Picnic and Day Trip to Cham Tower Temple Complex (Week 16)

Date: Sun, Jan 21, 2018

Hello everyone!

Wow, I have already gone through another week. Time really does fly by here. Things are starting to get really exciting here, with everyone preparing for Tet next month. For those of you who don't know, Tet is the Vietnamese New Year, and is by far the biggest holiday of the year here in Vietnam. People prepare for it a month in advance, and pretty much everyone takes off about a week to celebrate it. From what I hear, things will be pretty slow for us during Tet as everyone travels back to their home town, but leading up to it we are trying to get in some extra service by helping people clean their homes and prepare for Tet. We have one member we are helping this Saturday, and we are advertising our help for Tet in self-reliance class. We are always happy to help whoever we can!

So things are going quite well. I am happy to report that Elder Danh is no longer on crutches. He still has to wear a cast on his leg, but he seems well on the way to recovery. As for our investigators, Em Thanh is still doing great! He currently has a baptismal date set for the tenth! He is super excited about learning the gospel, and always tries his best to follow our commitments. We are still meeting with our other investigators, and they are all doing well. In fact, we think we may be able to get three more people learning the gospel soon! We have three people we have been learning English with, and they have all shown interest in learning more about the church. On Saturday, we even gave one of them a copy of the Book of Mormon, and she is going to start reading it! Seriously, the Lord prepares people to receive the gospel and puts them in the right circumstances to receive it!

This week has also been great in that the weather is getting better! It is starting to warm up again, so I don't always have to wear my coat. And on top of that, we had two blue sky days this week! In winter here, most days are foggy and white, so it was nice when on Friday and Saturday, you could actually see the sky. Oh, and on Saturday, my branch had a picnic. It was nice to go to, and we invited a few nonmembers to attend. It was quite a nice experience. And I really enjoyed the food they had. It actually reminded me of the US a bit, as we had sandwiches with grilled corn and sweet potatoes. On top of that, the picnic was at a campsite which also reminded me of the US. The other American missionary in my branch also commented on it reminding him a bit of home. Overall, it was really neat to just hang out with the members and get to know them better.

I guess one other thing I should mention is self reliance. This week, we didn't have as many students, at a total of nine, but three of them were new, two of which I had contacted in the last two weeks. I think they all had a really good time, and in my opinion, I think we had the best spiritual thought we have had yet in the class! We shared a video about the importance of having a Messiah, and then all testified. I could feel the Spirit really strongly in the room. Of course we always have a good spiritual thought, but we usually try to be a little more subtle with our message so as not to scare people away. Actually, those there seemed to take it quite well! We will see if any of them were touched and may want to learn more in the upcoming weeks...

Alright, well I think that about covers it again for this week. I will write again next week. Until then!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

 

 

 

 

 

Being More Bold (Week 15)

Hi all! 

I didn't have a lot of time this week to write much, so my parents are going to take some of what I have told them and put that in my blog.

 
 
So, these last few weeks have been crazy busy! Christmas was awesome! My favorite part was calling my family of course! It was so nice to talk with all of them, and I think they enjoyed talking with me too... Of course they did! I also celebrated New Year's last week. I got to go on a zone P Day, to a place called Trang An, and it was a ton of fun! I also participated in a family tradition eating grapes on New Year's. My parents can explain more on that. As a family, we have continued a tradition from Spain that Jenny learned on her mission back in 1987. On New Year's Eve, Spaniards eat twelve grapes, one for every "bong" of the clock as it hits midnight. It is hard to stuff all of them in your mouth, but if you can keep them in without choking to death, it is supposed to give you good luck. It is not bad luck, however, if you do have to spit them out if you are choking. This tradition started in the 1950's when there was a surplus of grapes in Spain. It is a funny tradition, because you are looking at each other as you do it, and grape juice is flowing down your face, etc. 

Elder Watson's (Nghiem's) companion,
Elder Danh, just after his knee surgery

Members of Elder Nghiem's Branch in Hanoi

 

My first Care Package from home finally arrived.
 It took 6 weeks to get here

Anh Nam's baptism day!

