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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I intend for this to be the last post specifically on the trip from March 2009.  If you haven’t seen all of the posts and pics, you can find them listed on the Vietnam page. Really good lessons learned that will shape us over the next decade as we continue to engage those who the [...]

I’m in the San Francisco airport and I’m noticing so many different attitudes – in those around us and (most disturbingly) in myself. While moving through security, a man wanted past one of our teens and cursed them under his breath as he went by.  This may have happened in Vietnam, but mostly everyone just [...]

I’m sitting in a taxi, in rush hour Hanoi traffic on Wednesday afternoon heading home from Bonnie’s first day of teaching at the University.  The windows are down and we are in a tangle of traffic heading in every conceivable direction.  Most of them are scooters.  Some of them are cars, probably taxis.  A few [...]

GVI has had a long standing relationship with the HUE (Hanoi University of Education – or University of Hanoi).  GVI has made real inroads through the Department of Special Education by bringing in experts in dealing with the issue of Autism, which is very important to the Vietnamese government and Ministry of Education. As a [...]