The Next Step...

 Steps continue to figure prominently in my stories these days, and not on purpose. This p-day  came after last week's practice hike up 2 mountainsides at BaVi National Forest. That was a preparation for this week's 1000 step hike up to Thanh Giong Monument, where Allen really wanted to hike "one more time". Famous last words spoken last January--spoken by Allen and not by me. What a good wife I am! Plus, our young missionaries love to hike and they also really wanted to do this hike.

This is a new mural that was built since the last time we were here. You can see the hero Thanh Giong on his horse at the top of the panel behind us.

In the van...

We love to treat our missionaries to fun p-days, so we rented a van to take us there all together. This was a 16-seater van, so we invited 5 other people to come with us: two YSA branch members, two investigators (one is a brother to a member who came), and one sister of a missionary, who was here on a trip. It was a great group, and we had a wonderful day together. Climbing up the steps. The steep steps. That are steeper than I remembered. And kept going on and on. Did I mention the steps?

  

This is the hike with the amazing pagoda complex 1/3 of the way up the mountain, with the crossing roof-lines. It's just beautiful, and Allen is right to want to see it over and over again.

And then we continued on up the steps. Some of the young men were kind and waited for me...

And then we made it to the final flight of steps that led to the monument!

WE MADE IT!!

What goes up must come down. I actually spent a great deal of time on this hike arranging a Guarantee of Payment for an Elder who had developed a painful ear infection and needed a doctor appointment that afternoon. It's a little tricky to arrange on my iPhone...

Once at the bottom, on the way back to the van, we took quick peeks into the pagodas at the base of the mountain...

One of the young men told us that this is a cross between a dragon and a horse.

Here are the two brothers: Hung on the left is older; his brother Hoang on the right is the one who was baptized a year ago. 

My Tuesday labor of love this week was to measure and then hem 3 pair of pants for Elder Sprague. Allen pointed out that we could have had a neighborhood lady do it for probably $2, but it wouldn't have been done with love. 

And at Game Night that night, our Relief Society president came back from her trip to General Conference in Utah (the trip of a lifetime for her and her husband) bearing gifts from Sister Kiphibane's mother! A sack full of pasta and Chick-fil-A sauce! She is set for the rest of her mission!

Wednesday, Allen had discovered another citadel near Hanoi, Co Loa Citadel, so we went to explore it. It was only about 10 miles from us but took 45 minutes for the Grab ride to get us there. We were dropped off at An Duong Vuong Temple, a major part of the citadel, and found that we were there at the same time as an event of some kind where young children were visiting, which made it colorful, loud, and fun. 

This dragon is lifting up(?) the fish...

...while this dragon is lifting up(?) the turtle.

This was a beautiful flower pond that we walked past as we looked for the citadel, which turned out to be all around us. This area of lily pads had many barking frogs.

It turns out that the citadel walls were made of a hill we were walking next to, and another across a field. If we had known where to look, we may have been able to see the gates into the citadel, but it covered a very large area and there were no maps. We had to give up our quest to find "the" citadel. We walked back into the town and began to look for pagodas or other places of interest.

On our way, we passed the first water buffalo we have seen that actually waded out into the water.

It was a very hot day, and a very good idea, I thought--for them.

It was a beautiful area.

We found some large lizards/chameleons?

This fellow probably had a very interesting story...

There were some really awesome looking gates into the village streets in this area, but they only led into regular streets.

This was one pagoda we found, but this was the best part of it.

It was a very pretty spot.

We left Co Loa and went to Phat Tich Pagoda in Bac Ninh, built in the 11th century. This was a very interesting place and worth the 1/2 hour drive (another 10 miles) and the walk up MORE stairs. It consisted of a large Buddha as well as a very large pagoda. 

Here is a view of the pagoda in the background.

Since I am the writer of the blog, you have to put up with the Bonsai trees that I love. The banyan trees are so interesting.

We first headed toward the large Buddha. The path went past shops filled with costumes you can rent for pictures.

Here's the pagoda we'll go to next.

Inside the Buddha--the walls were covered in small Buddhas!

In the rainy season, the streams would be bounding down the hillside, underneath the bridge.

This pagoda was a short walk away from the Buddha, and the path was lined with shops. At least, it would be lined with shops during the festivals. Today was a pretty quiet day.

Inside the pagoda, the walls were covered with statues and paintings of different gods and Buddhas and all kinds of creations.

The steps leading down on this side (the pagoda side) had murals of Buddha all the way down. We had hiked up the Buddha side, made a large circle, and now were coming down the other side to the complex below.

Again, it was a beautiful area, filled with trees and wildflowers.

The pagoda or temple down below still had all its decorations up from Tet, so I took advantage.

These boys were fishing, and were very excited to say hello to us.

Thursday was spent studying, working on health issues for the missionaries, and talks or presentations, but at noon we went out to lunch with Sheila and Darrell Smart, the humanitarian aid missionaries for the Church here in Vietnam. They are good people, but we rarely get to interact with them. They are here on a different type of visa than the missionaries are, so they are not allowed to be involved at all with missionary work, only humanitarian work. They can attend church on Sundays, can speak or pray or teach lessons, but that's the extent of their religious involvement. We like them a lot, so it was a treat to go eat lunch with them. Their mission ends May 4 and ours ends May 5. Their replacements arrive in a week; my replacement doesn't get here until the end of September.

I didn't get any pictures of our lunch, but afterwards Allen and I walked back toward Hoan Kiem Lake and looked in a few stores.  

Ngoc Son Temple

Turtle Island

Friday morning was my Asia Area Health Council Meeting. I had managed to develop tendinitis in my left wrist, so it was being a pain. Allen took a picture of our view; I'm going to miss this...

YSA was a treasure hunt tonight, and the treasure was all having to do with Easter.

One treasure tonight was Nga, whose friend Linh was baptized a few weeks ago.

Saturday I held my piano class that would be  my third to the last. Hoa couldn't come because of too much work. Hung Vu came; she is passionate about learning to play the piano. Her friend Viet Anh came; she is learning a lot on her own, and pushes me to the limits of what I learned, used to know, and have forgotten.

After piano class was English, and after English, Allen and I had to hurry over to the District Offices for a YSA Easter activity where Allen was asked to give the 10-minute spiritual thought. His talk went well; he had some good points. Afterwards, I spent 1 1/2 hours talking with a sister who is going through a bit of a faith crisis. I'm hoping she can find her faith and feel God's love. 

We got home after 9 pm and I needed to buy some over-ripe bananas to make banana muffins for a baptism...  My wrist barely cooperated, but it did. I made my muffins and was in bed around 12:30 am.

This brings us to Sunday, today. 

I was happy this morning that I was able to play the piano with minimal discomfort. I still must be really careful with all my movements of my left hand and wrist. During Sunday School, I went to Primary (newly created a month or so ago) to help with music time, where we sang "I am like a star shining brightly" and "If you chance to meet a frown". I think those are both good songs for the very young beginners in Primary. It was pretty fun with the 5 little kids who were there.

This was a special day because Thuy was baptized. She bore a powerful testimony of how this was first day of her spiritual re-birth. I'm glad we had Elder Hill to interpret for us. We gave her a CTR ring (in Vietnamese) afterwards, plus a picture of Christ with a short note written on it. It was a very nice day.

We have a special week coming up! Elder Gerald Causse of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is coming to Vietnam this week! He is meeting with all the Church members in Hanoi on Thursday and he is meeting with ALL of the Vietnam missionaries on Friday. And I get to play the piano for the Friday meeting. It's a little intimidating because he's a much better pianist than I am, but I'll do my best.

I hope your week is as exciting as mine!

The branch is planning an activity on May 1 where the members can tell us goodbye. Our EQ president doesn't want branch members to be attached to senior missionaries, so he doesn't think it's a good idea to have an activity where this kind of attention is paid to senior missionaries--us. We see no harm in it, but we have a vested interest in it. We did our best not to be offended by his attitude.