The Adams' Mission Adventure - Phở real

 I am definitely behind on getting this posted. Last week was busy with a visit from Elder Teh of the Seventy (a leading authority in our Church who has leadership over parts of Asia), coupled with our District Conference, which is the same as Stake Conference back home. The week began with Father's Day! But there were no kids around to shower Allen with affection, and as he likes to say about moms on Mother's Day--He's not my Dad. But our branch just happened to be having a nice pot luck lunch that day (they don't have a Father's Day) so Allen got some food beyond what I would have given him. Lucky man! Flowers in our apartment lobby Don't ask me to name what these foods are--I don't know. I only know if I eat them or not. I was so disappointed to miss a picture of our branch members eating pizza with chopsticks! Monday was a harbinger of the p-days to come--hot and humid; too uncomfortable to do anything outside. So we went inside! There's nothing like...

 Wait, What?? Who knew pagodas close for lunch?  Only some of them do! And none of the other ones we've gone to do! Only THIS one, the one we purposely took a ride out to so we could show our District missionaries the very cool pagoda we found! Instead, we had to go walk 1/2 mile in the heat to the 2nd best pagoda of the day, which was a darn good pagoda anyway, and which was on the river. These are the 2 pagodas that Allen and I discovered on the day that we walked across the Long Bien Bridge (remember? Threat of death at every step, looking down between the concrete slabs that shook with every step?). We were so impressed with these 2 pagodas that we wanted to share them with our youngsters, and it was too hot to go anywhere that took more energy. This little fellow was not having a good day, either. (This is something we don't see in the U.S., and we've only seen twice in Hanoi.)     Fish sold on the street; in this case, under the overpass. The second best pagoda...