More New Beginnings

This week marked the end of one transfer and the beginning of another. Our 6 missionaries were all guessing what changes might be made and honestly, I don't think they could come up with any. I think they thought they were pretty well stuck where they were. But our Mission Leaders surprised us all! Three of our Elders were taken and we were given three new ones, two of those were even new to Hanoi. This is a BIG change for us, and was a big surprise. It turned our p-day into a packing day. The only thing I could count on for the day was making cookies. So I did.

Our missionaries do have one constant, and that is eating, so we went to the mall for one last lunch together. Oh, and one other constant that the Sisters have is Photo Booths, so we did squeeze the 8 of us into a photo booth for our last group shot as a District. Sadly, I didn't take any photos of my own!

Except for lunch...

We have good friends in our branch who grow very attached to the missionaries who serve there, and some of these missionaries had been serving here for a few months. These friends like to treat us all to dinner when there is a "goodbye" to be said, so we went out for a dinner of Hot Pot.

They very politely saved me this chicken foot, and I very politely declined.

We had a slow start to our Game Night on Tuesday, which was very surprising. It was the first activity for the new missionaries to our district, and it was kind of sad to say "this usually isn't like this..." Things did pick up a little late, so it was okay.

One difficult thing with this transfer is that one set of Elders had to "whitewash" into their area. Both of the former missionaries were pulled out, one of them being the District Leader, and two new ones were inserted into an area completely unknown to them. The only helpful thing is that they share an apartment with another set of Elders, and one of the other Elders has been here for 2 transfers, so at least he knows his way around. I thought that would be very helpful, but it turns out that the 2 different companionships don't really do that many things together, and don't seem to share a lot of information, so the 2 new Elders in a companionship are having a harder time of things. I feel their pain. Thankfully, they are in the best branch (ours) and have the best senior missionaries serving with them (us), so I think they'll survive.

On Wednesday morning, I had my Mission Health Council meeting with the Mission Leaders, the Area Medical Authority, the Mission Dental Authority, and the Area Mental Health Authority. This time, the woman who will be replacing me in September also joined from the East Coast. She is a Nurse Practitioner and is Vietnamese by birth, but left the country when she was about 10 years old. She will be a great asset to the mission. During this meeting, we discuss any missionaries who need extra care or attention, and I had one I was particularly needing some advice on. It's really nice to have such great help when the missionaries have medical or mental health needs, and we can all discuss how to work together to get them whatever they need.

While I was getting ready for the meeting (by sleeping in), Allen went for a long walk and was impressed once again by the number of scooters there are in rush-hour traffic in Hanoi.

We discovered something new on Thursday and went exploring. Our "Stake" (District) in Hanoi had scheduled a Relief Society birthday celebration for Saturday, March 14, to be held in the Japanese Gardens of a part of town called Vinhomes Smart City. Since I would be going alone and didn't want to get lost, and since we both love all things Japanese, we thought it would be a good idea to go on Thursday to check it out and get the lay of the land. It turns out that Vinhomes Smart City is a housing development that built a beautiful park with a Japanese theme, then limited entrance to their residents. We were locked out. But we are very innocent looking and harmless, so the guard was kind and let us in to go look around.

On the way to the Japanese Gardens, we had passed through some streets with what looked like an interesting little pagoda, so once we had seen our fill of the gardens, we walked to find the pagoda. It was small, but pretty.

We walked further down the street to get to a more open spot to call for a Grab car home, and we passed some interesting sights like this fish market...

...the man carrying long rods on his bike...

...and then we came to another pagoda, but although the gate was beautifully kept up, the rest of it was a bit less fancy and actually looked like it may have just been the village center, with village ladies below.

Friday was scheduled to be an adventure, but we had to change our plans when Allen needed to get a bike decal delivered down to Ho Chi Minh City. With transfers on Tuesday, that means any new missionaries coming to Vietnam arrived on Thursday night, and we had three of them, 2 Sisters and 1 Elder. Friday was their orientation at the mission home, and then 2 would be flying down to HCMC to meet their new companions. Our plans changed accordingly and we traveled to the mission home to deliver the decal, and some cookies that Ba Adams made to share. It turned out that we got to be included in the orientation and share bike information and health information, which was great! And best of all, we got to meet the 3 new missionaries! We love getting new missionaries to Vietnam, and it was very fun visiting with them as they ate lunch.

After they ate, they were heading to the airport and we were heading on a walk. The mission home is very close to West Lake, and we wanted to continue walking around the perimeter of the lake. We've walked different sections of it before, and today's walk finished off all the portion we hadn't walked. Now we can say that we have walked all the way around West Lake! That's 11 miles all the way around.

I wanted to show what it's like to walk down the sidewalk...motorcycles, trees, etc.

Here, we walked past a flower field that we've heard about in Hanoi and we were really excited when we saw that there was a festival of some sort going on. But as we walked up to it, we were sweetly told that this was a private party for a company. Too bad...

This tree was tiled underneath, and it had some kind of awning strung up in it to make something like a treehouse. Very interesting...

This was a beautiful flower field, but when we got close to it we saw that the tables and carpeting were in decay and it wasn't being kept up. Someone had once had a great idea for a beautiful place to go for a picnic or to have pictures taken, and then maybe it was too expensive or too much work. Sadly, that seems to be fairly typical of a lot of Vietnam.

This is one cool tree in a field.

People have their little shops anywhere they own property. This wasn't even a house; I'm not sure what it was. I tried to see, but I couldn't figure it out.

We walked around to a pagoda/temple complex on the point of the lake that we've walked to before. This street just outside of the temple sells anything you might want for your temple offerings.

Here's one entrance.

This street inside the complex leads from one temple to another, and it is filled with shops selling pre-made offerings.

THIS is the same tree...

...as THIS... It is growing all the way across the plaza!! Amazing!

And here is the other entrance.

We finished our day with a trip to the supermarket. I realized I needed a picture of something that has made up our life for the past 18 months...

This was a light shopping trip! Our apartment is about 1/3 mile away from the store.

Saturday morning was a trip back to the Japanese Gardens for the Relief Society celebration. This was the first time I've experienced RS at a park in Hanoi, but it's not a bit surprising. We had 31 sisters attend the District RS activity.

Sister Nelson on the right is interpreting for the District RS counselor, who speaks only English.

And afterwards they treated us all to lunch at the mall: Hot Pot.

Saturday afternoon was my music class and then English activity. This day's music class ended up being a very busy one. One student who has come a few times and is really enjoying learning, Hang, invited her friends, and three came! These sweet girls are so interested in learning to play the piano, and it breaks my heart that I'll be leaving in 7 weeks and there may not be anyone to carry on the class after me. If the missionaries who are here after us are capable and are interested, then they may do it, but at some point they will also be leaving. It may be that I have my sweet Hoa, my first music student, learn how to use the Church's Music Course enough to help people learn on their own, if the missionaries will just be in charge of setting up the pianos and getting things ready for them. We'll see what we can do about that.

Sunday we had 51 people at church! Allen thinks that's a record for the entire time we've been here in Hai Ba Trung. It was crowded in Sacrament Meeting! Now if we can just keep them all coming. The missionaries were delighted with the number of friends who came to church, and then stayed for Sunday School (which they taught) and for the Pot Luck afterwards. There were a lot of people I didn't know sharing lunch, and that's just great. My clam chowder, once again, was gone in record time.