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Here is a video I made to sum up our trip. Thanks for being a part of the journey.

JF

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

Wrapping up

Just a quick post today. I'll do a much more extensive one tomorrow when we reach Hanoi and I have a stable internet connection.
We spent our last day at the school today, played with the children, had a lunch of traditional Vietnamese dishes and pizza with the teachers, and had to say goodbye to everyone. Everyone here has been so friendly and appreciative for what has been accomplished over the last few days. Like I said, I will give lots more detail and photos in tomorrow's blog.
Please pray for our team, as we had two more sicknesses (Isaiah and Tom J), and one very sore back (Tom G). We have a long trek ahead of us to return to the states, and being sick or hurting will certainly not make it any easier.

Thank you for your faithful support,
JF

Fun, Beanie Babies and hauling rocks

Today was mostly about having fun with the students and getting to know them better. We started the day by presenting the health and hygiene program to the last group of students. The kids have been very responsive to the lessons, and I just hope they will retain the message of how germs are spread and how they can help themselves be healthier. One of the highlights of the day was when we passed out the 100+ beanie babies that were donated by Adam Daganhardt from his own collection. The teachers were going through the bag showing the various plush animals to the kids. They were talking about them, describing what kind of animal it was and how to say its name in English. Then our interpreter Ling explained to the kids that these beanies were for them to keep. The looks on their faces when that realization hit them was priceless. The children then reached into the bag and took one babie each. They were all excited, but I have to say there was one BB that was kind of a hard sell. For some reason, the eel wasn't too popular with them. One little girl picked it out, and her face said she wasn't too sure about it. I tried to explain she could just drop it back in and get another one, but she wasn't quite understanding me. After a few moments, she took the matter into her own hands and casually dropped the eel back in the bag and found a more suitable pet. Eventually, a little boy found the eel and was delighted to get it. We also got to play with the kids using the sports equipment we had purchased for them earlier--soccer balls, badmitten sets, hackey sacks and frisbees. Brian, Tom G and Isaiah also joined in on some of the excercise routines with them (a small portion is on one of the videos).

The other major activity today was continued work on the water project. The pictures show the tough trek up the hill that is needed to deliver the cement and sand from the staging area in front of the school to the water filtration location. One of the pictures shows what looks to be a puddle of water outside a hole in the side of the hill. This is the source of water they are currently using for all purposes--cleaning, cooking and drinking. There's not much water coming out now, because they have dammed it up while working on the filter system. The way the system will work is the water will be collected behind the stone enclosure you see them building in pictures. This water then flows down through a course filter to remove major gunk, then a fine sand filter to remove the smaller contaminants. Then, the water flows into the last tank you see in the pictures. This water will then be piped down to the school for cleaning and washing. Some of it will be diverted into a separate holding tank and run through a reverse osmosis filter for drinking and cooking. The workers doing the brick and stone work are very skilled, and are working at a very fast pace. The teachers also helped hauling the material up the hill side today, but there efforts were paled in comparison to the work accomplished by our team, particularly Brian, Isaiah and Tom G.
There is another team (from Oklahoma) here in SaPa with GVI working at another school nearby. They have been hit hard by some intestinal problems, with 5 of their 8 members feeling pretty low. Our team has had a slight touch of that as well, with Brian being the one hit hardest. He got some rest last night while the rest of us went to dinner, and will hopefully be back to full strength by this morning. Everyone else is doing fine and enjoying the experience of getting involved here in Vietnam. This morning we will be visiting a school that Brian's old church has worked with in the past. We'll spend the afternoon back at our school, continuing work on the water project and getting to know the teachers and students better. This has been a great trip so far. The people here are very open and friendly, and the opportunities to serve are vast. I had some earlier reservations with our host, Glocal (GVI), before we started the trip, but after being in country for a while and meeting the personnel involved, I am very confident with the way they have their program organized as well as their mission plan. There are other organizations that serve Vietnam, and we should certainly explore those options, but so far I am very pleased with our association with GVI. More pictures and info on the next post. Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.

