Back in Nam

I wonder how many people have titled their Vietnam blog the same way I just did. Confession- I’m not a good blog reader so I honestly don’t know what anyone has named theirs.

Anyways, Nam really was like a battlefield for me. I was coming out of my favorite month yet on the race. And my high was shot down. Everything about Vietnam was comfortable. So you’d think it would have been my favorite month. Remember last blog when I said that my team is always the bush team? Well, we got to be a city team in Vietnam. We lived in a hotel. Each had our own double bed. Hot showers. Wifi all the time. A TV with HBO and other movie channels. And A LOT of free time. Oh, and we lived on the beach. But, all the comfort made me feel lazy. And even though we lived on the beach the sun only shone 3 days while we lived in Danang. I was in a funk. And instead of turning to The Lord for strength I just didn’t. I tried to pull myself out of it. I’ve lived in the sun every month and it was the first cool weather dreary month we had. It’s like I was having some kind of seasonal depression. It was unexplainable. All I know is that what I learned by the time we got to debrief is how much I missed out on a great chance to depend on The Lord for more strength and more joy than I have needed most months. I wasn’t me. Great lesson- I am not me without Him. I’m thankful that in the end, God was still calling out to me just like he did to Adam and Eve in the garden. I was trying to hide out and he was saying “Kels! Where are you?” He knew I needed him and he clothed me when he found me with love and peace. Learning from my mistakes one at a time.

The ministry part of the month was extremely short. It only lasted about 2 and a half weeks. We worked with a ministry called Orphan Voice. The ministry was started by an awesome family. They had 5 girls that they had adopted from China and the US. They are originally from Kentucky but they felt that The Lord had called them to Vietnam. What the ministry does is awesome. They have partnered with many orphanages and homes for children in order to help provide for the kids there. They also are spreading the love of Christ in a socialist country where Christianity is allowed but monitored extremely close and spreading the Gospel is just not really allowed. We as a team didn’t have much to do. We painted the boys study room at one orphanage and it was awesome team time. I got to paint the Vietnamese version of ADR. Seuss ” the more you read the more you’ll know. The more you learn the more places you’ll go!” The kids were at school while we painted so we didn’t get to really spend time with them. We did have this one time when a couple kids were home for lunch and they came upstairs and they were beating with pencils making the coolest music. So we all sang together. But, we spent great time just hanging out with each other. Family is your first ministry and on the race our team is our family. So we got to build each other up and just love each other. We also got to spend a lot of time with our contacts daughters. We saw a movie with them the first weekend we got there. Walter Mitty- so inspirational! We also got to run youth group for the church we went to called Danang International Fellowship. Youth group was so much fun. We played awesome games and sang songs and everyone spoke English! We had so much fun getting to know them. Jillian was my special chai girl- shout out. The last weekend we were there we had a bonfire on the beach which was so much fun. We made s’mores and sang songs. And starting the fire was such an accomplishment. We threw 3 birthday parties which were all so much fun we played the best games with the kids at each orphanage. My favorite part of the birthdays was when the orphans made their wishes and blew out their candles. They were so sweet and it was just a beautiful sight. It was just a super chill ministry month. We played some sick games of musical chairs. Seriously, what a classic game. One of the orphanages was for special needs children. Whenever I have worked with special needs children on the race The Lord just reminds me of how much I need to love his children better. I feel like I don’t know what to do when I am around them. But because of God I am able to love his people and he is constantly refining me in that. We also had a huge birthday bash for Jo because she turned the big 2-1! We went out and had dinner and just had a blast then came home and gave her cake.

Then we had debrief in Vung Tau. Wow, the sun shone and a huge Jesus statue looked over us the whole week. We spent the most relaxing of days on the beach. It was a much needed debrief. I got to spend some quality time with our old squad leaders and just felt really poured into. I spent some really great time with The Lord and was completely refreshed and ready for India but the end of the week. We had another minor team change. Markelle, my friend that I have spent every month of the race with, left our team to be a team leader and we gained an awesome new member- Sophia. God has huge plans for us in India and I can’t wait to see what is in store.

So, It’s hard to explain why Vietnam was hard. It was all me, but I am thankful for a redeeming God. He has been so good to me.