The team at the Temple
Our ministry hosts Minh and Thu and their kids Minh Chu and Minh Huie
English club
Bees
Shooting
“Jordans”
Hey everyone! Because I got behind on blogging, this blog will be on all of Vietnam and I’m going to try to put as much as I can into it without making it too crazy long. Vietnam was crazy! In many ways it has been my favorite county so far, though I think Cambodia will steal that title soon. More on that in my next blog, which will hopefully be released to the public next week. Back to Nam though. So to start off Vietnam, we had a week of debrief in the hot and busy city of Ho Chi Minh. While there, we debriefed Guatemala as a squad, basically meaning we talked about Guatemala and had teachings from our leaders and one on ones with our leaders and coaches. One of my favorite moments from that week was when I went to the market with my friends Marvin, Josephine, and Natalie. While there I found some slick “Nike Jordans”. I knew they were fake, but I honestly didn’t care. I bought them anyway because having them may be the closest I’ll ever get to having real Jordans so why not get them? They were purchased for a little over $30 USD. They aren’t real, but the makers made them well, because it’s not obvious that they are fake. Another interesting thing about Ho Chi Minh is that people are always go go going there and traffic is crazy. The way you cross the street is to literally just walk into the street and all the people driving mopeds and cars will just drive around you. It’s definitely kinda scary but also low key thrilling. One of my favorite moments at debrief was all the one on ones I had with my coaches, squad leaders, and squad mates. I definitely had a lot of awesome conversations during those times. My favorite experience overall though was the day we had for an adventure day. About 15 of us from the squad took the whole day and toured some of the coolest things in Vietnam. We hired a tour guide who led us the whole day. He took us to learn about the tunnels the Vietnamese used in the Vietnam war and also about some of their war tactics and about the weapons they used. They were genius! The stuff we learned about was really impressive and creative. We also got to crawl through one of the tunnels! It was pretty tight and we had to crouch down to make it through. Apparently they’d enlarged it for tourists too so that was interesting to think about how the Vietnamese would’ve made it through those tunnels day to day in the war. We also got to see an old tank that had had its tracks blown off in the war but was still in the same spot where it’s tracks had got blown off because it was too heavy to move. After the tour of the tunnels, the rest of the day consisted of us getting to shoot guns, canoeing, riding across a river in a boat, trying local fruits and delicious coconut candies, listening to traditional Vietnamese music, holding part of a bee hive with bees crawling all around on it, riding in the back of a horse drawn carriage, and more. After debrief, we all took a large sleeper bus to Da Nang. That was interesting to say the least. It was pretty hot in the back where I was sitting/laying/whatever the heck I was doing because we didn’t have great AC back there. The bus’s engine overheated at one point and the bus broke down for a bit, so it got really hot pretty quick and that wasn’t fun. Luckily they got it cooled down enough that they could pull it into a nearby station and fix whatever the issue was. After we arrived in Da Nang, my team said our goodbyes to the rest of the squad and then took the 2 hour van ride to Hue City. My team ended up being the team that was 2 hours away from the rest of the squad, so we didn’t get to see the rest of the squad for the whole time we were in Vietnam except for debrief and travel days. I was initially really sad to leave everyone but I ended up really enjoying the time away because it ended up being really good for me to press into relationships with the guys on my team and into my relationship with the Lord and grow those things without the distraction of so many other people to hang out with and interact with daily. My team got to stay in a nice 4 bedroom 5 bathroom apartment with 2 clothes washers and an AC unit in every room! Having a place to stay like that is an extremely rare occurrence on the World Race so we all throughly enjoyed the blessing of it while we there. Banks put everyone in a room with the person they knew the least on the team and so I roomed with John Teter, which was awesome, because we stayed up multiple nights talking about life and getting to know each other more. I’m really glad I had that time with him because we definitely grew closer. Our ministry in Vietnam was with college students, helping them learn English. Our 8 person team was split into two groups and each group would go every night M-F to a different coffee shop and talk with and build friendships with the local college students and help them learn and practice English. The point of the ministry was to build friendships with the non Christians the believers in the club would bring with them so we could eventually share the Gospel with them. In Vietnam, being a Christian is ok, but sharing the Gospel is illegal and so we had to be careful in how we approached doing that with people. We were allowed to talk about our faith and testimonies though, so we would do that every chance we could. We also were able to encourage the believing students and our hosts in their faith many times too so that was awesome! Our hosts Minh and Thu were incredible! They were so kind to us and Minh is a really funny guy. We also loved playing with their young kids Minh Chi and Minh Huie. Those kids were truly the cutest ever! We also had 2 other people we worked with in our ministry, Trust and his wife Mi. They were incredibly kind as well. Trust and Mi led the English club group I was part of so I got to know them better than Minh and Tu, but I loved them all. We had a lot more free time with our ministry than in Guatemala, so one of the things we did with that time was to work out. We found a gym and I went almost every day. I’d never worked out before, but I ended up really enjoying it. Except leg day. Leg day sucked! It was SO hard and painful. One of the hardest things about Vietnam for me was the church services we went to with our hosts. They were long and because they were in Vietnamese it was really hard to stay engaged. One cool moment of unplanned ministry was when one night we were walking home from ministry and we ran into an old man that was limping really badly. We helped him cross the road and then when we started talking to him. We found out he’d been in a fire and was struggling a lot physically because of that and he also was going through a lot of family problems as well. We talked with him quite a bit and then prayed for him for