Advocate Pho Truth: Another Transfer in Binh Duong! (Weeks 73 and 74)

Sunday March 3, 2019

Another Transfer in Binh Duong!

Hello everyone!

It has been a great two weeks here in Vietnam! Despite getting a second degree burn... I will explain in a minute.

But I am happy to say I get to serve another transfer here in Binh Duong! And I am still serving with Elder Quoc, so I am excited to keep working with him! And my whole district is actually the same for once! No changes this time! So Elder Chinh Tam is still our district leader. He did a great job last transfer helping us raise our vision. He had us focus more on finding by using the Book of Mormon, which we have seen very successful (it is the truest of any book on Earth, maybe you should try reading it!), and we had a district goal this last week to have 75 people at church! We did not quite make that, but we did get 58 which is the most we have ever seen! And there were so many new people! Pretty much we had a ratio of one member to every three non-members! And several of the members brought friends or family! Anh Ha had his whole family come which was awesome! And we are visiting them tonight for dinner and a spiritual thought! His wife and son are not yet members, but they are great people and like the church and missionaries. We hope Anh Ha will continue to be a good influence on them. Also, we had a bunch of new people we invited too. Some miracles: The night before church (so Saturday night) we were locking up the church when some lady asked if we taught free English. We said on Wednesday night we do have a free English activity, but that our main work is about our church, and that we had a church meeting the following morning. She came with her two kids yesterday! And I believe they had a good time! Talk about the Lord providing miracles! And we also had one of our neighbors, Eric come. He is from Taiwan, and does not speak Vietnamese yet, so he got the English translation. He is super nice, and really enjoyed the activity. And we see him pretty often living in the same apartment complex. We are glad to know him!

Well, going back from the tangent on church (though I was going to bring it up at some point anyways), the reason I did not email last week was because I was in Dong Nai climbing a mountain. It was a lot of fun, all the missionaries in southern Vietnam were there, so about forty of us, and President and Sister Chiles joined us as well. It was cool, the bottom of the mountain had a city built into it, with shops selling stuff a lot of the way up. And the top had a beautiful view. We had a devotional at the top, and discussed how one day there will be a temple in Vietnam that will get us closer to God without having to climb a mountain. Or maybe it will be built on a mountain and we will have to climb anyways... But it would be totally worth it, even more so then. It was a great trip, and I sent my family lots of good photos. But we all forgot sunscreen, and anyone who was white got burned pretty bad. And I got burned the worst! Everyone could agree on that. I actually got some blisters on my arms... But it is now healing and starting to peel. Not pretty looking, but it is feeling better now. So that was our cool trip last week.

For investigators, a lot of them are doing good, but we also have a few running into a few roadblocks. It seems like the Word of Wisdom is catching a few of them. The funny thing is though, it really isn't the word of wisdom itself. Or any of the other commandments. Something I have learned on my mission is that if someone is not willing to commit to keep the commandments of God, it is not because they cannot follow the standard, it is because they either lack faith in God, or don't understand the blessings of obedience to the commandments. My companion was listening to a talk the other day on his music player as we were getting ready in the morning, and the speaker made an interesting remark. As members in the church, we are very quick to say the word "can't". Oh, I can't go shopping on Sundays. I can't smoke. I can't drink coffee. I can't date before I am 16. Etc and etc. But the word can't implies a restriction. Something forcing us not to do something. Can't is not a very nice word to say, is it? Well, if we truly understand God's commandments, it is not that we "can't" do these things, it is that we choose to not do these things because we know the blessings we can receive. The freedom of avoiding addiction. The peace of mind we get. The eternal blessings of obedience greatly outweigh the temporary pleasure the world tries to offer us. So rather than say "can't" why don't we say we "won't", because we choose not to. Whenever I have seen a member or investigators struggle with a commandment, it almost always comes down to they don't want to follow it, not because they are physically incapable of following it, but just they don't see why, or don't feel God actually commanded that. And in the cases where someone is physically "incapable" of keeping a commandment, if they are willing to try to work towards it with all they have, I have to say I cannot remember a single case where they were not able to achieve it. There are a lot of cool stories with smokers who "couldn't" keep the word of wisdom because of a smoking addiction. But with the Lord's help, they were able to overcome it. If you have a problem with smoking, try asking the missionaries about the 15-step program to quit smoking. It has amazing results, and only takes a week... So, with our investigators who brought up concerns, we are working on the bigger issue of faith and seeing the blessings of obedience. Luckily though, those mentioned are still willing to meet with us, as they do feel something as they learn and want more of it. (In case you are wondering, that something is the Holy Ghost). Also, we are seeing some struggles with work conflicts, and with permission of parents for baptism. The adversary has many ways he tries to stop the work, but with the Lord's help we can overcome them all. And we are seeing our investigators faith grow as they work with him through their trials. One of our investigators, Em Dat, we are really excited for. He is going to try to ask his parents again if he can be baptized. They have said no in the past, but he has shown a lot of faith and dedication lately, so we think he will be blessed for it. Oh, and we met Co Hue's husband. He is really kind. He used to be a preacher in another church, but he loves all forms of Christianity. Next time we plan to share a little more on the Restoration with them. And Em Vy and Em Nhu are doing good too! They have great questions and are growing a lot. We are going to try to meet their families this week.

