Elder's Nguyen's Favorite Scripture

"And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

"The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

"Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever."

- D&C 122:7-9

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Email - Dated Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Xin Chao!

(Please excuse the lack of tone and vowel markers, this computer doesn't have any.  You'll have to fill them in yourself, sorry.  And please don't use Google Translate, because I might have accidentally written something offensive because I don't have the tone markers, etc.)

Em la khoe.  Khong thay luon luon heiu tieng viet, nhung anh ca hop tap.   Em co thay dop tieng viet.  Em co thay noi bang tieng anh trong Fundamental Practice va Coaching Missionary Study. 

OK, that's enough of that.

I'm doing just fine here.  The language is still difficult (for everyone) but everyone's learning.  There's not really much to report, every week is pretty much the same.

We actually have two investigators now (I don't know if I told you that already).  One of them, Em Thao, is progressing well.  We have him attending church and he is keeping most of the commitments that we have given to him (We haven't been able to follow up on some yet).  He has a baptismal date (Saturday) but my companion and I don't think that we're going to be able to finish teaching everything in time, so we're going to push it back a week or two.

Our other investigator, Chi Thuy, is another story altogether.  We've taught her one full lesson and are about halfway through the second lesson, but she doesn't understand why we need to pray. No matter what we tell her, she keeps insisting that she doesn't think prayer is necessary, and we can't really go anywhere with these lessons if she refuses to pray. 

In my last letter I said that I was called as the district leader last week.  It's not quite as demanding of a calling here as it is in the field.  I have to pick up the mail and approve companionship splits for some activities, and that's it (I don't think I'm going to be required to give baptismal interviews for the district, because there are some missionaries in the district who don't speak Vietnamese, they speak Hmong, and I can't interview people in Hmong.  In fact I can't say anything in Hmong at all.)

I was surprised at the announcement that young men could begin serving missions at 18, but not as surprised as most others were.  There were a few missionaries in our zone who were 18 when they came into the MTC, so when President Monson started talking about them I knew what was going to happen.  I'll bet Michael and A.J. are excited about that, now they don't have to wait quite as long.  But I probably wouldn't have gone at 18 even if I could have.  Not because I wouldn't have wanted to, but because I was so used to having 19 years old as the earliest people could begin serving that I probably would have just stuck with going at 19.

I'm glad that I'm leaving the MTC soon.  While it's good here and I enjoy it, I'm a bit tired of being here (most people who speak foreign languages are only here for 9 weeks and most of the people I know here who aren't in my district are already gone or will be going soon.)

Well I'm about out of time, so I'll end it here.  Bye!  Hopefully these next two years won't be too long for you.

Elder Nguyen

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