Imagine a high school romance evolving into a mission of love and service, transforming the hearts of both the lovers and those they serve.
Meet Brent and Stacy Tarr, our inspiring guests and founders of Tiny Hearts of Hope in Vietnam, who recount their journey from Washington State to the bustling streets of Saigon. Their story, filled with moments of faith and challenges, will take you through their decision to adopt a little girl from Vietnam, the cultural adjustments required, and the significant role faith played in their journey.
Now, you may wonder, what is it like to do missionary work in Vietnam?
Let Brent and Stacy give you an inside look. They share their initial experience at a local orphanage that opened their eyes to the harsh realities of poverty and despair. The couple's journey of faith and service eventually led to the formation of a 501 C3, allowing them to start ministering in orphanages. Through their tales of navigating the cultural differences of Saigon, miraculous experiences, and how their children embraced Vietnamese culture, you'll be moved by their dedication and passion.
Don't miss the evolution of their mission trip to Vietnam in 2006 into a full-time ministry. Brent and Stacy offer insights into how they reshaped their business model, expanded their ministry, and quickly adapted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Their decision to stay in the US to care for their aging parents, manage their ministry from afar, and witness the explosive growth of the gospel in Vietnam paints a powerful testament to the power of divine intervention. This episode is not just a heartwarming story but an inspiring testament to how hope and faith can guide our steps.
Imagine a high school romance evolving into a mission of love and service, transforming the hearts of both the lovers and those they serve.
Meet Brent and Stacy Tarr, our inspiring guests and founders of Tiny Hearts of Hope in Vietnam, who recount their journey from Washington State to the bustling streets of Saigon. Their story, filled with moments of faith and challenges, will take you through their decision to adopt a little girl from Vietnam, the cultural adjustments required, and the significant role faith played in their journey.
Now, you may wonder, what is it like to do missionary work in Vietnam?
Let Brent and Stacy give you an inside look. They share their initial experience at a local orphanage that opened their eyes to the harsh realities of poverty and despair. The couple's journey of faith and service eventually led to the formation of a 501 C3, allowing them to start ministering in orphanages. Through their tales of navigating the cultural differences of Saigon, miraculous experiences, and how their children embraced Vietnamese culture, you'll be moved by their dedication and passion.
Don't miss the evolution of their mission trip to Vietnam in 2006 into a full-time ministry. Brent and Stacy offer insights into how they reshaped their business model, expanded their ministry, and quickly adapted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Their decision to stay in the US to care for their aging parents, manage their ministry from afar, and witness the explosive growth of the gospel in Vietnam paints a powerful testament to the power of divine intervention. This episode is not just a heartwarming story but an inspiring testament to how hope and faith can guide our steps.
Welcome to the Mind Body Project podcast. After over a decade in the health and wellness industry, Aaron realized that our bodies change only short-term unless our mindset changes. For long-term success, Both our mind and body are forever linked. We are continually building up new ideas and tearing down old ones in the construction zone we call our mind. After this podcast is over, make sure you give it a like and a share and please subscribe and review this podcast. I would now like to introduce you to your host, the man connecting your mind and body to create a limitless life, Aaron Degler.
Aaron :Welcome back to the Mind Body Project. Thanks for taking a little time to join me today. Please welcome my guest today on the series World Impactors. They were an all-American family. He was crushing it in the business world. He was crushing it as a stay-at-home mom of two. In 2005, God prepared them to show them a hole in their heart for a special little girl, A little girl from Vietnam who would find her forever home and family with them. During the adoption process, God opened their eyes to the poverty and despair of Vietnam, along with a heavy burden of forgotten children of Vietnam. Please welcome my guest today.
Aaron :The founders of Tiny Hearts of Hope in Vietnam, Bretton, Stacy Tarr. Thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you for having us, Thank you for having us Home for a little while, for a few years, About to go back to Vietnam. So we wanted to catch this before you went back to Vietnam for a month. So we're going to get to the orphanage in Tiny Hearts of Hope, but we want to kind of go back a little bit, kind of get to know the two of you before we follow the journey to where you're currently at. So kind of get to know. Did you date in high school Did you have some great. How did you meet story?
Brent:Of course you know, being away from Texas for so long, we always use the joke that she was my favorite cousin. Don't say that around here.
Stacy :I know right.
ANNOUNCER :We might start checking the line and say that our tree does cross.
Brent:We worked in the business world as well and we would always tease about that. We'd come up in Portland, oregon, we were working, and I would go to Kisser and I'd see people going. I thought they said they were brother and sister but I guess we would have met. It would have been 1991, a thousand years ago and I was born and raised in Wichita Falls until I was 12 and then came here. From 12 on she was born in Henrietta, but we crossed paths because I ended up going to Goldberg and finishing up and graduating there and I guess Goldberg was playing Petrolia where she was going to school, and I had broken my foot so I wasn't able to play but I went to the game and I was on crutches.
Stacy :He was flirting with all the girls.
Brent:Why your own?
Stacy :On crutches. Of course you play it up, don't you?
Brent:And I guess we had mutual friends and that kind of brought us together and you know 1991 until I guess we got married in 95.
Stacy :We were 15 and 17.
Brent:15 and 17, high school sweethearts.
Stacy :Don't tell our kids that.
Brent:We've had that conversation.
Aaron :Isn't that hard to believe that when we think of our kids at that age, you think they could get a boyfriend?
Stacy :We were way more mature, right? Yes, I think that.
Aaron :Yes, they could get a boyfriend or girlfriend that could be their spouse for life.
Stacy :Yes, true, kind of crazy.
Aaron :And so after high school, did you go head to college separate ways or go to college together? We got married.
Brent:She was 18, nearly 19, and I was 21. I had been going to school. We both went to NCTC.
Stacy :We got married and went to college together.
Brent:I actually worked right over here at the Walmart through college. Both graduated from NCTC and goodness, we both had jobs out of high school I'm sorry, out of high school, of course, with Walmart, but out of college I got a job offer up in Washington state working for Boeing, and then, of course, she had her hair stylist, see we both worked for Boeing.
Aaron :Because I worked in Boeing.
Brent:And it's funny, my mom said she worked with you in South Africa. I was going to ask you about that. So, yeah, we moved to Seattle. She was managing supercuts and I was working at Boeing up there. I mean, god has always seemed to bless us financially in the business world. God gave us business opportunities, education opportunities. So did you both grow?
Aaron :up in church.
Brent:Neither one of us did no. Not at all.
Aaron :Really.
Stacy :I lived across the street in Heria from a church, so my parents sometimes would say, hey, on Sunday morning you need to go to church. So I just went alone and that's where I got saved is at a church just close to my house, at a church camp. And then Brent kind of probably did the same.
Brent:Well, yeah, I mean here everybody believes in Jesus. I think you know my mom wouldn't go regularly but we went a few times. And Liberty Baptist, in which Star Falls, I accepted the Lord because I was scared of hell and I got a free pencil that said Jesus loves you. And so it never really was real. But both of us coming from broken families, I think we ran to Jesus and ran into each other kind of thing and so when we got together it was like we're going to make this an important part of who we are and I guess it flourished in Washington state because what we found going to Washington was we didn't have family being here where we were close to family, close to friends.
Brent:You know never have left this area to Washington state, which is basically another culture, another language, because we had trouble communicating. Y'all fix them too. I don't understand. So what we did is we found family in church. We said we need to find a church and for really for the first time, we started going to church regularly when you know up in Washington state and we started seeing godly people and said you know what, this is where we need to be. And we started seeing kids respecting their parents. We started seeing just a whole different culture that we had never been raised around and it made us grow in our faith. It made us grow in our marriage, because we couldn't run to mom and dad if we had a fight, we couldn't go, get money and all these things that you would get with the family structure.
Aaron :We really had to rely on each other and we had to rely on God and it brought us closer and you moved there before, had started having kids in Washington state with kiddos, or I guess we would.
Stacy :We moved there straight out of college and we were there for a short time and we knew we wanted to come back home. We just felt like, okay, we want to have kids and come back home, and God just had different plans. So we did get pregnant in Washington state and from there we made several moves along the way to get us to Vietnam, but it was never to Texas. It was never where we wanted to be, which we always wanted.
