This Thursday, Chi Man Nghi and I got to fly down to Ho Chi Minh for some exchanges! Unfortunately we were only able to spend about 7 hours in the city with the sisters down there, but it was still fun! I've noticed that Ho Chi Minh is a lot quiter, the food is really good, and the air is a bit cleaner.. Still love Hanoi, but I definitely will not have very many complaints if I get transferred down to Ho Chi Minh!
This week I want to share a scripture, D&C 122:5-9
(I would copy and paste the scripture on here but I really don't like the way it formatted in this email.. So you will just have to go look it up on www.lds.org!) This scripture talks about trials that we have in life, and that ultimately every trial that we are given is for our benefit. We have trials in life to improve and become the person that we are meant to be. We don't have trials because Heavenly Father thinks it's funny to watch us suffer. Trials truly do help us reach our full potential. Serving here in Vietnam has been rough - there are so many things to plan and think about, a lot of stuff that I didn't even know missionaries had to do! But I know that with every trial I have, I'm improving (maybe just a smidge, but improving) and hopefully by the end of my 18 months I'll be someone that people actually enjoy being around!
(I would copy and paste the scripture on here but I really don't like the way it formatted in this email.. So you will just have to go look it up on www.lds.org!) This scripture talks about trials that we have in life, and that ultimately every trial that we are given is for our benefit. We have trials in life to improve and become the person that we are meant to be. We don't have trials because Heavenly Father thinks it's funny to watch us suffer. Trials truly do help us reach our full potential. Serving here in Vietnam has been rough - there are so many things to plan and think about, a lot of stuff that I didn't even know missionaries had to do! But I know that with every trial I have, I'm improving (maybe just a smidge, but improving) and hopefully by the end of my 18 months I'll be someone that people actually enjoy being around!
Not much happened this week, except for that our investigator Chi Trang officially accepted 10/22 as her baptism date!!!! SO EXCITING.
This Saturday, we were invited over to a member's house for lunch: Chi Tan. She is the relief society president here in Hanoi. She lives about an hour away, so we new it would be a LONG bike ride. Unfortunately, we forgot our cellphone at home.. So when we got lost we had to ask about 15 people for directions!! But we couldn't give up and go home because Chi Tan makes really good ice cream and we knew she would give us some when we got to her house. So we endured this bike ride pretty well. FUNNIEST PART of this whole experience though, was that her kitchen (where we ate lunch) is only about 5 feet 10 inches tall. I'm 5 foot 8/5 foot 9 (depending on who's measuring). So that's right, I had about 1 inch of space when I stood up. It was the funniest thing ever. I will be attaching a picture of it later on so that everyone can laugh about how ridiculous my life is here in Vietnam.
On Saturday night, we had a party for Le Trung Thu, the mid-autumn festival!! We had a lot of new people show up for it, so it was a great night for us! My least favorite part, however, was when my lovely, kind companion Chi Man Nghi volunteered me for the banana eating contest. I absolutely love the bananas here (they're so cute and little) but I don't love them when I have 2 minutes to eat as many as I can! Thank goodness I had a little helper, Em Ha (5 or 6 years old). She managed to eat 1 banana and I ate 4 more for a WHOPPING TOTAL OF FIVE MINI BANANAS. We place third... Out of 3 teams. Don't worry, I know that this is just one trial that's been given to me in my life, and (like I said before about trials) through it I will be able to improve to become the person I was meant to be. A person that can eat 10 mini bananas in 2 minutes.
The one quote to describe this week would be this: "Hai Chi Ca an thoai mai, nhe!" Which translates to "Oh, eat comfortably!" Meaning that we can eat as much or as little as we want. Unfortunately, people here say that and then expect you to change your definition of "comfortable" so that you eat everything they put on your plate. For example, Co Hang said that to us this week and then forced us to eat a huge platter of ban cuon, nep com, and papaya. Yum.
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