Harvest Kuala Lumpur

Friday, April 10, 2015

My name is Sandy Song, and I started attending Harvest in 2001. A year later, I joined the Harvest staff, and since then, I have worked for both the worship ministry and for Harvest Bible Fellowship (HBF). In 2011, I had the great opportunity and privilege to be sent out by Harvest to move to Romania and work alongside our Harvest Metanoia churches in Eastern Europe. It has been amazing to experience the Harvest family overseas and to see how the four pillars transcend culture to make disciples in all the nations and to make the name of Jesus known to the ends of the Earth.

Although I have spent the majority of the last four years in Romania, I have had the opportunity to visit many of our international church plants. Last year, I was sent by HBF to live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from August 2014 to January 2015 to help support our Harvest KL church. This church had been in existence for 10 years before it joined the Harvest family and had gone through the tough transition of having several pastors come and go. Two years ago, their pastor was killed and the church of approximately 150 people was left yet again without a shepherd. One of the elders of the church has a brother who attends Harvest Crystal Lake and had reached out to see if Harvest could help find them a pastor. The church then officially transitioned to become a Harvest church in January 2014. Pastor Nate Newell had responded to the call to become the new pastor of the church, but he was still shepherding his own flock in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and with his church’s blessing, was preparing to make the transition to Chicago and then on to Kuala Lumpur. Nate was part of the Harvest Training Center in the fall of 2014, but before that, in July, He and I were able to spend two weeks with the other staff members of Harvest KL, training and planning together. I, along with the other staff members, then went off to Kuala Lumpur while Pastor Nate completed his training over the next four months.

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur at the beginning of August. Thankfully, I had already visited the church back in January 2014, and had already met many of the people. Having visited many countries within Asia before, Malaysia had always fascinated me. Asia is not typically known for its diversity, and it’s often very difficult to navigate any country without a translator. However, Malaysia is unique in the sense that only 60% of the country are Malay Malaysians. Since 20% are Chinese Malaysians, 10% are Indian Malaysians, and 10% of the people come from all over the world, English is widely spoken by everyone. Many people living in Kuala Lumpur are refugees from various countries because of Malaysian’s open visa policy, and there are also many foreigners from around the world who come for work, mainly in the oil and gas industry. Harvest KL is an international church, and the average person stays at the church for only two to three years due to either work placement or refugee status. Therefore, it is necessary to build a strong infrastructure and to assimilate people quickly into the church. There are 20 countries represented in the church, so this was a new and unique opportunity for me to worship in a church that gave me a glimpse of what heaven will be like with people from every nation, tribe and tongue.

Over the course of 6 months, the people of Harvest KL watched two of James’ video series, “When Life is Hard” and “Always True," so I was able to see first-hand how God used these messages to impact peoples’ lives in the church, particularly through small groups. Even from halfway around the world, there was a partnership that was created between our Harvest churches in Chicago and in the one in Kuala Lumpur. As you can imagine, there was a great sense of excitement as the people of the church found out that Pastor James would be making a stop in Kuala Lumpur during his month-long missions trip. I am so excited that the Harvest Chicago team has been able to experience the wonderful hospitality of the people at Harvest KL, and that the people here have felt truly loved and have been given a sense of partnership in ministry, especially after a difficult season of tragedy and loss. It is especially meaningful that we were able to spend Easter Sunday together. We have much to celebrate and be thankful for!! 

Sandy Song and Kirk VanMaanen with some of the Harvest Kuala Lumpur family