Week 8: The Zone of Trials

Sorry all, it's going to have to be a really short email today, lots of personal stuff going on that needs to be taken care of here and in our zone. Don't worry! All is still well!

Tuesday - We had Elder S. Gifford Nielsen of the Seventy come and give a fantastic talk on the capability of each of us to be an effective person. Do any of us have any idea of the capacity we have to do good in this world?? I leave that up to you to find out.

Wednesday Elder Edwards gave me even more ties! I am so grateful to him for his friendship and for the awesome amount of love he has shown everyone in our room! It's also starting to get real! It was our second to last P-day and it's starting to hit us that we are nearing the end of our stay here..... It's insanity.....But, the lord has a timetable and we must follow it.

Thursday - Our Mock investigator lessons have gone so well! We've taught baptism to all of them at separate times.... Whenever we teach it I get a pumping in my chest, and it makes me think "Is this what it feels like to teach about baptism?" it was real then, and I know it'll be even more real later!

Friday - Best part out of today was we got our flight plans! We have to get up at the crack of dawn! 3:45 AM is our departure time.... Oh man........

Saturday - Honestly, Saturdays are always so awesome. Zone Volleyball was a blast and the day seemed to fly by, I wish there was more to add.... but that's basically it! 

Sunday - awesome as always. More spiritual than saturday of course, but that's just the way it goes. The Devotional was amazing, and we watched another Movie(talk) by Elder Holland on the importance of our missions throughout the rest of our lives. Please keep this in mind, all of you, that no matter if you serve or where if you did... Your mission lasts forever! 

Monday - Nothing really noteworthy to report, just an all around okay day! 

Sorry it's so short! But Lot's of other stuff has to get done today. I love you all! 

Pictures: temple photos with our zone before we head off into the wild blue yonder

 Elder Buhler's impersonation of our investigator Anh Trung (Teacher Thay Phat)

The Awesome looking mountains

 Elder Andersen enjoying sleep

Week 7: Because of the Ramen Mamas-We are Thankful this Day!

Busy busy busy week! Again, just jumping right into it!

Tuesday - We had Sister Bonnie H. Cordon come talk! She spoke of the importance of missionary work, and even shared her own story with us. She went on her mission at 17!!! when the age was still 21 for women! We loved her talk and had a lot to discuss about it, but, we are very excited for today as well....

Wednesday - We got more ramen, (thank you ramen mamas) so we had 217 packages of Ramen at one time in our room, on our bed, thankfully we are an organized bunch of missionaries, so it kinda looks okay(?) still a mess, but Cuộc sống mà (that's life). Vietnamese was hard for a little bit, just trying to pick up the pieces and refocus after the spiritual whirlwind that was conference. We also had new people come in! 24 in total I think, in the new thai and khmer districts!

Thursday - Started off with a good day getting to know the new people, they are all so awesome and come from so many places, truly a blessing in it's own right of the far reaching power of the Gospel as a whole. However, Elder Her, who broke his foot earlier this week, is getting ready to go into surgery, we started a zone wide fast that the surgery would go well and he would get to stay.....

Friday - Elder Her's surgery was successful! Loopy, but hopeful, he made it home and was on bed rest for a bit. Thankfully he's doing awesome, and we are all so happy that he had a good surgery. I read a lot about the Brother of Jared today, and the immense amount of faith that he had. The Brother of Jared had asked the Lord to touch and light the stones, but reading closely in the scripture, we are told that the brother did not see the finger lighting the stones, it was done first, and then the Lord revealed himself to the Brother of Jared. Through faith, he saw the Lord, and later on, he is asked to write in a language that had already been confused by the Lord, being told that in the future someone would be able to translate it. That shows immense faith on the side of the Brother of Jared, to write in a language you do not understand yourself, and hope that one can understand it later on in the history of time. May we have faith like this, and know that faith in its pure essence is required of all of us.

Saturday - We gave a blessing to Sister Htoo, from Myanmar, she isn't adjusting well to the MTC food and she hadn't been eating. The blessing helped and we gave her a giant case of ramen so she would have something to eat for now. Hopefully she can make a good adjustment to the food.

Sunday - Always the best day of the week (P-day comes next) But it was just spiritual in a way I can really describe other than you had to be here to feel and experience it, lots of personal talks, lots of personal study time, lots of feeling the spirit.

