It’s Vietnam!
It’s Month 11!
I’m two weeks away from our FINAL debrief, and closing the door of this World Race season.
This month we are working with a local English Center. These centers are common in southeast Asia: kids go to public school during the day and enroll in extra classes in the evening to learn English. My team is having fun teaching English to the staff and planning and facilitating summer camps for the students.
We’re staying in a hotel — read: “World Race paradise” — private rooms of 4 with locking doors, a bed, an indoor bathroom, air conditioning, and WIFI. I won’t say it’s fabulous. There’s a hole in the ceiling right outside my door that drips water and leaves a puddle in the carpet I side-step every time I leave my room. I walk 25 minutes to buy groceries that I can eat without a microwave or kitchen. But it’s home and it’s everything I need.
But let’s get back to the WIFI.
I have a list a mile long of reasons why I came on the World Race. Lack of technology was probably in the top 3.
One of the first moments the Lord started to spur this journey on in my heart was in Haiti on a mission trip in the fall of 2013. Things that gripped my heart included: the sights, sounds, and smells of a different culture, the simplicity of our schedule, and the FREEDOM FROM TECHNOLOGY.
I went a full week without getting on the internet. I woke with my community, I ate with my community, I served with my community, and I was fully invested with my community. I viewed my community as anyone the Lord physically put before me that day. At the end of the week, I didn’t want to get back on the internet! I wanted to “stay present.”
Therefore, in 2014 when I started to get a clearer call to the World Race, I rejoiced.
I pictured a year of living in my tent, playing cards with my team by candlelight, sitting in the dirt of a village playing with children, and many other ends-of-the-earth scenarios. On the Race, I have done all of these things. However, I didn’t picture spending 2 weeks in a beautiful hotel in Greece, getting a warm shower at least once a month, and going out to the mall, movies, or dinner where I look around me and everyone in my vicinity has their eyes glued to their phones.
Somehow, I pictured falling off the face of everything I knew the world to be and stepping onto a different planet.
This year, I’ve experienced completely foreign languages, foods, cultures, and wonders of the world. I’ve frequently been places I didn’t know existed before I got there.
…but it’s still this world. It’s not another planet.
People still have wifi. People still have phones. Even in the remotest areas I have lived in this year, we have had access to wifi if we just put our minds to it and sacrificed our off days to the mission of finding and paying for wifi.
Before the Race, I had a two-story-high soapbox about technology. Get me started and you wouldn’t get me down until I needed to tap out for some water.
While I still value human connection, I have realized something unexpected since arriving in Vietnam:
I have reconciled with technology, and it happened while I was scrambling away from it.
One morning last week, I got a facebook message from my friend with a prayer request. Because my phone is connected to wifi, I got it instantly. I’ve had internet on the Race (clearly), but most of the time I search it out in a coffeeshop or internet cafe in small doses. I don’t utilize every opportunity and I certainly don’t have it in my living quarters.
But now I do. And this particular morning, I was faced with information about a need of someone I care about, and how I can meet that need. I was faced with this information before I had finished getting ready, had breakfast, or spent my intended time with the Lord downstairs sipping my 50 cent shot of espresso. I balked. Not because I didn’t want to engage this situation, but because I wasn’t ready! And my perpetual annoyance with technology flared up. It felt intrusive. Get out of my face, facebook. I’m not ready for you yet. I put down my phone.
I went downstairs and ordered my coffee. I heard an early 2000’s pop song (M2M, anyone?) playing next door, and immediately wanted my sister to know about it because she would know the song and be able to relate it to our childhood. I hop on facebook and send her a 15-second video. And I was grateful.
I started processing.
As much as I used to yearn for separation, I’m never going to permanently “get away” from technology and the internet and still engage my world with tact and eloquence. I’m living in 2016 and that’s a hard fact. I can accept that wifi is the current and currency of the world we live in and I need it. It’s ok that it’s everywhere, or at least never too far to hunt down.
I like that I have easy access to the internet my last month of the Race. Not because I really missed it, but because I now have clarity after a year of sporadic access to phones and internet. Technology has benefits!
Being reconnected with internet, my quiet time is suddenly enhanced. I have access to youtube worship songs, podcasts, Bible studying tools! I take solace in my earbuds, tuning out the blaring music of the coffeeshop and the motor bikes zooming down the street in front of me. And don’t let me sound all holy. I’ve also been using it for recreation, to watch loads of women’s gymnastics this past week, cause the Olympics are coming up! There’s nothing wrong with using it.
Technology is useful, technology is great.
Now more than ever, I realize what “self-governing” is. The way we use technology is not dictated by our environment. It’s dictated by our choices.
Hear me: before the Race, I could say the last statement. It turns out, even though I could say it, I still thought that environment overpowered people’s will. It doesn’t. It may influence, but it can not and will not control others’ choices to engage in human connection.
I know I will get back to the States and be SURROUNDED by the bustle of people. People that I can understand and converse with easily, no less. And if they’re choosing to govern their eyes to engage primarily with their phone, I will no longer ruffle my feathers over things that are not my choice. Quite simply, I’ll choose the people that are governing their eyes to engage primarily with their present community and their Creator.
That’s where the ideals of my technology soapbox have been confirmed. The strongest relationships I’m walking away with on this Race, and the memories and moments I have that have increased the depth of my awe, knowledge, and love of God, happened in the wonder of “unplugged” human connection, prayer, and worship. But that happened in America, too!
You don’t have to travel to a village in Asia or Africa to gain this beauty and balance. It’s in the power of my choice, my response to a facebook message.
So that’s the beautiful balance I’ve come to walk in.
When I left the States last year, I thought I would finish the Race and flounder re-entering a world of data, smartphones, and constant, instant communication. Instead, God has been gracious to heal my perspective when I wasn’t even looking.
Just like every personal lesson of the Race, it comes back to my identity and my choice. Now I look forward to the ease of writing an email when I want as well as turning my phone off when I feel like it.
Praise Him for the healing He does in us, even when we aren’t looking!
In His Hands,
Anna
