Memorials and “Final” chapters

What we hope most to have accomplished in the few months we have lived, loved and wandered among the peoples of Vietnam is to have embodied in some way the example and teachings of Jesus Christ. Looking backwards as we now can on the paths we have taken in this journey, and more especially on the lives of the people we have met, loved and served, we see so many interesting stories, and so much of the sorrows, sadness and struggles of life, mixed wonderfully with moments of joy, happiness and fulfillment. As in Vietnamese cuisine, the sweet, spicy, salty, hot and savory, together with flavors and sensations not well described in English, come together to make a marvelous fusion of experiences that intensify and reinforce the feeling of satisfaction and fulness. So is life as a servant of God on a mission to bless his children. There are many flavors, textures and sensations that enrich us.

But unlike a meal which comes to a pleasing climax and resolves with a little “mouth decoration” as desserts here are termed, in a mission with real people and real lives, the course is often not finished and fulfilled by just one person. We are forced to put aside many books seemingly in mid-sentence, still hanging on what verb will dominate the remainder of the story and which object will be the consummation of the phrase. We know there are yet many chapters still to be written, twists and turns in plot and theme before the grand story is revealed and the Author’s mind and will are revealed.

We first met Brother Sharp two years ago on one of our first visits to the Mekong. We stayed in the village hotel, with it’s hard bed and the geckos prowling the walls for any insects that ventured in. We met him and his daughter at the head of the dirt path that lead in a kilometer or so to their home on the edge of the rice paddies. Flat and green, yet soured by a dry season that meant salt intrusion, those fields seemed in some ways a metaphor for their lives. He and members of his family had joined the church while living in Cambodia and had felt unity with the saints they met. They weren’t looking for “the true church” per se, but enjoyed the fellowship and accepted the doctrines. But when they moved back to Vietnam to resume work as the opportunities improved, they were far from the pleasures of that fellowship, and the dry ground invited other influences into their lives that soured the crop a bit.

So while they welcomed our visit, they had a different perspective on their spiritual needs at that time, and their affiliation with the larger international church didn’t seem essential to what they sought day to day. They prayed, they sang, they gathered together from time to time, security forces willing, and that was enough.

Our path took us back to their province 18 months later. Sudden losses had entered the family when a son-in-law had passed away suddenly, as though hit by lightening, and their daughter was now struggling to keep that arm of the  family going. As we shared their sorrows and thought about the blessings of being able to bear up the burdens placed on us, we invited them to consider whether temple worship might not offer them strength and comfort. Again we were warmly welcomed as friends, but understanding and hunger for the full plate of gospel blessings was still not evident. I had thought it unlikely following that visit that we would see them again. But circumstances can change.

While planning our trip for the Mission Branch conference this past weekend, word arrived that Brother Sharp had himself passed away and would be buried the following day. We couldn’t make the five hour trip for that, but determined to include a visit there in advance of the branch conference.

The last kilometer of the trip to the blue and white house was now paved in concrete, but the sun was still hot and much  of the path very exposed. The rice was again planted, now just showing sprouts for the first rainy season crop, the paddy partially flooded already from the first week of rain. We found the house, where now were two graves, one still in the final stages of construction, and the other completed but not fully adorned as a more prosperous setting might have required.

As we hugged, and held hands, shared faith and offered comfort a renewed sense of unity and a deeper desire seemed to arise in the hearts of not just the widow or her children, but also in the hearts and minds of their many friends to whom Bro Sharp had been the group minister, ex officio and pro tempore. “Will you come and bring us into the fold, we who have been cast out, and forbidden from meeting” by those in authority or of greater means, was the plea both spoken and implicit as we talked.

I had not ever dedicated a grave before, not in English, much less Vietnamese, but the blessing of comfort and hope from the ministering of authorized servants with priesthood keys, seemed clearly to have brought us there for that purpose, and through the accomplishment of that end, the beginning of a new chapter.

I have wondered how the spirit led early missionaries to Benbow farm where so many were waiting to receive the gospel and who became a vital infusion of strength and faith into the developing church. And I have wondered how missionaries found my ancestors living and working the farmland many, many miles from Stockholm or Uppsala. It is less a mystery to me now, as I see how farmboys from tiny villages in Nghe An become missionaries and then branch presidents, how the children of officers and magnates from distant towns and counties receive the gospel and rise up to bless their fellows and families as Zion is established. And I can see how the congregations of the faithful, through their prayers and entreaties, also bring the servants of God to their doors to minister, and comfort, and teach. It is only the beginning of course, and the many chapters and sequels yet to be written will no doubt be even more engaging and marvelous, but it is a tide of gathering, of refining, of building, that will not be turned back. And it will metaphorically turn the intrusion of salt that sterilizes the land into a salting of the earth that redeems and seasons the abundant harvest.

Wheat fields ready for harvest Simtuna, Sweden- Quê ngoại của tôi