by Tess Rivers, posted Friday, June 24, 2011 (13 years ago)
KBAL TAOL, Cambodia (BP)--For a moment, Josh Nguyen thought he was back in Vietnam.
Photo by Tess Rivers
Rubbing the wooden floor of a floating home in a remote village on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake, the 44-year-old physician from Texas remembered the country he left as a refugee in 1975.
Nguyen joined a team of nine other medical and dental volunteers working with the Vietnamese living in floating villages on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. He and three nurses divided into two groups and visited from boat to boat, assessing medical needs and sharing the Gospel. Nguyen, who speaks Vietnamese, also translated for the nurse who assisted him.
The trip was revealing to Nguyen, who saw himself not only in the floorboards but also in the faces and experiences of those he met on the lake.
"I thought we were back," said Nguyen, a member of Second Baptist Church in Houston. "I thought we were boat people again."
While the trip spawned memories for the doctor, it was a wake-up call for Gina Nguyen, 30, a pharmacist from Plano, Texas (no relation to Josh Nguyen).
Gina left Vietnam in 1991 under less difficult circumstances. Although she returned to Southeast Asia two years ago on a trip with her father, this was her first volunteer trip.
The member of Plano Vietnamese Baptist Church admitted she reluctantly signed up for the trip, which included medical and dental personnel from seven Baptist churches, four states and four different ethnic groups. She struggled initially with how best to contribute to the team.
"I can't diagnose. I'm not trained. I didn't think I knew the Bible well enough. I've never been a translator," Gina said. "Until this trip, I thought my apartment in Texas was the center of the universe." Read More
