A Season of Stillness

So! We’ve made it to Vietnam! And after a week of debrief in Ho Chi Minh City consisting of 1-1s, rest, and exploring the city our 49 person squad piled into a 46 person sleeper bus… I’m sure you can do the math and make an inference into what that meant. 15.5 hours later (give or take a couple stops along the way when the bus did indeed break down) we made it to the beautiful beach city Da Nang!

While we were all excited to get off that bus, get settled, and explore this new city we knew that meant the inevitable “goodbyes” as one of the boys teams was heading another 2.5 hours away and my team wouldn’t be able to see any other team while being here… I’ll get more into that later!

So here’s the scoop on our living situation and ministry while here in Vietnam!

My team is living with our squad leaders (aka the Swan family) a couple; Bill & Katie, and their 3 kiddos; Maxi, Ruby, & Violet. We have a 5 bedroom home that’s only about a 10 minute walk from the beach (don’t be fooled, it’s rained everyday since we’ve arrived and is actually quite chilly (it’s 69 at its coldest and I’ve just lost my weathering))! Team Harvest occupies 3 rooms where we share a bed and bathroom with one other person while the Swans take the other 2. This house has been an absolute blessing, it’s location is prime and living in a real home with a family dynamic is not only fun, but also so life giving after being away from family for 4 months!

You may be asking why we have to be separated from the rest of the squad, and the simple answer to that question is our ministry is very government monitored. What is our ministry you ask? We are blessed to work with Cru, which is like the Cru we have in the states if you are familiar! It’s college ministry!! Which is definitely different from our kids ministry in Guatemala! Our team is split into little groups that go and hangout with what Cru calls clubs (the different schools students who come each week and meet together), because Vietnam is a country that is more closed off to Jesus these clubs are labeled as English clubs. The primary focus that we help out with is making topics to teach them English and play games to help them learn while also building relationships with the students here! Last night was maybe my favorite night of ministry here so far, we taught them Christmas words then used those words to play games. Seeing how silly they are willing to get and competitive with also such a desire to learn English is so pure!

Since we have to be more careful we tie Jesus into it when we can but something cool about these students is that they are all believers and bring their friends to club to introduce them to Jesus! Seeing so many people our age that are also in love with Jesus… AHH just amazing!! While clubs run everyday (except Wednesday, where we reach out to have individual meet ups with students) we technically have ministry everyday, however not every club runs everyday. Everyone on my team has 1-2 clubs that run twice a week, also only in the afternoon for about 2 hours, meaning we have a lot of free time and this season of ministry has just shown to be slower (not a bad thing at all)!

Coming from more structure in Guatemala this caught me very off guard, and I really had to slow myself down. But, this time in Vietnam has also been such a time of digging deeper into the Lord and He’s been revealing so much to me with all this time I’ve been able to dedicate towards Him!

Here’s a few things He’s been teaching me:

1. While He has been putting more on my heart to continually pray into and bring to Him, He’s also providing the time to abide in Him
2. Even though we can’t go out and just talk to people on the street about Jesus (it’s illegal) and have to be careful about having Bibles in public/can’t disclose that we are missionaries, we are not just called to share Jesus verbally but with our actions and the way we treat people, because truly that’s sometimes the only way in countries like these that people can experience Jesus in daily life
3. We cannot compare our ministry to other teams ministries, even though ours might feel more minute or less productive Jesus has brought our team to this ministry and will use our continual “YES”
4. How am I spending this free time He has given us? Am I using it to grow into a deeper intimacy with Him or fall into a state of comfort?
5. There are so many people who don’t know the love, peace, and freedom of Jesus, and He’s called me into deeper prayer of where He wants me to serve long-term post race! Maybe this means the 10/40 window?! I’m not sure but I do know that where He calls He provides a way, and I just have to GO!
6. Follow up to that: we are called to be uncomfortable when we follow Jesus, and something debrief revealed to me was that I was very comfortable in Guatemala. The Lord then revealed to me that He wants to call me into something even greater, Guatemala is a faithful nation and so many people have followed their call to serve there, while there are nations where there are very few witnesses to Jesus!

So that’s Vietnam so far! Lots of exploring, building relationships with our clubs, trying Vietnamese street food with our host when they unexpectedly show up at our house at 9:00 pm… yup, that happened last night! Being in a completely new culture has its challenges (time differences, language barriers, customs) but there is absolutely nothing I would trade this for! Thank you Jesus for this life!! 🇻🇳