Last Saturday our District (Stake) held a Women's Conference for the Relief Society in the 4 branches here in Hanoi. It was a cooking competition, as well as a spiritual meeting, which made it very interesting, indeed!
I am now the 1st counselor in the Ha Ba Trung Branch. The 2nd counselor asked me Friday night if I was free Saturday morning and could help her with her cooking in the kitchen at the church. I had already received an assignment for the dinner and was to make a salad (I told our RS president it would need to be an American salad!), so I told her I could help her in the morning and make my salad in the afternoon.
Here, I am NOT reacting to Allen, but to the onions I was sauteing! I promise!
I was delighted to be with her and with the 2 Sister missionaries (both native Vietnamese) who all knew what they were doing and the 2nd counselor, Chi Linh, put me to work. She was patient and helpful and spoke as much English as she could to me, which was good for her as she is working on her English. What she made was delicious, and I wish I could find her dishes in a restaurant nearby! (I'm a bit tired of Pho.)
I made my salad and Allen and I rode to Ba Dinh where the meeting was. We arrived at 4:40 pm for a 5:00 pm start time and we walked into the kitchen there and were amazed by a couple of the branches and their preparation! You can see from the following pictures how seriously they took this competition! And my branch had a bare table and only my salad was there. At 5:00 pm only my salad was there. At 5:15 pm only my salad was there. And then I realized that all start times in Vietnam are dependent upon the weather and the Grab drivers, and everyone knows it and is very lenient.
At 5:30 pm the rest of our food had arrived and was artfully arranged on the bare table, but there was absolutely no competition with two of the other branches! Oh. My. Word. The lengths that ALL the branches went to in cooking up a culinary feast of Vietnamese food! It was heaven later when we were allowed to eat it after the judging.
This watermelon was carved with the First Great Commandment, in Vietnamese, "Love God", and then a flower carved into the rind. You can't see the whole thing in this picture but it's in the upper picture.
The next carved watermelon, complete with flowers made from the rind.
Here's our table with my salad on the right! Fancy aluminum pan, served with a pink spatula and a metal spatula! Yay, Barb! But it was full of goodness (I tried to copy my sister Jen's creations, which always include every vegetable known to man. Come to think of it, Liz and Cindy do the same!)
Our table again, in all it's glory!
And the last of the 4 branches...
It was delicious!
(That's my R.S. president waving on the left.)
And here's our branch! (Plus a few extras...)
And the RS presidency+ accepting our award (whatever it was) from the mission president. :)
And new places!!
Our district missionaries explored "pottery city" this Monday--Bat Trang--a place full of history and pottery! It was another amazing adventure!
This area was FILLED with shops and shops and shops of pottery: simple, elegant, and everything in between! It was AMAZING! I'm sharing lots of pictures again...
There are also shops that will help you experience pottery making yourself! Someday Allen and I will go back and see what we can create!
These were some beautiful "trunks" that I later was told are actually children's caskets. I hope they're not in very big demand in VN!!
This is one of the hardest things I've had to do all week is to choose which pictures to show you! I have SOOOOO many pictures of beautiful things!! So many colors, and flowers, and traditional pieces, and rustic pieces... We couldn't see prices on them and didn't ask, but we wish we could magically transport some of these back home to California!!
Plus beautiful paintings (that might find their way across the ocean...).
We found my early Christmas present for $10--the perfect Ong/Ba--Grandpa and Grandma.
Here is the crane on the turtle again...
In Bat Trang there is also a museum of pottery...
The displays show how the clay and the pottery were made anciently.
There was also a temple in Bat Trang...
I love how this tree embraced the rock...
And then I loved putting the tree in the proper perspective.
This is the view down to the river. Our apartment is clear on the other side of the river and west of here.
The rest of this week has been spent with a General Authority Seventy, Elder Benjamin Tai, who came to tour our mission. He is the president of the Asia Area. He was with the missionaries in Hanoi on Tuesday and Wednesday and in Saigon on Thursday and Friday. Missionaries in each city were able to attend meetings in person if they were in that city, and on zoom if they were in the other city, for each of those days, and it was a very spiritual experience. Allen and I were able to have dinner with him and his wife and the Howells on Tuesday evening. We did NOT eat Vietnamese food!
One thing we were reminded of during this mission tour is that Elder Rasband recently visited Vietnam and said that the Lord IS doing miracles--not WILL do miracles--in Vietnam. Elder Tai pointed out that the missionaries are the miracles in Vietnam right now. Pretty powerful stuff!
Well, we love you all! We hope your Halloween was safe and fun! We didn't think we'd see much of Halloween this year, but we were pleasantly surprised...
And our touch from home--
Dominic-O-Lantern!!
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