“Abby, turn your alarm off!!”
I groggily reach for my phone and actually swipe it open this time to turn the alarm off instead of hitting snooze for the 7th time…
It’s 6 am.
My teammates I’m rooming with (2 of the 3 others..) have usually been awake for at least 30 minutes either working out or spending their time with J3sus for the morning.
I’ve been REALLY trying to wake up and set the framework of my day by spending time with then L0rd before anything else, but it is proving to be difficult.. (more on that later..)
This month in Vietnam we are working with a m1nistry that is a daycare center. The VN government doesn’t allow organizations to function as a business and have Chr1stian affiliation. The way our m1nistry host Mark* puts it, they believe a ch.urch/group of believers should be a ch.urch and nothing else, do nothing else except be a building for Chr1stians to go to (as they are closely monitored…).
Still, Mark and his wife, Beth*, have this daycare center where they are providing childcare and teaching English to kids in their area, which is very poor. Some parents are able to pay for the daycare and some are not, but Mark and Beth don’t care about the money. They trust the L0rd will provide for them, and they have testified that He has done so in remarkable ways for them. Along with teaching English during the day to the 5 and 6 year olds, Mark has an english class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night from 6-8 and also and English club on Saturday nights from 7-9. At English club, he uses B1ble stories to teach the kids English and introduce them to who G0d is. In working through these stories, they talk about what the words mean and work on comprehension questions, which facilitates further questions.
(*names have been changed to protect these sweet individuals!)
Though Mark has to be delicate in the ways he is introducing the kids to the L0rd and the name of J3sus, he and Beth create an environment of love for these children who come from different and broken homes. They are people of such prayer for these children that they know the L0rd has sovereignly put in their care during the week. Mark is a playful and caring father of his own 2 children, and he loves each of these kids at daycare as if they are his own. It’s not a rare sight to see him tickle a few children down to the ground and lovingly nuzzle them throughout the day as he is teaching English and ensuring order and structure there.
And Beth, Mark’s wife, is a beautiful giver and servant hearted woman of G0d. We see it every day as she is the main supervisor for now over the daycare. She has her hand in so many of the small things that may go unnoticed or taken for granted. She helps the cook with the meals for the kids 3 times a day. She tends to the youngest child, a baby named Len*, all throughout the day. She hangs our clothes out to dry for us when we forget as we are teaching and working in the garden in the afternoons. She even offers to fix up our dirty, calloused feet and paint our toenails.
We’ve asked, “Beth, do you enjoy doing people’s nails?”
“No,” she replies, and smiles up at us. “But you are my friends.”
She is AMAZING! She is strong, but she is also weary as of late. She and Mark are SO confident in the provision of the L0rd and in his goodness, in his perfect plan and timing for them. They have had trouble with a business partner and now have moved into the daycare center itself to save money and prepare to move into a new house they are renovating little by little. This doesn’t really give them much of a break or escape from working and m1nistry. We could see the tiredness in both Mark and Beth when we arrived, and very slowly have seen them walk in more rest and joy! So praise the Lord for that! We have come to see their playfulness with the kids and the little naps they get to take in the floor when they have a spare moment. They have expressed how we have come in at G0d’s perfect timing because they have been shorthanded for a while with staff working there. Even the smallest things that we do as a team, they are thankful for. And we are thankful for their patience with us in learning how they operate and in inviting us literally into their world that is so centered on G0d’s m1nistry for them here in this city.
As far as the details about what we do on a day to day basis, the 6 of us girls go to the center each morning by 7 am. We are then paired off between greeting the kids in the morning, helping the 2 staff members take the food to the classrooms, and doing dishes with the cook. After that we are split into 3 people to help teach English and 3 people to work in the garden. Mark’s biggest project right now is to have an outdoor space for the kids to roam around in safely. It’s his dream for them to explore and just have the space to be kids! There is a pond in the back that was not enclosed, so we have been building fences with him and painting them a crisp white. He hopes to build a playground soon, and so we have also been helping transfer dirt to make a level place for that. The kids eat again around 10 am (interesting meal times, I know..) and then are ready for a nap by 11. They nap from 11-2 usually, which is AMAZING and gives us some time during the day to eat lunch, have our daily team time, and hopefully take a nap ourselves or have time to be alone (as alone as we can be..). Then it’s time for food again when the kids wake up, and we help cook/deliver food/do dishes for a while. The girls that have been in the garden come inside for the afternoon, and those that were inside for the morning come out to be in the garden. The kids watch some English videos and get to play in the afternoon while also doing some lessons in Vietnamese. Parents come by from 4:30 to 5:30 and pick up their children, and then we get to have dinner ourselves and either go home earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or 2 girls split off to stay and teach English with Mark for those Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings.
These days are long, but they are SO good and filled with such lessons. Lessons of being patient while we are hangry and rotate eating breakfast. Lessons of loving these children when they don’t listen and get rowdy. Lessons of being tender to them when they come up to us crying and arguing their cases to us in Vietnamese against the other kid that just smacked them… Lessons of choosing to be thankful for the small things, like the beauty of G0d’s creation in a backyard garden teeming with lizards and red dragonflies and fuchsia lotuses we get to notice as we’re dripping sweat and painting fences in the Vietnamese sun. And I think most important of all is the lesson that we are sowing seeds that we may never see come to fruition. Yet, God has called us to be humble and give all our energy to invest in our hosts and these precious children anyway.
PLEASE join me and my team in pr@yer for this amazing family and daycare/m1nistry we are blessed to be part of this month. Specifically, Mark and Beth are pr@ying for more staff members to come on board with them. This has been difficult because since the daycare is coupled with m1nistry, they have to be careful about advertising the jobs and have only been able to do so by word of mouth as of late. The L0rd knows exactly who should come in and help, and we’re praying He will bring them to this couple soon! They are also pr@ying for a supervisor to come in with experience in the daycare and teaching world so that Beth can have a break from doing so many things. She is heavily involved at their underground ch.urch also, and she has a lot of things on her plate. Pr@y that the right person for this position comes in and takes on that responsibility so that Beth can be more free and filled up to help out around the daycare without being stretched so thin.
Finally, pr@y for these precious and sweet children that the L0rd so sovereignly has in this daycare. The name of the daycare in Vietnamese is close to “haven of hope,” and we pray that each child is embraced with love and can grow being nurtured in this safe environment. Pr@y also that they see our love for them and know it is powerful; pr@y that they come to know who J3sus is and hear and grasp the g0spel even so young. We know the L0rd is pursuing them, and we know He will continue to pursue them through Mark and Beth and the teachers working so diligently here. Your pr@yers move mountains!
More updates to come soon! 🙂 (with pictures!!)