Brent:We always wanted to be like we'll go. I remember telling my mom I got a job in Boeing. It's in Seattle, we'll just be there for one year. You know, 1996 is when we moved, and then 96, until we didn't really come back officially until 2020 with COVID. But it's neat how God orchestrates things in your past, because we realized had we not moved to Washington and all these other places, we would have had a difficult time going to Vietnam. So in other words, when you go to Washington you might as well be on the other side of the world because it's not something you can drive home to. I mean, it was 2000 miles and so we kind of broke that family tie which kind of directed us to be able to do it like a Vietnam thing. So it would have been extremely hard had we been living here around family and then, okay, we're going to Vietnam. We felt that homesickness early on in 96, 10 years prior to moving to Vietnam. So we'd already kind of cut that in biblical quotes.
Aaron :And then, what year did you start having kiddos?
Stacy :They were born in 99 was our first, so I guess what year did we move off? The year we moved in 96., the oldest Addy in 99. And then two years later, four years later, and so now we're up to five kids.
Aaron :Up to five kids, so you have two. What, and after Washington, where'd you move from Washington?
Brent:We went to Portland, oregon, same state, so we were working in Portland and driving.
Stacy :Different state. Same area?
Brent:Yeah, different state same, no same state, different area.
Stacy :Yeah.
Brent:So yeah, I knew what you meant. So we went from Seattle in about three hours south, to Portland, but we were still living in Washington state and then. So essentially what we were doing is I was, I went from engineering to contract engineering. So we basically said, you know, we can make more money and basically we can kind of see stuff. We didn't have kids at that time, so we were just kind of having fun and it was like, hey, why don't we go to Portland, why don't we go to? And then we move to North Carolina, and then we move to.
Aaron :St Louis, missouri, and when you move those places, do you find yourself finding a church when you get to those places?
Stacy :Every time. That was our first thing that we wanted to do, because that was our family. We were trying to find our people.
Brent:So I think, and ultimately I think, our spiritual journey was making a stronger each move, because it takes a lot of faith to just move to a new area where you don't have friends. You don't know the culture we joke about in Washington state being so different. You really don't. There is a different culture.
Stacy :I remember pushing a stroller around the neighborhood in St Louis and saying I've got to make a friend today. And I went walking looking for other moms pushing strollers and I found a lady and I'm like I know, I just moved here and I don't know anyone. Will you be my friend? And I felt like a little kid but it was one of the best things that I did. I feel like as far as meeting people and growing in it.
Brent:And always got plugged into churches.
Aaron :And when you come from a small community, you used to know everybody, so that is a big change. When you move away, just newly married, into a different state, you have a couple kids. They're getting a little older. What is the conversation you have that you want to adopt? How does that come about? It's all you.
Stacy :I think we had never really had a number in our head that we knew of. We had never said, OK, we're going to have two kids or three kids. But I had a higher number than he had and so he had the number two in his head and I didn't know that.
Brent:Well, a girl for me and a boy for you, and worth for it. It's kind of bookends. We had one of each.
Stacy :We're good In his mind. But two years after Alec, that was our second one. I said, ok, I think we're ready to have another baby and I want to look into adoption. And he was like whoa, whoa, wait a second, we've already got two. I think that's just enough. That's perfect. We can travel, we can do whatever we want. We've got two kids.
Stacy :Good job and so he said, and I was really persistent, and I said well, would you at least pray about it? And he said yeah, I'll pray about it. And so I started ordering materials from different companies about adoption, domestic and foreign, and I just was pulling everything I could in and after I guess a week of him coming home from work every day, he said OK, where do I sign and you can go to what happened there and one back up just a little bit what is your feeling?
Aaron :that you want to adopt rather than have another child biologically?
Stacy :That's a good question. I guess we had seen other people in the church, other believers adopt, and we know that the Bible is pretty clear about taking care of orphans and widows, and we just felt like that's something that we could do, that's something that would bless our family. It's not something that you're taking on a burden, it's a blessing, and however God chooses to bless you with kids, then I think that's a great thing, and so to me it was really no different. I felt like there was a baby of ours somewhere.
Stacy :Now we just had the mission to go find this baby.
Brent:Well, the gospel is very clear, I think, that we are adopted into God's family. So, I mean, the gospel in itself is a story of adoption. And so the story goes. I'd go home and she'd put these DVDs in, of these videos of these cute little kids, and I'd just start turning into a big puddle of goo. But the kicker was I had a seven minute drive to work, mind you, and every day around that time, stephen Curtis Chapman had put a song out called All I Want for Christmas is a Family, and I'd be driving. It seems like every time I'd get in the car that would start playing. I'd be, and finally, after about a week, I said, ok, we need to adopt. There's these so many kids out there that don't have a chance, don't have an opportunity to have what we have a family. So we did, we jumped on it.
Aaron :And so you're going through all these different organizations trying to find the right child.
Stacy :We had a lot of paperwork come in. We were going through several of them. We didn't really know whether it was domestic or international that we were leaning toward Domestic. Where we were in Ohio they said that you had to have the child in your home for two years before it was final and we knew we had two other kids and at the two year mark or anywhere in between they could take the child out and say, no, the family's gotten straight off drugs or whatever.
Stacy :We want the child back, and so we felt like that was too big of a risk at the time with our older kids in the home, and so we started looking into international and Asia, and we had already sponsored some kids through World Vision.
Brent:And so they were both from.
Stacy :Vietnam. It just happened to be. We didn't pick them, it was just kind of our kids picked them off of a table at a VeggieTales concert and they were both Vietnamese and so we were already kind of drawn to Vietnam. So we looked into China, korea, and they had just guidelines that we weren't going to meet and so we said, ok, well, let's look at Vietnam. And Vietnam had only been open at that time for a short amount of time, so there was not a lot of organizations that were adopting through Vietnam. But I got on a chat. It was back when they were like web pages, to where you would go in and chat Just on their web page. It wasn't like today, which was.
Stacy :And there were only a few of them, and the one that I went to just happened to be a lady who had adopted from Vietnam, and she said I'd love to meet with you an hour and a half away. Would you meet me at a McDonald's and we can talk? And I thought OK, and so we met her. She had girls from Vietnam and she was working for an agency and she said you don't have to go with me, but I'd love to just help you, because Vietnamese kids are just great and Vietnamese people are great, and so that's kind of.
Stacy :We went home, prayed about it and we were like, ok, where do we start? So from start to finish it was only nine months. At the time everyone else was saying prepare for two years, be ready for a long wait.
Brent:They'd never met my wife. She was going to the because we were close to Columbus, and so she was going to the state capital every day with the paperwork and doing everything.
Aaron :So then, how did that work? Do you meet the child, do you? How does she just?
Stacy :Each country does different things. Some of them will have two visits to where you go over, you meet the child and then you come back and you wait. We, with Vietnam it was you go over, you meet the child and you bring the child home, which was really appealing because you don't have to wait once you meet your kid, and so that's what we did.
Brent:And they picked the child. So basically we said here's our constraints this age group, this sex. I don't even know if we put a six on it, did we? I think, we, not a said girl. I think we might have said girl.
Stacy :I think we said girl. Here's the window.
Brent:Girls are a higher number usually In Asia, yeah, or most globally yeah.
Aaron :And so you put this is in, you go through the nine month process and you go over there and meet her.
Brent:I guess it was. After six months we get a picture in the mail, at the email back then, and it's like the lady called me and she said did you check your email?
Stacy :And I said no, and so you have to wait. We're out in the country waiting on dial-up for it to load. I'm like oh. And so, as it starts to come up, it said, ha ha, and I thought she's teasing me. This isn't a nice joke, you don't joke like this. So I started looking and I'm talking to her on the phone at the same time and she goes no, no, no, it's hi-ha is her name, her Vietnamese name, and so I said, OK, it's not a joke.
Brent:She's real.
Stacy :But at that time we had told them we didn't want special needs because we didn't feel like we could handle it with two other kids and being away from family, and so that was one of our constraints was a girl under two, no special needs. And when we got to Vietnam I think that's when we Brent, realized first that she had a spot on her head that was flat, and he said have you noticed that she's not using her right side? And so that's when we realized something big is wrong and we don't know what.
Stacy :And so we just I don't know, we were there for a month wondering what's going on?
Brent:Well, god basically just said you're going to Nine of them. In other words, yeah, you didn't specify this, but this is your child. And it's funny because in Vietnam they still do this. They're like do you still want this child? And, of course, god gave us. This is the child that God has designed to be in our family. And they're like well, she's broken, because they still look at that to this day the same way. And we're like no, she's our child. We brought her home to continue.
Stacy :And it's pretty crazy. She doesn't always admit that she's like us, but she's a lot like us in lots of ways she's a tar.
