One Step Closer...

 

Where Is This??

This was one more place on Allen's bucket list, and brought us one step closer to being ready to come home. And speaking of steps, it took a whole lot of steps to get up here. More on this later.

April 6. Monday. Only 4 p-days left with our missionaries. It's getting harder to find things we can do together that they haven't all done before. Today we chose a really good BBQ place--Ushi Mania-- with meat that was actually tender enough to eat! It will be a shock to pay the America prices for good food like this.

After lunch, we headed to my favorite Hang Ma Street to let some of the missionaries find memorabilia to take home, as they have only 2 1/2 transfers left on their missions. Allen and I have 1/2 transfer left and we were not in the market for more memorabilia, but we bought it anyway.

Hang Ma Street was filled with everything red and gold and every hanging lantern of every description, just as the first picture shows, but I was too busy just looking to take any pictures this time. I have taken so many pictures of this street in previous visits that I passed over this opportunity.

April 7. Tuesday. District Council Meeting. We always have the missionaries bring their lunches over at noon before the meeting begins at 1:00 pm. When there is a Mission Leader Council Meeting during the week (once a month the young missionaries have this council meeting with the mission leaders), we have an extra missionary come visit, one of the Sister Training Leaders who flies up from Saigon. Today we had Sister Khom visiting with us; her mother is Vietnamese and she was raised in Cambodia. She is helping teach Cambodian investigators in the Mission Branch, those people who live outside of Saigon and who are taught online. She now knows why she was called to the Vietnam mission, as she is able to play a crucial role in teaching these Cambodian people.

My part in the meeting was to give a presentation on Adjusting to Missionary Life, so I taught about how to deal with anxiety. There is a wonderful booklet in the Gospel Library app specifically for missionaries to learn how to adjust to being a missionary, and it has wonderful information. It would be helpful for anyone, not just missionaries. Allen's part today was the closing prayer, which includes praying for every single person the missionaries are teaching who are progressing or who are on date for baptism. It is a challenge to pronounce those names, I can tell you.

Tuesday evening is usually Game Night, but we are changing things up to have a more meaningful interaction during the week, and so game night is trading off each week with Book of Mormon Club Night, which was tonight. We had a good group attend, and the discussion on how to learn from the Book of Mormon (Sach Mac Mon) went well. 

April 8. Wednesday. Allen and I chose an activity today that we hadn't done before but which was on a list of possibilities: The Hanoi Museum. The name is pretty generic so it's never really caught our attention but we thought we'd better not skip a Hanoi Museum! We went and it was worth going to.

Allen says that this large building was filled with modern art, which makes it less interesting than ancient cultural art, but still interesting-looking.

Out on the grounds there were more displays...

This shows the shape of the museum--an inverted triangle.

This is a steam engine.

This is a display against war. It uses the sculpture of John McCain being captured that I'm standing next to as a demonstration of the vices of war.

Now we're inside the museum building. The displays were interesting because they were very typical of Hanoi and evoked memories for us of our experiences here. For example, the next picture has a poem about Bat Trang bricks because they are the best when it comes to pottery. And we LOVE going to Bat Trang, pottery village.

This next picture talks about Hang Ma Street...

This pictures shows the colorful bicycle vendors that we see all over Hanoi--all over Vietnam, for that matter.

This is Long Bien Bridge, which is a very familiar sight.

This description is of Long Bien Bridge before and after the name was changed, and how it was destroyed and replaced in the war.

Hanoi wouldn't be Hanoi without a picture of a water-puppet theater.

And these carriages are in all of the largest pagodas, I think.

This museum was one that we enjoyed, although not one that we will miss going back to.

April 9. If I could do one thing differently on this mission, I think it would be doing a better job of writing things down as they happened. Allen and I help the missionaries with lessons fairly often, but quite often they are just a last minute thing, or a spur of the moment add-on to our day. I always think "oh, I should be sure to write that down", and then I don't.

