Lots Going On! (Week 51)

Lots Going On!

Samuel Watson 

September 24, 2018

 

Hello everyone,

Wow, Elder Trung and I sure have been busy! As you may know, when we started our first transfer together, we had very few people to teach... So we went contacting for like four hours a day! Well, this week, we did not have very much contacting time, we were so busy meeting people at the church! Or in some cases, waiting for people who never came... But that is less common! So we got two new people who agreed to keep learning. We have Anh Tai, who is a college student. I met him at Aeon. He agreed to come get a tour of the church, and really liked it. He had never seen a church before. Also, in one room, we had written up the steps of how to pray (which may or may not have been intentional...) and he asked what it was and if he could learn how to do it! Afterwards, he also said he could tell we had a good message to share, so he said he would bring his friends! It was really cool.

 

Then we have Chu Khanh, who came to church on Sunday. We think he was contacted by Elder Thien, who is now in the north, as we did not recognize him. He stayed throughout sacrament, and Chi Hang did an awesome job of explaining it to him. Afterwards he said he wanted to learn more, and we got his phone number! We are going to meet him again this week! We also met a few other people who have not fully agreed to keep learning yet, but will be coming to our activities. We did drop one investigator, Chi Yen, from last week. She said she liked what we shared, but does not want to convert. She will keep coming to the activities but does not want to meet individually anymore. It is a little sad, but hopefully she will change her mind back some day. Oh, and Chi Dung, who came to church last Sunday, met us for a lesson, and she is doing awesome! She came back with questions from the Book of Mormon! Also, she agreed to a baptismal date! She will still need to learn more before that, but she is very open to learning more, and has enjoyed what she has learned so far! Even if some of it is a little confusing first round through. Actually, that reminds me of a quote from Elder Bednar I heard in the MTC. More or less he said how the majority of converts in the world say they were super confused when the first met the missionaries, with all the talk of angels, and golden plates, and the sort. But, they feel good about it because of the Spirit! This case was no different! She came in with a lot of questions, like what it means by the plates were "taken up" or the people "would speak as it were from the dust", but she still felt good about what she read! The power of the Holy Ghost is real, and anyone who truly seeks will find! Chi Dung is doing awesome! And we met Em Trang this week! She forgot her Book of Mormon at her grandma's house. While that was not convenient, it was cool to know she took it up on her trip to keep reading! She still does not know if she is ready for baptism though, particularly fearing how her family would react, but she does feel the truth of our message! I know with time she will become even stronger in her faith and testimony! And the one other investigator we met this week was Anh Huy, who just got back from his hometown. He went to church on Sunday and will now be learning with the sister missionaries in District 1, which is closer to where he now lives. I know they will do a good job in continuing to teach him though! And that does it for our investigators this week. The rest have been pretty busy, some of whom are getting ready for the lantern festival with family and the such. We will still try to keep meeting them though.

 

English class is still going strong. We played Mafia last week, and are going to introduce Mad Libs this week... Elder Trung and I have been talking about really trying to invite more English students to learn about the gospel! We actually had a district training on it that was good. And afterwards, I actually got three people to agree to meet after last week! Now unfortunately these are the three aforementioned cancelled lessons... But they all have rescheduled appointments for this week. Two of them actually got to the church building together, but got an emergency call, and turned back around right in front of our eyes... All good though! Actually, funnily enough, one of the guys wanted to donate us money for English... We offered to talk about the church instead! And just in general, not to brag, but I am getting a lot better at inviting people to learn! So is Elder Trung, and we have had a lot of new people come to the church. Return appointments are another story... But we are doing good!

To report on last week, ice skating actually went pretty good! No serious injuries, and I was getting sort of okay by the end, though I moved really slowly. We also found a Swensen's, and had great ice cream! Everyone else ordered scoops, before I asked about the specialty sundaes which were an extra 10000 dong (50 cents) and you could still choose your scoop flavors... I guess good things come to those who ask! And today, we are going to stop by a lantern market which should be cool!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess one other fun thing to bring up, they just built a new coffee shop called Cong Caphe. It is a really interesting place. It is designed to look like an old-fashioned army barracks or something. We checked it out since we usually try to study outside to contact people.

Well, I think that does it. As you may have noticed, my investigator section keeps getting progressively bigger in these emails! That just shows how much God has blessed us to be able to do more of his work! Well, see you all next week!