Aaron :So how old were the other two kiddos at this time?
Brent:See she would have been 19 months when we brought her home, which means Alec would have been four, and seven, four and a half.
Aaron :So did they kind of understand the concept when they went with you to Vietnam, they went with us and we talked it up.
Stacy :They made t-shirts for their baby sister. We were preparing them all along the way that we're going to go get your baby sister. It really wasn't. It would be like you would prepare for a pregnancy. I would think You're going to have a baby sister soon, and they really embraced her. She was pretty spoiled from the get go.
Brent:She would try to buy them because she'd been raised in an orphanage. She'd go after them and they would just wrestle with her and, yeah, they became family. We all became family very quickly and it's been a great journey.
Aaron :So kind of explain your thoughts when you first went there to get her, and not just about what you saw. That's the first time in Vietnam, of course.
Brent:We didn't like it. I mean and I thought we'll be very open it's very different than Montec. I mean we're talking overpopulated, hot, sticky.
Stacy :Not many air conditioners.
Aaron :And as we're talking, you've been in Vietnam for a while, so you're wearing jackets. And it's like I'm here because you're on a ferry. We love the food, we love the cold, we love the country, but back then the food was so different.
Brent:We didn't like the food. We didn't like the culture. There was no the corruption. It was dirty. I mean, you name it. We did not like it, but I'm jumping ahead, I guess, but we just I'll let you ask questions. I could keep going.
Aaron :And what year was that? That was 2006. 2006. So this is not a place we really want to be.
Stacy :Let's get in and get out, yeah, and we got souvenirs because we knew that we wanted to have that for her as she grew up. And we may never be back and we're not coming back, If you, maybe, if she wanted to when she was 18, we thought that might be something that we might do. Really, we just thought grab our baby and go.
Brent:At the time I was working for Honda and we had actually lived in Japan for a bit. We loved Japan. Japan was clean and the food was great. We just loved the Asian culture. But then it was like Vietnam, was like Mexico and Japan together. It was like a Mexican version of Japan.
ANNOUNCER :So we did.
Brent:We came back and didn't ever talk about it ever again, up until two years later.
Stacy :Well, I think to go back to Vietnam, while we were there, there was a time to where we went onto the beach and took our kids and we were playing on the beach and one of the little girls that was there was running along the beach, probably five or six years old, and we had learned to say hello in Vietnamese. I mean, we had very little, and so we told her hello in Vietnamese and she just looked at us and she goes why don't you speak English? And I went whoa, wait a second, you speak English.
Stacy :You know, and it was this little Vietnamese girl and she's like, yeah, my parents are over there, and of course she's got white parents and we start to talk to them and we said, what are you doing here? And they were missionaries. And we said, wow, how is it? And they said, well, you can't share the gospel. You know, it's very close and I don't think that we really realized that you couldn't share the gospel, that you couldn't actually talk to people about Jesus on the street, because people didn't, the government didn't want that, and so up until that point we had been. Like the day before we had been sharing, people were telling us oh, you're so great, we bought some stuff for the orphanage.
Brent:I guess that was kind of the birth of Tiny Hearts. Hope was, before we went they gave us a video of Ava and we said we can't just go over there and take a child away and not do something.
Brent:So we started speaking at churches back then in 2006. And we took about $3,500 over to Ava's orphanage and didn't know what that was going to look like and we also got like two suitcases full. She had hit up dentists, mcdonald's and we got McDonald's toys, toothbrushes and brought two suitcases full and $3,500. And then we had. When we picked up Ava, we went to the orphanage director and said what do you have need of? And she gave us a big, long list rice cookers, all of these things. And so we went because we were only there for one or two days and we went to a local place, had the taxi driver take us to a local store and we went in and spent $3,500 in Vietnam.
Brent:That would draw attention even today because that's a lot of money $3,500 US goes a long way in Vietnam, especially in 2006. And we ended up filling up a whole truckload of stuff to take to this orphanage, and at the time I didn't even jump on your time at the time we didn't think much of it, but we were sitting there, we're in the store and it's open. The doors are open and we're buying all this stuff. We drew a crowd and you look out and there's like 30 people around.
Brent:And on the plane, alec, our son, had a little Gideon Bible and one thing we noticed on the plane was in the front of the Gideon Bible it has John 3.16, like 30 languages, of which Vietnamese is there. And so God just kind of put it all together and as we're buying these things, we're out there talking to these people, we had our taxi driver who was our translator, and they're asking questions what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And it just came to us hey, do you have that Bible? And so Alec got the Bible and we had him read John 3.16. And we said do you understand?
Brent:Everybody seemed to understand and we didn't think much of it at the time. And to thank the taxi driver, we said, hey, can we take you out to eat and treat you? And so we took him out to eat and after we had done, of course, all the orphanage stuff and he was just talking to us a little bit, we started talking to him about Jesus and all of a sudden he got really nervous and he was kind of looking over his shoulder and stuff and you could just tell he was extremely uncomfortable about talking about Jesus and he said he was going to go out to smoke and he left us. And so then we met that little girl, and that's when we started putting the pieces together like, oh so it's a legal kind. We were so numb.
Aaron :And he probably didn't want to thing that happened. He didn't want to be associated with us.
Stacy :We were standing out anyway, because we were the only white people around, so we kind of stood out.
Brent:So it's the cogs coming together. We did that, didn't understand it fully, until we met the missionary couple on the beach with their daughter, and then it was like, ok, we did not realize and I think you said it best about Ava's family.
Stacy :I just it broke my heart because they were so closed and they were pretty fearful. They just said we can't share unless we know people really close. So they were even hesitant to tell us why they were there. It was very secretive and so when we started asking questions they just got nervous and they said we really can't share, we'll get kicked out or worse, or you know. And.
Stacy :I just thought how's my baby girl's family ever going to hear about Jesus if the people that are here scared, how do we share? And so that was the beginning of Tiny Hearts. Let's go.
Brent:Let's go. We like to think it was, but then we came back for two years and it was such a hard pill to swallow.
Stacy :We didn't know it was the beginning.
Aaron :We didn't know.
Brent:And we didn't want to go back.
Aaron :So what happens that two years? Is God working your heart or the conversations you're having about Vietnam and and where? Where she's from?
Stacy :any conversation ever talked about it.
Brent:It was funny God was working on both of our hearts independently and I remember talking to her and and just I Know at that time I had felt that heavy burden and been fighting it, been swallowing it. Just push it to the side, push it. They know I don't want to go back.
Aaron :I don't want to go back there.
Brent:Don't be telling me that I want to go back there and then I looked at her and every time I say this I get goosebumps because I remember her face and I said honey, I think we're supposed to be in Vietnam. That's why I get goosebumps Is because I looked at her and she said I feel the same way I've been feeling.
Stacy :We both knew it, but neither one of us wanted to say it, because we didn't want to go.
Brent:Mm-hmm, it wasn't Comfortable, it wasn't clean, it was all these things that it wasn't a place we wanted to go to mm-hmm. It's funny how God connects things, and so we basically, what do you do when God does you or tells you to do something you don't want to do? What do you do? You do the getting in thing.
Brent:You know, you're like I'm gonna put the fleece out. Okay, god, you said, go to Vietnam, but you got to do this first, and so we put these obstacles in our mind that were here, they didn't, they couldn't be moved, and so.
Brent:God moved, and it was a good friend of ours. Put it this way he gives you kingdom clarity and it was. There was kingdom clarity that we were supposed to go to Vietnam. We could go into long details about that, but it was very clear by the obstacles moving, by the circumstances following in such a way that we knew it was divine intervention. And we said, you know what? Okay, I guess we're going. And 2000, and what would that have been? 2008? We moved over to Vietnam May 29th.
Aaron :So so how does that? How's that? Look, because you're moving there. How do you know how at the time?
Brent:yeah and you have good job.
Brent:You, I mean a great job working for Honda, is a design engineer. I mean. God blessed us financially with stupid money compared to, you know, the rest of the world. You don't realize how wealthy even us here in Montec County are and we were very blessed. And so what does that look like? We just said, okay, god, we're trusting you, and I got a job working in Texark and Texas. We moved we so try to sell our house and moved Everything down here and put it in storage at my mom's place out near sunset, mm-hmm. And we just started. Well, I found a job teaching English, which is funny because we don't speak English. We're Texan always make that joke but Found a place that would train me to be a teacher because, like you, couldn't go in and say we're gonna be missionaries, we want to tell people about Jesus. You can't go into a communist country.
