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