On the way home from the museum on Wednesday, we helped Elders Sprague and Hill with an online lesson with Sister Thao, Branch President Hieu's sister. We were in the back of the Grab car on our way home; she had a bad connection; her English isn't the best; they asked her about her feelings concerning a baptism and she didn't respond well; we didn't hear what was going on well; it wasn't a very good experience.  

Today we said we could help these Elders with another online lesson, this time with Loan, and this time we were at home with my iPad in a quiet room and she was on her computer with a good connection (after she hung up and tried again). It was a much better experience for all of us, and it was fun to talk to her and testify about spiritual gifts and being able to contribute to helping people. These kinds of lessons happen frequently, most often at the church and in person, but they just haven't been written down, and that's a shame.

Tonight, we made it to English class to help out; we're not getting very many people at English these days, which is really too bad.

April 10. Friday. BaVi National Park. Here is the headliner for today's blog, and the first picture! Allen has been wanting to go to BaVi for awhile. He invited the other senior couples but they haven't been able to come; we quit waiting and booked a private tour, so it was just him and me and our tour guide, Truong.

It was a hot day in Hanoi, but the temperature at BaVi was very pleasant with a nice little breeze, which was a wonderful surprise. The air quality on the way up to the forest showed 207, which is ghastly, so we were very glad to have it drop to 171 by the time we got there. There are some high views there, but we weren't able to see any of them due to the clouds of overcast and smog, but the forests themselves were beautiful.

Allen had thought we would be walking on natural trails of dirt...hahaha, we're in Vietnam! We climbed 1296 meters on steps!

While we were hiking to a pagoda on one peak, this temple could be seen on the other peak. We would be hiking to this one next.

Inside the pagoda...

                                                                                                   More steps...

It was a "white out" below us...

We made it to the top of this peak--to Bac Ho Temple, the Temple for Ho Chi Minh. The legend--or rumor?--said that Ho Chi Minh was actually buried somewhere up here. But that's only a legend... or is it?

This is the actual shrine; the statue of HCM is in the back.

We had reached the pagoda, and then gone up more steps to the HCM temple, and now we had to go back down the steps to the pagoda again. What goes up must come down...

...down many, many steps.

Once we got to the bottom of this first hike, and had a chance to take a potty break...(the green bucket takes water from the red bucket for flushing)

...then we began the second hike, which was only 1129 meters high, or thereabouts.

...and more steps...

It began gently at first...

...and then it didn't.

Here was a sight of the pagoda we had hiked to on the first peak.

Wildlife!!

We finally reached this temple.

But there were more steps to get to a higher level of the temple on the peak.

And a better view of the pagoda on the other peak that was 1296 meters high...

Here is the shrine, with a dragon, or serpent?, above on each side. The flowers are beautiful.

There was another shrine inside a little man-made cave...

Tigers were in this cave.

And then there were more steps going up to an even higher level. I stopped counting. Or noticing. I just went wherever there were steps.

Finally reached the top!

I thought these things were for sale (there were a LOT of them) but it turns out they were offerings.

Down, down, down...

Back to the entrance and this pretty koi pond.

From here we drove down the mountain for a little ways and then up a short road to this French church that had been destroyed. It was very picturesque.

These steps to the bell tower would give anyone pause...

After the church, we continued down the mountain to this little "pine forest" which was a pretty place, but not what "pine forest" conjured up in our minds.

And after we had finished all our adventures on the mountain, we found a restaurant for what turned out to be our next adventure--lunch. We had no one to guide us on what was good; our guide barely described what was on the menu, and Google Translate didn't do much better. Allen decided to order a fish dish, and that's what he got--a fish dish with many small fish that apparently you just pop into your mouth and eat, lock, stock and barrel, so to speak. I tried a few; as long as I didn't think of the fact that I was munching on the fish head, I didn't mind too much. It was quite dried out and crumbled to ashes in my mouth. I was glad I had stuck with a cucumber and French fries. (I was not brave at all.)

We made it home in time for Young Single Adults, where they played a little game to see how much people knew about General Conference and then they listened to a conference talk. 

