Call in the Superstrike! (Week 54)

Call in the Superstrike!

Samuel Watson

Monday October 15, 2018

Hello everyone! 

Things here in Vietnam are going good. Actually, they are going more than good, they are going great! So some of you reading this email may be asking yourselves "what exactly is a superstrike?" No, we are not calling on any air reinforcements. This superstrike has to do with our mission's vision here in Vietnam! The main purpose is to get everyone to have faith in the vision of our mission having two stakes by May! At first it sounds crazy soon, but as we all know, with the Lord anything is possible! Currently the Hanoi branch up north is doing super well! As of last month, their average sacrament attendance was around 40, and they only had a few investigators. Now they have tons of investigators and have a sacrament attendance of over 100! More or less, this has been the vision all along, but the Hanoi branch was the controlled test subject to see just how much we can accomplish with the right vision. They also implemented a few test ideas I have mentioned before, such as throwing away all contacting cards and aiming for phone numbers, and trying to focus more on getting people to church. I may give more details on that later (I think I already did a time before) but more or less you just need to get people excited to come to church, and once they come and see the blessings they will want to keep coming!

It has been greatly successful, and they have related each of these ideas in past zone conferences. But the other areas have not picked up too much from it. I think it comes down to two things, most people don't have the vision of where this can go, and when you see something at zone conference you don't always know fully how to implement it. That is where the superstrike comes in! So, the missionaries in the Hanoi branch are now doing tons of exchanges across all the other branches. One missionary in each companionship will go up north to see how well everything is working, and the other will stay in their own area and be given direction on how to apply it there. Elder Trung and I really learned a lot from it! We were trying to implement it, but seeing the way the assistants to the president applied it helped us see how we could better apply the trainings. Hopefully we will see major improvements next week! So that is why we went up to Hanoi for two days... The combined higher vision, and the know-how of applying all the new ideas has been showing all over! This last month alone, the mission is not only performing at the highest level it has ever reached, but more than quadrupled that! Clearly, something is turning for the better! 

 

So one of the things I liked that I picked up from the superstrike was just trying to get people more excited to come to church. Because when you call and say "Hey we want to invite you to church. It will be three hours" most people don't get too excited. But when you call and say "I know you had a question about the Book of Mormon. That is actually the topic of our second hour class!" or you can say "Thai will be speaking on Sunday! He is such a good speaker and will be talking about humility! It will be really good! You have to come hear it!" people are more open to the subject. We are going to apply that this week, and tell people more so what they can get out of it to help them want to come and receive the blessings of Sacrament meeting!

 

I should mention we watched conference this week! In Vietnam we watch it a week late, but it is just as good! I learned a lot from it, and one of the focuses I really liked was focusing on taking the Savior's name upon us. Each of us agrees to do so when we are baptized. And we need to do all we can to show others we follow his way. My mission here is a little different, we are not allowed to wear our name tags... Something about needing a ministers VISA to wear Christ's name on your person... But despite that, I can still wear his name by my word and deed! As I go about doing good, trying to help others, and sharing my testimony of the Savior and his restored church, others will be able to see the light that comes from Christ! And that is what we all need to do, as the scriptures say "...but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." 1 Timothy 4:12

Also, speaking of conference, we got three new people to conference and they all want to know more about the church. First is Anh Long, who heard about conference from an announcement in our English activity and who came! We shared a bit about the priesthood and prophets, and he is curious to know more! Then is Dom, who we met a month ago he has a member friend who is currently studying abroad in Russia. Well, he too really enjoyed conference and wants to learn more about religion. He actually has wanted to meet us for a while but was busy with studies. He is now free though, and we will be meeting him. And finally, we have Chi Tuyen. This one is a cool story. So first off, we me Chi Tuyen over a month ago. She lives in the same apartment complex as us. We got her number and invited her to our activities and she never came. So we hadn't contacted her in some time. Well, we really wanted to get a lot of people to conference, as it is such a special event. We called through pretty much all of our phone list whenever we had time. We did not have time to finish the list but we called a lot, and did not have much success. Literally the last person we called was Chi Tuyen and she came! If we had stopped one call earlier, she would not have been invited! The other cool thing, she wanted to come to learn more about Jesus Christ, as she is Christian, and she was free specifically for the Sunday afternoon session which I felt focused the most on that! It was the perfect session for her to come to! And I don't happen to believe too much in coincidence... Also, we had an awesome member, Em Thanh, sit next to her, and she shared a lot about the church. Chi Tuyen really enjoyed the experience and wants to learn more! So those are our three new investigators for the week. Most everyone else is still doing good. We could not meet a lot of them, as we were in Hanoi for a good portion of the week, but will meet them this week, and plan on inviting several to baptism! Also, one other thing to report on is that a certain investigator of ours that we had lost contact with re-contacted us. We were super excited to hear from her, but it turns out she is not allowed to join the church, her family does not approve, and they actually took away her phone. She wants to join the church, but we can't really do much to help since her communication has been blocked. Prayers for her are appreciated! I know the Lord will help her in this time of need!

