Lance and Kristen Baker

Recently we received a special gift to update the library at Promise House. The library had outdated books and many old, worn books. We wanted to give the children a library they can learn from and enjoy.

Chau and Kristen spent many afternoons over a period of two months buying all the books. The Promise House library is now the home to encyclopedias, books to learn English, books about science, comic books, picture books, fairy tales, novels… you name it, it’s there.

A few of the categories.

Chau and Kristen put a lot of work into the library.

Going through the old books.

Checking out the new books.

After all the books were purchased, Chau, Kristen, and some of the older girls cleaned out the old books, wiped shelves, and organized the new books by category and with a call number.

The long process of putting call numbers on all the books.

Just a few more books to categorize and the library will be complete. Once it’s complete, we will go over rules about how to take care of books, how to check them out, and how the library is organized. After that, the library is open! In the meantime, we can’t keep the kids out of there, they are so curious and eager to look at all the books!

Tam and Nghia found these masks in an old storage box. Too funny!

On July 27 we will be returning to the U.S.  Our time in Vietnam has totaled almost 2-years and they have been some of the most rewarding and transforming years of our lives.  For every story that we’ve shared on this blog, there have probably been 5 more that we just never had the time to write about.  So much has happened and we have had the opportunity to be a part of so many peoples lives.  We are looking forward to returning to the U.S. but are sad to leave so many wonderful things behind here in Vietnam.

We have been so blessed by the number of people who have faithfully and joyfully contributed to our work in Vietnam.  It is difficult to ask for money but because of your generosity, we have rarely had to do so.  However, we are asking for your financial support just one more time.  Kristen and I need financial support to provide for our return flight to the U.S.  After that, we just ask that you would keep us in your prayers as we will need buy a car, find jobs, a place to live, etc.  We have finally managed to establish ourselves in one culture… now we must reestablish ourselves back in the U.S.!

For information on how to support us visit our donation page.

Thank you for all your help and support.  We look forward to seeing all of you in person very soon.

Sorry we haven’t posted in a really long time! Life has kept us busy here.

Our good friends, Bridge and Hilary, visited us for 10 days, and we had so much fun exploring, driving, eating, and living together.

One of the things we did while they visited was host a party for the kids in honor of International Children’s Day, an important holiday here.

After much planning and preparation, we were able to have games, crafts, and prizes for all of the children. We arrived to Promise House around 1:30pm to prepare for the 2pm party, but the children were still sleeping at 2pm, so we had to wait for them to slowly wake up. In the meantime, Lance and Bridge we out to buy Nuoc Mia (sugar cane juice) to give to the kids when they woke up.

The party was a lot of fun, and we got to play a lot of games the children have never played before. The water balloon toss was especially fun, we had 3-4 rounds of it. Two boys, Vu and Long, won two times in a row, so for the third time I added soap to their balloon! They laughed at it, then continued to roll their balloon in dirt to make it easier to grip. Very smart.

Another game was a bean bag toss (well, bean bags filled with rice!). We collected boxes a few weeks before the party. Bridge and Hilary prepared the boxes for the game by cutting holes in the tops for the bags to fall into.

The final game was a drawing contest. We put the kids in pairs, gave them 3 colored pieces of chalk, and asked them to draw a pictures. The winner of the drawing got candy. The pictures were all so beautiful!

We had raffles for the kids, just like we had a Christmas. It was fun for them around Christmas time, and they seemed to really enjoy it again.

We ended the day with a beads project. When we started the project, the beads were in their bowls so nicely and the kids were so diligent. By the end of the time, beads were all over the table and floor! A few of the kids made necklaces for Hilary and Kristen.

It was a beautiful day, we’re so glad that Bridge and Hilary could spend it with us!

(Lance writing)
While Kristen and I primarily work with Promise House orphanage, we do a lot of miscellaneous things in the Orphan Voice office.  One of the things I do is work a lot with media.  This may entail collecting photos from various activities throughout the month to put on the Orphan Voice website or to send to donors to share about our work, updating the website or organizing the photo and video files in the office.

More recently, Orphan Voice has started using video as a way to show more about what we do here in Vietnam.   Orphan Voice has a number of programs: family preservation (food delivery and micro-enterprise), anti-trafficking initiatives, work with special needs children and orphan care.   I recently finished a short video introduction of Orphan Voice’s “Orphan Care” program.  You can see the video below.

