Hello everyone!
Sorry for the delay, but I’ve been waiting to post this blog since I have been in a closed country all month. My time in Vietnam is officially over, but I wanted to let y’all know what my month looked like. I’m going to be pretty vague about the actual details of our hosts and location for their safety.
Vietnam is one of the least religious countries in the world, and their main beliefs follow a Vietnamese folk religion that includes Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Since Vietnam is a closed country we had to be very careful with anything that we said in public. This led to our month being filled with interceding prayers for the country as a whole.
This month was the first time that my team was living and serving without anyone else on our squad in the same city as us. We stayed in a really small fishing village outside of Vung Tao. Want to know a fun fact about this village? Not a single person speaks English. This led to several challenging and comical situations. We lived next to a church that started in 2007. The pastor also housed children at the church. By housing these children he is helping them stay out of the fishing business, which leads to long hours of child labor. Our days in Vietnam were filled with teaching English and developing relationships with the adults and children at the church.
The area we lived in was not used to having foreigners. We were told not to wander around at all because it would draw attention to the church. We were only supposed to walk to and from the church, and that’s it. This means that we spent a lot of time in our lovely gated house.
Here’s what a typical day looked like for us:
5:30am-6am Morning prayer at the church
6am-8am Go back home for breakfast and quiet time…and the occasional nap
8am-10am English classes! Half of us taught the children and the other half taught adults. I must say, you have to get creative when teaching and neither of you understand each other’s language.
10am-11:30am We usually spent this time just hanging out with the kids and drinking coffee with the adults before lunch.
11:30am-12pm Lunch time at the church! I’m pretty sure we are the exact same thing everyday for a month, but it was delicious every time. We became very familiar with rice, chicken, fried eggs, veggie soup, okra, and cauliflower.
12pm-2pm Nap break? In Vietnam they take their naps seriously. I’m definitely not mad about it. We would also have team time during this break.
2pm-4pm We continued our English classes
4:30pm-9pm Half of the days we had evening conversation classes at an English center in Vung Tau. We had these conversation classes with teenagers. The kids at the church would often convince us to have dance parties on the nights that we did not go to the English center. This was probably my favorite thing I did all month!
On the weekends our host would take us to the beach or the mall, and then we would attend church with them on Sunday. We spent our Christmas attending several church services and meeting the kid’s parents. During the Christmas Eve service we performed “Joy to the World” in English and Vietnamese. It was definitely a Christmas that I won’t forget!
Outside of ministry, learning how to find rhythms is something I learned this month. I have always known the importance of being consistent and obedient with disciplines, but I never do a great job implementing these ideas. I spent a lot of time developing these rhythms that will help me grow towards where I want to be with my faith, and then put these rhythms into action. Finding discipline in this has led me to grow closer to God in my daily life. I am really excited to continue these rhythms throughout the race. With all the constant changing, it will help to have the constancy of taking actions the same way no matter where I find myself.
Fundraising update!
I am constantly blown away and humbled by all of your generosity. I am now 94% funded. WHAT! God has done incredible things this month related to fundraising. I am now just $970 away from being fully funded, and I need to reach the final goal by the end of the month. The daunting task of fundraising seemed impossible when I started about a year ago, but now the end is sight! If you want to donate, please click the “Support Me” link to the left.
