COPI Mission Update: March 31

March 31, 2012

Saigon, Viet Nam

I was up well before my alarm. I am still bothered by things I saw on Thursday. Today was a light day. We toured a well-run orphanage and an HIV clinic. We were free from lunch on.

Mike and I had lunch, and then we set about our souvenir shopping. I picked up some things, had a “Coca-Cola Lite” (Diet Coke), and returned to the room to dress for dinner. We had a lovely team dinner with awards and speeches, etc. Simmering under this all are several questions: Why does God allow such suffering for children? We have done so little: does it really matter? Did we make any difference? Why does Binh continue to do what she does?

I am baffled by the first question. The second and third must be answered with a yes—it matters and it made a difference to the children we touched. The question about Binh is interesting because there is no one answer, but very many. I think she closes her eyes and she sees the faces of hundreds of children. She sees the workers who care for them in orphanages. They are incredibly underpaid. She sees the stony faces of politicians and civil servants who don’t care about anything, unless you disturb their peace. She sees a spark of hope in a few Vietnamese people who get it -- they understand that orphaned and abandoned children matter.

I needed time after Thursday to get some perspective. I can’t say my mind is at peace. I can say that it helps to talk to teammates! Many Vietnamese people have great reverence for their elders and ancestors: Families really matter here! This makes what we saw on Thursday even more hideous and absurd. TOO MANY children are sold and used and abused. But all of us have a new appreciation for the many parents who accompanied their children to the clinics and listened and watched and learned everything possible to help their children. The two clinics near Da Nang were on a Saturday and Sunday. Almost every child had an attentive parent or grandparent. I need to remember this as I pray for the children Viet Nam.

We leave for the airport in an hour. It will be good to get home.

Signing off in Saigon,

James

COPI Mission Update: March 28 & 29

March 28, 2012

Saigon, Viet Nam

We were up this morning at O’dark thirty. Breakfast at 6:00, and on the bus at 6:40 to travel to a deaf school. The traffic was already bad. When is it not in Saigon? Because of the early start, we had devotions on the bus. Matthew 7:1-5 and the challenge of not judging one another.

We had the clinic up and flying by 9 AM. The Catholic nuns who run the deaf school are amazing. Everything was orderly, even if it was overwhelming. We served 294 patients today between 9 am and 5:30 PM. It took us 30 minutes to break things down and pack the truck and get on the bus. Rush hour. We were back at 7:15 PM and completely exhausted. My roommate Mike settled for the fruit in our room. I went with Raina, Binh, PM, and two of our dentists to a pho restaurant in an alley about 4 blocks from the hotel. The noodles were excellent!

We have our last clinic tomorrow at the youth shelter. These are teenagers picked up for prostitution, pimping, etc., who have been given into the care of the state for their own protection. They don’t choose this lifestyle--they are used by adults. We will see perhaps 150 of them? Christ have mercy!

Please pray for our team’s stamina and cohesion.

Thanks for praying,

James

March 29, 2012

Saigon, Viet Nam

Sold-at-Three

Brace yourself. This is going to be difficult.

We were up at 5:45, and showered and ready for devotions at 6:15: The Golden Rule. By 7:15, we were on our way to the Youth Shelter. It changes every day, but this morning, there were 210 kids in the shelter, ages 5-19. In this photo, Bethany is helping a 9 year old I’m calling “Sold-at-Three.” Raina is in the background, looking back at this precious little girl. If it were a crystal clear photo, you would see the tears in Raina’s eyes. Bethany cried as soon as the girl turned away. Why?

Little Sold-at-Three’s parents died when she was two. Her grandmother kept her for a year, and then sold her to a pimp. She was abused as a “prostitute” for 5 years. She is now nine. She has been in the shelter for a year. She still won’t make eye contact with men. An 8-year old boy wouldn’t make eye contact either. I asked about him. His step-father sold him to a pimp when he was 5. He was chained to a bed as a “prostitute” for two years before someone reported the abuse. He has also been in the shelter for about a year. We served 194 of the children today. Every one of them broke our hearts. I have never prayed, “Christ have mercy” so many times in one day!

Today I served as the toothbrush man. Pastor Jeff understands this, because he was the toothbrush man last year. I was only able to do it today. It gives you time to pray for each child.

