As an act of gratitude, the staff of San Sa Ho school wanted to take us out for a special meal, for which they paid.  It was a local practice called Hot Pot.  This was an important step for all of us, because it was a tremendous offer of hospitality on their part and to refuse would have been just as tremendous an insult on our part.

On the other hand, to accept would deepen the bonds of friendship and give us more opportunity to grow in our understanding of one another.

So the choice was obvious if uncomfortable: We were going for Hot Pot.

To my mind, the phrase “Hot Pot” conjured the street vendors in Hanoi who cooked pungent foods with rickety equipment that looked like it had been cleaned sometime last decade.  In my imagination, each pot had an odd meat or other food that we would sample from.

I was pretty close in my initial estimation, and yet the reality far surpassed my mind’s eye.

We were led through town to what appeared to be a house no longer lived in, but in fairly good repair.  We climbed the steps to a larger room where we found 4 tables set with 8 chairs around each.  Each place was set with chopsticks and bowls, the traditional method of eating in Vietnam.  We spread out among the tables and the school staff did the same.

Jerry, David and I sat at one table in the far corner of the room, as did Sherman, the country director of GVI.  Ken and DeAnn sat together at another table while Selena and Emily sat at the other two tables.

The Headmaster (Principal) sat with us as did the Foreman of the paving job we had been working on.

When we sat down, many of the foods were already on the table.  There was raw beef, finely chopped, raw chicken with the skin coarsely chopped, some unknown meat with large and small orange spheres, a plate of boiled and peeled quail eggs, a bowl of tofu, a bowl of tomatoes, a row of prawns and a bowl of various greens.  A little later, someone brought a plate of salmon.

In the middle of the table was the Hot Pot:  a large bowl of broth on a butane burner in which was already cooking some tofu and tomatoes.  The concept of Hot Pot became apparent.  It was like a shrimp boil, where you put different ingredients in the same pot and ate what you preferred.

My initial thought was that this was uncomfortable, but survivable. Until someone set a bowl of Vit Lo (I’m guessing on the spelling) at David’s elbow.  It looked like eggs, but there was something more to it.  More texture.  Jerry recognized them first and it was later confirmed that they were unhatched duck embryos.

I glanced sidelong at Sherman with a half smile and said, “If one of those goes in the pot, I’m done.”  He chuckled and David refused to look anywhere near the Vit Lo.

When we started eating someone dumped the whole plate of chicken into the pot.  I told them I would like to try the beef, so the Headmaster picked up some beef and put it in what appeared to be a wide flat ladle with holes in the bottom.  He set the spoon in the middle of the pot and it cooked there for a few minutes.  He then raised the spoon out of the broth and beef was cooked through.  Jerry and I both tried some and I thought it was pretty good.

Just about the time we were getting comfortable, the job foreman scooped up the Vit Lo and dumped the entire bowl into the pot.

We all watched in stunned silence as they plopped into the mix.  Sherman tried to stop him, but it happened so quickly that it was done before anyone could do anything.  The foreman looked at Sherman inquisitively as he set the bowl back down and Sherman explained that we weren’t used to that.

The foreman asked what we were used to.  Good question.  The honest answer, was “nothing in this room.”

I don’t know what Sherman said in answer.

After a while, I did eat some salmon and quail eggs after the Vit Lo were in the pot.  I looked over at David after eating the quail egg and he had this odd look on his face.  I asked him, “You’re proud of me, aren’t you?”  To which he replied, “Yes, indeed, I am very proud of you.” He said this in a way that made me feel that he was both proud and a little repulsed.

Later, the Superintendent of all the schools in the region dropped in to meet us all and toast us.

However uncomfortable we were, being there did more for our relationships and future work than anything else we have done or could do.

Throughout the night, the words of Paul ran through my mind, “I have become all things to all men that I might win some.”

Sorry for the delay in updates.  Sickness swept through our team 2 days ago, starting with Selena and rapidly settling on David, myself and then DeAnn.

You never know what exactly causes this stuff, but that doesn’t stop you from speculating.  Hot Pot got the blame from DeAnn, but I’m not convinced.

Regardless, I was in no condition yesterday to attempt to describe the culinary diversity that was Hot Pot.

