Vietnam 2016 - Day 4

It is Saturday April 2 and the group is up and breakfast is over.  We leave our hotel in Son La around 9:00 am with our Vietnamese pastor brothers and continue our ride west into the mountains.  We spend the morning riding through small towns and villages as we enter some of the more remote areas of north western Vietnam.  The people we encounter now are mostly from the various Hmong tribes that live in the mountainous areas... the Hmong are distinctive with their brightly colored clothing and the women with their long hair piled high upon their heads.

 Some 30 km outside of Dien Bien Phu, we make a stop at a regional police station.  Introductions are made all around, speeches are given and gifts are exchanged.  As the introductions are being made, it was noticed that the officials here already had a list of our names! Gotta remember... we are not in America anymore... foreign country, foreign values.  We leave the regional police station, only now we have a couple plainclothes police officers riding with us!

We now turn our motorbikes up and into the mountains... we will be traveling back in time to a very remote Hmong village.  We soon leave the paved road and start back a one-lane dirt trail... not wide enough or smooth enough to be called a road.  We follow this trail up and down and around hills for about 5 km or so, always winding back and up the side of a mountain. The path is sometimes steep and somewhat difficult in places, but our Vietnamese pastor brothers are there to assist and help us travel the rugged terrain.

We follow this trail until we suddenly pull onto the edge of a clearing with a couple of ponds surrounded by rice paddies and about 20-25 small wooden buildings.  Hmong homes are set up on poles, usually about 10 feet off the ground.  They are simple homes made of wood planking, some shingles, some with thatched roofs, normally one or two rooms with no running water or bathrooms.

There is a one-room church in this village.  We gather there with the villagers to make introductions (in English translated into Vietnamese translated into Hmong!), we sing songs, and we offer to pray for them.  At this first village, I am asked to say a few words, so I read from Psalm 121, "I lift up my eyes to the mountains - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."  And then I am asked to pray... so I pray for the village and for their healing.  After my prayer, many of the villagers come forward to be prayed for individually, and for a time, this mountain village church sitting on the side of a Vietnamese mountain, becomes the scene for a healing prayer service. We gather around the villagers, American and Vietnamese pastors, and we pour out our hearts in prayer on behalf of the remote mountain Christians. 

We then spent some time just visiting, taking pictures and sharing hugs all around.  Eventually, we reluctantly mount our motorbikes once again for the bumpy ride back down the mountain trail.

A few personal observations... first, we had just spent a scant few hours with a group of people who have had little to no contact with the outside world, much less with a group of non-Vietnamese foreigners.  We found these people to be some of the friendliest, most generous and loving people anyone could ever meet.  They welcomed us with open arms, loving words, and a Christ-like spirit.  When they worship God, they worship with their whole being!  They are loud and enthusiastic, and there is no doubt that the Holy Spirit is in this place when they worship.  Their enthusiasm and spirit would put most churches to shame, and once again, we Americans found ourselves being schooled in evangelism.  There is much to learn from a group of people who seemingly have nothing in terms of material possessions, yet have an abundance of the Holy Spirit in their midst.

Back on our bikes, we end our day by riding into the far north western city of Dien Bien Phu near the Laotian border. It is a very tired group that check into their hotel rooms and prepare for supper.  It is a quiet group during supper, for each one is lost in thought, trying to process the sights and sounds of the day.  Each in his or her own way, quietly praise God for His unconditional love and His grace that reaches deep into the mountain jungle villages of northern Vietnam. Tomorrow, we will do some sight-seeing in the historically important city of Dien Bien Phu.