It was love at first sight. Built around seven lakes, Hanoi’s French architecture tells of its colonial past; and food — always, everywhere. Streets, narrow, lined with markets of all kinds. I especially noted meat stalls, workers with cleavers cutting meat or cleaning fish side by side to market gardens and small stores of all kinds. I suspect if you can’t find what you want here, it can’t be found. Hustle. Bustle. Everyone is at work, unless it’s evening; then friends and family eat their meal around cooking stoves.

In a population of 94 million there are 40 million motorbikes. Their crisscrossing seems bizarre, yet with logic in the traffic madness. Polite and kind in their language, forceful, staccato-like – it’s easy to hear. Their currency – a million “dong” equals 44 U.S. dollars – makes everything here seem inexpensive.

In my travels I look for footprints of the Spirit. Vietnam is a country of tragedy, ingenuity and beauty. These past 100 years, as the Spirit birthed a people of God, through horrors of war and still living under Marxist rule, theirs is an apostolic story. In this country of mysterious contradictions there is a groundswell of faith.  It is not always pretty and petty conflicts abound.  Yet they are offset by martyrdom and fearless faith, bridging a divided world by wisdom, grace and the love of Jesus. I hear leaders talk about their care for Communist Party bosses and staff, knowing they too suffer heartbreaks of family and the stress of pleasing their party and are in need of the solace and peace of the risen Lord...

Read the rest at https://www.evangelicalfellowship.ca/Communications/Dispatches-from-Brian-Stiller/October-2016/Grace-in-Vietnam