After completing proselytizing missions in both Europe and South America, Lawrence and Noma Bowman were accustomed to serving around several other couples. So when they received their third mission call to work as humanitarian specialists in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, they were startled when they discovered that there was only one other couple serving in the entire country.
"We were about 1,000 miles away from the other missionary couple in Vietnam, and the mission home, located in Cambodia, was a six-hour bus ride away," Lawrence explains. "The isolation was a challenge. There was no one to talk to or turn to for support but the Lord."
Yet as the Bowmans began various humanitarian projects, they quickly made hundreds of new friends. At a local orphanage for youth with disabilities, they worked to install a water filtration system so that clean drinking water would be available on the property. For years, the only source of water had been a well that produced water that was only suitable for washing.
At the ceremony where the missionaries presented the system to the facility, the orphanage displayed artwork some of the students had created. As Lawrence and Noma wandered through the halls, they noticed a few paintings that were particularly beautiful and asked to meet the artist. That was when the Bowmans first met Sam, a girl who had limited mobility in her arms and legs.
"Despite her disability, she had learned to paint with her toes," Noma says. "We were so touched that she could express herself so beautifully despite the limitations of her body."
Before returning home, the Bowmans purchased two of Sam's paintings, which remind them of connections they made in Vietnam.