Today I (Howard) traveled with Joshua, Thuy's Biblical name. Thuy is an outstanding evangelist and church planter. He has four cell [home]fellowships that he is presently pastoring. Whenever I come to Vietnam I go with him to the outlying countryside to visit the people who have come to the Lord through our ministry together. I wish I had the time or space to tell you about some of the miraculous salvations that have taken place in the past in areas where I served during the War.
The first fellowship was one he is now presently visiting once a month. It is made up of people who are physically handicapped. We stopped on the way [on motorbike] to pick up some basic supplies like salt, sugar, laundry soap, rice...things we take for granted are always available, but arein extemely short supply for the family we were visiting.
After an hour on the bike we arrived at a small hut about 50 yds off one of the tributaries running into the Saigon River. I gingerly stepped through the mud and rubble and trash that surrounded the first building [if you can call it that] and followed Thuy to the back where an even smaller hut lay perched on top of a swamp. The overhanging bamboo hid most of the surrounding but the putrid, stagnant water was clearly visible and smellable. I could see an older man sitting on the dirt floor, one leg missing. This was the man Thuy had brought me to meet, a ARVN soldier who had lost in leg in 1974 in the fierce fighting surrounding the Hoc Mon District...old stomping grounds for me.
Thuy had communicated to me that we might be able to help this man get a prothestic leg but he didn't want one. What he really wanted was a hand pump driven bicycle. He was presently borrowing one from a neighbor in order to wheel his way into Saigon on Sunday's in order to attend a worship service at Joshua's home fellowship. The interesting thing was we had committed $100 toward the needs of Joshua's fellowships and it was the exact cost of the bicycle. This man, Ngun, had been diligently praying the miraculous provision of a bicyle for the last 6 months and God was now using you to answer this man's prayer.
I wish I had the time to tell you about the amazing renovation that has taken place at the home church in Cu Chi we visited, or the new church that had been planted in the middle of a Buddhist cemetery. Two years ago we replaced the dirt floor that served as both the kitchen and sleeping area for Christians who traveled to Cu Chi for services. Today it looks like a, modern kitchen and it has provided the means of starting a baking business for the woman who was hosting the fellowship.At the new felloship we buried Scripture in the ground and prayed for the area to be returned to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In the past, wherever I had planted Scripture and prayed, a family has come to the Lord. I am expecting even greater things to happen here.
By the time I got back into the city, a horrendous environmental cacophany assaulting your every physical senses, I could feel my throat hurting from breathing in the fumes that hang over the city and when I scratched an itch on my nose it left a black oil underneath my fingernails that later showed up as a black handprint on the cloth I used to wash my face off. Ah, I so fear the environmental impact on people's health as the city swells in number and concrete supplants the lush, green environment that I was so familiar with when I served in the war.
