Living intentionally and missionally.
God opens doors–we just gotta faithfully dive in and see what our faithful God does.
This month I was able to experience this a couple times and it was SO neat.
On one of our off days, our team was relaxing on the beach, swimming and getting baked in the sun (and for some of my team, quite literally…we had to make an aloe vera run the next day).
My teammate Leah and I were about to leave to get cleaned up, but then all of a sudden a bunch of young, Vietnamese men were excitedly trying to get jellyfish from the ocean that were being washed up onto the beach. The Vietnamese people like to pick them up, cut them up, and them take them to some place to eat. Two other tourists on the beach went to go check out the process the same time Leah and I went to go to check it out.
That’s when we met Pablo from Mexico and Eilish from New Zealand. We also found out that they were in our hostel! We left with having planned to meet up with them again, soon.
We ended not hanging out with them, though, because between all of our busy schedules and being worn out in the evenings from working. The day they were supposed to leave ‘Nam to continue their travels, came and past.
And then, when Saraya and I were on our “treasure hunt,” we went to a coffee shop to see if there were any fellow tourists we could build relationships with and there was Eilish!
Since then, Eilish and I became great friends and the team and I got to hang out with her and Pablo often.
I can’t believe how blessed I am that God allowed me to meet someone like Eilish in Vietnam. It is such a rare thing to meet someone so real and genuine like her. She also is definitely a flower child and a free-spirit. We bonded over burgers and coffee, but we also had some really deep conversations about feminism and what society does to woman, we talked about traveling and how it changes your perspective on life, the joy of having a positive attitude in life, and we even shared our stories and encouraged each other. In Vietnam, I met a kindred spirit, a sister, and a fellow wanderer.
We have the opportunity to meet some amazing people in our world–we just have to be intentional and take advantage of those opportunities.
This week will you look for an opportunity to meet someone new and either get to know their story or start building a friendship? You never know what new friend you could make.
Then comment below with what happened.
