Let me paint you a picture of the place that we are spending the month:
Our hostel is in the middle of backpackers central- the tourist-y part of the city. If you walk out of our hostel and turn left, you end up in a park where all you have to do is sit down and people flock to you to practice English. If you turn right, you end up on the main street that goes through the district. There are motorbikes everywhere and more tourists than locals. The best pho is made by the sweetest lady at the corner maybe 20 steps from our front door. If you venture across the street, you can get fried rice for a discount (since we frequent). The restaurant across the street from the fried rice place greets us with hugs and blesses us with free mangos. But say you want a sandwich, no worries- you just venture across the intersection in the picture above and the sandwich lady on the corner will hook you up. A little further down the road is the smoothie lady and she makes amazing smoothies. We have everything we could want right at our fingertips.
We already feel like we have friends in every direction. If we go to the park, we rarely sit for long before someone is sitting beside us wanting to talk. If we go to the pho place on the corner, people are stopping to say hello, to beg, or to sell us things. The pho lady has an incredible heart though and if people are begging, she will bring them bowls of whatever we order for them right to the street. We have made friends with some of the traveling vendors, so it is always fun to stop and say hello to them each day. At the smoothie place, it is so easy to strike up a conversation with tourists from all over the world and hear their stories and share ours. We have made friends that took us to church. We have made friends at the coffee shop where we spend a lot of our time. We have friends all over the city.
It is so apparent why God has plopped us down right in the midst of everything here in the city. Where else are there so many people from so many places all concentrated to a few block radius? Where else can you find people everywhere that just want to practice English? Where else could God literally provide a translator for us at any point that we need one- sometimes out of nowhere? His hand is at work here.
But it isn't all happy here. This city has a dark side too and it is also right in the midst of where we are. Our district is also a red light district. There is obvious prostitution everywhere you look- especially at night. There are drugs being sold everywhere and the main goal of many of the tourists here is to drink away the night. There is a lot of loneliness here. There are a lot of wandering and searching souls in this area. There is a lot that is not blatantly seen as well… There is child trafficking and once you realize the patterns that are associated with it, it breaks your heart to know that you are in the middle of so much darkness…
I love it here, but my heart breaks here every day. My heart breaks for the children selling flowers that I know are being forced into unthinkable things late at night. My heart breaks for the prostitutes as they hop on the back of motorbikes with strangers and a blank look in their eyes. My heart breaks for the men that come here for the soul purpose buying love…
There are so many people here that need Jesus's love. There is so much darkness that needs light. There are so many smiles that need to be coaxed out. There are so many opportunities to just love on people- and that's why we're here.
So please be praying for us. Pray that we can bring that light, bring out smiles, bring love with us everywhere, and pray that God uses us every day for the plan that He has so intricately orchestrated here.
