Visiting the Spiritans in Houston - Nailing Down the Details

As of this Tuesday we were still a little unclear about what exactly we were going to do in Vietnam. In order to clear things up, as well as got a general orientation we traveled down to Houston for a brief 36 hour visit to get acquainted with the Spiritan mission, visit the Vietnamese consulate, and suss out the remainder of the details of our mission year. We drove down from Tulsa on Tuesday afternoon and arrived at about 7:30p at the Spiritan office for mission advancement in Houston.

The office is in a lovely home in the Montrose neighborhood quite close to the University of St. Thomas where Spiritans have taught for many years. It is also quite close to Rice University and the neighborhood features several cafes and restaurants without being too busy. Fr. Michael had made us dinner and afterwards we had a very pleasant walk around the neighborhood. The houses were quite a mix of both old and new giving it a very pleasant atmosphere.

In the morning our first stop was the Vietnamese consulate with Fr. Joe, who is himself Vietnamese-American, and will be joining us in Vietnam on and off. We had to wait for about an hour for the officers at the consulate to get out of their meeting, but once we were seen the process to get a visa was quite quick, and really only involved the exchange of money and passports.

After our stop at the consulate we grabbed lunch at a traditional Pho restaurant. Pho is a soup consisting of beef broth and noodles seasoned with basil. Houston has quite a large Vietnamese community, and we ran into some of the Vietnamese-American youth that father Joe works with while we were enjoying some post-Pho bubble tea! Bubble tea is a combination of sweet milk tea and tapioca pearls.

We then returned to the Spiritan house for an afternoon nap and a discussion of Spiritan life and spirituality. The Spiritans, also known as the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, are a Roman Catholic organization of priests and brothers founded in France in 1703. They are dedicated to the alleviation of poverty, evangelization, and the support of seminarians. If you would like to learn more about the Spiritans you can find them here. The Spiritans are a missionary organization currently functioning in more than 60 countries worldwide. The Spiritans themselves hail from as many countries as they serve in and more.

In the evening we were able to skype with the Spiritans in Vietnam and iron out some details. We will be in Ho Chi Minh City for the first six weeks teaching English to Spiritan seminarians. In the fall we will move slightly further south to the city of Can Tho where we will be teaching English to diocesan seminarians and sisters in formation. As Vietnam is a communist country we are unable to travel there as missionaries outright. Our roles as teachers provide us with a structure to serve within as we become better acquainted with the language and the community. The longer we are in the country, however, the more we will be able to integrate ourselves and determine how we can be of service as engineers. It was good to suss out exactly where we would be and who we would be serving - and we are much more comfortable now knowing we will be staying with the Spiritans at their house in Ho Chi Minh City and then with the bishop of Can Tho when we are there.

Thursday morning we were up bright and early and on the road at about 6am. We had to get back to Tulsa so that Chris could continue to work on his research.