Monday - Had an awesome time playing volleyball with another district that just got here this week, I've never had that much fun playing Volleyball, but when you aren't playing for the Win, then you can hang back and just enjoy the game, and that's what we did. We held a zonewide prayer for Elder Kim though, who during the night fainted after coming back from class due to what the doctors think is stress. We pray that all will be okay, and that the poor guy can pick it up and get back on the Road. I've seen the devil work attack after attack on our new missionaries, and i pray they can withstand his attacks.

Tuesday - Best day ever of course (well, with exception) and still lots to do, everyone is excited for the speaker tonight, who picked all the music and wanted focus on the primary hymns and special versions of the choir number, we're excited to see who it is, but we know it isn't the primary president, so we're anticipating something..... just don't know what yet....

I love you all!

-Elder Ashby

Pictures:

The awesome looking mountains when it snowed

Some pictures of all the Elders studying

Our new name tags!!!!!

Elder Luangrath and Bartholomew, the best Zone Leaders ever! 

Elder Her and Elder Andersen

Elder Smith and Elder Lee

Elder Wang and Elder Black

Pictures from other Missionary Mom's

Week 6: Did someone say TEMPLES??

A literally mind blowing week, so, uh, I'm jumping right into it:

Tuesday - Elder Joni Koch of the Seventy came and talked to us, I loved his Devotional. He talked a lot about being humble in order to teach. A question I think is good to ask is "Am I humble? and Am I depriving myself of the essentials of the Gospel because I am in some way prideful?" Just some food for thought this week.

Wednesday - Anh Ca Andersen and I spent some time translating talk names from Vietnamese to English, that was awesome and we were amazed by how many words we actually knew. I also got a ton of Caramel and caramel popcorn from my Aunt Cassie --literally blessings from above-- because they are always so good, and of course, homemade. We also got more ramen..... And we made a mountain out of it, we could've stuck a flag in there and claimed it for ourselves, but since we aren't savages we organized it into neat shelves by kind, and officially opened "Ramen's" to the public.

Thursday - So, I was playing 4-square, since I've been deprived of it since I'm not going to the family reunion this year, but I threw out my hip playing.... not an injury you expect, but, I was king for 6 rounds, so it was worth it!

Friday - Got a haircut since I actually really needed one! We also had a really cool message from our teacher when he spoke about pride. He said, "Pride is self-given, be careful with it" Again, just more food for thought.... however, I was thinking this week, and the thing the Lord really wanted to teach me during my stay at the MTC was not so much a language, but how the Gospel touches lives. All my companions are different than me, and I'm so much different than a lot of the people in my district, so much that sometimes those personalities don't always get along. But their backgrounds are all diverse, and they are here because they believe in teaching the words of Christ to those who need it. We may all come from different lifestyles, but we are all still God's children and are here to do his work.

Saturday and Sunday - If you hadn't guessed it's conference! 2 hour block for church is going to be weird to come home to, but I'm excited to see how the change will affect everyone. I loved Elder Gong's talk on Campfire(s) of Faith, because sometimes that faith will be the only light keeping us going at many points in our lives, and we must trust in the warmth and light of our faith to carry us through the night. I loved Elder Holland's talk on ministering. Sometimes we are so caught up in ministering to those around us and to those that are our assignments that we sometimes forget that the most effective ministering effective we can have is with those in our own family. So, I ask you to take Elder Holland's advice, pertaining to any member of your family that you may have had a spat with recently and "you go instantly, and do the thing you may not have another chance to do." Also 12 new temples!!! Cambodia's announcement made us all freak out, as well as Nigeria!?? The Lord is truly hastening his work, and I cannot wait until the day Vietnam has a temple. We also had a devotional from the BYU singing group noteworthy, and that was awesome, if you don't know who they are, look them up, they have awesome music. 

Monday - nothing significant, just recovering from conference. We had Skype TRCs this week, but they didn't really go as planned, the audio didn't work and we didn't have enough volunteers who spoke Tieng Viet, so we just ended up teaching Anh Ca Ahanonu and Anh Ca McLain.

Tuesday - I'll just say that temple work is essential to the Lord's plan.... Do it.

I love you all!

-Anh Cả Ashby

Pictures: Ramen Mountain, and then Ramen's

The Misty Mountains of Provo

In Between Conference Break time and Dance party

Pictures taken by others missionaries