JF

First day of school

I apologize, but I still haven't figured out how to imbed the photos where I want them in the text. So, all the pics are up front. It probably works better to read the post first, then go back to the pictures, but it's your choice. Let me give a brief description of what they are..

first picture--hand washing demo

second--tooth brushing with Tom and Brian

third--Isaiah gets inot the teeth with them

fourth--kitchen for the dormitory

fifth--typical dorm room--sleeps 16

sixth--morning calisthenics

video--Brian, Tom and Isaiah showing how germs can be spread. (video upload failed, I'll try again later)

Today was first day at the school. Before I get into our day, let me give you a little background. THis school serves about 2500 people in a widespread and sparsely inhabited community. Most of the people in the area are of the H'Mong minority, and are granted free access to an education. However, the education is not mandatory, which is why attendance is not what you might expect. There are a total of 161 children enrolled in 6th through 8th grade at the school. Only around 50 were in attendance today, as there is quite a bit of farming activity going on at this time of the year. About half of the kids stay at the school during the week, the test being that if it takes more than one hour to walk to school, they can board there during the week. The dorm rooms leave something to be desired, though, as they are about 10 x 14 feet in size and room 15 or 16 kids. The school itself is a very nice structure, and was built by the local government. It has ample rooms for the number of classes and children being educated. There are 25 teachers on staff, which makes for a very good ratio of students to teachers (7 to 1). However, 2 of the teachers don't have much to do, as they teach IT even though they have no computers for the kids to use. Another disparity is that the community governors didn't fund a water system for the school, so they currently use the runoff from the uphill rice paddies for all water needs, including drinking water. In all, it's an odd method of determining and applying funding priorities.

As for us, we arrived this morning and met with the school leadership as well as the local party representative. They welcomed us over some traditional Vietnamese tea and thanked us for our willingness to help out. When asked of their most pressing faciltiy needs, they listed clean water, security and computer capabilities. We are addressing the most pressing need on this trip, and are looking into how we could help with the next two. Following our cultrual guidelines, we were careful to make no promises, but rather listened to their needs and told them we understood their position.

Once the meeitng was over, it was off to class. We are teaching the children a series of lessons on hygiene and nutrition. THe basics are that germs are everywhere, they can be spread in several ways, and the best way to deal with them is through washing with clean water. Sounds pretty simple, but is was obvious that the concepts were pretty foreign to the majority of the students. During the hand washing demonstration, you could that many of the children had not washed for quite a while, and had no idea how to go about doing it. We also covered the need to eat the right kinds of foods to maintain a healthy diet. Surprisingly, the type of food missing from most of thier diets was not meat, but fruits and vegetables. Especially surprising in such an agricultural setting. The last part of the lesson dealt with brushing their teeth. Brian led the classes with the rest of us assisting, working with the kids, and demonstrating. OVerall, the presentation was fun for the kids and I think they learned some things about keeping clean and healthy that the didn't know before.

While the classes were in session, part of our team was helping with the water project. Tom and Isaiah in particular got a good taste of just how manual the labor can be in a situation like this. They made a ton of trips up thye steep slope behind the school, hauling one load after another of cement, bricks and sand up to the site of the water filtration system. I'll put more info on the water system in tomorrow's post.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent playing with the soccer balls, Frisbees and badmitten sets we brought with us. The kids had a great time, as did our entire team. The children are extremely poor, and yet they are exceedingly happy. They are all polite and respectful, but quick to smile and laugh. It is such a pleasure to teach and play with these kids, and I really believe we are gaining a lot more from this week than they are.

Tomorrow we teach the last of the hygiene classes to the 8th and 9th graders. We will also continue work on the water system and just hang out with the students. I have attached several pictures as well as a one minute video. They can't really convey everyting we are experiencing, but I hope they give you a little taste of what's going on here this week

Thanks for your support,and look for more updates tommorow (assuming I can manage an internet access again)

JF

Here are couple of picsfrom today. Much more tomorrow.

Local 6 year old Hmung "salesman" carrying her 2 year old sister. Many of the ethnic minorities in town earn money by selling trinkets to the tourists. THis young girl was also responsible for taking care of her even younger sister.

Getting ready to board the train to Lao Cai

We're in SaPa!

After traveling overnight via train (an interesting experience in itself), we arrived on the Vietnamese/Chineese border in the town of Lao Cai around 6 AM today. We then caught a van ride to our final destination of SaPa. After unloading, we enjoyed a hearty breakfast and toured the surrounding area. I am having trouble establishing internet contact with my laptop, so I can't upload any pictures today. But trust me, this is a beautiful area. We have had an opportunity to talk with some of the citizens here in town, but tomorrow is when we start the real interaction. We have been preparing for and rehearsing our hygiene lessons for the school children. There are a total of 4 lesson plans that we will be presenting, translated into vietnamese by our interpreters. The basic concepts of personal hygiene that we take for granted are totall foreign here, and education like this can go a long way towards alleviating disease. We have also heard that the water system installation is progressing, and we will be able to lend some physical labor on that task as well.

The team is ready and anxious to get into the meat of our trip. We have had several opportunities to discuss things with our guides and hosts, who come from a distinctly different background than we do. Please continue to remember us as we try to make a difference in this land of friendly and gracious people. If my computer woes are resolved by tomorrow, I hope to have a much more informative post for you to peruse.

Type you later,
JF