Elder Watson/ Nghiêm

 

 

A Very Special Invitation… (Week 50)

A Very Special Invitation…

 

Monday September 17^th, 2018

Hello everyone,

I am very short on time to write today. My district is going ice skating (which I have never done before. I mean I am from Arizona...) so I have just a few minutes. So, the title of this email is from my companion, he thought he would use it to relate a funny story... So I will be more to the point, but we had a special invitation to... wait for it... the police station! So you know the using a sign method I brought up we learned about last week. Yeah, that is not allowed without a permit. So unless the church gets permission for us to use signs, we are not going to be doing so for a while... But it was all good. While technically my companion and I were detained for two and a half hours, it was not too bad. They just needed to clarify we could not do that, and had us write a statement and then write that we would not do it again. They were actually really nice to us, and one of the officers actually wants to meet for smoothies at some point! Also, we got to bring a member to translate, and they brought in another lady to translate the second statement, and she wants to come to our English activity, so funnily enough, we still got a contact out of going to the police station! Well, no need to worry about me here, it was all fine, but certainly makes an interesting experience to share!

Quick summary of missionary work here. We got five new investigators! And one is a super cool referral who already has a baptismal date! She learned a little in Taiwan, and is really excited to learn more with us, though we have to Skype call her. The others are all pretty cool too. One started attending our activities this week, and decided she want to learn more! And the other came to Sacrament out of curiosity, but really liked it, and she two wants to learn more! We had a few other appointments this week, but a lot fell through... you know "oh it's raining, I can't come." or "oh, did I forget to tell you I was out of town?" or my personal favorite, just not coming at all and blocking our number. We will try to meet some of them again this week. It is a little sad, but hey, we have had great success, so that is good! Also, we met Co Ngoc again. She really loves the gospel, but is afraid to commit to baptism, she feels she does not have enough time to fulfill church responsibilities. She asked if she can believe in the church but not be baptized. We will try to keep working with her highlighting the importance of baptism and helping her see the Lord will certainly help prepare a way for her! As in 1 Nephi 3:7! (which I recently memorized in Vietnamese!) Also, Em Trang is doing awesome! It is so cool seeing how she has changed, from two weeks ago probably not even having considered learning about the gospel to now meeting to learn more! She is really cool! She does worry about her family not accepting the message though... We will keep working with her!

One more note, there has been a big typhoon here, possibly affecting Hanoi, but I think they are okay now. Plenty of rain in all of Vietnam though!

Well, see you all next week! Things are still going good here! No more sign, but that is okay. See you all next week!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

 

 

 

We are Catching Fire! (Week 49)

We are Catching Fire!
Monday September 10th, 2018

Hello everyone! 

 

How goes it wherever you are? Well, I don't know about you, but things here are going GREAT! Seriously, things are taking a huge step forward for several reasons. First off, my companion and I have just been out trying to find people a lot. But on top of that, we had an amazing zone conference! By the way, if any of you know someone currently serving in Hanoi, they have not had zone conference yet, their's is on Wednesday, so keep this on the down low. We were asked not to spoil the surprise. So, in zone conference, we had a lot of awesome new trainings!

Okay, so this picture is from Vung Tau, not our most recent Zone Conference
Go take a look at Week 42 for more awesome Vung Tau photos!

So, first off, they introduced the new super card! They made it sound like this awesome cool new contacting card we would use, so they had us bring all our "old" contacting cards to the front of the room. Then they had their box of "super cards", which turned out to be empty, and they took all our old cards and put them in the box. The new method is they are taking away the crutch of cards so we have to get phone numbers. It actually reminds me of Ha Dong where we could not use cards anyways... I think it will help a lot, making us actually be able to contact people again. They also said that the cards were not very effective, as they both cause us to not focus on phone numbers as much, and they related a study done by Dominoes with flyers, where only three percent of people called back, and they said cards would be similar.

 

 

How does a Four Flowers or a Ginger Fried Pork Pizza sound?

Whereas with getting phone numbers, you have a one hundred percent ability to call or text them, as long as they don't give you a fake number, which does happen occasionally... Then they had a method of bringing a sign up sheet for English class to get numbers, as in have a clipboard and a role sheet to sign up on. My companion and I are stepping it up and trying a new method, putting all activities on the sign up sheet, including learning about families or Jesus Christ, and it is going good so far. You sit in a park with a sign for English or another activity, they come to ask about it, you get them to sign up and explain all the other activities, and they sign up, putting a check on each activity in which they have interest. You send information for the activities they want, and Elder Trung and I call anyone who signs up for Sacrament, a Church tour, or learning of families or Jesus Christ.

