It's A Small Word After All!
Monday August 27, 2018
Hello everyone!
This is Elder Watson here in District 6 in Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam, also from Tucson Arizona. Now the odds of running into someone from
back home when there are over seven billion people in the planet is pretty
small, wouldn't you think? Well, I just happened to run into a Vietnamese
family here on a trip, who are currently living in Tucson Arizona! Not only
that, but they happen to live on the north side of town, which is where I am
from too! It was really funny when they were explaining how they work at the
hospital on Oracle and Tangerine, and then when I asked if it was across the
street from the Walmart in the Oro Valley Marketplace. Or when I was trying to
explain where my school was, and they said "oh, you mean by Honeywell? I
didn't know what that building was!" Just funny being to talk to someone
about your own hometown. Also, that is a really important concept here in
Vietnam. Family and your home roots are two super important aspects of the
culture. People regularly go back to their hometowns whenever holidays or
festivals come up, and it is really cool! In Vietnamese, the word for hometown
is "Quê", and quite commonly people will ask where your quê is when
they first meet you. Anyways, I ran into this couple in my apartment complex!
We were going out to the local grocery store, the Aeon Minimart, to pick up
some noodles to cook for the branch potluck on Sunday (which we completely
forgot about until a member asked what we were bringing for Sunday as we were
on the way out the door at church). They saw my companion Elder Trung and I,
and asked where we were from. We totally do stand out, with our white shirts,
ties, and being white... No nametags yet, but President Chiles is in the works
of seeing if they can get that approved. We told them we were from America
(currently speaking in English) and they said they were too. They said they
were from Arizona, and I said I was too! They asked what city I was from, and
we were all from Tucson! We then told them we were here volunteering for our
church, and that we actually knew Vietnamese. They were here visiting family.
They were quite impressed with our Vietnamese and asked for advice on how to
teach their son in law, who is currently trying to learn... The secret comes
down to two things, living in Vietnam, and more importantly the gift of
tongues! We didn't go too much into that one though... Still, they were super
nice people, and I might be able to contact them when I get back, and we can
practice Vietnamese! Overall though, it really is a crazy small world! Hence
the title of this email.
Well, let's get to some other stuff in the week! We are still working on finding others. We are doing a lot of contacting! Often three or four hours a day! It has been going good though! A few weeks ago, we tried using a sign asking others to help us with Vietnamese, and it was greatly successful, with lots of people stopping to talk to us, but then we were told you can not have a sign in the Aeon Mall unfortunately... We have done the sign at the park once, but recently we have been trying to get more personal contacts. One method that has worked decently well for us is going around and just sitting next to people. You initiate a conversation in some way, asking what a word means, how to get somewhere, etc..., and then bring up the gospel somehow. I have found family is a great thing to discuss, as most people really value family. We have had several appointments this last week! We got two new investigators, Co Ngoc, and Em Giau. They are awesome! We had a good first lesson with them, and learned they have family in America who are members and have shared with them a bit! That is actually how they came to our English class where we met them! They were referrals that we didn't even know about! So they are quite excited to learn, and have been doing great getting to know the members in the branch. They will be learning with the sisters now, but it was super exciting hearing their story and getting to teach them the first lesson, and how to pray! Outside of that, we have several other people interested in our message. No appointments yet, but they will attend English class, and we will invite them to learn more after they hear the spiritual thought, so I will report on how that goes next week! We are going to share about temples and eternal families!
All the members here are doing great too! We are focusing a
lot on getting them to work towards the next ordinance in the gospel for them.
That means getting ready for the temple! All the branches go on a big trip to
the Philipines in the summer, but to get ready for that, they have to prepare
in a lot of ways! So we are currently trying to help people start in that
direction, and emphasizing the importance of temple ordinances. Also, I have
one great piece of news to report! One of the recent converts here, Anh Thang,
has had his Mom come to some church activities lately. She views the church in
a very positive light, seeing how it has helped him. She agreed to meet with
the sister missionaries to learn about the gospel! We are super excited for
them! That is the ideal thing to happen, we are all missionaries through our
examples, and when we can share the joy we have in the gospel with our
families, how much greater shall our joy be! The sisters taught her how to pray
this week, and I can tell Anh Thang is super excited about his mom learning!
Now for English class. Our last English class was good. We shared about how to do a job interview. It all went well. At the end, we had a fun activity where people were supposed to fill out applications for crazy jobs like a lumberjack, billboard sign painter, astranaut, roller coaster designer, etc..., but a lot of them didn't really know the job they were applying for... It was still funny though. Elder Trung and I also filled out one. His was to be a proffessional Christmas tree decorator. For the application question of the three best words to describe yourself, he put "ho ho ho" which I found really funny! The class didn't get it though until we explained it... As for mine, I was a roller coaster designer, and for my mentionable achievements, I put that I was a world champion in the video game "Roller Coaster Tycoon". Funnily enough, I have actually never played said game. The class members were good sports about the activity though. Next week we will teach about listening to English lyrics in music, which should be a lot of fun. We might sing along as well. We have songs like "What a Wonderful World", and "Make a Man" from the movie Mulan. It should be very interesting!
Well, I think I may have overloaded everyone reading this
week, but there were a lot of cool stories to share! One final thing to bring
up is that today is our service scavenger hunt for YSA! We will do that at the
nearby Binh Phu Park, and it should be a lot of fun, if it doesn't rain... It
is rainy season for sure! This last week has been better, but the two weeks
before, I am pretty sure it rained at least a little every single day!
Well, I am going to sign off for the week. Thank you to
everyone out there reading this. I know that I am currently about the Lord's
work! And Vietnam is such a special place! I will write again next week!
Elder Watson/ Nghiem
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