Today was a good day!! I will do another blog on what we are doing in Vietnam, but this is for what we did today. We went to a Christian home for recovering drug addicts here in Ho Chi Minh City. We walked in and there was a room of about 20 men of all ages sitting waiting for us. We started off by worshiping with a few songs in Vietnamese. I was shocked to see how much they loved it!! They were singing and dancing, they had NO shame, I loved it!!! But the whole time my eyes couldn’t stay off of this one guy sitting in the corner. He wasn’t singing, just sitting there, he looked miserable. I went over and just sat next to him. He had an arm full of tattoos, so it was an easy conversation starter. Surprisingly he knew a lot of English so we could communicate a little, which is good. As I was looking at his tattoos I noticed that there were tons of scars on his arm from where he cut himself. I saw 4 single scars on his other wrist too. He also had cutting scars all over his neck from trying to slit his own throat.
We had a good conversation about his life and why he was there. He arrived there 1 month ago and hated living there!!! He is not a Christian and has no idea what is going on, or why we were there, what these worship songs were or anything. A little while later he got up and left. We then broke off into small groups to talk with the guys and to help them. I knew who I had to talk to. I left to go and find him. He was right outside in an open area hang out space. He was alone so I went to go and talk to him. I asked him if I could ask him some questions about his life, and he said yes. After talking for a while I told him some things about my life. About suicidal thoughts from my past, addiction and always being sad and feeling that no one is there for you. He said that he was very comfortable talking to me because he could relate to me and felt he couldn’t relate or talk to anyone there, he said he didn’t have any friends.
His name is Youing (probably not how it’s spelled, but that’s how it sounds), he is 25 and has been addicted to heroin for 5 years. He has a huge scar on his fore arm from where he used to shoot up. He also had his shirt off and had 10ish big red spots on his back he said he got in prison. I don’t know exactly what they are from.
He kept saying that he was a bad guy and nothing he can do can make him a good guy. That he isn’t going to have a future because of all the bad things he has done. Also that he wasn’t strong enough to fight his heroin addiction alone.
HELLO!!! JESUS!!!! If that wasn’t a perfect seg way into the Gospel I don’t know what is.
I told him that I wasn’t always Christian and how Jesus turned me from a bad guy into a good guy and how the Lord can do the same for him. We talked for a really long time about so much stuff!!! He was not ready to accept Christ, but he is right there!!! He is on the right track and I can’t wait for the day he does. I told him what prayer was and that he should start to pray to God and form a relationship with Him. What’s it gunna hurt!! I then asked if I can pray for him, but he said no, which is fine!! I told him I was going to pray for him anyway, just at my hotel. He was really nice and said he really liked talking to me.
It was such a cool day!! I love that kind of ministry!! I really hope we get a chance to go back so I can talk to Youing more and see where he is at.