That story is up next.

On Monday, after arriving at the hotel and dropping off our luggage, we set out for San Sa Ho school.

It was important for us to get to the site to renew relationships we had established last year when we installed computers for them.

The leaders and some of the teachers there remembered some of us from a cold night of coffee and conversation last year. They wanted to take us drinking last year, but we tried to explain that drunkenness is against our faith. They took that at our word, but seemed skeptical.

We were thrilled to find that the computers we had installed were still working well and that they had opened great doors. The educators were able to mass produce tests and homework whereas before they had to write every sheet by hand. Also they kept up with grades and organized other things with the office software we installed.

Most importantly, the students were able to see and work on a computer and have practical experience using software. Prior to this, they were shown pictures of keyboards, screens and disks. Explanation was then given as to what these pictures were, how they worked and why. Obviously, pictures of computers and moving a mouse are drastic quality of education improvements.

After the welcome ceremony where introductions and re-introductions were made, we got to work helping to lay down concrete. The workers were finishing the courtyard and after lunch we helped them with the road from the “main” road to the school. There isn’t really anything “main” or “primary” about that road, since where we are is a very rural place.

The road that we are now paving is a dirt road that gets very muddy in the rain and concreting it will be a great improvement for them. It is also uphill.

We weren’t trusted to mix or spread the concrete. I suppose that’s considered skilled labor. Our job was to haul sand, rocks and bags of concrete to the top of the hill. All afternoon long. This is what we will do all week.

That would be frustrating as well as exhausting, but the gratitude expressed to us for our partnership makes it all worth while. This is not a “good” assignment for the teachers or staff, but our partnership has increased the quality of education tremendously and the moral has gone through the roof. We are constantly being engaged in conversation and they are helping us do dirty work in their nice clothes. The appreciation is evident everywhere.

We are taking the UV Filtration system out today, but someone else will likely install it as it is complex. It will be the first clean drinking water the children raised in this community will ever have had.

As a token of our thanks, the staff wanted to take us out to celebrate again. They wanted to take us to “Hot Pot” and if that seems scary to those reading back home, let me assure you that it is more so here.

Let me also affirm that it lived up to its expectations. That story next.

In previous years we’ve flown from Tulsa to DFW to California to Taipei to Hanoi in our humanitarian aid efforts.  This year we saved both money and time by flying from Tulsa to Chicago to Seoul to Hanoi.  We cut out a flight and a layover which decreased our overall travel time from about 36 to just under 30 hours.  It also cut our costs by about $300 per person.

After arriving in Hanoi about 10:00 pm on Saturday evening (9:00 am Saturday morning in Tulsa), we had to pick up our visas on arrival at a special desk.  Typically, we would have had our visas already, but the Tet celebration in Asia bogged down the process and resulted in our heading for the “Visas on Arrival” desk.

I think that this procedure is typically smoother than it was for us, but a group from a country in western Europe was in front of us and had bogged everything down.  They couldn’t communicate with the officials and weren’t being very cooperative so everyone paid the price.

Finally we received our visas, passed through immigration, tracked down our luggage on the other side of the airport and walked through an empty customs desk.  Our good friend Tim delivered us to the Bao Kahn hotel in Hanoi just after midnight.

You might say that we were exhausted and if you did say that, you would be right.  Sleeping on planes is difficult and sleeping in beds is a welcome respite.

We were boarding the night train to Lao Cai/Sapa/San Sa Ho that night so we had the day to kick around the Hoa Kiem Lake area – a popular place for tourists and locals alike.  We met up with one of our interpreters from last year, Long, who was excited to see us and we felt the same way.

We took some pictures, ate at a couple of local restaurants, Jerry and I got moderately lost and found our way back again.  We avoided fruit from the street vendors.

We got foot massages.  All of us.  No, check that.  Selena went for the full body massage.

At 8:00 pm we gathered in the hotel and headed for the night train.  I’m writing this on my bunk at 4:00 am with jet lag having woken me up in the middle of the night.  When we arrive, we will clean up and then head to San Sa Ho to begin our preparation.  

It is very important to them to have a formal meeting with us when we arrive and we can, hopefully, get this done today so we can start work right away tomorrow morning.  We also hope to organize this afternoon toward that same end.