I am starting a new paragraph as the last one was too long. So, we got five new investigators this week! We got back two people who had previously learned, Anh Son and Chi Nhi. Chi Nhi is Catholic, but is open to seeing what we do in our church, and said she would set up to come to church. They are really nice and we are excited to work with them! And we got Anh Chung, who works at Aeon. His father passed away recently, and we shared about the Plan of Salvation, which he enjoyed. He will learn more with us. And the same day, we were waiting at a coffee shop before he came, and some lady named Chi Diep came up to us. She had a question on English, and we were Americans. I can't remember her question, but we asked what it was for. She was writing some paper for her uncle who just passed away. Elder Quoc told her we are missionaries and that we share about where we go after this life, and pulled up a scripture on the Spirit world found in Alma 40. It was really cool seeing him just share that truth! She seemed comforted by it and agreed to meet us there again on Tuesday! Another tender mercy of the Lord! And the other person I mentioned earlier was Eric, who came to church for the first time on Sunday and enjoyed it! They are all really awesome, and we are always happy to be able to reach out to more people here in Vietnam. Also, quick fun model for any missionaries, or anyone who likes metaphors. In our last zone conference, they talked how often in missionary work we use an "elevator" model. We put all our effort in finding people for a while, and load them into our elevator. Then we put all our effort into just teaching until they reach the destination at the top, being baptism. But the thing is, then the elevator it empty, and you have to take time to go pick up more people. It leads to a crazy graph of crazy spikes and peaks. We were taught to follow an escalator model instead. An escalator is constantly moving, so you can help more people get on at the bottom, while those on keep progressing to the top and you have a steady flow of people. So for your missionaries out there, just because you have some good progressing investigators, does not mean you can now stop finding. If you do so, you will be in for a fun surprise when your elevator empties at the top, and now you find yourself with tons of time to go tracting. From my experience, tons of time to go contacting, is usually not the most fun time. Contacting can be fun, but when you have seven hours of it a day... You get the point. So keep helping people get on the escalator! Plus then you can help more of God's children at a time! I thought it was a cool metaphor.

Let's see, church, fun things, investigators, random metaphor most people will probably not enjoy as much as I did as it requires too much abstract thinking... Check. I think I have covered most bases this time then. I guess I will also briefly bring up our English activity. It is going good again. At Tet, we went as low as three students one day, and we even had a day where only eight total people showed up so we combined everyone into one level... But now everyone is back into the swing of things and the last two weeks have been more full. Last week we had eighteen. So it is good. Apparently in the next month or two, we are going to switch to a different program too. This one will be PowerPoint based, and looks like it will save time planning, so we are excited for it!