Vietnam: The Old Man’s Sea (Part 3 of 8)

A few days before this a girl came
into my room having a panic attack. She had just found out one of
her teammates was getting sent home, had broken the no-dating policy,
had been in a quasi-relationship for months. The guy she was
involved with was on my team. We figured he would be sent home too.

 

In less than 24 hours both were gone.

 

I started sleeping a lot. I skipped
meals because I wasn’t motivated enough to
negotiate the pale, crowded streets to attempt to find food that
didn’t smell like fish paste. There wasn’t much ministry. I told
myself I was going to use my free time to write but instead
watched movies and played MMA Pro Fighter on facebook. We were
counting the days, all of us.

 

In my air conditioned hotel room I was
writing a story. It was about a group of American missionaries.
While they started out well and had good, if naive, intentions, they
would quickly turn back to comfort and conformity if given the
chance. These American missionaries, the ones in my story, had been
given the chance. They ignored the suffering poverty of the people
they’d been sent to. They went to beach.