Final Scene. Act Two.
The next day is here. We head back over to the field hoping for an invite to someone’s house for the night. Same routine as yesterday, less turn out though since it’s the middle of the day, but the Lord manages to find us a place to sleep and eat for the night. Levan to the rescue. We gladly accept his offer as he guides us down a small, dirt, side street to his home. In case I forgot to mention. We are in the boonies. Rice fields and mountains. Streets with no name type of stuff.
Thank goodness for my lonely planet book. It’s got some Vietnamese language basics and conversations in the back. Our team just calls it, “The Book.�
We pull out The Book trying to explain we will sleep in tents outside or on the floor but they insist. Complete strangers give us their beds for the night and take the floor. Later that night a feast is prepared for us.
The next day we left. Jess wasn’t feeling well in the morn and headed back to Thanh Hoa with Andrea as the rest of us trekked on in search of the second Dong Tau location. It was a good hike away from Levan’s house. We ran out of food but another family invited us in for the usual and gave us bananas for the road. We actually walked a good hour past the second suspected Dong Tau location without even knowing it, only to backtrack to where we thought it was, and eventually throw in the towel to catch a late bus home later that same day.
There is no climax to my story.
What did I learn from all this? So much build-up before coming to Vietnam about Dong Tau. Were we there specifically for Dong Tau or was it like those cheesy novels about the journey that mattered? Was Dong Tau put on Jonathan’s heart so we could make it to Thanh Hoa and meet the girls we hung out with all month?
I don’t think I’ll ever really know the answers to some of these questions. Good things happened in Dong Tau. The community had fun, people loved having us in their homes, and we were fed and provided for on a regular basis. No conversions to my knowledge. No leprosy healings. No demon’s extracted.
But maybe we were just called to go.
Maybe the act in itself was a test of our faith.
Why do I write six blogs on Dong Tau?
To remember I guess.
