Sister Jenna Connell

Hello to all the people I love! I hope everyone is doing well! All is well here in Vietnam so that is great! First things first, Chi Phuong got baptized on Saturday!!!! yayyyy!! She is so awesome and says she wants to serve a mission so yay! We didn't get to go to her baptism because it was out of our area but I am so happy for her! We also got the opportunity to meet her mom and her mom totally supports her, which is awesome and pretty rare here. A lot of parents do not agree with these young single adults decisions to get baptized. Half of the YSA in our branch have not yet told there parents they have been baptized. It's crazy to see some of the sacrifices these people are willing to make and so inspiring to me! Wednesday was one of those days where I just could not understand any Vietnamese. we visited a less active who is super funny but she always turns to me and says "Do you understand?" Then she will say "Okay what did I just say" Most of the ti...

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!!! It was kinda an action packed week this weeks so here it goes. Monday one of our former investigators we have been visiting and helping a lot lately wants to learn the gospel again! Her name is Chi Ngoc and she is awesome! She stopped learning because she felt bad she couldn't come to church on Sundays and was pushed a little too hard in the past. That is one example that helps me remember our purpose is to "invite others to come unto Christ". Yes sometimes we must be bold, but remember not overbearing. We invite because we love them and desire them to have the joy that we have through the gospel! And boy do we love her! Tuesday we had Zone conference with President Hassell for the last time. Our new mission president comes in 2 weeks so we are getting ready to make sure he has a warm welcome as we continue to improve and grow as a mission! Until then the work just keeps on keeping on! We were able to talk about some really awesome stuff and le...

Chao buoi sang everyone! So I've started writing in my journal in Vietnamese which is a great idea for learning the language but a dumb idea for when I need to write emails cuz it takes forever to figure out what I was saying haha! Anyway it's been a good week! we had so many little tender mercies! One of them is we got a new investigator which is a actually a referral from a member! It's the first like real referral we have gotten. Her name is Chi Loan and she agreed to take all 5 of the discussions! So it was awesome! I am not great at first lessons, in fact I stink at them. What's worse is that the member is Korean and speaks fairly good English and no Vietnamese, my comp only speaks Vietnamese, the investigator was speaking Vietnamese and English and I didn't know what to speak cuz I wanted to include the member, help the investigator understand, and be able to work with my companion. Haha so that was exciting. I'm just glad the Spirit knows all langua...

Xin Chao This week we had a couple interesting experiences with our investigators! First of all Chi Phuong Anh. Last time we met we gave her a baptismal date for the end of July. We felt like maybe we should put it earlier so she could go to the temple with the branch, but both me and my comp have had mistakes in the past with putting a baptismal date too early because we get excited and our desires get in the way of the Lord's and it doesn't always work out. But we asked her to pray about it and knew the Lord would guide her decisions. Then when we met with her this week the first thing she said is " Hey am I allowed to get baptized earlier?" So that was a small little answer to prayer! the way she decided that date is a pretty cool story too I'll tell later! We met with her and talked about the atonement and because she is a dentist, related the atonement to going to the dentist. We talked about how we can try and clean our teeth daily to keep them clean but...

Xin chao buoi sang! How is everybody today! It's crazy I have hit my halfway mark out here on the mission!!! ummm,,, where did the time go? It's crazy but I'm so excited for the adventures the next 9 months will bring with a solid foundation and 9 months of experience under my belt! hopefully by the end of my mission I will be able to a an actual conversation with someone in Vietnamese haha! Anyway this week was busy! We got a baptismal date for Chi Phuong Anh and I am so excited for her! She is seriously so golden! When we ask her questions she basically just teaches us everything we were going to teach her. We found out she lives in district 10 though which is the Than Son Nhat area so we will be passing her off but I'm still super happy for her! We also continue to work with our less actives and it's been awesome! We are become really close with a lot of them and 2 of them came to church. Most of them are older ladies who have been long time members. They ar...

Xin Chao! Hey hope you all had a great Mother's days last week! The last couple of weeks we have had some interesting water stories. Last week started off with one of our water bills not getting paid so we didn't have water for like 3 days haha! that was not fun let me tell you. It makes me laugh though cuz you know that it's rainy season-- there is so so much water every where all the time and we are always soaked in sweat and rain but we didn't even have enough running water to wash our hands. Don't worry though. We used our drinking water to stay clean haha! But I'll tell you, a real shower has never felt so good in my life! Also in Vietnam they have these little sprayers in the bathroom (we use them to clean the floors but I think they have a different purpose.) but anyway the thing broke and so water was spraying everywhere and we couldn't turn it off! We totally flooded our bathroom and we were so soaked haha! Speaking of flooding the rain floo...

Xin Chao Moi Nguoi Hello! How is everybody! Happy Cinco de Mayo a couple days ago! Hope it was great and that you all ate lots of tacos! This week was pretty normal. We had Mission Leadership Conference on Tuesday and discussed a lot about obedience, becoming a high performing mission and really focusing in on those with baptismal dates and helping them as much as we can. We also discussed about a church here that is sending missionaries out like us and they are causing a lot of problems and scaring a lot of people. A lot of people think that we are the same church and so are scared of us right now. But we discussed how to turn that into a great contacting opportunity and it has work so great! The other day on the bus there was a guy getting a kick out of the fact that we speak Vietnamese and I told him we work for a church but not the one everyone was scared of and he just cracks up. He was just totally floored we knew Vietnamese and knew about that church! So hopefully we will me...