Hey friends!
Have you ever played a game of bigger and better? I actually have not, but I want to. The idea is that you start out with something like a dime, you go house to house and trade for something that they feel is worth it to them for a Dime. Something bigger and better for you though. You continue to trade what you have and see what you wind up with.
Going door to door asking if people will trade some thing bigger and better teaches a few things. It teaches you to take chances, to dream, and to not hold on too tightly to things. After a good game of bigger and better; you just may end up with something worth 100,000 dimes. Much bigger much better.
I play his game with God a lot. I have this idea of how much something like a dime is worth to me, it’s worth 10 cents to my human eyes. God sees it differently, he often views a dime as a possible quarter if given for him to use and invest. That’s a increase of 150%! That is just the beginning, like I said you just may end up with something worth 100,000 dimes.
Recently God has been playing bigger and better a lot in my life.
We were scheduled to work all month in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam at an undercover coffee shop. Ho Chi Minh is the biggest city in Nam, we were all excited for it, we even spent a few days there, loved it. Then, unannounced to anyone on our team, staff or organization, we got shipped to Da Nang, Vietnam, a city 24 hours north to teach English. We were ALL a little bummed. We were no longer going to be with other teams we were planning in spending the month with, we had to move all of our gear again, we’d be teaching English for the second month in a row AND we’d be taking not one but two 24 hour bus rides. We were happy with our dime…
But, God said just trust me I have something bigger and better. Man, was he right 😀
If you ever visit many countries to work or volunteer you will start to understand that countries can be great in many different ways. The people, the place, the contacts relationship, the experience, the food, the weather, the atmosphere, the volunteer opportunity, conveniences, how your team functions there. Often times there are actually great experiences on both extremes of the spectrum (eg. Having a great hotel room and thrown to relieve yourself in is a great blessing and experience, but defacating in a dugout hole in the middle of the night with no electricity is also a great blessing of an experience.)
I love rating things on a scale 1-10. It makes sense to me and I do it for almost everything. God took our dimes and made 10/10’s across the board.
Let’s walk through it. Know that when I’m ranking them I’m going out of the best I could possibly imagine on a world race trip. But there’s always bonus points for where our wildest dreams stop and Gods reality continues, for those we’ll go over 10.
People (8/10): South Asia has wonderful culture and people. They are so nice. Always welcoming and interested in conversation. We didn’t actually get to spend a ton of direct time with the Vietnamese people as much as other countries because our ministry was to pour into our contacts. But even then, the ones we did meet deep were super.
Place (9/10): Da Nang, Vietnam is amazing. It’s a perfect size city in central Nam. A place where a lot of our USA war veterans were stationed. It is placed perfectly on the beautiful beach coastline. (Anywhere there is a beach automatically gets a 7 :)) there is a sweet river that flows through it with four unbelievably artistic, big bridges chat light up at night. One, the dragon bridge, is a huge dragon that spits our water and fire on the weekends. Anyways, this was by far my favorite city on the race, it’s the first place I legitimately would love to live in someday.
Contacts (12/10): Two months in a row we have fallen in love deeply with our contacts. Even though we only had two weeks with the family in Da Nang, we felt like we were family. They took us out to eat, brought us to many events and attractions, worked entirely around a random but flexible schedule, and most of all poured their heart and soul into us. This was the biggest bigger and better that God rocked us with. We saw the best example of community yet on the race. From Bernard and Lilian, their daughter Petra, Betty an Charlie, to Nancy and Jeff, Marion, Bing and Ruth. All SOLID. Any of these would have been a 10/10, but combined along with many more at their church community accepted us and loved us with intensity that can only be because of Jesus.
Experience (12/10): Our team agrees unanimously that this was one of the best months. Even though we had two short weeks, it felt like 2 months of experience and depth with the people there. We got to drive mopeds, ride bicycles through an ocean of traffic, we worked out, swam and boogie boarded on the beach, saw flames spit out of a dragon, visited every awesome restaurant in the area, had a hotel close to the beach, a different hotel with a free massage chair, had a wonderful teaching English experience, celebrated their New Year TET, and saw Jesus move in such strong but subtle ways. It was so cool! 🙂
Food (11/10): I know this is the 3rd straight ranking over a 10, but remember that’s because it surpassed my wildest dreams. Some people may think putting food on here is too materialistic, or missing the point of missions, but believe me God meets me with food too 🙂 Vietnamese food is my favorite a close first place over Thai food. I was so shocked I loved every dish, not liked or put up with, I loved every dish. On top of that I think we ate pizza 4 or 5 times and Mexican twice!! Can’t beat that at on the race or at home! Ho Chi Minh would’ve had great food but not this good, not this experience! Praise The Lord.
Weather (5/10): It was a cool 60-70 degrees and rainy. Imagine Seattle for two weeks. Still beats snow in Michigan for sure 🙂
Atmosphere (8/10): Some places just FEEL cool. You enjoy wailing down even the completely normal parts of the city, every step is fun. That’s the atmosphere in Da Nang. Great, fun, family, everyone’s your friend atmosphere.
Conveniences (12/10): This ones for fun. Almost any type of situation here is fun. You either grow in something different, like bucket showers or feel like a king because you get a bed. Here we were kings kings. Super nice hotel, our own individual full size comfy beds, free breakfast in the morning, close to the beach, the fact that there’s even a beach, rented bicycles and mopeds, hot showers, hotel workers to clean, wifi on every floor, friends to take us out to eat everywhere. This list is endless, we were spoiled. Way bigger and better than I imagined could happen on the race or ever.
Volunteer opportunities (9/10): If you’re not aware, Vietnam is a closed country to the gospel. We were not allowed to speak publicly about Jesus while there. We used code words in public, and talked a lot about themes (eg. Abundant life, changed life, volunteering, the King, Father, meditation, scripture etc.) It was so cool to be able to help teaching English and at the same time be looking for any opportunity to drop God’s life in the conversations. It was even cooler to see the contacts faces whenever they did get an opportunity to talk about the King. We even got to watch the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and relate that to the gospel. Obviously it was written as a direct allegory, but they didn’t know that 🙂 They did get the gospel theme though, thank you C.S. Lewis.
Team Jacob (8/10): I can’t lie, this month was BY FAR the most challenging. Especially as a team leader. So much change and inconsistencies. Stress popping up everywhere. A few more issues to walk through than past months. But some things remained the same, Jesus reigned in our team. Still first place 🙂 We also grew the most this month than any other month. It led to so much freedom afterwards, during the battle though it was at times tough. God was with us, helped us stress relieve, helped us have wisdom and fueled our fire. The coolest was that our contacts felt so loved and honored by us. We were so concerned with fixing ourselves at times that I thought the contacts would think we were selfish. They didn’t, that just goes to show that Jesus did something way bigger and better than we were even aware of. The goodbye sorrows don’t lie, they loved us as much as we loved them. Praise God.
Our month in Da Nang, Vietnam was a blast. It also taught me that Gods plan is bigger and better than mine. What’s hard for me to imagine is what would’ve happened if we didn’t step into what God had for us this month. If we would’ve stayed in Ho Chi Minh. I’m sure it would’ve been great, 10 cent is great, but when you can trade 10 cents for something way bigger and better, there’s no comparison. God put our team in the right place, he also put other teams in the right place.
Praise Him,
Jake
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