Singapore

After having very busy days in Malaysia, where around 8,000 people would visit the ship daily during weekdays and up to 12,000 per day during weekends, we arrived to Singapore which was like a resting port for us. It wasn't very busy and everything went smooth. The ship was docked directly in front of a very big mall so visitors would come in randomly after doing their shopping.

Singapore visit was during Christmas period so we celebrated Christmas and New Year in a very nice way on the ship.
Christmas was a family time spent with each one’s “ship family”. A ship family is an actual family living on board who would adopt a certain number of the volunteers on the ship and treat them as their kids, taking care of their emotional, and spiritual needs.

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

During our sailing and even before we set sail from Kuching, we didn’t have a sure place to berth in the next port we were heading to. However, we had to leave the port in Kuching and we set off in a journey of faith to the unknown. During the whole 2-day sailing everyone was praying that the port authorities would agree to give us a suitable berth for the ship, otherwise it meant we had to go on-anchor at a distance from the port, resulting in not being able to open for visitors and we would be stuck on the ship! This is where we saw God at work, few hours before reaching the port, a temporary berth had been given to us, but this meant we had to go on-anchor after the temporary period was over. After spending few days in that temporary berth, we were given another temporary one, so we moved few meters and docked there. We stayed in that “temporary” berth the whole time we were supposed to stay in that port and we never had to move again or go on-anchor.

Our God is amazing!


We had the opportunity to share with a group of Filipino youth who are refugees, and most Filipino refugees in Malaysia are Muslims. We went to a Christian lady’s house who takes care of these youth. She had gathered them in her house and we shared with them about the ship, we played some games with them and one of our team members shared his salvation testimony. Many of them showed real interest while hearing the testimony and some had a lot of questions afterwards. They were so friendly and wanted to talk to us and get to know us more in comparison to the little interest they showed when they first saw us.

Port Kuching, Malaysia

In Kuching we served in 4 different schools located in a rural area, 2 hours away from where the ship is docked.
The program in the first school was at 7:30 am, so we had to be ready and leave the ship at 4:30 am, a very early start for a long day to come! The programs in all 4 schools went very well and the kids really enjoyed them and were very responsive. Though timid at the beginning, but after breaking the ice they enjoyed interacting with us, singing and running, learning about the ship, lifejackets and life rings as well as learning our flags and countries and matching them to the correct person. Most of them have very little experience of anything beyond home and school, thus meeting us, foreigners from 4 different countries was a big excitement to them! After this long amazing day we headed back to the ship on a longer than expected journey due to bad weather and heavy rain. It wasn't until late at night that we made it to the ship, but thank God we made it safely!

I was also given the opportunity to join a building team that was going to build a toilet for a widow’s house. We took some shovels and gloves and some other tools and put on our working clothes and headed to the widow’s house. When we arrived we saw the modest conditions that she lived in with her daughter. On the previous week another team from the ship had finished building the toilet, and we worked to lay concrete in the backyard to connect a drain with the house.

Port Klang, Malaysia

Going on a team to visit a school specialized for Cambodian migrant kids. These are kids of Cambodian migrants (mostly women) who work as domestic helpers in Malaysia. First we played with the kids, taught them to sing “my God is so big”, then we helped prepare their lunch, served them the food and ate with them. Later we did a small program for them, introduced ourselves & the ship, did some balloons and drew on their hands or faces.

They seemed so excited and happy to break from the routine, see & learn new things and meet new people. Noticeably these kids were so excited to see us, even before we started to interact with them, just because we were “white”, a bitter and sad realization to how these societies think of themselves as “lower” and the West as “higher”. But these kids were so genuine and friendly, and because of the little they have, they are easily contented with what little we could offer.