Being Interruptable and the “M-Word”

The M-Word and The Story So Far (1/29/17)

This blog will just be a brief introduction of our journey so far! To start out here is a picture of our team (names from right to left: Hailey, Amber, Shannon, Me, Tori, Halle)

Being interruptible is something Hailey, our leader, prayed over our team before we even met. That we would be open to whatever happens even when we don’t know why and that we would trust God’s plan and walk in that. When you pray for something, sometimes it doesn’t take long before the Father gives you what you asked for and that’s what we experienced after arriving in Ho Chi Minh City. After flying over 14 hours to Tokyo and another 7 to Vietnam we spent the night in a hostel expecting to get on a bus the next day for our 27 hour ride to Da Nang. However, we arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of the Lunar Festival (the Chinese New Year) which lasts two weeks meaning it’s impossible to get a bus until February 6^th. We spent an extra day and a half in Ho Chi Minh sleeping on bright fuchsia sheets and had pho and Vietnamese coffee before we got put on a plane to Da Nang. So instead of 27 hours on a bus we traveled 1 hour on a plane and have been settling in Da Nang since Friday!

Now that we´re in Da Nang we´re preparing for ministry and getting settled in here. Vision café, where we will be teaching English, doesn´t reopen till the 6^th so we´re using this time to reach out to local students to make friends and build relationships so we can invite them to Vision and continue growing those relationships. In Da Nang this means going to the beach at 6 in the morning when all the locals are at the beach to avoid the sun! On Friday morning we played volleyball and got to sit and talk to a man named Dung who has been teaching himself English, and who tried to teach us Vietnamese. Tomorrow we´ll start going to coffee shops as well as the beach to make friends and build relationships with the students here.

Sharing God is difficult in Vietnam, mostly because it´s illegal. Because of this we can´t say Missions or Missionary, which is the “M- Word” and we can’t talk to people about Jesus until we have spent time with them and can consider them friends. Being a Christian is no problem as long as you aren’t sharing it, so it’s easy for things to feel normal when you’re sitting across from a teammate in a coffee shop in Ho Chi Minh with your Bible open in front of you talking about God and Owl City is singing “Hallelujah my almighty God divine” over the speakers because there’s basically no rules for American music. But today sitting in an expat church and hearing about how restricted they are by the government, and knowing that no one without a foreign passport is allowed to attend, there’s a better understanding of what it really means to be a missionary in Vietnam. Patience is everything. Sherman, an American who retired here to teach English and share Jesus has been here for four years and some of his students that he has known in this time have just recently become Christians, he warned us that things happen slowly in Vietnam (except motorbikes, those are fast). But there is so much hope and so much vision here despite the obstacles. Listening to Daniel, our host who runs Vision Café, talk about the vision he has for this country here is amazing. But even though the waiting seems hard to us fast paced Americans, the foundation of the future is now and we get to be part of it. We get to love these people and we get to help teach them a skill that is critical to their future and we get to be light in the darkness. Our purpose here is part of a picture to big and beautiful for us to be able to see now but I am so blessed to be a part of it and so thankful that my Father brought me here. I’ll close by sharing a poem that was written by my teammate Shannon, inspired by hearing about the work the missionaries are doing here.

Darkness to Light by Shannon Renville

“A world that was once filled with light

Now only but a dim streak

Slowly but surely attempting to burst forth

Darkness combats

Tempting as it swallows whole

Where hope seemed lost

A way was born long ago

A light came forward to break the darkness

Within each person a light was sparked

Love was created to defeat

Light and love spreading like a wildfire

From one end to the other

Never stopping till it has overcome the hearts of all

It is growing in the darkest of places

The stars are starting to outshine the dark once again”