Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Shining in Vietnam: Efforts in trafficking prevention

Where's Karissa? Not hard to spot. I'm big and white and in the middle of the photo. :)


Our last Shine evening (www.myhillsong.com/shine) was Monday night. We had graduation at one of two American restaurants (Bread of Life--a "project" employing deaf youth) in our city (the other being KFC). We had marble and coffee cakes and banana bread. All 12 girls were there and we presented them with certificates, a rose and The 5 Love Languages, in Vietnamese (a topic we covered one evening).


A youtube clip about Shine in our city of Da Nang. (yes, watch it, it's just two minutes and I made it into the video) :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BMoXdMmbyI

We taught Shine each week in English with a translator. All the girls spoke intermediate to advanced English, but of course were more comfortable with speaking in Vietnamese when talking about feelings and stuff. Their evaluation forms were filled out in Vietnamese, so it may take a while to get those translated before we can share many stories of what the girls learned or thought about Shine.

I have one story to share. One of our translators, Thanh, (front row, blue dress)talked to one of the girls at the graduation and here is Thanh e-mailed us:

"Last nite, while we talked each other , I had time to chat with Suong - one of participant. I asked her that how you felt about this course. She said that before when she heard her friend invite her to come this course, she didn't want to come. But when she know that this course help her the way how to make up and look after her skin, she changed her mind and decide to come. And then she really enjoy this course. She said that she really like the session that have the ice breaker "I'M STAR". After this session, she sticked this sheet on the wall in her bedroom so that every morning when she wake up, she look at it and feel that how valuable she is. This means a lot for her life, especially in this time because she have many trouble now.

When I heard this, I feel so happy and really appreciate your team because what all you can do to show your love to these girls out there. -Thanh


We are very restricted as to what we can do in Vietnam in regards to share our faith, but we can share truth, just avoiding all references. Truth is truth and we believe that the H/S is working in these girls' lives.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing! Btw, I had a hard time picking you out in the picture :)

    ReplyDelete