Email Dated Monday, January 28, 2013

Hi everyone,

We had a good experience a couple weeks ago that I forgot about.  On Saturday (two weeks ago) we had a lunch appointment with a member.  However, I got an impression to visit a less active member instead of going to the meeting.  We visited the member, but he didn't come to church the next day.  However, yesterday he came to church!  It was exciting to see that we were able to help someone come back to church.

The finding project hasn't yielded much.  We found out on Friday that it is illegal to use Facebook in Vietnam, so we've started searching an additional site for members who are probably in Vietnam.  However, it's still quite difficult to find anyone because a lot of people simply don't have information, and when they have it the Facebook profiles that match their names don't have information, or at least not information that matches.

On Friday, Elder Workman and I had to move to a new apartment.  Ours was too far from all of the other missionaries in the mission, so we got moved to another apartment that is closer to the mission home.  It is around the corner from the church, which is nice, but we also have to cross a large and rather steep bridge to get to our area now (our old apartment was in our area.)

Our zone also got a new missionary on Friday.  His name is Elder Barker.  He actually speaks Vietnamese quite well for a new missionary.  He is in my district, and the same apartment.  The Zone Leader, Elder Tien, is his trainer.

Besides that, not much is happening here.  We haven't found any new investigators, but that's not really news anymore.  We're still searching, still asking for referrals, and still not finding anyone.  We're going to continue to look, but there aren't many places left to look.  Still, we're doing good here, and I'm happy for it.

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Nguyen

Email Dated Monday, January 21, 2013

Hi everyone,

This week we got transfer calls.  For now, I will be staying in Branch 6 with Elder Workman.  However, we seem to be the only Viet companionship that is staying the same in Phnom Penh.  Every single other companionship (including the sisters) is getting shuffled around, with people going to and from Vietnam.  A lot of sister missionaries are going home this week, which means that there's going to be a rather large companionship shuffle, trying to fill the gaps, because we don't have any coming in right now.

We still don't have any investigators, but we're looking when we have time.  Our zone recently started a new project where we take the names of less active members who the church has lost track of, and we try to find them through social networking sites, especially Facebook (but you won't be seeing me on because we don't use our own accounts.)  Since we don't have investigators, Elder Workman and I do a lot of the work.  It's done Tuesday through Saturday, and Elder Workman and I are scheduled for every day.

Well, I'm running out of time, so I'll go now.  Have a great week everyone!

Elder Nguyen

Email Dated Monday, January 14, 2013

Hi everyone,

We're doing OK here.  We still don't have anyone definite to teach, but we have some areas that look promising and some new ideas about how to find people, so we have high hopes for the coming week.

I found out Wednesday that I had a lung infection, so I had to stay inside most of the week.  Luckily I got medicine for it before it turned into pneumonia.  I'm pretty much recovered now, except for a slight cough that probably won't go away for a while.  On the plus side, I was able to catch up on sleep somewhat because we've been inside all day.  However, being inside gets quite boring after reading the scriptures for hours on end.  Elder Workman and I are going to be very happy to be able to go out this week.

We've been going all over, trying to find more people to teach, but as I have said before there aren't very many Vietnamese people in Cambodia to begin with, so we haven't had a lot of success.  Also, a lot of them have to work all day so it's hard to contact during the day. 

We're still working hard, we recently got a new project that we are going to use to find less [active members of the church] who have been less active for a while.  Since Elder Workman and I don't have any investigators, we are probably going to start spending a lot of time working on the new project once we get it up and running.

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Nguyen

Email - Dated Monday, January 7, 2013

Hi everyone,

I'm doing OK right now.  I have a cold (someone said it might be pneumonia and I really hope not) but I'm recovering (I think.)  I won't know for sure until tomorrow.

We still don't have a lot of work to do here, all of the leads we've followed that could have led to new investigators turned out to be dead ends so far.  We're still looking, still have a few places left to look, and still have a lot to do here.  

We're currently teaching Anh Vu's family.  He is a member who recently returned to activity.  His children don't know how to read very well, so we're helping them with that.  It makes it harder to teach when they can barely read, but we're managing to teach orally while teaching them how to read.  We hope that they might be able to start reading the Book of Mormon on their own by the end of next transfer.

I had a funny little collision the other day.  My companion and I were biking home, I was going pretty fast, when suddenly the motorcycle in front of me stopped.  I didn't have enough time to stop behind them, so I turned to the left to go around them (which is allowed here if you're on a residential street.)  Suddenly there was a truck coming down the street , and my shoulder hit the driver's-side rearview mirror.  The mirror shattered.  Nothing serious.  Somehow the chain on my bike slipped, but that was easy to fix.  I'm perfectly fine, the collision was more funny than anything else.

In short, we're doing what we can, working hard, and hopefully will have more to do soon.

Have a great week!

Elder Nguyen