The setting was the summer of 1995. I had just turned 14 and was in that awkward space between junior high and high school. I was still adjusting to a new town that my family had moved to a year earlier.

So what did I do with myself? I decided to write gushing letters to food companies in an attempt in hopes of reaping a harvest of free stuff. Here's a verbatim sampling of these bizarre (and highly succesful) excercises in flattery. For brevity, I've only included my signature sign off in the final letter.

To put it simply, Tom Sine's The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Timeis an encyclopedia of the new movement in the Evangelical church in Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States.

I received a review copy of The New Conspirators: just before leaving for Vietnam a month and a half ago. I carried the book with me through 3 long train journeys, fully intending to read it on each one. Then, quite unexpectedly I found myself with a large amount of time in a clinic room while my traveling companion recovered from a collapse due to altitude sickness.

A week ago on Saturday Charletta and I were sitting down for an afternoon chat when I got a call from a friend telling me that my Dale had had a stroke that morning. An hour later I found myself outside the door of the ICU at St. Mary's calling through a list of Dale's friends to give them all the news. He had developed a brain aneurysm that was leaking. The prognosis was grim.

Less than a week ago, on April 10th, a paramilitary group issued a new letter specifically threatening the Miner's federation along with local priests and other human rights and development workers in the region. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

We wish to warn you that as of this moment you are military targets of our organization and that your names are on the national government's list of undesirables who must be eliminated… For that reason, for every delinquent act that you organize in these towns [in Southern Bolívar] you will be exterminated one by one… [sic] …tell your relatives that they must start to dig your grave

At 2:05 pm on Saturday, April 5 I arrived home.

It was three months to the day after I left for Colombia. Thought I spent a month at home between Colombia and Vietnam, this winter has been a period of an exceptional variety of international travel for me, probably more then I'll have again for a very long time.

This week has been one of much traveling within north Vietnam. We visited both Ha Long bay, possible one of the seven wonders of the natural world and Sa Pa, a beautiful mountain outpost in a region home to many Vietnamese hill tribes. Here are some of my photos. As always, click the photo to see the bigger version.

On Saturday evening, Dale and I sat down for supper with four members of the Mennonite Central Committee based here in Hanoi. Rachel, Anna, Brent and Ruth told us stories from their time here that provided a wonderful window into the work of MCC in this country as well as daily life here in the city.

Since Monday morning, Dale and I have traveled by train from Saigon to Hanoi, a total journey of 29 hours. We stopped over for two days in Hue and traveled by boat up the Perfume River. Below you can see a collection of the photos that I took from the train and the boat.

Saigon is known as a city of neon. Wandering through the streets at night is liking walking through a vast neon rainbow. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw that each arch in the cathedral was lined with white neon. An extra neon arch framed the crucifix high above the altar. My first reaction to the lights was that they were an unfortunate aesthetic choice, but as the service went on, the neon lights grew on me. After all, they were an accurate reflection of the city itself.

This morning, a little before 9 a.m., we headed south from Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) towards the Mekong Delta. Along with Dale, we were accompanied by another Vietnam veteran and his Vietnamese wife. They were friends of Dales who happened to be visiting Vietnam at the same time as us and invited us along on a boat trip on the Mekong river.