The trip to Vietnam in November 2016 was a rich experience, providing us with a great opportunity to consolidate the connections that we made last year and to make new ones.
During our time there, we worked with three different ministries – and as we went along we discovered that it is indeed a small world as some knew each other. What a blessing it is to know that God did not only bring a group from England, but introduced us to His people, creating a network of those committed to building the kingdom. While each of the ministries had their own distinct area of serving, there were also parallels within the work. It was nice to see the different ways in which they were all linked, whether it was through the Christian Football League, involvement with YWAM or through larger churches like the Hanoi International Fellowship or the CMA, Christian and Missionary Alliance. We identified that there was a lot of work being done in partnership – encouraging unity in kingdom building.
In Ho Chi Minh City, our first host Pastor Nam has a strong heart for the countryside and the people there. After the service in his church on the first Sunday, he took us to another church approximately 2hours from the city for another service. We were treated to the famous Vietnamese hospitality after the service. Such a blessing. In the week, we travelled to the countryside where he tirelessly took us round to different orphanages, schools and homes of friends and family where we had opportunity for prayer, children’s ministry and encouraging other Christians. We saw salvations, prayed for the ill, sang with children in the orphanage and were blessed to sow a seed into our team project. We believed that God was directing us to a work that involved someone from the city going back into the countryside to develop hubs, bringing the light of Jesus and empowerment into the area. At the time of writing, the Harvest light project has already started, providing finance for enterprise. A predominately agricultural area, this finance will provide much needed support and help for the farmers to improve the lives of their families and communities. This is just the beginning for Harvest Light Project and we are excited to be part of what God will do in that village.
Secondly, we worked with the New Life Centre. This ministry to students is led by Pastor Man (which we learnt this year is pronounced ‘Mang’) his wife Trang and their team of dedicated staff and volunteers. The Vietnam team went on outreach to the university, met and chatted to students in cafes, inviting them to English class, delivered an English lesson, rapped, preached in the Sunday service and were on hand to serve in any area that was required of us. Having younger people on the team was a perfect fit as they soon discovered that young people everywhere share the same experiences.
The last part of the trip was in Hanoi. Here we had an opportunity to see what the last team project had birthed. We worked with Color Me, Vietnam a work dedicated to rescuing women involved in sex work. Pastor Jacob and Tram lead a church working with recovering drug addicts and have a heart to set up a home for women who are victims of human trafficking. They had already garnered some experience rehabilitating and reintegrating recovering addicts back into the community. They are hoping to use some of what they learned in that process in setting up the home for women. We had the opportunity to help them start an action plan to achieve their goal of housing the first woman by April 2017.
This trip opened news doors – doors of opportunity that BTBAB may go through. Regardless, we believe that during this trip we were able to sow and water! We saw much more of Vietnam than we did last time and we had the great honour to pray even more for the country and its people.
