This past Sunday, I got to go to church in Vietnam- a closed country. I don’t know what I was expecting but I was met with a welcoming community in a beautiful sanctuary. We were given headsets so we could have the service translated and a friendly young women who spoke english sat next to us. We sang hymns, took communion, and had an amazing lunch together after the service. It felt so… familiar.
I have been away from my home church, University UMC, for a long time and I miss it. I miss all the people, the band, and our AMAZING potluck lunches. Church in Vietnam was my first experience on the race that reminded me so much of University.
It wasn’t that the sermon was similar or the sanctuary, or even the way we took communion. It was that I felt at home in this church. I felt welcomed in by the people and by God.
Before communion, we sang Amazing Grace. The church was singing in Vietnamese while Madison and I were singing in English. I will never forget the feeling of peace and joy that I felt listening to our new friend sing at the top of her lungs in Vietnamese while I follower in English. Seeing this young woman’s passion in her worship of the Lord made this closed country seem a lot brighter. It gave me hope for the gospel in this country. It was truly a beautiful moment.
We then all took communion together as the unified body of Christ. In a closed country, I found a family in Christ.
As the service concluded, the congregation began reciting a prayer that we recognized to be the Lord’s Prayer and then they began to sing the doxology which I learned four years ago when I worked at LLYC. It was just a sweet and familiar way to end the service and I was thankful to God for giving me a little bit of home in Vietnam.
We went the church luncheon after the service and got to try different Vietnamese food, all of which was wonderful, and we got a chance to talk to some of the other people form the church. We shared a table with the woman who had translated the service for us and our neighbor from the service. We made friends and learned about each other’s cultures. It felt like I was back home at University UMC surrounded by my own church family. We took pictures (of course) and as we headed home, the woman who translated offered to walk home with us because her house was in the same direction. We agreed and set off together.
On our walk, we continued talking about all sorts of things including the city in the US that our new friend had visited. As we got close to her house, she asked us if we wanted to come to her house and make banana cake. Madison and I looked at each other and agreed. So, we went to her house, met some of her family members, made banana cake (more like banana bread), ate miniature oranges, and played uno. It was a great afternoon.
Everything about last Sunday felt like I was at home with my church and my friends. It was an incredible start to what I believe will be an awesome month here in Vietnam!