Aaron :So it's not. You sold everything that's not on a plane and several missionaries.
Brent:You can't do that, and so I'm like how do we get in, you know? And again, when God pieces things together, it just works out. I just started looking around and there was a place that would train us how to be an English teacher, and you need an income, well, it's funny, we had three kids and Wait, we get pregnant, and so we're like we're pregnant with the fourth kid. We've already got the ball rolling and Vietnam is happening and it wasn't really planned.
Aaron :That's not like we're gonna have a fourth.
Brent:You know we pee on the stick and we're like okay, god, I Many realize God's got jokes he does.
Stacy :We both nearly passed out.
Brent:Because we didn't, we didn't think that was feasible you know, I remember we're like are we supposed to go, god, and always make the joke? You know, we went over there and they've been having babies over there for thousands of years, they knew exactly what to do.
Stacy :Yeah, we made the joke, but we both contemplated like do we wait until this baby is, you know, six months or a year, or four years, or what are you saying?
Aaron :Okay, you find out pregnant, You're gonna be leaving shortly.
Stacy :Yeah, the baby's not gonna be born in America If we leave right.
Brent:Have a faith in American medicine. You realize, where is your faith? Is it in this government, is it in this country not to say this country's not great, but truly your faith needs to reside in God and we said, okay, god and you're moving to a country with zero contacts, like you don't know anyone don't know the language, don't know the culture.
Aaron :You don't have a church family plug, don't have a church family.
Brent:But God does, and that's how that we flew over in the very first person. We met Love Jesus.
Stacy :Yep the first person that met us through the language core that we were going through.
Aaron :She said, okay, this is weird, you have to tell me.
Stacy :She said you really had to tell me why you're bringing your family, because normally it's a guy or a girl. You know one one person a single person or a couple of the most, but never kids. And we had three kids and and I was pregnant, pretty obviously pregnant, and she was like you've got to tell me what's going on, like why are you doing this? And so we just told her and she said oh my goodness, I'm a believer too.
Stacy :I love Jesus and so it's so cool how God, the first person we meet off the plane, loves you this doing. God had that connection. There's such a small amount at that time of believers in at least in Ho Chi Minh City. More in the country Maybe, but not a lot of people around it.
Brent:They were open to tell you even mm-hmm again, it's easy, it's so neat to see how God orchestrates every facet of everything. Because we went over trusting we were pregnant. I mean, again, it was so foreign to us and yet God just shows up and and we call her Auntie Hinn. Our kids know her as Auntie Hinn and she became an intricate part of the ministry, close family, and we still love her to this day, I mean so you over there to teach English, what does it do you?
Aaron :how do? How do you start Sharing the gospel, start sharing the word.
Brent:Well, I mean as a teacher. What I realized and I'm not educated to be a teacher, but what I realized is when you have 30 kids in a room for an hour, that is such a ministry opportunity. So I would use supplemental material that would be gospel driven. I would take a towi max song and I would blank out lyrics and give them that and we would have to listen to the lyrics and I would explain to them what the lyrics meant.
Brent:That's just a small example and so I think, just who we are and how we are, we just we are people that always share our faith, we always talk about God, and so our neighbors knew and stuff. But I think very early on we were always children driven and so it's like we need to go to Norfolk's and we would. We go to Norfolk's just be me, her, of course, our kids and Auntie Hinn and maybe a few other people, and we would just go and take her eyes and you know, take, you know milk or whatever they needed, and it just kind of started to come together. We always seem to be driven by kids because what we now know, of course with, with the experience of being over there, children ministries a great opportunity for us to open up that, that opportunity to build that bridge to share the gospel.
Brent:So, we meet those physical needs, we meet those, all these, these, these needs, you know, on the secular level, but then that gives us an opportunity to share our faith and again mind you that, that the anonymous economy is country things to do like that or illegal, and so you can't just walk up and say, hey, let me tell you about Jesus.
Brent:And so we would do that by going to orphanages and it started looking like VBS. We would show up and we would play games and it would all be gospel centered and we would do stories. And, of course, what was the story we're telling? We were telling a story about the sky named Jesus, and the more we did what we did, the more people came alongside us, and what I mean by that is is we were getting. I guess we we formed the organization August 08 as a 501 C3 because we knew people wouldn't donate to Brenton st Citarre, but if we had some legitimacy, that would give us something, because we didn't go with the supporting charge. We weren't getting a paycheck you.
Brent:You are fully supporting yourselves by working in so it was like working full-time six days a week. She's homeschooling, you know, new baby.
Stacy :And we thought we moved over there. We were going to be living in the countryside, in a dirt floor, you know you shack and we ended up getting a house, but it was there like on top of each other, so the neighborhood was really really close. It's Super hot, there's no breeze because everything's touching all the walls, and so it was really different from what we expected.
Stacy :But, we were kind of hoping for the other. We hope to be outside of the city and God kind of locked us in and God kind of locked us into Ho Chi Minh City, which is a really big city then the orphanage You're going to are in the city some and then some would be out in the countryside.
Brent:And it'd be just like our friend that we, the God, connected us to and to him would say hey, I found out, there's this place, let's go, you know. And she would help us just connect the dots. And as it got bigger, you know, people would hear about what we were doing, and so people in Ho Chi Minh City, mostly Vietnamese, would say, hey, can we do this? Because they've never done that.
Brent:That was so formed for them to help People that were poor, and so they started tagging along with us and just giving us the physical, and then, I think, our first year, in 2008, we got about four thousand dollars this nonprofit, and then eight thousand and so at that time, at the nonprofit, your Tiny hearts of hope we were registered, but knowing what that would come of just that was your nonprofit.
Brent:Yeah, that's exactly. We didn't know what it was going to look like, and so then we started, of course, getting home sick and realizing, okay, let's go back home and do fundraising. So we would come home for three months and we would travel all over the US and speak to basically anybody that would listen to us. Home school group.
Stacy :You know women's or men's Meetings tell the story because it was so funny. We would put all of our stuff on top of our minivan to go drive across the whole US. And we lost a potty chair in Arkansas one time. It blew off on the road and so because we were potty training while we were driving across country, so we Donated a potty chair to the Arkansas.
Aaron :And so You're going around fun, trying to get money this time just to go back to the orphanage to give to the orphanages, is that or there?
Brent:And so the next year was eight thousand, the next year, I think it was about sixteen thousand. We're very, even to this day, very small as far as an organization goes. We are online. You can see we're very transparent and see how much money comes in. But you know we would take whatever we get and basically I was teaching, so we were living off of that. And then we would do, if we had this amount of money, we would do whatever, and it became the orphanage stuff. But then the orphanages became familiar with us and they would say, hey, I got this medical need or hey, can you help with this education? These children need education. And then we started working on a weekly basis where we would go to this one orphanage and we would give of ourselves and we would actually go and teach English every Tuesday. And then we started building relationships with these kids and, yeah, just, it continued to grow as the needs became more and more clear, we realized and we would start trying to do stuff for that specific part. And so, 2011, we started the Hope House, which is an actual orphanage when we take straight kids in, and that's been going on since 2011 and we've had over 50 kids come in, of which some of them have only known us. So I mean, they came, they've come in so young and they're still with us and it's probably one of our favorite ministries.
Brent:In 2012, we started the shop of Hope, which is the second hand store, because in Vietnam and a lot of countries throughout the world, handicapped people are second class citizens. You know so, in Vietnam, because of the war, because of the you know the agent orange and all that, you have a higher percentage of handicapped compared to, say, like America, and so you would see people on the street begging or selling things. You would see handicapped people like crawling on a piece of cardboard, but they're selling water to make them live it. And so we started a second hand store and I guess we basically would take donations and then our staff, which was all handicapped or underprivileged uh, we taught them how to do retail and, uh, it was. It was interesting because we would actually pay them more than minimum wage.
Brent:So here they are given an opportunity that they would never Ever be given otherwise and so more than minimum wage the United States or more in Vietnam.
Aaron :So so American dollars, how much do they get in paid?
Brent:Well, I mean now it's about 75 cents, I think. Let me think I have to think it's 15,000. What is it probably about? 75 cents, 15,000?
Aaron :gone.
Brent:Also seven, about 75 cents an hour.
Stacy :I think it was not crazy to think when we look at our minimum wage and we're going wow.
Aaron :And and that I mean they can live on that, and that's a oh yeah exactly, and that's even.
