Hello everyone!
How are things going? I have to say this week was great for
me! In particular, we found two new investigators, which I am super excited
about! I will discuss them first. They were actually some people whom I
contacted last Monday. We went contacting at a bookstore that day, and tried
talking to people. We split up and just talked to whoever, while browsing the
bookstore. I was in the pen section in the middle of it all. Considering I am a
white, five foot ten inch tall American, and don't have black hair, I get
stared at a lot, so sometimes that helps with contacting. I saw a guy staring
at me, so I talked to him a bit. He was happy to talk, and was polite when I brought
up religion, but when I offered to show him my church sometime, he said
"sure" in the way that means "no, I really don't want to do
that, but I don't want to be rude." This was also confirmed when I offered
my number on a card and he just smiled and said he was just too busy. At that
moment, some lady came up from behind me and said (by the way, both of these
conversations were fully in Vietnamese) "what are you talking about?"
The guy took this as an opportunity to dodge out, so he said something like
"oh, he is a foreigner, and works for a church" after which he said
he had to go and left. The lady stayed and talked to me. Her name is Co Ngoc. I
talked to her about religion for a bit, and she was very polite and open. She
then invited me over to her home! This later changed into her coming to our
church, but she actually offered for us to come to her house, and she was the
one who asked for my number! Pretty much she contacted me I would say! I gave
her a card and got her number. I was pretty excited, but my companion and I
didn't want to get our hopes up necessarily, for all we knew she could have
been excited just to be talking to foreigners or something like that. We ended
up setting an appointment for Sunday afternoon. She came and brought her daughter,
Tran, with her. We gave them a tour of the church, and had a member there to
help, Co Cuc. We ended up talking for about an hour and a half, discussing
everything from God and Jesus Christ, to families, and even brought up temples.
She was extremely open to all of it! We asked if she would be interested in
learning more, and she said she was, and was willing to come to the church to
do so! She also said she would try to get Sunday morning off work so she could
attend Sacrament meeting! Elder Thong and I were surprised at how open she was
about everything, and Co Cuc was awesome with helping explaining any questions
Co Ngoc had! Overall, it was a great meeting! At this point, we will probably
be switching them over for the sisters to teach them, but I am really excited I
was able to help find Co Ngoc and her daughter, they seem so ready to learn
about the gospel, and I know it can bring great blessings to their family! I
hope they continue to progress and find joy in this gospel as I do. Also, she
gave us six coconuts afterwards, which was extremely nice! It is customary to
bring fruit when you visit someone's home in Vietnam, but is certainly not
required, and six coconuts is a lot! (Also, might I add quite heavy, it made it
a little hard to turn my handle bars on my bike and keep balance...)
Some other things to report on in the area: Anh Phuong is
now out of the hospital and doing much better I am glad to report! We will
visit him at home this week. Also, a lot of the members will be going on a
temple trip tomorrow, which is super exciting for all of them! I wish them a
successful and enjoyable experience there! Oh, and I got to bike a lot again
this week! We went to visit Chu Hung and Co Nguyet this week, and biked out two
hours to see them! We also tried to find a referral with an ambiguous address,
but to no avail... We may try again another time. And today, we helped some
investigators move, and they live a good distance away. I am actually sunburned
right now from all this biking of late... Maybe I should have applied sunscreen
this morning... But it has been great visiting and serving others!
Our English activity is still going well, though we only had
one student with it raining last week... We got to know the one student a lot
better though as we had a one on one tutoring session thereby. We did have a
second student come late as well. We are also preparing for our big activity in
August on time travel, and that should be really cool! And the YSA program is
also doing good. Today the missionaries are in charge, and we are doing an
activity of my suggestion. We are doing a saltine cracker eating contest, and
are following it up with a scripture chase activity! The cracker one will be
funny seeing people try to eat a bunch of dry crackers with no liquid, and the
other one will be good to help them find scriptures while playing an altered
version of the card game spoons! Instead of using cards, they try to find the
scripture first.
Well, I hope everyone is doing well back at home. One thing
of note is that next week we will be having zone P Day and will travel to Vung
Tau next week. It looks like a Vietnamese version of the city Rio in Brazil to
me, ocean side city with a Christ statue and all! It should be a lot of fun,
but that leaves good odds I will not get to email next week, so I will try to
send something out in two weeks then! Oh, and in that time, we will be meeting
with President Chiles for interviews, and have zone conference, so a lot of
stuff is going on for sure! Well thank you to all of you out there reading
this. Also, I have a blog set up that recently was updated with six more posts,
so you can check that out if you would like. It more or less has what I write
in these emails, plus photos. You can search "Advocate Pho Truth" to
find it. Until next time!
Elder Watson/ Nghiem
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