physical healing and for his family too. We also gave him so money for his hospital bills. It was hard to pray for healing and not see it happen, but we could see that the man was definitely touched by our love for him. We definitely planted seeds that night and so that was cool. We also had the privilege to play soccer multiple times with our ministry host and his students. We ended up tying his students in one match and beating them in another. The one time we played against him and his rec league team though, we got utterly destroyed. It was bad. Like 15 to 5. At the end Minh’s rec team started messing around too and not really trying and even then they were still smoking us. New Years Eve was an absolutely insane day for me. It started with my team going to the Hue city beach to swim. We later found out that the beach is pretty dangerous and they have deaths there every year from the strong waves and current, but at first we were just innocently having fun and swimming with the powerful waves there. At one point I went out and got stuck right about where the waves were crashing and where I couldn’t touch. At first it was fine and then I started trying to swim in and wasn’t making a lot of progress. The waves were pulling me back out and I couldn’t move from where I was. Wave after wave crashed over me and salt water filled my mouth. I started to panic because I didn’t seem to be making a lot of headway when I would try to swim back and the waves just kept crashing over me. As I panicked, I was getting tired quickly and there was no one around to help me because the waves had also pulled me away from everyone else on the beach. I really started to think “I’m going to die today. I’m going to die on the World Race.” I cried out to God to save me kind of as a last resort, honestly not really believing He would. A little later a wave pushed me in and I felt the sand beneath my feet. Then I strained with every ounce of strength I had left to make it to the beach. I eventually did and then crashed to the ground. Looking back on everything I truly believe without the wave God sent to push me in I would’ve died. It’s not even that I can’t swim, because I can, but as soon as I started panicking I stopped thinking logically and was frantically thrashing around and tiring myself out really quickly. It’s hard to communicate how crazy and terrifying the situation was but I truly thought I’d die. I’d never been in a situation before where I literally thought I would die and had time to contemplate death. Through the whole situation the Lord taught me some beautiful things. One being that He hears my cries for Him and responds. I’d also never experienced the Lord saving me from physical death before, and so it’s beautiful to think that God took time to send a wave to bring me in and save me. He didn’t want me to die then and would’ve done it whether I came to realize that it was Him or not. He did it because He’s good and He loves me more than I’ll ever know. Also shoutout my Mom who pointed out to me that it was the Lord who saved me not just a coincidence. I also felt awful that I hadn’t been ready for death and didn’t want to die when faced with death. But what was beautiful was the Lord reminding me that He understands and doesn’t expect perfection from me. That He is sanctifying me so that I do get to the point that I want to be with Him in Heaven more than I want to be on earth, but until He gets me to that point, there’s so much grace for my imperfect desires. A lot less crazy, later that night John, Ben, Malachi, Doug, and I went to a free New Years Eve concert in the middle of Hue City. Even though it was free, there were quite a few popular Vietnamese artists that performed there. The music was great and we got to meet a lot of cool Vietnamese people in the crowd and befriend them even if just for the night. The best part of the night was by far after the clock had already struck 12:00. All of us left and as we were walking away, they started playing some American songs we recognized and so we decided we had to stop and just start dancing. We quickly attracted a crowd of random Vietnamese that wanted to dance with us. Then a bunch of our friends from the English club we were serving with found us and we all danced together and then hung out for about an hour after that. It was such a fun night! One of the last events we helped our ministry with was this team building event thing. We played 4 games where each of the games had a meaning behind it that ties into the 4 symbol Gospel presentation our ministry uses. Then the Gospel was shared with all the unbelievers that attended and we got to share our testimonies too. It was a really awesome time to encourage the believers that came and be part of presenting the Gospel to the unbelievers that attended. 2 girls accepted Christ that day! Praise God! One of them had been attending the English club I was part of and so I knew her, and that made it even cooler to see her accept the Lord. One of the last things we did was to go to this beautiful old Vietnamese temple and tour it with some of the students from our English clubs we’d become friends with. The next day we all said our goodbyes and traveled the 2 hours back to Da Nang to meet up with the rest of the squad before we all departed for Cambodia. We had a couple days in Da Nang before our travel day and so I got to go surfing! That was absolutely incredible! I’d always wanted to learn to surf and so I went out with John, Ben, Doug, and Kayley (one of the girls from my squad). At first it was really calm and there wasn’t a lot to surf. I did end up catching one nice wave and getting up on my board correctly. That was such an incredible feeling! I was so pumped! The rest of the day every time I tried to get up I messed up my footwork and fell off, but it was still awesome and so much fun! The next night my whole team and I went and played beach volleyball with some of the guys from the other boys team on the squad and then went night swimming with a bunch of them and then most of one of the girls teams as well. That was super fun! It was the perfect ending to our short time in Da Nang. Overall, the biggest lesson the Lord taught me in Vietnam was my need for intimacy with Him. He continued to remind me as He has for awhile, through the Word, in prayer, and through my teammates and leaders that I could pursue things of the world to attempt to find happiness and satisfaction but only He could give me those things. And the way I’d find those things in Him was through intimacy with Him. The way I’ll find intimacy with Him is to continue to press into my time with Him daily and learn to have conversation with Him like I would with a friend. Honest conversation with Him, telling Him my heart, even when it’s ugly and then listening for His response and dwelling in His presence. Well that’s all folks! Adios Vietnam!
