Da Lat: Day 2

On Sunday morning I woke up at 6:30 am, before my alarm went off, rolled out of bed, and walked to the hotel's restaurant. I stood in front of this locked door for a bit before realizing I had to get in another way. I found the correct entrance and sat down, ordered my bread, scrambled eggs, and Lipton tea with milk. Then Jill and DiDI came and joined me after a bit. I ate quickly, left early, donned my black and white dress and Jill's little white sweater, and headed across the street to the church at 7:45 am.

An older, very friendly Vietnamese man greeted me and ushered me to a pew on the right side of the church, towards the back. I was then joined by a Caucasian guy and his wife. We got to talking (quietly, as three different Bible study groups were occurring around us) and found out that this was a Protestant church, and he teaches English at the local college, speaks almost no Vietnamese, and is originally from Philadelphia. He explained to me that they have students from the university that come to the church services and translate for us. I plugged the headphones I was given into the jack I found on the back railing of my wooden pew and felt like I was in the U.N. I then turned around to find another older couple who wanted to know where I'm from. Apparently they lived in Hamden, CT for a while and their nephew graduated from Hobart a couple years ago. Small world.

The service began promptly at 8:00 am and I noticed that all of the female parishioners sat on the left and the males all sat on the right. The place was so packed that some men had to stand in the outside aisles as well. Most people were wearing nothing dressier than jackets and slacks. The service began with the hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy," sung in Vietnamese. I removed my translation headphones, grabbed the nearest hymnal, and sang along as usual. Singing with the tones of the Vietnamese words turned out to be easier than I had initially thought- you add the tone (up, down, short, etc.) onto the end of the note before you move to another one.

Then the congregation said the Nicene Creed, which I could only mouth/whisper in English because they didn't provide or display the translation. A middle-aged Vietnamese woman (who I think was a deacon) then read from the Book of Solomon and we sang "Great is Thy Faithfulness." The song lyrics appeared on a Powerpoint presentation that was displayed on a screen to the right of the altar.

Then there appeared about 20 people in robes on the small altar and it was announced that they were baptized into God's family yesterday (which made a grand total of 67 for this year). All of them were at least older than 15 years old and half were men and half were women. They were presented to the congregation, sung the hymn "Meeting Jesus," and then the pastor, a middle-aged, balding Vietnamese man, gave them their baptismal certificates. One woman from the group of the newly baptized stood up at the lectern and spoke for about five minutes about her thanks for the support, classes, and teachers. She also made sure to ask for the parish's continued prayers in order to help "save them from sinfulness and temptation," which was mentioned more than once in the service. Their prayers also featured the reoccurring phrase "all children of God" and the word "Jehovah," which I found interesting. They end all of their prayers with "All this we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen." instead of just "Amen." Anyways, a guy stood in the center aisle and freely took pictures of the newly baptized people and then sat back down. That was when I noticed the running camcorder mounted high up on one of the pillars inside the church. That was when I borrowed a pen and began to take notes on the service. This led me to many thoughts about the fine line between praying and participating in the service and observing and taking notes.

Interestingly enough, the first group of newly baptized dispersed and was replaced by three H'Mong men and four H'Mong women. It was then explained that these seven people were also baptized yesterday (and came from almost 100 km away, where they live) and they then sang "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing" in H'Mong, which was downright amazing. It made me realize how much of a great thing the Church is in Viet Nam, yet I still have mixed feelings about converting the H'Mong (and other tribal) people. They were wearing their traditional H'Mong brightly-colored scarves and garb. This conversion to Christianity means a certain loss of tradition for them, yet isn't religion all about changing as a result of transformative and transcendent powers as we search for the sacred?

They finished singing and said Psalm 103 responsively, and this was followed by the choir's anthem. This church choir was 30 singers, mixed voices, half men, half women, and mixed ages. As the guy from Philly explained to me before the service began, the mixed choir started at this church in 1975. The new Communist government regime told the church that they couldn't teach Sunday School so the parishioners began having the kids meet weekly for choir practice. The singing was coupled with Bible stories and the problem was solved. As I listened closer to the choir's sound, I was surprised to discover that they were being accompanied by a synthesizer.