One quick funny story, but also a bit sad. We had a member in our branch who brought two friends to conference. That part was good, and they had a good experience. But on the way out, they were taking Grab home, and the one girl started walking towards the Grab bike holding out her phone to signify "I called you, I am the person you are picking up". Suddenly, a motorbike with two guys bolted in-between her and the Grab bike, and a guy snatched her phone! It was really sad for her, but super interesting to watch! Scary that there are people on the look to snatch whatever they can, but it was kind of impressive how smoothly they did it... We don't know how they made it in-between her and the Grab bike with a two-foot gap almost impossible to go through at high speed... The Grab guy tried to chase them, but they bolted away too quickly... So now I will have to be more careful when I hold valuables in my hand... Maybe I could just hold out a Book of Mormon, and if someone steals it, they will decide to repent of their ways... Also, we were told this isn't too common, but happens a bit, especially in the more touristy parts of town. And one other funny story while I am at it, while in Hanoi on exchanges, I got to be in a lesson with one of the investigators of the APs. Her name is Co Vy. Apparently, she really wants to do ancestor work in the temple, and the APs have gotten her excited for baptism as a step towards it. In the lesson, she went off on a ten-minute rant about all the ancestors she wants to do temple work for, when suddenly she takes a pause and said "But first I need to be baptized. And Elder Lam (one of the APS) here won't let me get baptized until October 28th!" It was really funny, but she needs to get all the lessons first and then can be baptized! So that was funny too.

Alright, I think that is enough to cover this week. Hopefully Elder Trung and I will be able to apply the things from the superstrike and report on that more next week! I will write again then!

Elder Watson/ Nghiêm

Families are Key to Everything! (Week 53)

Families are Key to Everything

Samuel Watson

 

Monday October 8, 2018

Hello everyone!

Another quick group email here, but full of lots of information! So lets just say my companion and I beat the mission record for most new investigators in a week! The secret to how we did it? Well, first off, God totally prepares the people and puts them in our path. We have been contacting in all sorts of crazy ways! As in in circumstances where you wouldn't think it would occur. I will give you an example. I may have mentioned this one before, so sorry if it is a repeat. So last Friday I believe, we were pulling in our bikes to our apartment to have our daily nap (everyone naps in Vietnam. The middle of the day, literally no one is out, so we sleep one less hour at night, and take a nap in the day.) and the machine to scan your bike card is broken. We sit there, and a bunch of people start coming in. I talked to the guy next to me for about two minutes, and I ended up getting his number, and set up an appointment! He has not continued learning yet... But it is a perfect example for how we have seen God prepare people. So my companion and I made a goal to look for that one unique contact every day... And it has been working! Anything from a really solid elevator contact (which is really tough, you get about two minutes again), to someone at a cafe who is just ready.

Actually, two of our new investigators, Elder Trung met at a cafe, and he talked to them for quite some time. The husband in particular was really interested in the church. The wife was a little less excited, but agreed to learn too. At some point in the conversation Elder Trung said the guy asked how one would join the church, and his wife tried to say "but honey, your Buddhist!" and the guy whispered something to her that more or less equated to "be quiet!" and he kept talking about it. Anyways that has been one large part of it. The other part is that we have really been focusing on families! Seriously the gospel rings so true with people, especially when we discuss families. Everyone has a family, and it is something central to just about everyone! We have been going around to people with families and sharing with them about how the gospel can bless them, and later meet them to share the Family Proclamation. We ended up with thirteen new investigators this week (the old record was twelve), and all but one were in families! Also, we now have a multigenerational family of five learning, with a man who started learning first, his wife and son, his younger sister, and his mother, who all live together! We visited their house and shared with them, and all agreed to learn more! It has been great seeing how God has blessed us to be able to find and help so many people! Now we just have to do the next step, which is a little harder, getting them to church... Unfortunately in Vietnam, most people work on Sundays... But we are telling them the blessings of the Sacrament, and some of them are going to ask their bosses if they can at least get off Sunday morning! Your prayers for them are appreciated! 

