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.