Filling the Days With Our Kind of Finding!

A big part of a missionary's life is finding, but it's done differently here in Vietnam. The missionaries here can't go door to door, or hand out pamphlets, or show a Book of Mormon unless they are first asked about it. They get creative in their finding. Many of them are approached outside by people who hear them speak English or who ask who they are as they visit a bookstore or in the park. Much of their teaching comes from referrals from the Church Face Book page, or from the English activity Face Book page.

Allen and I can't speak the language, so our kind of finding looks like us walking around the city of Hanoi with our badges on, hoping that we attract attention by our sparkling demeanors and cheery dispositions. Don't laugh; it works more than you'd think! We spent our p-day this week at Bat Trang, the pottery village that we have visited many times, and 3 ladies remembered that we had visited there before (most recently with Kevin), and remembered us by our badges and our hair (probably). Even riding up and down the elevator in our apartment building, we often have people remember us. Last week, a woman told Allen that she remembers him being here for about a year, and that he is with the other young men who wear badges.

This is the way we do our missionary work in Hanoi: we walk the streets and try to be memorable. And as we walk, we look for the sights that will be memorable for us, and this week we found quite a few. We'll start with Monday.

Monday was spent at Bat Trang where our Sisters really wanted to make some pottery of their own, which is a very fun activity and costs about $4 to make a small pot or vase or bowel, paint it, and then have it delivered for an extra $2.

While the Sisters were creating, Allen and I were exploring. We had made pots in the past and were more interested in discovering beautiful things, which we found in abundance.

A bazillion tea sets of every color and design... just beautiful.

On Tuesday, we met with our District for training but left a little early to meet with Jeremy Butler from a previous home ward. He works for a company that has a manufacturing plant in Vietnam and every so often he comes over to spend time at the plant. He and 2 co-workers made a stop in Hanoi and we were able to meet them for a short visit. We went to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known in America as the Hanoi Hilton, and then to Hoan Kiem Lake. I was kept rather busy that day with phone calls and texts from missionaries with some health issues, and as my phone was running out of power, I left them early and headed home. But it was nice to see a familiar face from home.

The main focus of the prison is how the French used it to incarcerate the Vietnamese political prisoners in the first half of the 1900s, and it really was terrible to see. The focus on the treatment of the American POWs during the later war is handled differently.

It was a beautiful day, and I missed out on dinner with the guys!

On Wednesday, Allen continued with his assignment to catalog all the bikes in the mission by visiting 3 of the branches in Hanoi. He had already taken care of our own branch (Hai Ba Trung), so we got to go further afield today and see branches in Cau Giay, Ba Dinh, and Ha Dong.

This is the church building in Cau Giay (whose name is literally "paper bridge")...

And these are the fun Sisters--Carlile and Nelson!

From Cau Giay we went to Ba Dinh with Sisters Ellsworth and Cheney. I had to show you the street, which is a typical one when we get into the neighborhoods. They are 2-way streets, and people park on the sides. Sometimes, your car ends up backing out and finding another way around.

And if we're walking at the same speed as the car, we have to be extra careful because we are third in importance behind the car and then the scooter.

Sisters Cheney and Ellsworth...

And the Elders, who are with friends, and also on exchanges...

And then we made it to Ha Dong, and Allen got to have some fun testing the bikes.

When we finished in Ha Dong, which is the branch furthest from our apartment, we walked to the train station to ride closer to home for less money. We could Grab home for about 8 dollars, or ride the train for a buck and a half. And since it was Wednesday, and we were free that evening, that made it our date night! The train station where we got off was near a big mall with lots of restaurants for us to explore. Here was a food court; see if you like the selection...

Thursday we Grabbed to English activity in the evening and had a conversation with our Grab driver. See how we did? This was actually all Allen.

A fun thing this evening was a new friend Nga, whose friend Linh was just baptized today, and who is a very good artist. She drew a caricature of Allen and me and I think it's exactly right.

On Friday, we had one more bike issue to deal with, and we did the missionaries a solid by taking one of their bikes in to have a tube changed so that they wouldn't need to deal with it later. The tube cost $4 (100,000 VND) and he didn't charge for the repair, which took him a good chunk of his time, since it was a cumbersome mountain bike without any easy way to remove the tire.

This shop owner just happened to have 2 bike jerseys that are the gold and red colors of Vietnam and have the country name on them. We are delighted.

And here's the shrine that almost every shop has in a corner somewhere, usually near the entrance.

The rest of Friday became the real finding day for us, and the inspiration for the title of this week's blog. We had time to spare after the bike repair, so we decided to go walking across a causeway...

past a really cool pagoda...

past the spot where John McCain was shot down into West Lake during the Vietnam War...

and near Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum where we had seen a park on one of our trip's earlier this week. We ended up walking down a long street...

and missed a turn to go the way we should have, but we found a shortcut into the Hanoi Botanical Garden. There, to our surprise, we heard drums and chanting, and as we walked toward the sound we found...

the Den Nui Sua, where they were holding a festival to commemorate "Huyen Thien Hac De, a saint believed to have helped the Dai Viet people fight against foreign invaders during the reign of King Ly Thanh Tong (1023-1072)". The sign for the festival specifically said that they are celebrating the 1000th year since the founding of their village there, which is now just a part of Hanoi. So take your pick as to the reason for the festival, I guess.

But what perfect timing! The festival was being held today and tomorrow, with today being more of the practice day, but it meant we could watch it and not get up at 7 am on Saturday.

The festival included these very colorful rituals or ceremonies taking place at the temple itself, and then we stayed long enough to see some awesome drumming, and also the re-enactment of the foreign invasion which was put down with the help of the Saint. It was a wonderful finding day! We missed out on dinner and we were late for the Young Single Adult activity that night, but it was worth it.

The musicians getting ready to play...

And now the musicians are playing...

These drummers were just amazing.

It was an awesome festival to find, and especially fun when it was something we weren't even looking for. But since our phones were about dead, we had to leave and Grab to the church while we still had the ability to use the Grab app. haha

We arrived in time for the YSA activity, where they were making decorative cards for the special women in their lives because March 8 is celebrated as International Women's Day in Vietnam. The bouquets on the streets are pretty interesting, and they're for sale everywhere.

Saturday was another busy day. I made banana muffins for the baptism that we had today, and I had two women return to my piano class whom I hadn't seen since before Tet. I missed a couple of Saturdays in February that they came for, and they had met with the Elders for their lessons those days. I'm not sure what the Elders taught them, but I told them to un-learn it and stick with what I was teaching them. :)

Today--Sunday-- was a good day. It was a bit stressful with a broken microphone at the podium, and some language challenges, but in the end, we had a baptism of a young woman who bore a strong testimony afterwards. The young branch member who baptized her had the experience of his first baptism, which was great, and in the end he did it perfectly.