Late news

News from two weeks ago.

Someone told us that sending off departing branch builders feels like sending off your children. I don't think it's quite that tender, but it is tender. We really grow to care about them. They are trying so hard to do good things.

On Monday Sister T. (second from left) flew home to Laos. That meant sending her via Bangkok because the branches in Laos are part of the Thailand mission, so that meant she would need to meet with the Bangkok Thailand mission president before she headed home. She is a member of one of the two Vientiane branches and heading home for her means flying into Vientiane and then heading north two hours to the small farming community where her sister, brother-in-law and two small nephews live along with a smattering of other relatives.

Her parents died when she was still young and so she grew up with her older sister, and some loving attention from her uncle and aunt. I'm not sure of the story of how she learned about the gospel but I do know that she is not the only one in her family who did. Not all her family are members, but there was enough of a group that traveled regularly the two hours to the city to attend church that she could join with them. (It was particularly fun to hear the story of their travels- at first they were only planning to keep going until money for the bus ran out, but it never ran out, and then the uncle decide to receive baptism and bought a car to go. Then there were so many people going each week they had to buy a bigger car for 12 people. Now there are more going so it is likely to be a bus! When her mission call came, one might have assumed that it would be to Thailand where the language might be easier to learn, but instead it was to the Cambodia mission to speak Vietnamese. However, Vietnamese was only taught at the Provo MTC and they could not get the visa to send her there, (did you know that, of all the countries where LDS missionaries serve, the United States is the one that is the most resistant to issuing visas?) so she showed up in PP knowing no Vietnamese, little if any English and no Khmer. But, as Lewis says, the gift of tongues is still alive in this work and within a few months she had learned enough to communicate fairly freely in both Vietnamese and to a degree in English. (Until coming to Hanoi all of her prior interviews were in English.) She is an amazingly steadily good-willed young woman and we miss her.

We first met her last June when we were in PP for two weeks and spent time in the Vietnam district visiting with her and her companion. L. thought she was a native speaker when he first met her.

Now it's really a long time since I started this. So I'll leave it at that and let L. do the next post.