Recovery! The Game of Life, and BYU came to Vietnam this week! (Week 33)

May 21, 2018

 

Hello everyone!

I am glad to report I am feeling a lot better this week. I still have a bit of a cough, but my energy levels are back to normal! So some of this last week was a little slower, with my sickness and some investigators being out of town, but we still got good things done, and we got to talk with some investigators we had not heard from in a while. First off, as mentioned in the title, a BYU singing group came to Vietnam! They were in Hanoi for a while, and then came to Ho Chi Minh City for two days. They were not close enough to where I am for my companion and I to be able to go and see their concert, but one of our investigators, Anh Vu, called us and said he had heard about the event and was in the area, so he was interested in going! We were able to get him a ticket and had a member meet him at the event to give him his ticket. We haven't had the chance to talk to him since, but we are sure he had a good time, and hope he had some good conversations with some members there. We will talk to him this week and see how he is doing since the event.

It was really good to hear from him though and have him attend an event where he could interact with members. And our other investigator we talked with this week was Anh Thuong. He is a student in our English class, and had agreed to learn about the gospel last month. We had one lesson with him, but he was too busy to meet us after that. Well, we met with him Sunday night and brought a member to help us talk to him about the church. It turned out to be a great conversation! It was kind of all over the place, going from prophets and the apostasy, to the restoration and the Book of Mormon, all the way to temples and eternal families. Yet it was all relevant, and he seemed very interested in what we had to say. He is interested in reading the Book of Mormon, which is great, so we will work with him on that. And he also really values family. When we were talking about families and temples, I had the member, Anh Tien, pull up a photo of the Mesa Arizona temple and was proudly able to tell Anh Thuong that that was where my parents were sealed so my family could be together forever. He seems genuinely interested in what we shared. He is not yet at a point where he wants to join the church necessarily, but he really likes the principles we share, and I know if he will keep an open mind and seek the truth, the Holy Ghost will bear witness to him of the truthfulness of the gospel, and then he will know how much the gospel can bless his and his wife's lives.

I also got in a bit more biking this week. We went to visit a less active member about an hour away and had a nice visit with him. After that we went another twenty minutes away to try to find someone that had been referred to us from the Hawaii temple visitor's center. We did find his house, and he was surprised to see us. Unfortunately in this case, he was no longer interested in learning more at the time, but maybe our visit will have sparked something in his mind. You never know! Well, we then biked over an hour to get back to the church, which was tough, but it was definitely nice to visit the member, and as for the other guy, as least he knows we are willing to follow up with people.

It sure is rainy season now! It has rained a lot this last week. That creates a few interesting predicaments... First off, I have laundry I have been trying to dry all week, but whenever it rains, my clothes just get wet again! We hang up our clothes outside. And the other thing, when it rains really bad, the streets can actually flood! My parents will upload some photos later, but the street in front of the church literally became a river! Luckily there was an alternate path to take, but we still had to bike through some large patches of water and got quite wet. It wasn't exactly fun, but makes an interesting story for sure. And apparently we have plenty more of that to come, as rainy season just started.

The one other thing I should probably mention is that we had our big English event this week. It was very good, but was a big process to set up for! The students really enjoyed it though. We had about 20 or 25 students in attendance. They each got to live a shortened version of "life". We had five floors of the church set up to represent different stages of life. They started as children and made macaroni necklaces and sang children's songs. On the teenager floor, which was the one I helped with, they learned how to text with abbreviations, which was fun to see them try to do! Then they got to describe careers in English in a game on the next floor. Then they learned about families and communication. And finally, they got to retirement and played Bingo with English words. There was also a photo booth of a coffin to represent the end of life... They all found it very fun. And to finish it off, we all went down to the Sacrament room to learn about the Plan of Salvation, and why we are here in this life. All in all, it was a very successful event, and I think all the students really enjoyed it. And we had one in particular who has since started studying about the gospel with the other elders here, Elder Duy and Elder Thien, so that is really cool! And luckily now, we have another three months to come up with our next big event.

Well, things are definitely going well here. We are trying to work hard to find more investigators, but of those we have they are all doing well! Missionary work sure is not easy, but it is very rewarding teaching others about the gospel of Jesus Christ and seeing how it lights up other people's lives! I look forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for us this week!

Thank you again everyone out there supporting me on my mission! It is always very reassuring knowing the support I have back home! And I had a wonderful call on Mother's Day with my family! Well, good luck to everyone with all your endeavors! Until next week!

Elder Watson/ Nghiêm