Brent:It gives them a better amount than they could make elsewhere. Again, and then as you start doing what you do and you start realizing there's other people doing other things, and we started partnering with other ministries In Vietnam. We're in the south, in Ho Chi Minh City, and there's a place in Benang, the central part, called orphan voice. We became good friends with them. There's an organization up in the north, in Hanoi, called blue dragon. We started partnering with them and so sometimes they would ride us and say we need medical help and we would have contacts with all the good hospitals in Saigon and they would send somebody down from their organization that needed surgery. And again, it seems like as you live your life for Christ, you see these connecting dots and God always is there before you. While it was hard to get on a plane with a pregnant wife to a hard to live country, god was there. He shows up every time. It's really it's. There's nothing like it. There's no better place to be than in God's will. It really is.
Aaron :And as you're talking and people are encouraged to help and be a part of that, I keep seeing that you serve first. You serve and you give and and you meet those needs and then they're open to listen. It's not you go in and say this is what you should do. This is when those needs are met, because you know, for hungry or thirsty, it's hard to listen to anything else because all we can think about is my, my physical needs, and I think that's just what Christ did. He, he served, and I think that's what we're called to do and and when we do that, we definitely. It makes a difference. People, when people notice that and they want to be a part of that, just other people wanting to go the orphanages and help and be. How can we? That's something that they'd never seen before how can we? We feel underprivileged, but how can we give to even people more? More underprivileged.
Aaron :That's exactly right and and so so through this process has there been a time when it's been close that the government says what are you doing? You know that's again.
Brent:You know God as you see the pieces come together. God is in all things and you realize there has been so many close calls, there's been so many opportunities where you know we should have been kicked out or we should have. You know, we've had our house raided, the police have come in and inspected, or we're taking a box of 50 Bibles which are completely illegal and we're going to take them to a location, and yet God always seems to show up and yeah.
Brent:I mean, even to this day. We had a doctor's team seven years ago that got shut down by the government and the government shows up with AK-47s and I mean it was legit. And I remember the doctors, they're just amazed, they're like they've never seen anything like that.
Brent:You know, and this wasn't even gospel center, we were just doing medical, we're just there meeting the physical needs, doing doctors appointments and giving out medications and whatnot, and they're just like no. And so we sat down with the government officials and we tried to persuade them to allow us to do it. You know, but it's just one of those things, it still was a blessing. And somebody said the other day you know, they put us in a box. Oh man, brent and Stacey, they're so great, they're doing all this.
Brent:And I feel like we're not even close, because there's people in Vietnam that have given up so much more than we can even fathom, because the worst that could ever happen to us, I think, like some friends of ours, you get caught doing what we do, they just kick you out. Okay, you're American, we're protected by the US government. So, you know, I mean as long as you don't kill somebody or something big. But I mean, okay, your visas revoked, you need to leave, kind of thing. But there are people in Vietnam that gave up their lives for the gospel in such a way that we can't even comprehend. So people look at us like we're all that and we're like no, I mean, there's a woman they meant to in an orphanage and she's man. She is something else. She takes care now 75 kids, of which most of them are handicapped, and she is a she's a good mom. She's a super mom.
Brent:And Pastor Lin. Pastor Lin tells us stories about how, when Vietnam fell, in.
Brent:August 30th 1975, you know, the communists came down and took over Saigon and anybody that helped the US or anybody that was religious, because communists like get religion, religion he was a pastor. Then he gets thrown into a concentration camp or a reeducation camp and he tells stories and you're just sitting there, you're draw, your jaw just drops. He's like he met his wife there and they got bamboo rings and got married in a concentration camp and as he's talking to us, he doesn't even think about it. He goes yeah, we were asking about persecution today. And he goes oh, it's nothing now. When I was in the concentration camp, they used to hit me with the what's the end of the gun called. I'm like he got hit with the butt of the gun, you know, and stuff, and you're just like we're, we're nothing.
Stacy :So there's so many more people throughout the world not just Vietnam that give up a lot for the gospel, I think Voice of the Martyr bought him a motorcycle when we were there and he was so excited he said now I can put more bibles on my motorcycle to carry, To carry because, that's how you transport everything right. You put boxes on the back of your motorcycle and carry them around, so so that was encouraging to us.
Aaron :And so then you just have to. So that's how you get around is on a motorcycle. We've always yeah.
Brent:I guess and I'm going to jump out of myself and look at my wife here Now I like to think you know, I'm a man, I grew up on dirt bikes and out here in the country and my wife can rock it. I'm going to tell you why, because I did all those things and when I went to the motorcycle there it wasn't a big deal. She didn't grow up on it, she started off on a motorcycle, I mean one week after having a baby, and so she's got AJ, our son, strapped to her chest and she's got another kid, and I've got a kid or two kids, and she's got two kids. And we're driving around at Ho Chi Minh City and for your listeners, just go to Saigon traffic or Ho Chi Minh traffic. There's 10 million motorbikes and it's just insanity, the rules. And here she is newly, and I had to push her, she didn't want to do it.
ANNOUNCER :We just got to do it.
Brent:Because, we couldn't afford taxis, because that's kind of an up thing, you know, and so we got motorbikes and we've always been like the Vietnamese we get on mopeds and a family of seven on two mopeds, and there's no car seats or anything like that, just hop on and strap on. There's a little belt. She straps on a baby.
Stacy :I think one of the first motorcycle rides that I had that I really got scared. I mean, you're always scared, right?
ANNOUNCER :It's always pretty intense.
Stacy :At first I had AJ on and I had just moved him from the front to the back, so he would have been maybe four weeks old. Put him on the back and I was coming out of my alleyway a narrow alley and an old man who had cataracts over his eyes couldn't see anything. He hit me and my bike was really heavy. It was a Natilla, which I don't know if they even have this in the US, but a really heavy bike.
Stacy :And if it were to go down. I couldn't get it back up and so, as he hit me, my bike went and it leaned down and my kickstand that was on the right sparked.
Stacy :It was dragging on the road and I was going back 30 miles an hour and I'm still driving my bike fishtails and, you know, swerves quite a bit, and I had two kids on, my baby and then an older kid and the man I could see in my mirror, he went down spinning and it was almost like God just picked us straight up and so I can almost see him just straightening us up and that builds faith big time. Because I thought, okay, you know, because if I do it would have gone down. There's no helmet, you know and he was four weeks old, his head would have been on the concrete.
Stacy :He probably wouldn't have made it, and so just the faith in little accidents like that you go. Okay, god's with me. I got this.
Brent:But it is very much a part of it is a very much part of the Vietnamese culture. It's motorcyclists they. Cars are expensive, highly taxed because the infrastructure can't support everybody driving cars. So from early on we've always been on motorcycles and our kids love it. To this day it's our favorite part of Vietnam.
Stacy :Our older kids learned to drive on motorcycles in Vietnam.
Brent:They had their last years here, yeah, as they became to, and it's the best part, it's the best way to feel Saigon, because Saigon is such a vibrant city and you've got the smells. You've got the sound. The best way to see Saigon is on the back or driving a motorcycle.
Aaron :So how long you're there Do you go? We're kind of getting used to it.
Stacy :Is it a while when you are there, times where you say first year when I was pregnant, or you know, the first couple months, and then that first year I remember screaming and going crazy inside my house. So I had a breakdown and I had a glass wall and it's hot and the people outside were coming up and they were staring all day long and I had just like just staring at, well, staring at the people that were living there.
Brent:You're like a home on a cage because you're the only white people in the neighborhood and Vietnamese houses it is. So such communal living. They can basically see inside your house and we had a clear glass, I guess it was door, so they just kept staring all day. They would bring their friends over and say, come look at the foreigners. And they would look in.
Stacy :It was like you were at the zoo and you were the featured animal and I thought, oh, I can't handle this. And finally he came in and I had just started screaming and throwing my arms up in the air and I thought, if you want something to look at, I'll show you. And so I kind of went crazy, had a meltdown and they didn't come back to my window.
Stacy :They were like oh well, yeah, I think they thought I was possessed, and so it was pretty funny because they stayed away and I delivered a few weeks later and I thought, oh, this is going to be crazy. You know, I have to go outside my house. I had been going out, but still it was embarrassing. But you know what? They were so sweet.
Brent:Let me explain this, okay. So inside, most people live down these narrow alleyways, you know, and so you don't. For us to get dropped off and we did get dropped off by a taxi we'd have to walk about a quarter mile just to get to our house. Obviously, she can't pull up that she had just delivered. And it was crazy because, yes, she'd had that outburst, but the whole community came out to see the baby and us and you see this little old lady about that thing.
