I made it!!! I'm in Ho Chi Minh City, which is in the South.
It's hot, but not too much worse than Virginia. It'll get hotter, but then monsoon season will start, so that should help. I love the food, but it's definitely hard to get used to! The rice dishes are my favorite. I also have a new favorite fruit! It's called man, with a hat over the a and a dot. It's so good! I also love coconut smoothies! they're so good! Smoothies are really big here.
Despite the heat, I wear a sweater most of the time when I'm outside to avoid burning. I don't think I've burned yet! Maybe a little on my neck, but that's all. I do come back covered in sweat and dirt though.
So, the traffic... Imagine a busy four lane highway. Now replace 80 or 90% of the cars with motorcycles. Now get rid of most traffic laws. Welcome to biking in Ho Chi Minh. Apparently here driving is more based on relationships than rules. So, as long as you don't do anything too unpredictable too quickly, you're fine. It's crazy, but really fun!
Our apartment is really nice. There's air conditioning, a thumbprint reader to open the door, and a balcony (we're on the 16th floor!) Luckily, there's also an elevator.
There's a big river, River Saigon, that goes through the city and at night the lights reflect off the water. It's beautiful.
We just opened our area, and dubbed it Nebula, which means that we're both new. So we don't know where anything is and we don't have very many people we're teaching. We're biking around the area looking for markets and bigger stores we can go too.
We taught one chi last night and I think it went really well. She believes in God as our Loving Heavenly Father and Christ, so we taught her about feeling the Holy Ghost through good thoughts and feelings and also about developing a personal relationship with God through prayer. I think she really liked the idea of personal prayer and becoming closer to God.
We went a member's art show this morning and we talked to a lot of his friends who also had work in the show. I was able to share with them my testimony that my family has been helped by the Church. I know that the Gospel has helped strengthen my family and helped us through hard times. I'm grateful for the values of love and service that the Gospel teaches and I know that it can help us and those we care about find strength through any hard times we encounter.
I know and testify of these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
That's all for this week!
