Sunday in Saigon

After a whole lot of trying, we finally found a church to attend today in Saigon. Sue, our agency director , and I have been trying to locate an evangelical church and last night when we talked to the lady at the front desk at the hotel we found out she was a Christian. She gave us the name and address for the Saigon Evangelical Church.

We got there about 8 o'clock and Sunday School was in progress. They do not have many rooms besides the sanctuary, so everyone met in the sanctuary. There were about fifteen groups seated throughout the sanctuary and each one had a teacher going over a bible lesson with them. We waited around until Sunday School was over and then a gentleman directed us to a special section of the sanctuary. There we were given a set of headphones and an English translator translated the entire service to us. The church held about 500 people by my count and it was overflowing. Shortly after the service began, Jett had a bought of diarrhea and ruined his clothes. DeanAnne took him out and changed his clothes. Before she came back an usher came and asked her to let the nursery keep Jett so that she could hear the service. After a week here there is one thing I can tell you about these people, they are extremely kind and compassionate. DeanAnne took Jett to the nursery and felt comfortable doing it (for those of you who know DeanAnne, that says a lot for the nursery). After the service we went down to pick Jett up and he was asleep on the caregiver's shoulder. The service was extremely interesting and the pastor delivered a message entitled, "Where's Your Faith?" He used a scripture from the New Testament about the disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee during a storm. Jesus was asleep on the boat and they woke him up, terrified that they were about to die. Jesus stilled the storm and asked the disciples "where is your faith?" The sermon really spoke to me as it seems Vietnam has been our "Sea of Galilee" and at times we have to be reminded that nowhere on this earth is out of His reach.

The translator that took us to Tay Ninh the other day stopped by and brought us some Vietnamese fruit. I don't know what all of it is, but the spiny one that looks like a sweet gum ball is a rambutan. The large pink and green one is a dragon fruit I think.

Tomorrow we will have our Giving and Receiving ceremony if nothing changes. This is an official ceremony where we will sign documents and after it is over the country of Vietnam will recognize us as Jett's legal parents. We leave early in the morning, so we are making final preparations tonight.

We went out walking tonight and it ended up pouring while we were out. We waited for about 30 minutes and the rain never broke so we went into the closest restaurant and had dinner. After dinner it was still raining, so we caught a cab back to the hotel and started getting ready for bed. Here are a few pictures of Jett at bath time. He seems to be doing better now and his fevers are lower and less often. Maybe now we can keep him well until we get back home.That's all for today. Pray for G&R pictures tomorrow.