Two Weeks?! (Week 42 and 43)

Monday July 30^th, 2018

Hello everyone!

How have things been going? Things have been very good here, and a lot has happened, it has been two weeks since I emailed after all! I don't have tons of time to email though, so I will try to be brief in what I share. So one cool thing is that we now have a new investigator! His name is Tony. He is 12 and his grandmother, Co Ngoc Thanh is a member. His parents are good with us teaching him the gospel. We use activities to teach him since he is still very young. We had him run messages between the two of us to show prayer, and then had him draw a person to teach how we are in God's image, so he looks like we do. He is really cool, and enjoys our activities! We also had been meeting him before to help him practice English, so we know him pretty well. Co Ngoc, the person I mentioned I had contacted the other week, came to church yesterday! And I think she liked it pretty well! She seems interested in having us come over to teach more, so we will see if we can set that up this week.

 

So we met President Chiles a few times this week, both for zone P Day, and zone conference. It was cool getting to know him better. He is definitely very relaxed when on zone P Day... He even let us go to the beach! And we got to put our feet in the water! But no more than ankle deep of course! 

 

We went to Vung Tau, and it was a lot of fun! We first went to see a giant Jesus Christ statue, apparently the second biggest statue of Christ in the world! You even get to climb up to his shoulders! I can now say I have been on the right hand (or shoulder) of Christ! Not the left, good thing, right?

 

We also got to see the White Palace, where the French built a home for the regions governor at one point, and it later became famous as the location of house arrest for a later Vietnamese king. It had cool history to it, and I could actually understand a good bit of what the tour guide was saying in Vietnamese! We did also have a member who came as an acting tour guide for the whole trip, and she shared in English, particularly since the Chiles do not fully know Vietnamese yet, and it helped those of us who haven't studied history or related terms to that in Vietnamese yet... And then we got to see the Whale Temple, with some real whale bones in it, which was pretty cool. It was a lot of fun. And zone conference was great! We learned a lot of things! The Chiles had a training on what it means to really repent. And we had a large focus on trying to find more people, so we are going to try to do more with that. Hopefully we will talk to a lot more people and find those ready to come unto Christ!

 

Also, when we had interviews with President Chiles a few weeks ago, he told us to focus on getting members to their next saving ordinance. We gave some thought to that and applied it last week. We met President Khanh, and asked him what his thoughts were on getting his endowments. He has been less active lately, so we weren't sure how he would respond, but he knows we have good intents, and we have been visiting him for a while, and love to do so! He always shares fun stories and tells us what is going on in life, as well as we discuss the gospel a bit. Well, his response was better than we could have imagined! He told us he is getting ready to go to the temple next year with his kids so they can be sealed! So now we are trying to help him work towards that! Just by asking him that question, he showed us his real desire, and now we know how to further help him on his gospel path!

Our other activities are still going well. We are getting ready for our time travel English event next week! That should be a lot of fun! I had a cool idea on our future floor to have an "ancient artifact" museum making fun of things we currently use. We will see how it goes then!

 

 

Oh, and I learned some really good news today! Chi Uyen, an investigator I had taught in Ha Dong, just got baptized! That is awesome! I am super excited for her.

And I think that about does it. I can not think of anything else at the moment, but if I remember anything else, I will let you know next week. We had district P Day and ate Mexican and American food at Al Fresco's and afterwards played some games, such as Spot It, Exploding Kittens (a Vietnamese favorite), and Uno. It was pretty fun. Well, I will write again next week!

 

 

Elder Watson/ Nghiêm

P.S. My hair has been falling out a bit lately. No bald patches yet. My family and I have researched a bit, and think it is probably just a phase being in a different climate, but I guess only time will tell... I may end up bald for all I know! I would not like that! You can ask my parents if you would like to know more...

 

Two New Investigators! (Week 41)

Monday July 16^th, 2018

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

 

Happy Fourth of July! (Week 40)

Monday July 9^th, 2018

 

Hello everyone,

This week was very good. As those of you in America know, this week we celebrated America's independence from Britain on the Fourth of July! They didn't really do too much here for that, but we found our own things to do... Not too much, but we had a few decorations, such as a red white and blue star banner my family sent me and an eagle. I hung those up on the wall.

