USA or AUS
One day after living in Nam Dinh, Vietnam and working at the medical school for a year, we were called into the administrator’s office. We went with our interpreter, Mi, to find out what was happening. There was obviously a problem with something with our visa for staying and working there in Vietnam and the office was in a bit of an uproar. Evidently, the school had submitted some of our paperwork to the Ministry of Health in Hanoi to approve our stay there at the nursing school. Government officials were upset when they saw that we were Americans. Vietnam had just recently opened up since the war to foreigners, and they were upset that here we were, Americans, working and living at the school. Officials obviously were not happy and were putting a lot of pressure on the school administration. Something was wrong and they were looking for someone to blame.
We explained that we had never lied or hidden the fact that we were Americans. They all knew we were Americans from the first time we visited there. It was always out in the open and known by everyone. We served there with an Australian Aid Organization, but we were Americans.
They kept saying that there was this problem and that we had lied and had put in the space marked for nationality AUS instead of USA. (AUS is the abbreviation for Australia.) They acted like we had tried to slip a fast one by them and sneak into the country like spies. They all just kept talking among themselves in Vietnamese. Mi, our translator, was doing her best to interpret for us what was going on but also we realized she had to be careful because if she defended us too much they would think she was not loyal to the school and she would lose her job. Once we understood the problem, we were able to try to talk them through it by explaining that we had always told them we were Americans and everyone there at the school, in fact, everyone in Nam Dinh City knew we were Americans living there. But they couldn’t get past the AUS in the box that should have said USA.
I just stood there praying for wisdom to know what to say and help settle this issue. All of a sudden Bob said, “I know what happened! It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t our fault. It must have been the person typing up our information who made the mistake. It is actually just a “typo”. Instead of typing in USA they got the letters mixed up and typed in AUS. No one was trying to be deceitful in this case, but it was just a typo”. Mi interpreted all that for Bob. Immediately, the atmosphere in the room changed and they seemed to be able to accept that because no one knew who had typed the form out and no one would be personally blamed. No one would be losing their job, and we were able to remain there and work at the nursing school another year.
Little things could blow up into big things very quickly in Vietnam. Mostly this was because they still had so much animosity towards Americans. They saw us as troublemakers and deceivers. Over the two year time frame that we lived and worked at that school, most of the people began to trust us and appreciated the fact that we were there trying to help the people. God’s purposes prevailed!
“But the Lord is my defense; and my God is the rock of my refuge.” Psalm 94:22
