I'm sitting here trying to encapsulate a week filled with surprises, relationships, and near death experiences. How do I put into words an adventure that can only be described as humbling. While I could describe the buildings, infrastructure, roads and even traffic, what my lasting memories will be is deep within the view of the Vietnam people. Before coming on this trip, Vietnam was a country known only in my vocabulary by the association to veterans and loss. A country that had relation only to something that happened forty years ago. How narrow of me. My view began changing while reading the history of this country online. Sitting in a hotel room looking out over of the Saigon skyline that was being described and seeing a mixture of old and new, history and reinvention. But what about the people? Quiet, determined, respectful. Living a life where working is expected and respect is demanded. There is no wining or complaining. There is no demand for bigger. There is only an understanding that working hard and community is common place. I'm not sure if the first layer view is cohesiveness or acceptance of circumstances which do not change. There is a change though. A generation of children who are being shown God's light. A generation of leaders rising up and reaching the youngest generation of Vietnam through love and tangible needs. A group of people that are focused not on self, but on the love and thirst for Christ's words. Teaching that a Heavenly Father is awaiting with a vision to alter a seemingly changeless course. So I leave Vietnam, with a heart changed. A realization that there is a people half a world away, resigned to a life of unchanged. Yet a group of people daring to change that view, to expose a purposeful way of life that leads to the arms of God.