And, we went to McDonalds for dinner of course! It was my first time in Vietnam. I got a McChicken, and it tasted pretty close to one at home! The one small disappointment though was I thought I had ordered a combo, but only got a burger... We tried the drive thru for fun, and I think that is where things got a little confused. It is hard enough to order in Vietnamese in person, let alone in the drive thru! Oh well, better luck next time I guess... And the other cool thing related to America (though not on the 4th itself) was that I ate a TON of American candy this week. Earlier this week, Sister Hong Linh got a package from her parents with a lot of American candy in it, and she brought it to the church on Saturday for those helping clean the church. She insisted it all be eaten, "forcibly" handing us some more after we ate some and said we were good. It was really good, I had four candy bars, but felt really unhealthy afterwards... It was really worth it though. And then yesterday, some previous missionaries here who live in Australia decided to visit. I actually know one of them, Elder Khiem, who served in the north while I was there. He has been back for about two months now. It is cool to see he is visiting some members he served while he was here! Well, the funny thing is that they brought Australian candy, so we got some of that too. I have had a lot of foreign candy the last two days... I better watch my diet... Though Anh Nam, a member from Ha Dong, says I have lost a lot of weight from the photos he has seen. I am not sure about that, but certainly wouldn't mind it if it were true.

Well, we are still out looking for more investigators. We have contacted a bit, but have not found anyone too interested in the gospel. On the bright side though, two members here have brought some friends to activities lately! They were really excited to tell us their friends were coming, so we will try to talk with them and see if they have any interest! Members are the best way to find the people God has prepared to receive the gospel, as they live among the people here and give a good influence to help others see the light of Christ! Besides finding we are also still helping all the members here! We had an exciting day on Saturday, where we got to bike an hour to a members house, an hour back, and then forty minutes to visit a member in the hospital and then forty back all in the same day! We had a nice visit with the members, talking to them about preparing to go to the temple, and then Anh Phuong was looking a lot better in the hospital. I think they were all glad to see us when we visited each, but I have to say, my legs were really tired after that! We also ran into a member, Anh Thai, on our bike ride home! He offered to let us hold onto his motorbike so he could pull us home, but we told him we could not do that. It was nice seeing him though, and kind of funny too! We almost didn't recognize him! I guess though him recognizing us wasn't too hard with the white shirts and ties...

 

Well, English class was very good. This week, the other elders were getting back from a meeting in Hanoi, so we had to employ member help. That meant I taught advanced class while Elder Thong taught intermediate. It actually was very good! I taught a lesson on honesty, and we discussed the idea of white lies. They really enjoyed role playing it, and they were so creative! The first scenario, I told them they were at a birthday party. Two students came up. On the spot, I handed one a marker, and said he was going to gift it to the other student whose birthday it was, and that this marker was a prized possession of his. In the role play, this student, Richard, went on and on about how much this marker meant to him! It was super funny! The other student took it graciously and said thank you (the white lie). The class agreed the white lie was appropriate in this scenario. The other scenario that was super funny was one where I said one of the students bought an ugly dress, and asked the other student how it was. She started it very creatively, rather than ask how it looked like I suggested, she used her own phrase, do you see anything new? The other student initially tried to avoid it, saying, "makeup?" As the conversation went on, I found the student's response to be very creative. Rather than tell her friend the dress was ugly and not to wear it, she told her friend it was "a night time dress" that you wear when you sleep. The whole class was laughing really hard! The other part of the class that they really enjoyed was that we played two truths and a lie! It was quite funny, and one of my truths a lot of the class didn't believe was that I can twist my feet back at an angle greater than 180 degrees, which I then showed them. They were quite impressed. All in all, it was a great class!

I also got to meet President Chiles this week! He and his family are from Canada, and they seem really excited to be here! He previously served a mission in Louisiana Vietnamese speaking, and told us some experiences that he thinks the Lord gave him to prepare him to serve as mission president here. He also seems to have great vision for Vietnam, with a goal of having two stakes in Vietnam before he leaves. Also, he has one son, Reid, here with him as well as the family dog. I am sure I will be able to learn a lot from him in the upcoming months.