Brent:She has the conical hat and she comes, and she was probably 140. I mean, I say it all again, she's probably in her 80s though, and she takes my wife's hand. She's frail little lady. She helps my wife all the way down the alley. You know, she's just going along, just speaking.
Brent:At that time we were learning the language but we didn't really have a grasp of it. And she's just talking away and we get to our house and there's a step up to our house and she takes the baby and helps my wife. Just a beautiful picture of Vietnam culture. Vietnam culture is very, very, very family oriented.
Stacy :Vietnamese people are very loving.
Brent:Very loving and we have learned a lot from the Vietnamese culture and they can learn from the Western culture and some of the things we bring to the table. We can learn a lot from them as well.
Aaron :And is it so 2008,? You're there. You've learned the language.
Brent:You're there for no 2008 we haven't.
Aaron :Well, 2008, you haven't, but you're learning the language. You have five kids, so was your fifth kid born there For a kid.
Stacy :We were both born there.
Brent:So let me think so it'd be 2008. Aj was born 2014. 2013. 2013. 2013.
Stacy :I know I'm here for the day.
Speaker 4:That's only reason I'm here, guys. She's the best part of it 2013.
Brent:So we had Ava, who we adopted obviously was born there, and then AJ 2008, and then Amie was born 2013. And so all in pretty much the same area, except Ava was born in the central part of the country.
Aaron :And then you have the orphanage going 2011, yep. And you have the Hope House Yep.
Brent:And then we have the scholarship program. We started in 2000 and was in 2013. I think it was 2013 and we started doing scholarships Again, scholarships for school For school.
Brent:Well, let me back up. So we started the Hope House and we had some. We were going to countryside places. It was going from orphanages now to like tribal areas where the tribal people were because they're statistically some of the poorest in the poor in Vietnam, and so we realized the poorest people were in these areas. So we would go and kind of do the same thing we were doing in the orphanage, but it kind of morphed into something else and we started just more focusing on food distribution, not the VBS, but we would use the VBS platform, but then also just food.
Brent:These people are dirt poor. We're talking 30, $40 a month for a family of five, six. You know they're cashew farmers, they're coffee farmers, they're just I mean just truly some of the poorest in the poor in Vietnam. And as we were doing this, they came to us and said would you mind starting another house for these kids? And they give us a whole file of all these pictures of these kids and every picture would just break your heart and it's like these kids need homes, they need homes. But then we'd look and we'd go to the next page and it'd have a picture of this kid's family, and so they wanted to give us their kids, to give them a better life. But they were still a family.
Brent:And at that time Stacey was reading a book called Urban Halo about a guy in Cambodia, and they started reading that and she had told me one of the things that he had determined, and it was scientifically proven kids don't develop as well in like orphanages opposed to like a family structured home. And so in Cambodia this guy had started these homes, kind of like our Hope House, and he had learned that if you have more of a family structure they do better. And so we were like, why would we take these kids out of a family setting? So at that time we went to a food distribution program where it was like, okay, we'll interview these families, see if they have need, and then we'll support them for one year, you know, with food. But one of the stipulations is they have to keep the kids in school, because when you're in a situation where there's such poverty, these people would pull their kids out of school to help with cashew farming, to help with coffee or whatever tea leaves, and so they didn't understand the importance of education. And so we worked through local churches out in the countryside. They helped us facilitate it because it might be two, three, four hours away from Saigon. We weren't there, we didn't have hands on there and we said make sure the kids stay in school and if they get to where they're not staying in school we're going to pull them out of the program. So we kind of used the food as a bribery tool.
Brent:And then that morphed into the scholarship program, the food distribution, and we would go for a full year and every month we would go we'd say here's the food boxes. It's about $25 to $35 worth of goods in a box. But if your family's making $25 to $35 a month for a family of six or seven, that's a lot to them. And we'd try to obviously hit nutrition, hygiene, things of that nature in the boxes. And so we tried to go every month and put the boxes out. They would come and they'd have to listen to us for an hour and a half. And we developed 12 programs, of which one of them was totally sharing the gospel. One of them was anti-human trafficking education, because these were the prime targets for human trafficking. One of them was CPR, first aid. One of them was clean water purification, the importance of clean water, hygiene, sanitation. So we developed all these programs and every month they would have to listen to us, and then we'd give them the food box and you'd have a different program each month.
Brent:Every month.
Aaron :So do you come up with those programs with the churches, or do the two of you?
Brent:come up, we would come up with it, and then by that time I'd stepped away from teaching because we didn't have enough time. So we started pulling from the funds. We started obviously growing as a nonprofit, so it was like we prayed about it. I'm like I'm about to quit teaching English. Our check that was coming in is going to stop coming in. Can we do this? And we did. We just took a leap of faith and ministry became full time at that point and we didn't know what it was going to look like.
Aaron :But yeah, and that's about how many years after you were there.
Brent:It was probably 2013, maybe. So I probably taught for about five years, 2008, 2013. And it was a big step because at that time we have five kids, mind you. But the ministry just kept growing and growing and growing and there was less and less of us as far as time goes, and it was like I had to go teach Mondays through Saturday, because they go to school on Saturday and it became too much. She's homeschooling and so we started hiring people.
Brent:We started really changing our business model of what it looked like, and so we said OK we're going to start using funds for this and we're going to start living off of this. We're also going to start hiring people, and we did, and even to this day, we have eight staff and they love Jesus and they own it. They were so proud of it.
Aaron :And so when you started, what you see now, is that what you had envisioned, or was it just the? Was it just to help?
Stacy :Have we even talked about that? I don't know that we had a vision. I think our vision probably was to get something similar, maybe not. I mean.
ANNOUNCER :I think that it's more.
Stacy :There's so many needs, it's spread out so well. We've talked about that many times, like how do we narrow our focus down to certain areas? Because we feel like we can't say no and there's so many, so many true needs. And so we branched out further than we thought that we ever would have. I thought we both think it was probably orphan work that we felt called to, but then it just grew into medical missions.
Brent:We were doing medical surgeries, we were working with the best hospitals in relationships we're starting to build there, and it was always like what we loved about tiny hearts, and even to this day I feel it it's always been a lozenfish's kind of ministry. In other words, we didn't have a lot of money, yet God always seemed to show up, and so we would reach out to a foreign doctor and say, look, I got this kid out in the countryside and he needs surgery. What do you think?
Brent:and they would do it now, these were secular people most of the time but God connected the pieces and it just blows us away because we look at what the fruit that has been a part of the ministry and how little Finances we've always had, but God just always multiplies it, like the globes and fishes and so things are going well.
Aaron :Your meeting needs your helping. 2020 comes COVID. Anybody remember that?
Brent:Didn't seem to turn the world upside down just and you look at it now you're like to leave 2020. We'd actually we were just here doing fundraising December 2019 and we rushed back because we had a doctor's team January 2020. So we get back and it was one of those hit the ground running kind of things. We've done fun fundraising and we've done well and we're going back. Of course, Nobody knows anything about COVID. We bring these doctors over and they're talking to us. You know we're on the bus with them. We take them out to the countryside. We're kind of the hands and feet and they bring the doctors team that they're out there, based out of Tulsa it's a nonprofit as well and they're talking about COVID. You know, of course, medical talk we don't whatever.
Brent:Of course they leave. And then we're living in Vietnam. We're getting back to work. You know, we're here and we got big plans and whatever. We started branching out more in the education sector. At that time had bought this big old box somebody donated to us that had 20 laptops. We're gonna go out and set up computer labs out in the countryside. And Next thing, you know, as we we've never taken Vietnamese formal training, we've just learned living with people and we're on the back. You remember this? Right, we just kept hearing this, this new Vietnamese word we're like Viru, viru Corona. We're like what is that?
Stacy :I've never heard that before One of my friends one of AJ's friends mom's came to me and she said how's your family in America with With Viru Corona? And I said I don't know what that is, I don't know. And so then we start talking and she was explaining to me, you know, because she didn't speak English. You know it's when you're sick and you have this fever. Haven't you heard of it? It's all around the world. And then I went oh, the corona virus. Okay, I get it. And so it wasn't it was.
Brent:Everything starts shut.
Stacy :You start seeing, because we're city started to shut down pretty quick.
