Laos – Through A Student’s Eyes
Mud puddles, rainy days, dancing, sign language and green forests, French Colonial buildings built bare blocks down from temples decorated red and gold, with carvings so precise they make you feel as though you’ve stepped into an alternate world. Laughing children, with so little, yet so much in the world, waving at you from gardens and street sidewalks. These small, quiet moments, when you step back to just admire the universe that our God created, so full, so overwhelming in its intricacy, so perfect. A mind far above ours could begin to conceive the reasons for each corner of it, but as we are, we can do little more than stare in wonder at it’s majesty… This is Laos. Beautifully tucked away like a hidden gem, that takes an eye for the finer details to truly appreciate. Once discovered, however, falling in love is the only possible answer. Laos captivated us from the beginning.
We began our time here with a happy reunion: the Eastbound team, their time in Laos overlapping with ours, was with our host when we arrived, giving us the opportunity to share our journeys with each other. Travel Challenges, testimonies, stories leaving those within hearing distance clutching their sides with laughter, we spent a wonderful 10 days together, serving and studying. Together we worked to clear land on our host’s small farm, taught English, acted in skits for the deaf children we came to help serve and learned sign language. Amidst the work, the team realised this was our third country, already we were half way through our year in the nations! With only three countries left on our list, this year-long journey, intimidating at its beginning, suddenly was reduced to small moments, shared with precious people. We drank in every second, knowing that soon these moments would become memories. As the days become more routine, we begin to get used to our lives, realising that the days slipping by suddenly turn into weeks and months slipping through our fingers, to be fondly looked back upon as a life changing adventure. Moments, so present seconds ago, suddenly become memories, and we begin to understand the meaning of appreciating every second.
With this in mind, we have been celebrating, recalibrating and re-evaluating our time, our vision, and praying about where the Lord wants to take us in this next season. Geographically, the constant change has been a reflection of the change within ourselves, with the challenges coming like a gentle rain, allowing things to grow and change within us that we barely yet begin to conceive. This slow change is incredibly hard to pinpoint, yet undeniable. Waking up one day, we begin to realise we are not the people who arrived only months ago in Jeffrey’s Bay, nervous and unsure what to anticipate. Nor are we the ones that left after two months, ready yet not for the journey ahead. From strangers to companions, unknown faces to a family, sitting around the table, knowing that, albeit temporary, this is the home that we hold in our hearts now.
We are working with a host here in Laos who is very involved in deaf ministry: internationally involved in deaf education, having started a school for these misunderstood children, and working with different projects to spread awareness of the very real, yet not insurmountable challenge that deaf education can present. In some small villages here in Laos, the deaf are looked down upon as less because of their differences. Yet our host is doing tremendous work to turn these misconceptions around and to provide hope for the deaf.
We have truly connected with our hosts in this country, living side by side with them, in their home, learning alongside them, and being treated as members of the family. This has been beyond precious to us, and meant more than the world. When hosts could just leave us to our own devices, and instead choose to love on us, feed us, invite us into their homes, and give us a precious taste of their lives, it is hard to express the love that grows up more quickly than one could ever imagine. As we will have to say goodbye soon, we can’t help but feeling as though we say our goodbyes to family, all over again. It is heartbreaking, and beautiful at the same time, that this year, we have made connections, and met people, who have adopted us into their homes, and who will forever be a part of our hearts. People who undeniably poured into our hearts, who, despite the fact that they had so little time with us, all the same gave their love unreservedly, and without limit. Reflecting Jesus like this, they have taught us the meaning of true love. To pour oneself out, without fear or reserve, no matter how long you may have the person with you, to give everything of yourself, is something so purely of Jesus, that it is so incredible to see still happening today.
As Jesus looked into people’s eyes, saw their hearts, and loved them, so we too, as His followers, must do the same! So often, we think that simply being cordial is enough, that that is what Jesus would have done. But no. Jesus loved people so much, so radically, that He changed their lives after one conversation. His love, unreserved, inspired so much trust in them, that they threw down their nets, their lives, their hurts, their sins, without regret, and with the same unreserved joy with which He first loved them. To be on the receiving end of this love is something so incredible, and so inspiring. If we can go out from this time in Laos with nothing else but this lesson, our three weeks here will have been more than well spent!
We had the beautiful honour to help our host build a garden in our time here, on the farm that we stayed at. Starting with a piece of grassy, but otherwise barren ground, and watching, over the days, as it turned into a beautiful paradise, filled with flowers, with earth ready to receive whatever was planted, trees surrounding it like a protective hedge, sheltering from the sun. As we placed each flower in its place, slowly seeing the final beauty emerge, it was hard not to wonder if this was a taste of what our Creator must have felt like, all those thousands of years ago. Preparing a beautiful place for us to reside, a place where He could walk with us. Preparing something beautiful, knowing that it is not for you, but for the joy it will bring to the people you love, must in some way be a small taste of what Jesus feels when He looks at us.
The metaphor, that He is working, every day, preparing this place, so beautiful, so full of life and colour, so full of joy, for us. It may look messy at times, mud everywhere, plants scattered about and great big trenches running though the middle of it. But, give Him enough time, and those trenches turn to waterways, those scattered plants into flowers gracing every corner. The mud, the earth, one day giving fruit and producing abundance and beauty.
He gives us these physical images to show us pictures of what He feels as He looks at us. Our garden was a small one in Laos, His is an eternal, continuous, ever changing and growing place, woven together from the garden each of us carries in our hearts. His love takes those trenches, that we thought of as so despicable, that mud, that we thought could never have a purpose, and He builds something beautiful.
With only three weeks left on this side of the world, we are drinking in every memory, every moment, knowing that all too soon, they will be over. That the hard times will become good stories, that all the nonsensical moments will become great jokes. That those random pictures will be looked back on with nostalgia, and that no matter what we have in our futures, we will treasure the memories we have of the past two months. We are exited to see what God has for us next, in Thailand, and afterwards, in Georgia, where will be spending most of the remainder of our journey.
Studying, working, travelling, we are grateful for every moment of this incredible year, and so grateful that we get to share it with the people who we love and who have been such a support back home. Time passes swiftly, and there is much left to do. By God’s grace, we hope to see it done, in His perfect time.
Some memories we wanted to share…
Just before our farewell to the Eastbound team, the deaf children at the school Eastbound had been working with for the week put on a small show for us, which they had rehearsed with their teachers. Not knowing the words, or the melody, yet dancing with all the passion in the world, we watched in absolute wonder as their beautiful show unfolded. Telling the story of a tree’s growth, they danced out the life of each tree, as it was planted, grew, became a shelter for them, a protection and a place of joy, as it was turned to lumber and made into a ship… Their expression, their love in each movement, was so incredible to see. Far from missing out, they enjoyed each second of their routine, dancing like it was the last chance they’d ever get. We were floored by the beauty of the dance, and so grateful that they had shared their production with us. Each of the children had such a unique and beautiful way of expressing themselves, and each was so obvious and expressive in their love, we were absolutely humbled to have been a part of their lives for that short week.
With that, we will sign off this month! Until our next country!
-Travel Varsity