by Esther Price
Two years ago in November 2023 a team of four travelled to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Our project was to invest in the vocational mentorship of young people and we identified a recipient of the project in the highlands. Unfortunately after six months, due to personal reasons he was unable to continue. So I set out searching for somewhere else we could invest which was not easy being 6,000 miles away!
A few months later I felt a nudge to speak to a family friend who is a Vietnamese Christian worker and had just moved back to Vietnam. After chatting he kindly agreed to look for a potential project for us. This man – who I will call Q – is married to a British woman so he has a good understanding of the two cultures.
After some time he identified a potential project in a very remote area of the Mekong Delta region where a church with a thriving youth ministry is operating amongst the H’mong people group. One of the church employees has a history of raising pigs, so they proposed using the land next to the church to raise piglets and sell them, training one of the young people and supporting them with a stipend. So in September BTBAB agreed to pay for 4 piglets and their food and vaccinations. Q also invested in the project, so the church set about building a pig pen. Six weeks later I heard from Q to say that the pastors were so impressed with the set up and partnership of this project that they decided to invest their own money into making the sty bigger & bought a few more piglets so that they could bless local families at Chinese new year!. To quote Q, they were impressed with the accountability, longevity and community impact & training of the project.
This is the first time I have ever seen a community become so excited about a project that they invest their own money. It’s a model of what BTBAB sets out to achieve, to help people out of the hopelessness of poverty by giving them a helping hand. Proverbs 13:12 – Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.
