple the students as their semester begins. Also during this time we will be teaching English classes to university students.

Our team is composed of 2 CU Nav Staff members (Ben and Brian), 1 college grad (09! WOOT!) (Tim), 3 CU men (Kyle: sophomore, Brendan: Junior, Doug: Sophmore), and 3 CU women (Cynthia: Junior, Lydia: Senior, Tianna: Junior). We will be staying in a rented 3 bedroom house across the street from campus that will have regular internet access. Hopefully we will have many opportunities to provide updates. Although I (Tim) created this blog, I am hoping the team and I can share the burden of providing updates. I will be regularly uploading pictures during the trip which you can access via the slideshow on the right-hand side.

Tim