Ah, Vietnam, a land of Communism, Pho (noodle soup), some of the best coffee I’ve ever had and countless people that want to speak English with any Westerner they can get ahold of, especially Americans. English is the language of commerce for much of the world and if you want to be successful in the world market it’s considered a highly advantageous language to learn. It occurred to me that this could be well within the plan of God. One of the barrier’s to the Gospel has been the language barrier. The Bible itself has been translated into more languages than any other book in history and yet there are over a thousand left untouched.
The predominant ministry for many of the teams this past month has been coffee shop ministry. No, we don’t sit around drinking coffee hours on end, which sounds like a very caffeinated experience. As a strategy for ministry, this one has proven to be one of the more successful means for reaching others with the Gospel in this nation. I came to this conclusion by way of two reasonings. One, all of our teams worked with this type of ministry, so there must be something to it. Two, I’ve seen more people put their trust in the Lord this month than the prior months together via this type of ministry.
Outside of this, we made a couple of trips to the local park where students frequented. All you had to do was sit down and within no time you’d have students approach you asking if they could talk to you. Other outlets included a sports ministry called tchoukball. A lot of the students involved in this ministry were believers and would invite their friends.
My favorite moments this past month were not the conversations that were had with students. They were the time spend once a week with a small gathering of missionaries. They didn’t understand me, nor I them, but our gracious host served as a translator between us. We began our time together with worship. They would only sing songs translated in Vietnamese and English for our sake. In those few hours, we were the Body of the Lord Jesus, come together from different parts of the world. Our time made of many prayers and with the opening of the Scriptures. I don’t remember all the prayers or even the passages reflected upon at the time, but I will remember those times as holy moments.
