The Lotus Club

We met this guy named Peter at a house warming party for one of our friends. Nobody really knew whose guest he was, but he was very friendly and liked to talk. He invited us to go with him the next day to a Pagoda outside of town. Well, actually he just told us he was coming over to pick us up in the afternoon! It was a little suspicious and we couldn’t get a straight story out of him as to what, exactly, we were going to do at this Pagoda. "We're going to meet about helping disadvantaged people of Vietnam and discuss ways in which to help,” He said. “There’s going to be a party!” he quickly added in hopes of coaxing us. It felt like we were being recruited into a cult.

The next day Peter called early in the morning and we missed his call. But then he called twelve more times so we finally spoke with him and told him where we lived. We decided to take a giant leap of faith with this guy and let him take us to his cult leader and feed us the cool aid or whatever.

We met him downstairs and climbed into his van. Sitting in the back, crunched together like kidnapped children were three young girls who had also been recruited for the ride. We introduced ourselves but there was very little talking all the way to the Pagoda. Did THEY at least know what we were doing?

It seemed very strange and Bina and I had already decided that this was a big ruse to basically bring us foreigners to the Pagoda and ask us for money. We remained dubious until we got to know Monk Huan.

It turned out that this Pagoda we were brought to does some really incredible charity work with HIV / AIDS patients and was looking for more ways to help a broader range of people. They wanted our advice on how to make the program better. That was it, they wanted to pick our brains about how real NGO’s do it and what we think could be done to help. They even had a name for the “club”; it was called the Lotus Club, named after the lotus flowers that grew in the little pond next to the Pagoda.

It was a really nice place. Monk Huan was a real character too. He had this huge smile and seemed really peaceful. That is, until this cute little puppy walked into the room and was quickly escorted out by Monk Huans foot! I guess the dog wasn’t part of the club.

After the meeting was over we were given a tour of the Pagoda and fed a delicious vegetarian meal prepared by the monks. Vegetarian meals are rare in Vietnam so this was a real treat. One of the ideas the Monks have for the Lotus Club is to open a vegetarian restaurant on the grounds to help raise more money.

Bina and I have both agreed to help out the Lotus Club with different tasks. I’ll try to take some pictures of the Pagoda grounds sometime. In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the meeting and the meal.