Transformation.  There’s a word.  It caused some jitters in Lichfield this time last year, as our Cathedral Sabbatical got underway.  I think there was a feeling that it implied, somehow, a lack of appreciation of the past.  But the word doesn’t – or needn’t – carry those connotations, and I’ve had to chuckle to discover how widespread the use of the word is in West Malaysia at present. 

I noted the use of it in my blog on day 2, when I was briefly here in KL at the start of my trip.  I don’t recall encountering the word at all in Kuching or Sabah, but it’s everywhere I turn today now that I’m back here. 

This morning I was working at the church of St Paul’s, Taman Jaya.  I was keen to secure some office time, in order to write a couple of sermons and draft a paper for a ‘summit meeting’ on Saturday at which I shall be discussing with senior church leaders at this end a possible outline of the CrossTalk conference in July. 

I made good progress.  In preparation for the sermon for Sunday, I looked up the website of St Mary’s Cathedral.  What does the homepage say, but ‘St Mary’s Cathedral Kuala Lumpur: Transformation through caring’.  

I was then interrupted a couple of times in my sermon writing, first by Canon Eddie Ong, the vicar of St Paul’s, and then by his wife Ruth, the parish deaconess.   Both had things to give me.  In Eddie’s case, it was a couple of publications associated with the five-year (2006-2010) Diocesan Vision, the theme for which, this year, is ‘Transformation of Congregations in Christ’.  Eddie is the Co-ordinator of the Implementation Committee.  In Ruth’s case, it was a tee shirt, which says, ‘Transform my heart’.  Perhaps the Spirit is saying something to the churches…

The meeting I was expecting with Helina Solomon didn’t happen today.  It’s now scheduled for tomorrow.  It’s not been delayed, it’s been ‘re-timed’ as the airlines out here wonderfully say about take-offs and landings.

But it did mean there was time in the afternoon for a longer conversation with Eddie and Ruth.  They are the first people I’ve met out here who are openly in favour of the ordination of women.  They think it will come to West Malaysia first, out of the four dioceses in this province.  Apparently, there was a proposal before the diocesan synod a couple of years ago, that deaconnesses be ordained as deacons.  I gather this was passed by the house of laity, and only just failed to secure a two-thirds majority in the house of clergy.  So perhaps the prospect isn’t as far away as I thought. 

In the evening, I seized the opportunity to take my host family (Canon Fred David, Yoke Fong and their elder son Jonathan) out for a meal.  (Their younger son, Tim, was away.)  We had a great meal, as much as we could eat, all four of us, for a tad over £15.  In the course of it, Yoke Fong fell into the most natural conversation with our waitress (a fellow Hokkein speaker) about Jesus and the relation of Christianity to Chinese religions.  I asked afterwards how the conversation began, and discovered that it is a perfectly acceptable thing in this part of the world to ask even a complete stranger, ‘How is your worship?’.  It’s not much different from ‘How are you?’, but of course opens up entirely different avenues of conversation.  What a long way from England!  The conversation ended with Yoke Fong able, again quite naturally as it seemed to me, to invite the young woman to church.  If only evangelism was so straightforward at home!