(Lance writing)

Well we normally try to keep our blog focused on our work with Orphan Voice and relationships with friends but I had a couple fun adventures that I thought would be fun to share with you all.

Mountain Sunrise

A couple weeks ago my friend Robin and I decided to drive to the top of Monkey Mountain here in Da Nang to attempt to get some good photo and video of the sunrise.  We knew it would take about an hour to get to the top of the mountain and decided that we needed to leave about 4:30am.

At 4:30am we meet on our motorbikes near the beach and began our ascent in the still pitch black morning.  It was actually quite a rush winding up through the wide open mountain road, our small headlights illuminating the way and the atmosphere silent except for the sound of our motorbikes.

A good portion of the drive was along the coastal road but toward the end of the peninsula the road takes a sharp turn to the left and becomes insanely steep.  I know our motorbikes aren’t the most powerful things in the world, but even in first gear we barely had enough power to climb the steep and narrow road.  After a few minutes of climbing the narrow road that weaves through the dense jungle, a heavy fog began to set it.  An already eery drive became even more so between the darkness, the fog, the narrow winding road and the sounds of the jungle on each side of us.

Since it was so foggy, this is the only picture I was able to get from the mountain.  This is about halfway down.

This story is a classic example of “it’s about the journey, not the destination” because when we finally got to the top of the mountain, it was too foggy and we realized that we were actually in the wrong part of the mountain to get a good view of the sunrise anyway.  We continued to drive across the top of the mountain and back down the other side.  We had a great time despite our disappointment in not catching a beautiful sunrise.

The Swimming Hole

The second adventure occurred last Saturday.  Friends Robin, Jeremiah and I decided to drive an hour or so north over the Hai Van Pass to try and find this natural park preserve that we had heard about.  Driving over the Hai Van Pass is one of the most beautiful journeys I have experienced in Vietnam.  It just continues to climb and climb continually boasting HUGE vistas and gorgeous views of the ocean, rice fields and forests.  By the time we drove up and down the other side of the Hai Van Pass it was already an amazing trip.

The Hai Van Pass Road

We stopped for ice-coffee at the top of the pass.

After asking a few locals in the city of Lang Co about the park, we realized it was quite a bit farther than we had planned to drive that day so we decided to explore a local road that led us through a beautiful water-filled valley basin.  We stopped to visit with some water buffalo who very uninterested in us and quite content bathing in the cool water.  They must have inspired Robin because it was just few minutes up the road that he decided he needed to go for a swim.  We stopped on a small bride about 20 feet above the river water below. Robin, perhaps a little unwisely, decided to jump into the river below without knowing how deep it actually was.  (See the video here: Bridge Jumping)  Thankfully, it was plenty deep and he proceeded to jump a second time at which point a young man drove up on a motorbike and told us about another swimming hole nearby.

We followed the young man off the main road and onto a series of smaller, rougher, dirt paths and through some small villages and rice paddies till we finally came to a small house in the middle of the countryside. The family came out to greet us and seemed friendly enough.  They told us to park our bikes there and that we had to walk the rest of the way.  We continued to follow our new friend through a field and a small forest, not really knowing what to expect, when we suddenly came upon a beautiful river decorated with massive grey boulders.  It didn’t take long for us all to jump in and enjoy the coolness of the mountain water on a hot, sunny day.

We swam, relaxed for a while and talked to a few people who were also there for a swim.  To me it was just the perfect picture of beauty, not just the river but the whole days journey there.  The motorbiking through the mountains, the adventure of following some random guy down some difficult dirt paths, the rock jumping and swimming and community of friends (both Robin and Jeremiah and the people we met along the way).

Water Buffalo – Who’s looking at who?

Beautiful countryside.

This is how the road was for a good 15 minutes.  A guy in front of us got stuck while carrying a load of pots and pans on his motorbike.

A house we walked by- much like the one where we left our motorbikes.

We had to walk for about 15 minutes to reach the river.

The River.

Jumping in.

I didn’t think about this initially, but I guess both of these stories have to do with failing to reach an intended destination or to accomplish a certain task.  We never captured the sunset that we had planned all week to photograph and film and we never made it to the nature preserve- but the process of “failing” actually turned out to be a series of great stories and experiences.  I don’t know how to tie all this together into a final finishing statement… but I guess I am just reminded that there is a lot of life that we will never experience if we don’t set some goals and at least attempt to pursue them.