Brent:We were part of an international church and so we we were connected with a lot of people. They were there for business. You know, they're doing a lot of oil drilling in the China sea, so there were people there for Exxon or mobile. Then there'd be people doing making furniture in Vietnam. So we go to international church and then what happened was everybody's talking about it Next thing. You know, these big companies are pulling these people out. You got to get out. The world's about to shut down. We get an email from the US State Department because we were connect, you know.
Brent:When you live overseas, they tell you to register and they'll send you emails and stuff and it's like the world's about to shut down, maybe for 18 months, and of course that seems so foreign. We're like now no, and we, we seem to hold it off more than most. And then finally we're like okay, I think we need to pull out and we landed here April 1st 2020.
Brent:Mm-hmm and it it's shut down like three days after that. But we got stuck in Qatar. You know, at that time the flight out got cancelled. We're it was just such a weird time. And then we flew to Qatar and it's like, okay, but we can't get out of the airport, but your flight's been cancelled. We're like we're in an airport. We got all our kids, you know. We're like what's this look like? And what we finally made at home, april 1st 2020.
Aaron :And then have you gone back, since you go about to go back back last year, and then how long did you go back? When you went?
Brent:one month, and at that time we hadn't been there since COVID. We didn't know what that looked like. The staff had been continuing the work, limited. Of course, a lot of the work we do is like two or three hundred people are around us. Mm-hmm and so obviously COVID shut that kind of work down.
Brent:You know, we're doing those food distributions, we're doing the education programs, and Just shut down, and so our staff was still working. We still had the shop of hope. Obviously, the, the Hope House, the orphanage, was still running. A lot of our programs had been damped, and so we kind of we obviously we're still talking to our staff, we're still managing, we're still waiting for the doors to open.
Brent:In the midst of that, though, I think we realized that God had brought us into a different season in our life and we had come home To both our parents aging and we realized, you know, god knew what he was doing, and we we we've always told people you know, we're gonna die in Vietnam, they're gonna bury us there, that's, that's where we're meant to be, and it would take something like a COVID for us to come back home In the midst of that 18 or 24 months, whatever it was that we couldn't go back.
Brent:We realized we needed to be here and take care of our parents, and that's kind of work. That's the stage we're in now, and so we're still managing staff, uh, and we're going back for months, but that first time going back, I remember going back. I'm so proud. We were proud of our staff. We didn't go back as a breakdown the door. Here's how you're gonna do it. We went back to spectators and so wanted to see how they were doing it and their vision was different than ours and I praise God for it, because God showed up and worked in their hearts and they were taking ownership and they had a different vision than what we had envisioned and we were proud of it. It was almost like the, the gospel and how, when Paul was right into the early church and the letters, and we just almost set back as proud parents of our staff and and to this day we're still proud of them. They're beautiful people, they love Jesus and they're doing good work and so we're going back this time.
Brent:It's like our Vietnam family and every time we go we cry when we leave and we're just gonna go back and support and obviously we're still managing. At night I work here in town, she's homeschooling, I work at buoy industries and so God has blessed us with those dots being connected. I got a job opportunity. That the buoy industries has been great. They allow me to go back and do this kind of thing Ministry still happening and we're going to go back and of course, our hearts are going to be heavy and we're going to have to get back on a plane and we don't want to, but we get back on a plane to come back, come back every time we do.
Brent:It's just. It's hard because our hearts are still in vietnam, but our parents aren't doing real well.
Stacy :So you have to part of your hearts in both countries.
Aaron :Yeah, which.
Stacy :God could just pull them a little closer. I guess someday he will.
Aaron :And for now, you're able to To take care of aging parents, able to have a great staff that is able to continue. The mission works and and you can still manage it Because of technology from afar, yeah, and still have that blessing. So, and you do see yourselves eventually going back, it seems it.
Brent:It just seems like such a part of us, and even our kids. We are all very vietnamese. We take our shoes off at the door. You know some of the things that that we do are very vietnamese and we don't even know it. You know, and so I can. Obviously only we can only speak for us. We've had that conversation. I think we do see ourselves going back, but of course, now our kids are growing up and we've got our second one about to graduate college and they're starting their own Journeys and life and but I still think they love vietnam.
Brent:But I don't think they'll go back.
Aaron :But so that start looks looks a little different as they get older and have start careers and families and and and just starts a different. I don't know where everybody's gonna be, yeah but I think, from looking at all the dots through your life, they're connected and they're taking care of Because of faith and so, and I think that it gives hope to take the next step because, whether we know what it looks like or not, because he's met every need you didn't know, you need had.
Brent:There's no doubt we always look back and it's just some of the stories. I mean, we could break your heart with some stuff and things that happened and and god prepared us and Um, just how everything just connects. It's truly god-divine intervention and, uh, what a joy to be in that story, to be a part of that story. People are like you should write this down and it's like we probably should, because we're getting older, we're good, but we have lived such a blessed life to be a small part of what god's doing, what his hand is doing in a country and, honestly, I think, such a pivotal time in vietnam history. The gospel is exploding in vietnam, whereas here, you know, churches are drying up and people have turned numb to the gospel, but in vietnam people are thirsty for it. They've never heard about this hope in christ and it's a beautiful thing. And you just see people give up so much for the gospel and here you just see people going. I wish you would stop talking, go and cry about them, you know you know me?
Brent:Yes, it's just a different passion, a different love.
Aaron :And I think so many times. You know this series is called world impactors and I think sometimes you think, well, I can't make an impact on the world. And I'm sure if I talk to 15 and 17 year old Brent and Stacy say I'm not going to make an impact on the world, I'm just, I'm go to a small town school. I mean, what am I going to do in this world? And Through the different Experiences of your life, he starts to change you, he starts to make those impressions on your life. I always like to say that that god doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the call and every step of the way he keeps qualifying you in little ways and and keeps putting that you know whether it's having to come back and learn to manage from afar, going back to visit and it probably even appreciating more when you go back than when you were there, because you realize your heart grows fonder when it's gone and it probably gives you a new perspective when you go back.
Aaron :I think it does and and you leaving would have never given your staff the opportunity to. Step up and grow, that's true. And and maybe change in a way that that you didn't see.
Brent:Well, we always speak at churches across and we always I'm always like I'm just a hero, and it's true, you know. But I love the fact that when I read my bible, I just see ordinary people and god doing extraordinary things in such a way. You have to give god the glory and that's who we are. We're nothing special, I mean, I think you're exactly right. God does qualify the cold and we definitely. I didn't go to school. We didn't go to school to be, you know, theologian. We just read the word and allowed god to direct us, and so we probably don't fit in the box. We seem to always never fit in the box, always joke that we're kind of like the, the, the blue collar missionaries you know the trailer trash missionaries.
Brent:But god shows up and it's all to give him the glory, because we every if people it's bleeding, anybody listening to this they know us. That's a pretty talker. Let me tell you about that guy. He was over there eating crayons in 10th grade, I'd say I graduated from Goldberg. I graduated top six in the class.
Stacy :They were only six. That's better than saying how many were there there. So I'll take that.
Aaron :Yeah, but you know, and you're right, it doesn't have to. I think we think sometimes mission work or just sharing the gospel has to look fancy. Yeah. Like we have to know the Bible in and out and what it means and we need to know all the versions and all that, and we don't Not even close. And when we share it in our way, how we interpret it, and we share by serving, and before you even share the gospel, you serve the people.
Brent:You live it out. You have to live the gospel out, and that's what tells people about Christ. What is it they often say? Often the Bible. They're going to read as you're live, and so not many people are going to go. I'm going to learn about Jesus. They're going to see somebody and, like the new kids, or what they call news boys, so long as they shine, shine. Let them wonder what you got. Let them wonder why they're not on the outside looking in. So, in other words, you're shining. Why does he look different than everybody else? Why is he shining? I want a piece of that. And then that makes them thirsty for the gospel. And yeah, let me tell you why I look like this Because this guy named Jesus changed the world. He changed my life and he can change yours. You're exactly right, aaron.
Stacy :And I think, even though the country is communist and blocked to the gospel a lot, there's been times where I've seen Brent even go into like the police department to do different I guess it was getting your driver's license or doing something and they just love his enthusiasm and his personality of being able to talk to him in their language and just love on them and care about them and they're open to have you share, and so you have those spots where it would normally be totally blocked but we're able to share a little bit. And so God, just seeing him provide those opportunities builds encouragement.
Brent:Stacey cutting hair in an orphanage or feeding, and we have this mindset that orphan ministry is beautiful thing, like a nursery or something.