As for the actual mission stuff, things are going great! My language skills still need work, but I am improving. And I have actually gotten a lot more confident just talking with people! I learned that people don't really talk to strangers here, and that you just have to keep talking if you want them to respond. Therefore, I will ask them about three questions at least to see if they will actually respond. I know that Heavenly Father really is helping me to be more bold with talking to others. Unfortunately though, I still don't know a lot of what they say, but that will hopefully come with time. And my branch had a baptism last week! Anh Trung is awesome! He attends all the activities, and he speaks English with me, which is always nice. He is also very willing to help with us teaching other investigators, and he does a great job with it. Also, we have a baptism this Saturday for our security guard, Anh Nam. He is also super cool. He also really likes talking with me, and we have found a good connection with chess. I believe I sent my parents a photo of me playing against him... Oh, and he has asked me to be the pianist for his baptism. I am not the best piano player, but I was honored he picked me for it. I know for sure I will be playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful". Wish me luck.

Playing chess

 

Alright. I do have more things that happened these last few weeks, but I don't have too much time to write more right now. I think my parents might be able to fill in some of the gaps for me, but I will write more next week when I have more time. Until then!

Attempting a nap at the Branch building

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

P.S. After Sam told us that he was able to see part of the set of "Kong; Skull Island" during his visit to Trang An, we had to rush out and buy the movie to watch. The picture next to the "ploat" (plane - boat) made a lot more sense after seeing the show... 

Part of the village set of Kong: Skull Island

Kong: Skull Island set

 

New Year's and Trang An (Week 14)

In Vietnam they don't really have a big celebration for December 31/January 1 for New Year's, they celebrate the beginning of the New Year in what is called Tet. From a site called "Vietnamese Awesome Travel" I found this description:

Tết ([tet˧˥] or [tɜːt˧˥]), or Vietnamese New Year, is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture. The word is a shortened form of Tết Nguyên Đán, which is Sino-Vietnamese for "Feast of the First Morning of the First Day". Tết celebrates the arrival of spring based on the Vietnamese calendar, which usually has the date falling in January or February.

Elder Watson was not able to email anyone on New Year's Day, as he was on an activity with other missionaries in his Zone. It was a day excursion to Trang An, a Vietnamese National Park where you get there entirely by small boats, and they pass through tunnels/channels through these huge rock formations. Awesome, and he had a great time, but no email to post. Please enjoy the photos!

 

 

'Twas the Skype before Christmas...(Week 13)

The greatest gift for Christmas this year for the Watson family and Elder Nghiem was the opportunity to Skype for about an hour and 20 minutes. With the 14 hour time difference, for the Watson family it really was the Skype before Christmas as it was Christmas Eve in Arizona, and Christmas morning for Sam (Oops I mean Elder Nghiem)!

Elder Nghiem's view of our family

It's incredible really when you think back 20 years and understand that all you would have had available then is a phone call, and with the long distance you'd be lucky to talk for 15 minutes and it would have cost a lot to do that! We were able to Skype for free for about 80 minutes with no cost besides our Wi-Fi connections.


As Paige's Sunday School teacher puts it: Missionary looks good on Sam!

Elder Nghiem looked fantastic, and appears to be comfortable with where he is and what he is doing. We chatted about everything we could think of and shared our thoughts and feelings about spending the holiday together (and apart) as a family, Christmas's past, present, and future, and of course Christmas in Vietnam! Skype was fantastic, but for the rest of you that also meant Sam did not have any opportunity to type up a post for his blog. He was able to send us some Christmas photos a couple of weeks later, so we'll add some of those here in the next day or two.

Merry Christmas to all!


The 2017 White House Christmas Ornament

Elder Nghiem's grandfather was in the Secret Service, and Elder Nghiem's Uncle Todd also serves in the Secret Service. One fantastic Christmas tradition he continues is to present our family with a White House Christmas ornament every year. It has always been one of our favorite Christmas activities to kick off the season by putting up our Christmas tree, and having Sam, Kate, and Paige take turns putting on our collection of White House Christmas ornaments. This year, the new ornament is a perfect reminder of Sam, as he had earned his Eagle Scout award at the beginning of 2017. We were very pleased to see that the 2017 ornament is a Bald Eagle!


Elder Nghiem (Sam Watson) in front of his Eagle Service Project

Our new favorite Christmas tradition is Skyping with our missionary! Here are some additional photos of his Christmas in Vietnam.

Elder Nghiem's Christmas Stocking