Volunteer: Philip

First off I will tell you how I ended up volunteering at an orphanage in Vietnam. Well, I am part of a big family with 5 other siblings and our connection to Vietnam comes through the youngest one in the family. She was adopted from Vietnam when she was only a couple months old. Since then the family and I have gone to Vietnam a couple times to help out the orphanage where my sister was from. This past summer I (16), my sister (18), my brother (21), went to Vietnam for a month to work in an orphanage to help the kids that are in the same position that my sister was in. The orphanage had about 210 kids varying in age. While there we helped take care of the babies, helped the kids with some of the chores, did some yard work, started to renovate one of the rooms, and most important loved on the kids by playing with them and just making them feel loved. I could tell you all about it, but would take about 10 pages so I will just tell you two of the stories that meant the most to me.

While there I learned that it truly is the thought that counts, not necessarily the price of a gift. One boy that really showed me this was Neay. After about 9 days at the Thu-duc orphanage Neay came up to me and handed me his ring off his finger. At first I thought he was just showing me it, then I realized he was giving it to me. I almost cried at that moment. Just after knowing me for a little over a week this boy gave me one of his prized possessions. Every time he saw me from then on he would point to his finger and I would show him the ring on my necklace. Every time his face would light up. One night after Nathan and I had a wrestling match against about 20 of the boys at the orphanage, Neay came up to me and pointed to his finger. I reached for my neck to show him the ring and noticed it was gone. After this I realized how much the ring meant to me. I would of preferred to get home just with that one ring more then any of the other objects I had. I looked for it that night but it was worthless it was pitch black. The next morning I looked hard and long but had no luck. I even went to as retracing my steps to a shop that I had gone to that was about 1/2 a mile away. It was about time to leave and I decided to give it one more shot. When the kids saw me searching they bent down and started to search too. With in minutes the boy next to me leaned down and picked up a ring. I still don’t know how it found it. It seemed like he pulled it out of thin air. It was truly a miracle!

One more of the orphans that touched me was Nhi. She was just precious and had something about her where you couldn’t help being drawn to her. But there was a problem. For the first couple days if Nathan or me even came near her she would hide and get scared. Slowly she opened up and then one day out of the blue she gave me a picture. This meant so much. This along with the ring was my most valued possession. Slowly she even started playing with me and wanting to be with me. When we went to the beach with the orphanage she would want to be with me at almost every moment. She would pull me to the sand then the ocean and then somewhere else. I couldn’t help but follow her. A couple times I played with her in the sand rather then playing soccer on the beach, which I would never even consider any other times. It meant so much to me that she wanted to be with me, that I couldn’t look her in the eyes and tell her no.

It has been about a month since I have been in Vietnam and I have thought about and missed the kids almost every day. I miss Neay, Nhi, playing soccer on the concrete for hours in the baking sun, wrestling with all the boys, playing hide-in-seek, and most important making an impact in all the kids lives. I have even had a couple dreams where I have gone back and surprised them all and played the same kinds of games that I played while I was there, just to wake up to notice I was sadly still in America. I can’t wait for the future when I go back and get to see the look on the Neay’s face when I show him that I still have the ring. I have truly fallen in love with about every single kid at the orphanage and will remember them forever.

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