I’ll be posting links to all the latest Vietnam updates on the Vietnam page.  Because the internet is so sporadic where we are working, I will upload several articles at a time when it is available and my schedule allows.

A group of seven people from Skelly Drive in Tulsa are headed for San Sa Ho in Lao Cai Province.  In last year’s trip, San Sa Ho was one of several places we stopped to work.  While there, we installed a “computer lab,” consisting of 2 networked computers and a printer that Skelly Drive had purchased.

When last year’s group returned and reported first to Skelly and then to our Engagement Administration Team, the consensus was that San Sa Ho should be the primary focus of our efforts in Vietnam for the future.  In the past, we’ve split time between Hanoi and the Sapa areas and last year participated in numerous projects in those areas.  These included working with orphanages and teaching at the Hanoi University of Education in Hanoi, and installing computer labs at a couple of sites around Sapa.

It was our evaluation that, while our impact had been broad, it had also been shallow.  What impact we had was small for each area and there was no follow up.  It came to our minds that good engagement practice would be to focus our efforts on one context and develop the quality of life and relationships there with larger projects and effort.

This year, Skelly has raised money to provide clean drinking water by purchasing a UV filtration system for the San Sa Ho community.  We have also raised enough money to pave the courtyard of the school.  A concrete courtyard will dramatically increase the hygiene for those attending and working at the school.  We’ve raised some additional funds that can be distributed later toward nutrition programs and clothing/blankets as we direct.

The majority of our week will be hand mixing the concrete on the ground, spreading and smoothing it during the day.  Smarter people than us will install the filtration system.  We will also check in on the computers we installed last year to see that all is functioning well there.

We are hoping to begin a long term relationship with the Black Hmong people group that lives in the San Sa Ho area and improve their quality of life tremendously over the next several years.

I have not dropped off of the Blogosphere again.  i have actually been working on yet another graphic, affectionately dubbed “Art’s Charts” by Marty Duren.  At least I think that it is affectionate.  Maybe I’m deluding myself again.

If I am, I can only say that life’s more fun that way.

In the meantime, I need to prepare for that post by writing this one regarding culture as it relates to transitioning a church (or any organization, for that matter).

Culture can simply be defined as a system of values commonly held within a community.  These values guide the actions of the individuals and the whole.  Culture is also fluid as each individual within the community influences the others to increase or decrease its specific values.  So, culture is not uniform across a community.

As an example, within the world community, America has its own culture, distinguishable from England, French, Russian, Ugandan, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Mexican and Kenyan… just to name a few.  Yet even within America, the differences between regions (North/South, Midwest/Northeast/West Coast) and even within regions (Louisiana/Georgia) is obvious to those immersed in those cultures.

All of this is to say that culture is as specific as the community to which it belongs.

For American churches, we deal with a massive host of ingredients: National, regional, state, local, evangelical/liturgical, denominational (or “non-denominational”) and so on.

The sway of these components create expectations among the individuals, and those expectations are as diverse as the individuals within the community.

If culture is a fluid, dynamic system of commonly held values that govern our behaviors, then there will be a fluid, dynamic of commonly held expectations that everyone involved will adhere to those values.  This in itself creates and holds tension within the community.

To attempt transition means that you are saying to the community that certain commonly held values are no longer held as high as they once were while certain other things previously not valued should be.  Some are likely to respond well as you will be championing similar values.

For others, it will seem that you are telling them that they are and have been wrong.

That may not be what you are trying to say (most times it shouldn’t be), but that’s the undertone and it will be noted.  And, it creates resistance.

It is why transitioning a church is one of the most difficult things we can do.  It is why deconstructing everything is important.  You need to understand the current culture to influence it.  You need to know what is going to cause people to throw out the anchor, and what is going to motivate them to make a change.

Questions to ask:

1. What is the history of the church?
2. What do they consider to be the “signature” of the church to the community?  What does that tell you of the values of the church?
3. Who makes up the church?  What are the demographics?
4. How open to change are they?  Have they realized that a shift in values is necessary?  To what extent are they ready?
5. Find the primary influencers within the community. What do they value? How open to change are they?
6. What does the church “do?”  What it does should tell you what it values.