Also, here is Elder Trung's summary of our family lesson. "So we will read through "The Family: A Proclomation to the World" and really highlight on a few things. 1. Each of us is a child of God, with Heavenly parents that love us! 2. Each of us has an Eternal and Sacred Destiny in God's grand Plan of Salvation for us! 3. Families are Central to our Purpose in this Life! 4. All Families are Happier when they Follow the Teachings of Christ! 5. Prayer helps Families have Better Relationships! 6. Through a Temple Families are Forever (your family, and your ancestors)!!!! When we share this with them it is amazing to see how much they agree, and want to learn "what are the teachings of christ?" "what is God's plan for me?" "how can i help my family more?" "How can i be with my family forever?" And It's amazing to see how much the gospel truly testifies of the importance, greatness, and sanctity of families. If any of you don't know the answers to these questions... ASK! it will bless your family! I invite all of you to do the minimum and pray, pray with your family, pray for your family and you will have a happier, stronger, and closer family! That is my promise to you, and that is Christ's promise to you! Christ said "19 Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name; 20 And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you. 21 Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed." " He put it in his weekly email today. He also made the following comment: "So let me start by explaining my subject line. Earlier this week i said " Elder Watson and I are like a fine wine, it just gets better with time." And it has been SOOO true. 2 weeks ago we had 4 new people start learning, last week we had 9 new people, and this week we had 13!! It really has been amazing to see the Lord help us so much! So one way we've been finding so many new people has been through families! Not just teaching families, but also just really teaching about how important families are in our lives and in the gospel! So I want to start out by just sharing what we teach about families!" that line actually came before the second one.

So, a few interesting notes. It rained like crazy the other day! 

My family should have a funny photo of me in the cheapest poncho I have ever worn. It literally fell apart at the touch. The sleeve ripped as I put it on. My bag on my shoulder ripped a hole there. It was really bad... So our bike home that day got me absolutely soaked! I swear it rained something like eighteen inches in one day! It also rained hard all day! It would rain for two or three hours, take an hour break, and start again! Streets flooded for sure! Also, I am going to Hanoi today for a two day exchange! It should be cool going back up after over six months! Then back down south again on Wednesday.

 

Well, to sum up families are key to everything! I have such a wonderful family back home who emails me every week. I am not going to lie, I do miss them, and they miss me, but it is only for a short time, just two short years. Then we will be back together and because of the gospel we can be together for eternity! The following statement is so true! "Missionaries leave their families for a short time so others can have a family that is sealed for eternity." And for any missionaries out there reading this, I would like to say, try putting some more focus in looking for families. They are so important, and the foundation of society as a whole. I am grateful for the success God has given Elder Trung and I lately, and I look forward to continuing to work with the people here!

Thank you to all of you out there reading this and for supporting me out here! Have a great week!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

One Year Already?! (Week 52)

One Year Already?!

Samuel Watson

Monday October 1, 2018

Hello everyone,

Wow, I can hardly believe it, but I have been out for over a year now! That is half of my mission! But I still have another year left, and need to make sure to be working just as hard in that year too!

Well, we had quite an eventful week. I don't have enough time to expound fully, and there is just too much to write, so I will mostly sum up what happened. We actually got nine new investigators this week! That is a crazy high number for those who do not know. We had quite a few from English class, and taught several great lessons on families! We have one lesson we have gotten particularly good at teaching, in which we share the Family Proclamation and then talk about temples. The Family Proclamation is seriously an inspired document! At first most people are a little weirded out reading the preexistence stuff, but as it goes, it highlights so many truths that ring to them, and then when we connect it back to the Plan of Salvation, that is how we invite them to learn more!

And the really exciting thing is one of the guys we met for that lesson has a family he now wants us to meet! Another interesting set of investigators is an older couple who previously signed up to attend English class, but we have really been focusing in the mission to increase sacrament attendance to invite everyone, so we even called up all of our English only people, and Co Le and her husband Chu Thang decided to come. I don't think they fully knew what it was before, but they really enjoyed it, and want to learn more about the church! And the other cool story is Anh Quoc Thang, who we found on an old list of people sort of interested in the church. He met the missionaries over a year ago but never started learning. His uncle lives in America and is a member. The missionaries went to his house once and gave his wife and son a blessing. I don't know why they didn't start learning before, but we called them up, and he was excited to meet us to learn about the church! So the Lord is really preparing people for the gospel! Also, they have not become investigators yet, but we have found several people who want to learn more about the gospel and we found them unintentionally, as in not during time going contacting. We have been finding them everywhere from Circle Ks and coffee shops, to even a guy at our apartment we talked to when the bike check in station got broken! We are really seeing God put people in our path!

 

Now for some fun stuff. Last Monday, we went to a lantern market for the Mid Autumn Festival, and I picked up two lanterns, so that was cool. And today we are going bowling with another zone, so that will be cool! That is about it for what I have now. I need to go, everyone is waiting on me to leave to go bowling...

Oh, one more thing. Our other investigators are still doing good, but Em Trang was supposed to meet us on Monday, but got in a bad motorbike crash. She is confined to home, and unable to be visited. She does have plenty of time to read the Book of Mormon now though as she said! Anyways, your prayers for her are appreciated. Also, Anh Tai is doing great, he has a baptismal date for next month and says he will read the whole Book of Mormon by then to know for sure if it is the right decision for him. We know that as he does so, he will truly get a testimony as he prays to God.

Got to go! See you all next week!

Elder Watson/ Nghiem

 

P.S. We are now officially going to plan a big English event for Halloween, so that will be fun!

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