If they just sign up for English or YSA, we just text. They aren't worth our time... Just kidding! But we do just text them. And the other big thing that they introduced is for Sacrament. Last zone conference they really focused on doing baptismal invites, and this time they are focused on getting people to church. They introduced the C.H.U.R.C.H. list. Basically you make a list of anyone who can possibly come to Sacrament and call them on Monday. You then make categories of people to confirm on Saturday who said yes, people who are "sketch" as in they say "If I have time..." who you call again on a day like Friday, and those unable to come. Those who do not pick up you call again later. The list both includes current investigators, and what the APs called "Hail Mary’s", who will be hard to get to come. It leads to a lot of calling, but in the APs district, where they have tested it for a month, Sacrament attendance has almost doubled! It should lead to a lot of new investigators, but also our phone bills are going to be going through the roof! All for a good cause though! It is a really exciting time! We have only applied it for half a week so far, but are seeing great results! I think this really could change the whole mission!

So, we got four new investigators this week! Two were an older woman, Co Hao, and her niece, Em Phuong (who we did not know she was bringing), who I contacted two weeks ago. She is super busy, and I had a hard time setting up an appointment with her. She is also one of the harder people for me to understand on the phone... I am not entirely sure why.

Well, on a phone call two weeks ago, I at least got that she would come when she had time, and I got her to agree to call us before she comes. Usually, when most people say that, it means they won't actually come, but in this case, I felt she actually wanted to come, I just didn't know what else she had said, so we left it at that. Well, she just showed up last Monday at 5 p.m. and called and said "I'm here, but there is no one else here." We were in a taxi on the way home from getting fit for our Ao Dais (traditional Vietnamese tunic). We told the taxi driver to go to the church instead of the apartment, so we went in P Day clothes! We also had to walk home later since we did not have our bikes... We gave a church tour, and had a good lesson explaining who God is and how to pray, and they want to meet again this week! Then there is Chi Nhu, who Elder Trung contacted. She is Catholic. She didn't seem overly comfortable in our lesson, but we got her to agree to borrow a Book of Mormon and try to read in it... We also taught the Restoration and about the Book of Mormon to give a new perspective for her on Christ. Afterwards, we lost contact with her, as her number was unreachable. We thought she blocked us, but we had set an appointment for Sunday, and had the member who helped us in her lesson send a text (as she should not be blocked yet) to confirm with her. Still no response, and she did not come to the lesson, but last night she texted us from a different number saying her old SIM card got destroyed, so we have contact with her again, and will try to set up another appointment! And we got a new investigator yesterday, Em Trang, who did not say she wanted to learn about church, but wanted to learn of families (she signed up on our new clip board sign up sheet). We read the family proclamation and discussed temples.

It was an awesome lesson! Afterwards, she was still not overly accepting of learning, she said she totally had interest, but her family is Chinese and might not agree with her converting. We explained how we teach and don't baptize people right away, and how they have agency to keep learning throughout the teaching process. And then we had an awesome testimony born from our member help, Em Thanh, who just got baptized last Sunday! Her family also did not agree with the church initially (though they let her attend all the activities), and it took her eight months to convince them to let her be baptized! Actually they attended her baptism last week! It was a perfect experience to share, and Em Trang agreed to learn! We have an appointment on Wednesday! So things are going awesome! As for our other investigators Co Ngoc and Em Tram have been busy lately, and have been unable to meet us, but are still interested, so we found another way to meet them, we are going to go to their house this week at when they are home and share for fifteen minutes. Hopefully that will go good! Anh Nghia is doing good still. He is still aiming for his baptismal date at the end of this month! And Anh Thanh Huy is doing well. He is still in his hometown with his family, but has been reading the Book of Mormon which is good.

As you can see, things are going great! What is more, we have three appointments with new people already set this week! One of them is an awesome referral, named Chi Anh. She used to live in Taiwan, and had an American friend who got her to go to institute. She also learned the first lesson. Now she is back in Vietnam, but wants to learn about Jesus Christ still! She does live far away in the west though, so we will teach her through Skype, but it is still awesome! And we have another guy we don't have an appointment with yet, but he came to Sacrament meeting yesterday and seemed to enjoy it. We will see him at YSA today! We also are expecting our YSA and English numbers to soar, hopefully we can fit everyone in the church building!

 

Well, I think I have shared enough on the excitement here. We are also adding one more idea to our contacting, we are going to try to have a schedule list for people interested in meeting us to tell us what days they are free so it is easier to set up appointments later. That should be good too! And I guess one other thing to note is that we had a great spiritual thought in English, we had a class on travel and had everyone make paper airplanes. Then we made an impossible task for them to throw the paper airplane a really far distance to hit a target, which no one could do. We related it to the grace of Christ, and how if we try our best, we may fall short, but how Christ will move the target to the best we can do, with the whole "we are saved by the grace of Christ, after all we can do" concept. We also talked about how different people have different levels of their best, but Christ knows that and will adapt it to us. It went super well, and people reacted well to it. The other elders actually got a new investigator after it! It was really good! Also, we have Jeopardy night on Tuesday for English!

That will also be awesome!

