Winding down & coming home

Well, our trip is coming to an end. We took the bus from SaPa to Lao Cai yesterday afternoon, taking a minute to peer over at the chineese side of the border.

We then caught the night train for an 8 hour ride to Hanoi, arriving Friday morning. After checking into the hotel, we met with the GVI representative, Sherman, for a debrief of our trip. We had a few suggestions for future trips, but all were in agremment that this was one of the best experiecnes of our lives. This trip made it possible to really get to know some of the people of the SaPa region, see how they live, interact with them, and work beside them to improve their condition. It has really opened our hearts to what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ. Part of Parkway's vision is to send out 50% of our church to the seven continents, meeting the needs of others, but also looking for opportunities to establish long term commitments in areas that can be positifvely affected by God's command to love Him and love others. All the team members would like to see Parkway partnering with an established presence such as GVI in the country of Vietnam.

Here's a recap of what we accomplished through God's guidance using our hands and your prayers and support:

• Instructed the students of Hau Thao middle school on the importance of killing germs and practical instructions on how to do it daily
• Taught the students about the 3 types of food needed for a strong body and how important it is to try to eat them everyday

• Funded and built a water treatment system that will provide clean water for washing, cleaning and drinking to the school of 161 students, as well as the surrounding households.
• Played too many games of duck,duck goose, soccer keepaway, freeze tag and over-under to count
• Established per
• sonal relationships with the teachers and students of Hau Thao, as well as the interpreters and drivers we came in contact with on a daily basis.
• Identified several areas for future chances to come back and build on the foothold we have established here.

We catch our return flight from Hanoi tomorrow at noon, travel 24 hours, and return to Phoenix Saturday night. It has been an exhausting 10 days, but more rewarding than I ever imagined. To close out the blog, here are several pictures of the students and teachers we met this week. Please take a close look at them. While they are incredibly poor by US standards, they are able to find hapiness in a tough world. We have learned a lot from taking the time to get to know these people of Vietnam. We can show them love and caring, and maybe someday, Hope.

JF