Brent:And it's really not. It's quite ugly. To be honest, with you, you're feeding kids and they're spitting on you. It's just, it's not what people expect it to be and it's hard, and God had provided me with a wife that is probably, I mean, by far the best mom I've ever seen. But she's not just a mom to my kids, she's a mom to all these kids, and so I see her going through the orphanage and she brings in a whole new light and I'm just like man, you know, and again she's doing that shining that points people to Christ.
Brent:I mean because then she still rocks the world. You do, honey. You can have a high five right here.
Aaron :Come on, I know you're going to hate me for that, and you know, as you speak of Vietnamese and Americans and you talk about how you reach them and it's human connection, it's not. It's not Vietnamese, american, chinese, japanese, it's human connection. And just like going into the police station making that connection with them. How do you connect with them on that level of speaking their language? It's joking around, it's enjoying and they want more. And if we connect, I think that's the best way we get. Sometimes we go with an agenda before we ever connect with someone.
Aaron :Yeah, and we connect first and connect with the other humans. That changes the world.
Brent:It does, it does and there's no doubt the fruit follows. And God has shown up in such a mighty way and I just, I feel so blessed to I think I speak for both of us we feel so blessed to be just a small part of what God's doing and just to sit back and go. Man, you see how that turned out there's I never would have. I don't dream that big, I'm not even close to that. Thank you, jesus. I mean a hope house, goodness.
Aaron :And I always like to say that you know, sometimes we're a pebble and we make ripples and those ripples go out. And then another pebble and those ripples go out. And you both have definitely made ripples in our world. Just by being a small, sometimes we seem insignificant pebble can still make a ripple.
Brent:And not to give us any credit, because it I think you, had we not had Christ in our center, there's no doubt we wouldn't be who we are or where we are. It's always been gospel centered. We've always decided to build our family around that, to build the ministry around Christ, and so he gets all the glory because, like I say, I'm just a humility from Bowie, texas. I could be from him or the other.
Aaron :And he can do anything with anybody. You're saying there's proof of that. So how can, how can people connect with you with Orphanage, what? How do they best do that? How they give, how do they donate, how do they help?
Brent:I would point them to our website and Facebook page, the organization's Tiny Hearts of Hope.
Aaron :So then, website is tinyheartsofhopeorg, and we'll put that on show notes and Facebook page.
Brent:You can do Tiny Hearts of Hope there. We got a little bit of a YouTube presence or some videos. I mean, we've been doing this for 10 years.
Brent:So you can go, or let me rephrase that We've been doing it longer than 10 years, but we've been let's see, we've been putting on Facebook since 2010 or 11. So you can go back to our Facebook page and you can kind of see our history, basically what they we have been doing working in slums, doing schools, because we put schools in slums, we put, we helped the cafeterias be built, working with the Vietnamese government so you can kind of see our life basically unfold on social media. We have the Shop of Hope, also on a Facebook page, and we have a website with that as well, but it's typically more geared towards the Vietnamese because it is a store in Vietnam. But I would definitely point people to the Facebook page, the website.
Brent:We are speaking at Central Baptist this weekend. We spoke a few weeks ago and First Baptist last week was Freedom Live. Probably start doing some more speaking because unfortunately, when you don't get in front of people, your donations kind of fall. So we'll probably come back to do some fundraising. Right now we're doing our scholarship program. We're trying to send 500 kids to school, which is a big feat, of which to send one kid to school is about 75 US dollars and that pays full tuition For the year. For the year, full tuition, school uniforms and backpack and school supplies 75 dollars will pay you.
Stacy :It's like a family of four or five going out to eat once right.
Aaron :Yeah, now it might be a couple, two people going out to dinner. We don't go out, isn't that crazy?
Brent:Well, I mean, say, 75 dollars, mind you. Again back to the box illustration when we were doing the food distribution 75 dollars to a Vietnamese family, they're making about 60 dollars 50 dollars for a family, four or five.
Brent:They can't afford to send their kids to school. That in itself is a full month salary, and so 75 dollars was sent to get to school. So when we go back, that's what we're going back for. We'll probably try to go back in January, because we'll be hosting that same doctor's team in January. We might take Mark to Mark.
Aaron :Mark, I'm trying to push him. Oh great, so you don't think and you take volunteers Of course we host what we call Hope teams.
Brent:If you're interested in teams, we can send you a package and we would love to host a team from Texas. We've hosted many teams across the US, but never a team from Texas.
Aaron :I was just sharing with a client today that I was going to be speaking with you today and she got excited. She was how do I go there? You go, yeah, yes. So she was excited. Tell her what's the video.
Brent:We would love it because I'm going to tell you, no competition here, but we've had a team from Oklahoma, so Texas-.
Aaron :We'd better step up. So what considers a team?
Brent:How many is a team? We build it around you and so you'll send your packet, I'll have you fill it out. There'll be questions like what do you want to do? Because obviously, if you send a team of 95-year-old men, you don't want to be sitting there doing a lot of rebuilding and orphanage and stuff, and so we ask those kind of questions what do you want this to look like? What are you willing to do? And one of the questions is very blunt Are you willing to share the gospel? Because it is illegal, I mean, you might get in trouble. So we try to build a team around how the forms feel about it.
Brent:And so we've had small teams, we've had two, we've had 20 or 30 on those doctor's teams. They get pretty big. We'll help you get a visa to get in the country. We'll obviously take care of I mean there's a cost, of course, but we'll help you get your accommodations and I mean it could be anything. It could be maybe we set you up doing what we call English Club, where you go in and you're teaching English, but that again is a great opportunity to share the gospel. Or you're rebuilding an orphanage. We've done orphanage floors where you chip up all the tile. We did a computer lab with the team. Of course, if you're doctors we can build a team around your skill set.
Brent:But yeah, we would love to have some teams come over.
Aaron :So there's a lot of opportunities through financial donations, through time donation. Prayer, always Prayer.
Brent:Prayer in Vietnam. It's such a pivotal time and the government is getting we're probably getting away with a lot more. It seems like Vietnam of 2008,. We moved over to today. It seems like we're getting away with a lot more, and the gospel is still exploding. And so I would still say pray for the government officials, pray for the gospel to continue to spread, because it is changing lives. We're seeing it. We get to be a small part of seeing not just amazing things happen. We get to see individuals' lives change.
Brent:We have people that are our staff, and even in our hope house. We're seeing these kids grow up in the Lord and there's nothing like it. So pray for those individuals, pray for the country and those that are authorities.
Aaron :So there's a lot of ways that we can help. Even though we're not there, we can help so well. Thank you very much, brent and Stacey, for joining me today and sharing your story, sharing your faith, just sharing your mission. Work that just changed in the world, but I think sometimes it changes in us first, so we can go out and help others. And it's interesting, you didn't change everybody at once, it's one person at a time.
Brent:It has to be.
Aaron :It's one person, one connection, one conversation at a time.
Brent:Thank you for having us. You're welcome.
Aaron :Thank you. I was excited about sharing your mission with me and sharing your orphanage and your story, because we all have a story and sometimes we don't take time to hear those stories.
Brent:Come out, come with us to Vietnam. And you come to Vietnam, you can join them and see I can get you on the back of my motorbike and I can take you through Saigon.
Aaron :I might be scared, so I might bury her. Oh, there's no doubt.
Brent:Every time we have our teams come over, everybody wants to ride on the moped and we always joke that she'll take the girls and I'll take the boys, and if you can just feel it up, we call them white knuckles.
Stacy :White knuckles, they'll be yeah.
Speaker 4:Because it is intimidating. I can do it, you can do it Again.
Brent:YouTube Saigon traffic Coach Mincet.
Aaron :I'm going to do that because I want to see what that's like, and I believe there's probably even on our page.
Brent:I think there's a video of us driving. We were driving recording. This would have been in 2000, and maybe 10 or 11 at the time, and so you can see that as well, you can see us driving through
Aaron :all the madness. Well, thank you, I appreciate you taking the time and wish you well and pray for you in the coming trip to Vietnam. Just a couple of weeks, less than a couple of weeks, about a week and a half, and just. Thank you so much for making the difference and thank you for joining me today. So, and thanks for each of you for stopping by and joining me on the Mind Body Project. And it's time my wife came every night for a go to bed. It's bomb of the night, aa out.
ANNOUNCER :Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If you would like to connect with Aaron, you can do so by going to arandeglercom or find him on social media as Aaron Degler on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Once again, we greatly appreciate you tuning in. If you've enjoyed the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. We greatly appreciate that effort and we'll catch you in the next episode of the Mind Body Project podcast.