Pastor Jeremy Stephens

Yesterday I learned a lot about the beauty of Saigon. It’s a city of history, good food, and pleasant people. Today, however, I learned about many of the dangers.

Saigon really is a dangerous place despite it’s increasing level of metropolitanism. The motorbikes threaten to run you down at any moment and walking on the sidewalk is no refuge. Yet this is only the obvious part. Stay around a bit and you’ll see more. You’ll see a government that is trying to stay in power yet allowing free enterprise. If you’re a man you will likely be propositioned by workers who were forced into the sex trade multiple times in the span of a few minutes. Then you’ll encounter vendors who want nothing more than to charge westerners a 300% upcharge on their wares.

I went to a few different religious buildings today: a mosque, a buddhist temple, a hindu temple and a catholic cathedral. The scene inside these places was incredible. In the temples I found people prostrating themselves in prayer, and immediately responding to text messages. The mosque and temples each had areas of high importance which had restricted access. Women were not allowed into the mosque and the icons in the temples were hidden in shrines out of reach to their worshippers.

The cathedral was enormous. Inside was probably the lagest amount of open square footage in the entire city. It was simply vast. Interestingly, though, while all the statues in the temples were separate and protected from the people, we were in the same physical space as the icon of Jesus on the cross. It was a powerful statement about our God. While others are distant and/or unseen, our Savior walked and lived amongst us.

Tomorrow we leave Saigon for the town farther down the Mekong Delta where our host university is. While on our five hour trip there I will be wondering what Jesus is doing to transform this dark and dangerous, yet beautiful city.