Vietnam Report - March 24, 2011

Entirely Spent (In every good way)

We finished our last clinic at the Youth Shelter in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh), serving 212 children. We left the hotel at 7:15a and arrived back at the hotel at 8:30a.

The Youth Shelter is really a youth dentention center that includes runaways, street kids, and orphans. Most kids have either been sexually or physically abused (beaten) and most certainly emotionally abused through abandonment. The youngest we saw was a five year-old boy who had been sold by his family into thievery and was picked up for selling lottery tickets. The oldest I saw was 24 years old. Most of the 15 year-old boys were on average 5'6" tall and weighed 50 Kilos (ca. 105 pounds). They are very slender of slight build.

The greatest joy were the apparent changes in the facilities and among the children. COPI has been supporting this shelter the past five years at $10,000 per year. A library was built and stocked with anime books to teach the children how to read, since most of them were illiterate. This has now completely changed. The facilities were all upgraded: sleeping quarters and beds, laundry and food services all vastly improved. You could see the effect upon the children. Most were clean bright and intelligent. They had formed a community and were looking after each other, a tribute, I think to the manager whose tenure is over 15 years. She has impacted the entire staff and set the tone for the children. She is truly invested in the children and loves them.

The greatest sorrow were the stories of how they came to be at the shelter. Many of them have been abandoned by their parents for economic reasons, several were brutally beaten by family members and ran away, some were sold into sex slavery to pay off family debts. One young girl was prostituted for four years, she is only 13 years old. Do the math. Can you believe it?

At one point, the men in the immediate facility were asked to "take a walk." A girl (15 years old) had been so brutally raped and prostituted that she had totally emotionally shut down and was mutilating herself through cutting. The sight of men only further tramautized her.

By the end of the clinic, most of team simply felt exhausted. They had given everything they had.

A small group of us started the day with a devotion from Matthew 25, the theme for the entire trip. It tells the story of the Son of Man judging the nations gathered before him at the end of days. He will separate the sheep from the goats "for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes an dyou clohted me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

The righteous will answer, "Lord when did we wee you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?

The King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

There is only one store in all of Vietnam that is licensed and authorized to sell religious material. It is affectionately called "the Jesus store." I guess you can even buy a glow in the dark Jesus figure. I was asked if I wanted to go to the store tonight. "No thanks," I replied. I've already seen Jesus 212 times today in the faces of the children.

On the ride home, Binh shared a email from one of the nuns with whom we served a clinic the day before. She was quite humble in describing how inspirational was the experience of working together with our team. Never before had she been with a team and worked through lunch in order to ensure that every child would be seen and not one left out. She confessed that this was not always her motivation to serve the children in like manner, day in and day out. I confess, too, that it is not mine either to serve in similar fashion, even in Utah, with such devotion.

I have, however, grown from this trip by bending over to present toothbrushes, wipe foamy faces, teach children how to brush teeth, and clean bloody spit buckets and resterilize cups with bleach, and fetch water from remote spigots, and to stand in the sun (or with little shade) for long hours on end, and feel grimy and sticky from all the humidity and sweat.

Thank you for all of you who have been praying. Your prayers have made a huge difference. Tomorrow we have a free day that will end with a team banquet. I hope to see the place where it all began for Good Shepherd, the very orphanage from which Thane and Nina (Zeeh) were housed and the blessed nuns, now passed on to glory, who gave their lives for the sake of the children tirelessly, day after day, by welcoming and caring for orphans.

I remember that phone call from binh to P. Jim on that day when she returned from Vietnam and reported that there were two nuns caring for 20 children. What could we do to help? The 20 quickly became 200. The 200 then 1000, then 5000. At each stage, we wondered how much we could do and whether we could sustain.

Our Lord is faithful, if we are willing.

God bless you all.

P. Jeff