Well, I am out of time now, and again probably overloaded everyone. Still, I am super excited about all that is going on. My companion and I really are trying to get a lot of work done, and I think we will see a lot of success! Looking forward to it!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

Hong Kong Temple - Closest Temple for the Vietnamese people

 

P.S. We had another big flood! My family will probably post photos later. There is a pretty funny one of a guy who sleeps on a hammock in the park, and under him it got flooded, but he is still sleeping there.

 

 

Happy Independence Day! (Week 48)

Happy Independence Day!

Monday September 3, 2018

Hello everyone!

Hopefully everyone out there is doing good. Things are going well here in Vietnam. This weekend was a little harder to meet some people though, as they were all going out of town for the holiday. For those of you don't know, Vietnam has two holidays similar to the Fourth of July in America. One of those days celebrates the country declaring independence from France celebrated on September 2nd, much like the US doing so from Britain on the Fourth of July. That was yesterday, and was cool they celebrate that, though it also meant the speakers outside were blaring every few minutes during Sacrament meeting with some national Vietnamese song. The other independence day they celebrate is more of a reunification day on April 30th when the Americans pulled out and the north and south became one country again. Anyways, it was cool to see people travel for their Independence Day.

Well, it was certainly a good week. We got a new investigator, Anh Nghia. He learned about the church through another investigator he works for, and has attended church a few times. He is doing really well, he already has a baptismal date for the end of this month! Of course there is a lot of preparation to do before that, but he is really excited to learn, which is great! Our other investigators are doing good, but have been busy and out of town with the holiday, so we will try to meet with them next week. And as for finding new investigators, we are still getting out a lot and looking. We have had several interesting contacting opportunities. The first one I will mention is funnier. We went to Binh Phu park, as we do a good bit, and tried to contact there.

As we were walking around, we came across a group of 22 year old guys making balloon animals. We went to talk to them and they invited us to learn how to make the balloon animals. Elder Trung already had some experience, but I had never done it before! I learned to make a dog. And while doing so, I shared a message about the restoration. One of the guys there was Catholic, and when I told him we worked for a church and were neither Catholic or Protestant, like most other people he said "well what the heck are you then?" I related the concept of the restoration, how we are not a "reformation" of any church that branched off, but rather a restoration of the original truths of Jesus Christ's gospel! He seemed really intrigued by that concept. I don't know if he will actually start learning, but he seemed to be feeling the Spirit as we talked. We invited him and his friends to attend the English class in Thu Duc, as that is where they all live. Quite an interesting contact though! Also, in the same day, we ran into an older gentleman who was playing the ever famous "Đá Cầu" here, or "shuttlecock" in English. Essentially just imagine a hackey sack, but made of plastic and with a feather. So not really a hackey sack, but played the same way.

Well we talked to this guy, and he asked us a lot of tough questions all related to the plan of salvation, anything from "why did God make people look different" and "why do we have to be here, why does God not just reward those he knows are good" to "why are evil people allowed to harm the good?" I think he was really quite impressed how many of his questions we could answer, both knowing the Vietnamese and the doctrine for it and only being 19 years old. We drew attention from several other nearby people because of it to. We told him we could not cover everything right there, but if he wanted to learn more, and had more questions, we could meet him at church. We are going to try to set up an appointment with him this week! And what is even cooler is that another man was passing by on a walk, and eavesdropped in on us. He was impressed with what we shared as well, and said he might come by the church to meet us as well! It is cool how much the gospel touches others!

And the final cool contact we made this week was as follows. We went to the Aeon mall to contact. By chance, we ran into a member with his friends. Now that is not all that odd, but this member is currently studying in Russia. He came back to Ho Chi Minh City for two weeks. We met him last Sunday for the first time, and did not know if we would run into him again. Well, not only did we run into him in this mall, but he had two friends with him, and he came up to us and whispered "this is my friend. You should talk to him. He wants to learn about the church!" We talked to his friend and got his contact information. What a coincidence we happened to be there at that precise time! His friend wants to understand more of Christianity, and of course we will be happy to share more with him! Also, this is a great example for all members in general. Introduce your friends to the church! You have such a great opportunity to share even through your example! This member was back for two weeks, and gave us a referral! Way to go! Well, we will try to meet all of the said people above, as well as others too!

For our other activities, YSA was really good last week! The scavenger hunt was greatly successful! It was a ton of fun, and we did a little missionary work too, giving out Book of Mormon cards as one of the challenges... English was also good. They all enjoyed the music topic. This week we are talking about travel! It should be good.

And I think that about does it for the week. Going forward, I think there is so much potential for what can happen! I am excited to be out here right now, and working with my companion to help the people here in District 6! Thank you all for reading this. See you all next week!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

P.S. Here is a photo of the balloon animal making group.