Email - Dated Monday, November 12, 2012

Wow, that's a lot of questions!  I'll try to answer everyone's questions, but I might miss a few.

 

The official schedule is like this: wake up at 6:30, exercise and breakfast until 8.  Study from 8 until 11.

 

That's really all that we have officially, because we're not allowed to tract or street contact in Vietnam.  Most days we have lessons to teach to investigators and recent converts.  Some days we bike to the houses of less active members and teach them, and one less active member pretty much eats up the whole day with travel, because we need to bike for several hours to reach the houses of less active members. 

 

We teach English four times per week.  We have two companionships in our apartment and we take turns teaching, so my companion and I teach two times per week. 

 

Many of the members here are from Vietnam, but there are also quite a few members from the States who are here because of work or for some other reason.

 

Church services are pretty much the same as they are in America (sacrament, Sunday School, Priesthood).  It's usually in Vietnamese, but there are headsets that English-speaking members can wear to get an English translation.  I don't usually wear it though.  While I don't understand much and I'm still not as good as I was at the MTC, I'm learning and I can understand a little.

 

The food here is something like this: rice, plus some sort of protein, usually chicken or pork, and some sort of vegetable.

 

My companion, Elder Tai, is from New York.

 

The Vietnamese elders usually get their mail every week, but in Vietnam we only get it once a month because we have to pick it up and the zone leader goes to the mission home (in Cambodia) about once a month or so, unless there's a transfer (which doesn't happen very often.)

 

Everything here is done by bike, no driving except for the mission president, the assistants, and the office elders, all of whom are in the Cambodia mission.  Bikes are supplied by the mission, but we have to put down a deposit in case something happens to the bike.  Traffic is quite bad here, there don't seem to be many rules besides

1. Don't crash

2. Don't go if there's a red light (some people ignore this one)

Those are pretty much all of the rules, besides this it's pretty much just go where you want.  I don't think there's even rulesabout what part of the road you're supposed to drive on.

 

It's hot and humid here (they say it always is, and I believe them) but it's not raining very much.  Apparently the rainy season was ENDING when I arrived, not beginning, as the rainy season seems to end early here.

 

From, Elder Nguyen