A last-minute dinner invitation with the missionaries took us to a very good Nem Nuong place that we wish we had known about for the past 1 1/2 years. Shoot. Oh, well. Nem Nuong is spring rolls that you put together and dip in fish sauce, and I hope when we get back to the states we can find a good Vietnamese restaurant that makes good Nem Nuong.

11 April. Saturday. Today was General Conference in Vietnam. It actually took place on April 4 and 5 in the U.S., but in Vietnam we always wait for another week for the talks to be translated into Vietnamese.

We arrived at the church for the morning session which went from 9:00 to 11:00 am. I only took a few pictures, which is too bad. This is the 1st floor, where we hold our English activities, game nights, Book of Mormon club, etc. We had about 15 people come to watch conference, which is the most we've ever had come on a Saturday. It was great! In the past, Allen and I have watched the English version of conference by ourselves in a separate room, but this year President Howell had suggested that we stay in the same room as the Vietnamese Saints and use our earbuds to listen in English, and I'm really glad we did it this way this time! It's too bad we didn't do it this way every time we listened to conference while we were here in Vietnam! 

The afternoon session went from 12:30 to 2:30 pm so that I could still have my piano class and the missionaries could still hold their English activity at 4:00 pm. My piano students really love to come and learn and practice, so I was happy to move the time of conference a little earlier to accommodate them coming to have class this week.

After the morning session, the missionaries all went to a Bun Bo Hue restaurant for lunch, so we went with them. Allen and I don't like Bun Bo Hue but we planned to just get something else there. The food was okay, but it reinforced my belief that I'll be happy to be home with American food.

Once again, at the end of the day we had another late invitation to eat Nem Nuong again with the missionaries. I'm a sucker for the fact that we only have 3 weeks left and then we won't be around these missionaries, so I thought we couldn't pass up the chance to eat dinner with them again. Once again, Nem Nuong did not disappoint. You take rice paper, then roll up the noodles, meat, veggies, and fruits, as well as some lettuce, and dip in the sauce.

This restaurant is one that has 3 walls, like we were told would be safe before we came on our mission. We discovered that advice is pretty much true. This one opened right out onto the street and was a really good restaurant. 

12 April. Sunday. Today was another General Conference day, but we had even more people attend, and we held it on the 4th floor instead of the 1st floor. The 4th floor is where we have our chapel, so we moved the TV into the chapel. I didn't get any good pictures from today, which is too bad. We had about 25 people attend today, which included quite a few friends here to investigate the Church.

After the morning session, our branch held it's regular Potluck, and I made my regular Clam Chowder. I may well be known for years to come for my clam chowder, especially if I get the recipe typed up and handed out to the few people who really like it.

Clam chowder went fast.

Elder Sprague and his sister Kat and me.

On our ride home after church, we were struck again by the precautions people take on their scooters to protect themselves against the pollution in the air. The temperature was about 99 degrees and the humidity was around 50%, but scooter riders wear jackets and long sleeves and hats and hoods and masks--not all of them, but many of them.

Vietnamese women especially feel that white skin is greatly to be desired. You are wealthy if you can have white skin, so they will cover up and protect themselves from the sun even if the weather is hot and humid.

Also on the way home from church, I took many pictures of businesses that are being torn down to make way for a wider road. We won't see the results before we are gone, but in a year we think we wouldn't even recognize the route to and from church any more. The neighborhood here has always been very poor and run down, and now it looks even more so. We wonder how the families feel who have been displaced; there are so very many of them. The government seems to be able to make it worth their while; at least, we hope so!

This just seems to make it even harder to leave Vietnam. It's like things are halfway done and we won't see the finished product--there won't be closure. We have grown to love even the run-down neighborhoods we live in, and we feel for those whose lives are being turned upside down by these construction projects. To think that we won't be a part of it, or see what happens, doesn't seem right.

I'm just grabbing onto whatever I can in these last few weeks; I'm finding it's harder to leave than I ever imagined. Seeing friends at church today and realizing that we would be leaving them behind was difficult, but thinking of being with my family again makes it all seem right again. That is my focus, my family is my joy.