After the choir's anthem came the Prayers of the People, which was led by the female deacon. She focused on their elderly and ill parishioners as well as the Vietnamese people in the Central Region who have been affected by the recent storms and flooding. She also mentioned that prayers will continue for the acceptance and safe passage of paperwork for their newly proposed Christian education building. They all seem so excited about that prospect.

The next hymn was "Give You Best to the Master" and the offering boxes were brought to the altar by two men. The female deacon then read the Gospel from the lectern (Ecclesiastes 3:1-15) and the pastor got up to preach afterwards. It was all pinpointed very nicely (albeit in Vietnamese) on the projector screen beside him.
He began by welcoming the visitors to the church and remarking on the recent cold weather before starting in on the current state of the world. Global warming is taking its toll, as is evident by the recent storms and flooding in central Viet Nam, and oil prices are rising at a frightening rate. His point was that the world and our lives change so much and so frequently. We should rely on God for strength, direction, and guidance. Just as he started to describe our duty to serve God, a man tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that someone needed to talk to me outside. I went outside and DiDi told me that our group had been waiting for me because we were supposed to be trekking almost half an hour ago.

It was so hard for me to leave the service and I was angry (couldn't they have just left me there?) and even a bit embarrassed. I am never late and certainly never purposefully late. I got changed quickly in my hotel room and went out to our bus, where I apologized to the annoyed and unchanging faces of my professor and his wife. That made me furious and I quickly sat down in the seat next to Tica, who kissed my head and made me feel a bit better. The bus ride was nice and short and our old tour guide, Viet, took that time to explain to us the history of Da Lat. The professor and his wife were over my lateness by the time we got to our destination, which was the top of a valley filled with farms amd multi-colored patches of crops. They were the same fruits and vegetables we grow in the U.S. since the two climates are so similar. We walked down into the valley down among the farms for two hours and slogged through mud, across little log bridges above rushing rivers, greeted the farmers, and took many photos before turning back and going a slightly different route to meet our bus. We got back to the bus at noon and drove down the road to this farm where we ate a great lunch of sticky rice, tofu, beef and snow peas, veggies, soup, spring rolls, and then bananas and caramelized sweet potato for dessert. I sat with the professor and his wife, DiDi, Graham, Natalie, Brittany, and this 23 year-old Vietnamese guy named Phuc. He just graduated from Da Lat University with a major in tourism and he's now a tour guide. He asked our professor if we wished to visit his old university and the impromptu visit was immediately arranged.

By the time we finished lunch, walked through some rows of recently-harvested strawberries, and got back on the bus, it was already 1:15 pm. I fell asleep with my head on DiDi’s lap for the short ride to the university and we then got a tour of the campus from Phuc, talked to some Vietnamese students in English, and I then showed them some camp games like hospital tag.

We left the university on our bus at 2:45 and I was dropped off in the center of town. I got coffee (hot with milk) with DiDi, Sarah, Monica, Tony, Dale, Oliver, and Viet. We sat and chatted for a bit more than an hour and when we paid and left I went with DiDi, Tony and Dale. We stopped at this roadside place and ordered a sampler plate of about five different types of snails. I tried them all, of course, and they were pretty good. We then saw that they had those fetal duck eggs and I had one of those too (see last photo).

I paid, left, and walked back to the hotel with DiDi. We arrived back at the room at about 5:00 pm and I uploaded my photos from Jill’s camera onto my computer and then took a nice hot shower. Jill braided my hair while I worked on renaming the photos and then I began the long task of writing about this day in my journal for class.

We met the rest of the group in the hotel lobby at 7:30. Viet led us on foot to this really nice restaurant downtown and it was a set menu of seafood soup, chicken, spring rolls, beef, and greens, with some fruit for dessert. We talked about scary/freaky personal stories and movies for almost the entire dinner and it was fun and carefree.

After the dinner ended at 9:15 I left with Jill and we walked down the street to a café that was advertising free WiFi. I ordered a hot Lipton tea with milk, checked my email, talked to Andy for a bit, and worked on the journal entry a bit more. At 10:30 pm Jill got a call from Sarah and I assumed it was about our nightly date to sit and watch episodes of the tv show “Friends.” We left shortly after the phone call, Jill found some M & M’s, and we got an extremely cheap xe om ride back to the hotel. Brittany, Sarah, DiDi, and I watched two episodes in my bed before dispersing and I was asleep by 12:30 am.