After the clinic we walked across the street to the orphanage. This was a small one, with only about 100 children. Some of them have incredible challenges. Most are not true orphans, but were abandoned by their parents when their “birth defect” became obvious. We toured the rooms and some of us wept inconsolably. I took no pictures.

We got home after 8 PM. This was our most difficult day. Some of what I saw will never be forgotten.

Tomorrow we will visit the Good Shepherd orphanage and the HIV clinic. Christ have mercy!

Stunned in Saigon,

James

COPI Mission Update: March 27, 2012

March 27, 2012

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Viet Nam

It was raining when we got up this morning and the drizzle lasted all morning. We had a leisurely breakfast, and then boarded a bus to the Da Nang Airport for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). It was almost effortless. But our bus hit some low hanging telephone lines (no kidding!) and we were caught briefly in a snarl of wires. It broke the windshield wiper on the right side of the window. The driver treated all of this as normal and took out a big wrench and removed the wiper arm.

Our flight was without incident, and we landed in Saigon about 3:00 PM. We are staying downtown in one of the older sections of the Rex Hotel www.rexhotelvietnam.com/en/.

Please pray for our 14-hour day on Wednesday. We expect this to be a big clinic. We start at 6:00 AM, and don’t expect to be back until 8:00 PM.

James

PS – A few folks got the wrong website for our last hotel. I left out an “h.” Here is the correct website. (www.vinhhungresort.com/).

COPI Mission Update: March 23-25, 2012

March 23-25, 2012 Hoi An, Viet Nam

Friday, March 23 was a travel day. We left the hotel at 11 AM and drove into the middle of one of the worst traffic nightmares you can imagine. There is one bridge out of the city center of Hanoi going to the airport. There was a wreck on the bridge, going the direction we needed to go. Can you imagine the traffic stood still for a long time? We had a flight to catch to Da Nang, Viet Nam at 1:30. It didn’t happen. Of course many of the other passengers were also in the traffic snarl, and so they held our plane at a different gate. We finally took off about 3:45. A 40-minute bus ride brought us to our hotel (www.vinhhungresort.com). The resort is beautiful. Most of us have rooms in the back, but we are not spending much time here.

Saturday, March 24 began at 6:15 with devotions in Mike’s and my room. The breakfast buffet was amazing. Have you ever eaten dragon fruit? We left at 7 for a 50-minute bus ride to Dai Loc. We set up our clinic in a school, and served 201 patients. The mayor came to thank us, and asked us to dinner at a restaurant near by. The Hoi An region is famous for a noodle dish called “cao lau.” It is eaten with lemon grass and it is very tasty. The restaurant served us this with rice crackers. Wow! We weren’t back to the hotel until 9 PM.

On March 25^th, 6:45 devotions came too early! We had the same wonderful buffet, and then boarded our bus for our next clinic. We served 170 patients today. Again, the mayor came to thank us. We returned to our hotel about 6:10. Dr. Brock Millet spoke for Mike and I at dinner: “I want some dinner and my bed.” I can add that my back aches from moving the bins of medical and dental supplies.

Monday, March 26 is our first full day off since we left Utah on March 14. I am looking forward to exploring the resort, doing some shopping, and maybe even swimming in the pool. As I write, it is about 70 degrees, overcast, and very pleasant here on the patio of the breakfast buffet. I am looking across the patio at the river, and watching the small diesel ferryboats move passengers from one side to the other. They operate all night, and I finally understand the putt-putt-putt (about 5 putts per second) that I have heard all night for several the last three nights.

Please pray that we get good rest today. We have served 942 people (mostly children) and we have two more big clinics when we arrive in Ho Chi Min City (Saigon).

From Hoi An, Viet Nam,

James

Today our clinic should have been by boat to an island near Hoi An. It has been very windy so the person at the island said the water was too choppy so recommended we not try to come for our safety. We instead went to one of our team member's village. We call him PM. For some reason there are a lot of congenital heart defects but for the most part the kids were healthy with not horrible teeth. The sun was out this morning and then it turned cool and windy by late morning. Some of us pulled out our jackets by afternoon. All the children came very bundled up to the clinic. You would have thought it was 40 degrees just by looking at them. We saw about 180 kids today with half the kids in the morning and the rest this afternoon. They normally have a siesta time around lunch for a couple of hours. Today we were so efficient that we all got a break as well, including the dentists.

