Day 4 - Where I Saw Jesus

We ate with the group from California. After everybody had eaten, the Buddhist priest shared an interesting custom with us, explaining the Vietnamese tradition of greeting other people by clasping hands and bowing...

The Lotus flower is the most beautiful flower to Buddhists. The Lotus flower grows practically anywhere, from beautiful gardens to refuse heaps, to manure piles. It grows and the buds are oval-shaped, like two hands close together (the way people pray). The tradition of greeting people is to make hands like the Lotus blossom, to recognize the beauty of the Lotus. No matter what kind of person you greet, you are looking at them through the Lotus shape of your hands. This is to remind you that all people are beautiful inside, no matter who they are, no matter where you meet them.

A little while later, the California group returned to their trailers and we stayed behind at the tables where we ate. Our group leader started a devotional about "Where I Saw Jesus." This is a devotional that was started early after Christian volunteer groups started showing up. There was even a blog about Where I Saw Jesus, though it hasn't been used in a long time. Each volunteer from our group thought of where we had seen Jesus this week, or elsewhere, to share with the other people in the group.

So here we were, a few adults and a bunch of teenagers who wanted to give up Spring Break to God. This is where our group leader said he saw Jesus. We had another day of work but a lot of the volunteers kept singing praise to God even after the devotional ended, and the group leader went to bed.