I am Now in Ho Chi Minh City! (Week 26)

Monday, April 2nd, 2018

 

Hello everyone!

A missionary send off as I was preparing to leave for Ho Chi Minh

I am now officially moved into Ho Chi Minh City. It is really exciting to see a new place here. Ho Chi Minh is definitely a lot hotter than Hanoi, and seems to be more crowded with buildings at least compared to Ha Dong. Still, it is really cool! One of the first major differences I noticed here was the church. The church here is huge! It consists of six large floors, and it even has an elevator! It is pretty nice to not have to climb stairs... Besides that, I have been adjusting alright to life here. The food is quite different but still very good. I also have to get used to the different accents down here. Vietnam has a few different accents, so far I have been exposed to the northern one, and I am now getting exposed to the southern one. Things are going alright so far, and will hopefully continue to go well with that.



The members found out I was being transferred and sent me off with a celebration and an awesome cake!







I miss my friends in Ha Dong already! You people are awesome!



The members here seem to be really cool. They are super friendly. This branch is also larger with over sixty members, so the organization is a bit different, such as church being three hours here! I attended Elder's Quorom for the first time in months! I also had the chance this week to meet with two investigators. Both have been investigators for a while, and are quite interested in the gospel. We taught them both about faith this week. It went well with both of them, and we had members help with both of the lessons, and as usual member help is always awesome. Members are always really helpful in lessons, as they can better understand what the investigators are going through, because they went through the same thing at one point. Anyways, I have to say that this branch seems like it is a really good one.

One other interesting thing about my new branch is that they have different assignments they try to get us on, so right now we are trying to teach some members how to play the piano. I myself only know a little bit right now, but my companion is really good at it, so once a week we will teach a member named Anh Son, and I guess I will try to learn some more as well. We also have been asked to try to visit some members who live a little further away, so this week we are going to bike a bit to go out to visit and help out some members.

It definitely seems like I have a lot to adapt to and learn about here, but I am excited to see how things work out. I really do miss the members from Ha Dong though. Actually, they somehow found out last week that I was leaving and had a small farewell party for me, which was nice. Well, I hope things are going well with them, and I know God will look out for them. And I actually communicated a little bit with one of the members today, and it does sound like things are going well back in Ha Dong, so that was good to hear.

Well, I sure do have a lot of changes ahead of me, but I know that God sent me out to this area for a reason, and I am excited to see what I can do to help His work. Wish me luck going forward!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem 

 P.S. I just thought of two other interesting things I noticed this week. When I flew to Ho Chi Minh, I contacted two people on the plane who were sitting by me. By shear coincidence, they both come from Ha Dong. I ended up giving them both pass along cards and the address of the church in Ha Dong which they said they would check out. I will have to ask my fellow missionaries back in Ha Dong if they end up coming when they return to Ha Dong in three weeks or so. Also, in my branch here, I ran into a former missionary, Elder Thoai, though now he is Brother Thoai. He served up north and just finished being a missionary two transfers ago. He is now the branch missionary leader here, and I think it is cool that he still gets to be involved with missionary work with his calling. Alright, I think that does it for this week.