Dr Brock, the American doctor, drew attention to some large garden spiders that were high in the ceiling outdoors by photographing them. If any of you know me, you know that spiders are one of my least favorite things. Those spiders on the ceiling were creepy but I knew that they want to stay up there to get bugs and are not coming down on my head. As Mike K. and Co Cuc and Pastor James were moving a table out of one of the rooms to be used in the pharmacy area, there was a huge spider having a ride on the table cloth. It was just smaller than my hand. James tried to kick the spider with his foot and it scurried under the cloth. Co Cuc tried to find it but said it went up into the table. Thankfully they put the table back and didn't use it. They actually closed the door to that room which made me feel better. I couldn't get that spider out of my head all day and thought that any bench that I sat on surely had a huge spider underneath. I didn't check!!

We will have a day to enjoy Hoi An tomorrow. It is a lovely old town. Some of us will tour around the town on bicycles while others are traveling about an hour to ruins called My Son. It sounds like everyone will have a nice day doing whatever suits them. I look forward to sleeping in just a little. We will end our day with a dinner at PM's house with his wife, mother and children. What an honor for the whole team to be welcomed into his home.

Raina

COPI, March 22, 2012

Diamond Hotel, Hanoi, Viet Nam

We arrived by train at 5:30 this morning. Most of us slept better on this trip, mostly because we were exhausted. (We had a 15-hour day on Tuesday, and a 10-hour day on Wednesday.) We had time to check-in to our hotel and get a shower before we went t the Soc Son Leprosarium in Hanoi. This is one of Binh’s favorite places. She loves the children trapped by the government’s decision that lepers and their families must live in a leper colony.

One member of the community had a stroke about 6 months ago. She is wasting away, and hasn’t much time left. Binh asked me to bless her and help give her peace as she dies. What to say? The words of benediction seemed most appropriate: “May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord cause His countenance to shine upon you and be gracious to you, and may He give you His peace.” Binh translated and she began to cry. She thanked me and Binh cried. Wow. I never thought I would be doing “soft Lutheran last rites” in Viet Nam!

We returned to the hotel at 1 PM and we have free time until we go to the airport to fly south tomorrow at 11 AM. For those who are interested, here is all I can find to show our hotel (www.agoda.com/asia/vietnam/hanoi/diamond_hotel.html)

Here are three more photos: One is of our whole team near the China border. The second is Rita watching a Hmong woman weave. The third is some of the beautiful “Black Hmong” we came to serve.

Thanks for praying,

James

COPI Mission Update: 3/21 P.James

Sa Pa Viet Nam (5 PM)

What a day. We started with breakfast at 6:30. We were on the bus to a nearby village school by 7:07. This was a very different clinic! We saw 181 students, all of the teachers, and all of the teachers’ relatives. Let me explain?

The village is “Black Hmong.” The Hmong migrated from China to this area about 300 years ago. There is incredible prejudice against them and we witnessed some of this today. The teachers are all Vietnamese: comparatively wealthy Vietnamese. Although we came to treat the Hmong, the teachers expected to be treated first. They brought their children, spouses, and even some friends. There was no consideration given to the Hmong children already in line who had never seen a doctor or dentist. The Vietnamese simply stepped in front of them. The Hmong children are so used to this that they didn’t show any anger. They just looked down at the ground...

Racism is an ugly word. Yes, what we saw today was just that – racism: unself-conscious privileged power based on the belief that THEY were superior to them. So ask yourself: What is it like to be taught by a Vietnamese teacher who thinks you are inferior, not just younger? Lord Jesus, have mercy on all of us in our blind judgments and prejudice.

After the “selfish ones” pushed through the lines, we treated 181 Black Hmong students. They were respectful and beautiful. I am glad we treated all who came. I am not sure how I would have felt if we had turned some of the children away. I don’t think the teachers would like my opinion of them. Christ have mercy on me!

Well, we passed out gloves and blankets at a final assembly and loaded the bus to return to our hotel. We have 90 minutes of free time before we load the bus to return down the mountain to Lao Cai, to the train station, for another over-night train ride to Hanoi.

Thanks for praying,

James