Oh, and the Holts will soon be moving up north. It has been great getting to know them while they are here, but they have a new assignment to do in the north and will be helping some people where it is currently flooding in the north. I wish them luck in the new assignment!

I think that about does it for this week. As mentioned, we are still looking for new investigators. Sometimes it is tough trying to find people to share the gospel with. Sometimes it feels like no one out there wants to listen. But I know the gospel is true, and God is preparing people out there to receive it, we just need to keep looking and rely on him! Well, I will talk to everyone again next week!
 

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

 

So Much Going On! (Week 39)

Monday July 2, 2018

Hello everyone!

Wow, what a crazy week! There is so much happening, I hardly know where to begin!

 

This week marks the start of a new transfer. No one moved around this time, so I still get to work with all of the awesome missionaries here! We had lots of things going on though. On Wednesday, we had exchanges, where we traded companions for a day to learn more about how others teach and do missionary work. I got to go with Elder Duy and we had a good day. We got to go to Long An, a province where one of our members lives, and got to meet with her family. They were very nice and we shared about the plan of salvation. They are interested in having there son meet with the missionaries and to be a good influence on him. It was a good visit. We also got to visit a less active member, Chi Trang, and shared about family history. She was baptized a while ago, but since her father passed away she has gone less active. She really seemed touched by the message we shared about family history though. And I actually got to teach about family history several times this week, and have really seen the power it can have in others. Family is so central to each one of us, and when we remember our ancestors it can bring us closer to God. Especially in Vietnam, ancestors are really important, most everyone has a place in their house where they have an alter set up for their ancestors, often with painted photos to accompany it. I have really seen how powerful a tool it is in the gospel, and hope to be able to share more about it with others in the future!

Here is the craziest part of the week though, as of Saturday morning at 6:50 a.m. we thought it was a normal day, and I believe I was eating breakfast when President Hassell calls the zone leaders and says they need two missionaries to go to the western province to help with a baptism. They didn't want to leave an area without missionaries, so Elder Duy and my companion Elder Thong packed their things on the spot and were gone by 7:30. Talk about crazy! So that left Elder Thien and I to cover both areas, but it went well. We taught a lot of lessons, and visited a lot of people. We also got to give a lesson in elders quorum on Sunday (with a that morning warning about it, so we had to prepare it fast...) and we taught again on family history! Seriously, it was a theme this week. We also taught another member how to use family history on familysearch.org, and each time he entered a name, we asked if he wanted to keep going or do more later, and he kept saying "more" until he had entered seven or so names! It was really cool seeing how excited he was to add the names of his ancestors and relatives and then see the joy he had in that. We also had one memorable lesson with an investigator who is really smart, and loves to talk a lot. And I mean a lot. We did a Book of Mormon reading with him, and I swear he was teaching us, not vice versa. It was really funny. He talked as if he were a teacher of it, despite not having read it before. He had really great incite though! He is currently Catholic and does know a good bit about God, and is very familiar with the Bible. He also likes quoting Bible verses he knows that relate to the Book of Mormon, just showing how much the two books really do work together! It was a long lesson though with all the insight he had, but we also had plenty to testify of with him too!

Lately, we have not really been able to meet any of our previous investigators, so we need to put more emphasis on finding new people if we are going to continue to be teaching. Wish us luck with that! One thing with that, we have been asking people for lots of referrals. We are also trying a different approach with that. Often, when we ask members if they know anyone interested in the gospel, they either say "not right now", or, as one member told us this week "don't worry, if I knew anyone of course I would immediately tell you!" Which is great of course, but we thought maybe if we asked in a different way, we could help them see more ways of how we can help the people they know! So first off, we implemented family history again, and are asking if people know anyone who would be interested in that, as well as teaching members about how they can get their families involved in that work, and we are asking them if they know anyone we can serve. They found this interesting, and several people said they would look out for it.

Well, overall things are still going good here! I am really excited to be able to serve the people here in Vietnam! This week, President Chiles got here, and he will be coming down south on Thursday, so I will get to meet him then. I look forward to meeting him, and learning a lot from him over the next year and three months!

Thank you so much to everyone out there, and I also want to put out a special happy birthday to both my sister Paige on June 28th, and to my father on July 1st! Happy Birthday! I love you both!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem