An update after a few eventful, wifi-scarce weeks.

What a full few weeks.

They started with a trip to Ho Chi Minh City.

 This was an opportunity to attend the baptism of our friend (on the left)

and meet with the missionaries and do another set of first interviews--L the formal ones and me the casual conversations while their companions waited.  Most enjoyable.  What a fine group.  And we sat in on some new member discussions with two of them. Honest-hearted young men.  Just elders there. No sisters in HCMC right now.

And it was an opportunity to spend some time at Cho Ray hospital meeting with the very good pathology team there and discuss arrangements for further medical education efforts there.

The other thing we were involved with was the anticipated meetings between the HCMC Family History Association and Sam Wong from the Area Presidency and four people from Family Search who were working their way through various meetings in Asia and who had come in response to the association's request for collaboration.

                              

The two Steve's-- Rockwood (CEO) on the right and Nickle (Head of Asian Acquisitions) on the left address the HCM Institute of Family History.

                              

Professor Mac Duong on the left and Prof. Le An on the right listen intently to the FamilySearch presentation along with 35 other interested genealogists at the Thao Dien chapel.

L. has been working to facilitate communication between the two for months.  One of our tasks on this trip was meeting the four at the airport and facilitating their lodgings and meals, transportation and venues etc.  In HCMC you wait outside the airport while the travelers go through customs and collect their luggage, so we were seated there waiting when we noticed some interesting activity going on near one of the exit doors.

First it was cameras, camera crews and photographers.  The photographers were all seated along a railing, until someone called to them and they all moved, in unison, into position.  Aha! We were looking at a bunch of extras in a film shoot!

So it was fun to while away the hour watching various takes in the filming of a movie that seems to be about some really famous, suave, sunglasses-wearing young man who requires body guards to get him through crowds of reporters and  photographers at the airport.

Our visitors arrived about 20 minutes after the last take, so they missed the excitement.  But they brought some good energy with them as we headed into the next 36 hours and meetings that L. had been working in tandem with M.D., the president of the association, to put together for the next day.  

There were formal meetings with the association's officers

and then, after the quick lunch L. had arranged (we'd done some searching and wandering around the day before to find a location that was near the second meeting) then another meeting with about 40 interested professors, family clan leaders, historians, etc. who gathered to hear about the resources that Family Search could offer them to help them in the work they do,

 and then a meeting with the young branch builders,

and then a quick supper that we'd ordered which I set up in an adjacent room so that they and the elders could eat, after which there was a gathering of church members to listen to them talk about the art and enjoyment of learning of and knowing your family history before you and sharing it with those who come after.  And then there were more conversations and cleaning up and it made for a very long and good day.

At this point now our role in the process will become tangential.  It was a pleasure connecting the major interested parties who will take it from here.  There are really good people in both entities.

Then, the next day, we headed out on a two day trip to part of the Mekong Delta or "Western Provinces" as they are referred to here.

A photo from the car.  We rented a mini SUV and very nice driver (renting just a car without a drivre is generally impossible).

Backstory:  Cambodia and Vietnam share a long border, defined by a river, which is rural and porous.  Over the past 15 years or so (post Pol Pot regime) many Vietnamese citizens have migrated to Cambodia in search of better employment.  Then later, as the economy in Vietnam continued to improve, moved back to their hometowns.  And several hundred of them, while they were in Cambodia, encountered and embraced the gospel.  So, as a result, not only are there members of the church in the large cities in Vietnam where there have been branch builders during the past decade, but there are also many others scattered around the country, hours away from the cities and the branches there.  And there is a Vietnamese senior branch builder who has spent the past couple of years traveling around the southern part of the country to verify the information the HCMCity branches have about them, meet them and encourage them and help find out how they are doing.  She is an amazing woman.

This trip was to visit several families in a small city half a day's journey away.  So we traveled in the mini SUV in company with her and the district president, (who is also the head of the Interim Recognition Committee (IRC), the in-country official representatives of the Church in all government relations), and a young man who had known and loved some of those members while serving as a missionary in Cambodia.  As we met with them, and they showed us how and where they met as families to worship together I was suddenly reminded of stories of groups of far-flung believers in other parts of the world I knew about in the 1970s who kept their faith and worshiped long before LDS missionaries were in their country.  They are such good people, some with amazing faith.  Our purpose was to meet them, bring them some church supplies to help them during their family meetings, designate a group leader and help the IRC become acquainted with them and their situation so that that committee could help them start the careful process of receiving their city's sanction for group meetings. And on our way home we stopped to spend time with a few others who are, in their locations "one of a city, two of a family" and holding fast as best they can.  I wish I could show you photos of them. They are amazing.

 

And after we returned to HCMC we flew to

Hong Kong

for a semi-annual area training meeting.  We spent four days learning a whole lot of very helpful information with other mission presidents (2 serving in India, 2 in Taiwan, and one each in Mongolia, Singapore/Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia).  Which meant we got to meet the Blickenstaffs, who served in Taiwan with our niece, Rachel.

And then home again to Hanoi, except that it's not the same apartment because the Area people wanted a different location for the mission office and apartment, so we've been living/camping in the new one, schlepping stuff over from the old one in taxi rides as we can, and having cereal for dinner, eating it with plastic forks, etc. while greeting (waiting outside customs at airports is a thing we do) and settling in the new senior couple in another apartment and managing everything else.   The Van Wagenens are absolutely delightful and will be serving as our office couple, which office, we think, we may be able to start setting up and moving stuff into today, maybe, we hope.

Life is good.

                       

Us, the Nielsons and the Funks in Hong Kong

Beginning the beginning

"Làm Tốt Ngay Từ Đầu" proclaim the signs posted on many a construction site around this country. Essentially it means "Do it right the first time" or "Do it well from the beginning." How we start off with something matters greatly, whether that is receiving a surgical resection specimen in the lab, or starting a marriage, or teaching a class. It isn't just first impressions that matter, it is the cultural map we adopt to use as our "software" for interactions, our first steps that determine our orientation, direction, and even final destination. Thus as we began a new mission over the past week or so, we were keenly aware that how we began things would be influential in where we go with this and what kinds of issues we have to come back to fix later (or sooner.) We want this common Vietnamese bit of workplace propaganda to link with the prophetic admonitions of Elder Holland last August and so many others before and since to "Do it Right, from the Beginning." We want the young missionaries, the members, and everyone associated with us to both want to do it right, and learn and act so that they can do it right.

When silk is made in some of the small craft villages here, the process involves a lot of preparation before the loom begins to work. Indeed the most important work is setting the threads and preparing the pattern that will be followed as the production proceeds. The stamped cards reminiscent of the stacks of computer code used by the early computers I recall working with as a student, each provide instructions to the loom to indicate the features desired in the final pattern. Set it up right at the start, and put the loom to work and voila! A facy brocade, or a delicate floral or other pattern appears from the threads.

     

These punch-cards are anything but high fashion, or fine fabric in this form, but add the loom with the threads in the colors of your choice, and out comes this:

     

Beginnings are often marked by "Grand Openings" with bouquets of flowers and well wishes from friends and associates. While the flowers were not highly evident, the interest around the visit of Elder Stevenson from the Quorum of the Twelve, and Elder Gong from the Presidency of the Seventy at the end of February marked a kind of celebratory event in the creation of the mission that was appreciated by both the missionaries who will serve here to start, and the members who were able to sit at the feet of an apostle for the second time in less than a year. The mission begins with some symbolic combinations- 12 young missionaries, the number twelve being indicative of "completeness" or "sufficient" and three senior missionaries plus ourselves. That is the same number who served in the course of the first "mission" to Vietnam in 1973-5.

         

Looking into the eyes of these missionaries, and over the past few days into their hearts as we have interviewed them, one sees the miracle of missionary work in these days. The Lord does indeed take the weak and the simple to proclaim his word before kings and princes, nobles and great ones. These are young men and women with no special credentials aside from a commitment to obey God's commands, a love for Jesus Christ that drives that obedience, some portion of a testimony of God's love and this work's divine origin and purpose, and the energy of youth to engage in something greater than themselves. They have their fears, their doubts, and their weaknesses, but they also experience that being united with Jesus Christ quickly eclipses any of those into insignificance. As a result, they can talk in first person pronouns of miracles, "coincidences," and manifestations that indicate God's direction and support for what they are trying to do. They also speak with great love and compassion for the people they have met, spoke with or taught, and watched open their hearts to the spirit of God themselves.

Each of them recorded in their own words what the experience meant to them that night after meeting with Elder Stevenson, and the following morning in a first "Mission Conference" each contributed to what the new mission would be like- "here we.... are obedient and are fully worthy, follow the spirit, love and deeply respect those we serve and their culture, teach repentance, baptize those who are converted and desire to follow Christ, live as examples of Christ ourselves, sing praises, make sacrifices to serve while honoring and respecting the sacrifices of those ahead of us." The conference was a formative experience and none of them wanted to part, they seemed to draw great strength from being together to begin. With the small size we begin from however, we'll have the luxury of meeting together for more such conferences for a period of time.

     

 The first baptism of the new mission occurred this past weekend in Ho Chi Minh city, a sister from Tay Ninh. Her humility and joy in beginning again with a determination to do it right, yet with the assurance that baptism, the covenant to take upon us Christ's name, to continue to repent, to serve and love others and so forth, would be enough to allow her to have many such new beginnings as she continued to learn of him and follow him more determinedly, all were encapsulated in the symbolic act of immersion in the waters of baptism and the confirmation or baptism by fire and the Holy Ghost that Christ spoke of as being our key to being born again into God's Kingdom.

The first new grandchild of the new mission also appeared this week, following a mold and model pioneered by his two siblings before him, The model appears to be working as he was born healthy and happy, though as his oldest brother said on the way home from the hospital "Sometimes babies cry because they need their brother to hold them." Be careful what you wish for! But our wishes are granted in seeing Niels Henry join the Fjeldsted family in New Hampshire!

       

So we have enough of what is needed to begin in ithe right way. We'll add some of the other accoutrements like a mission office and some sort of financing support as we go along. But for now we are moving ahead, and the view is marvelous.