Celebrations of Tết, Then and Now

Happy Tết!

It’s Tết here in Hồ Chí Minh City.  Tết is the Lunar New Year, often known as Chinese New Year in other countries.  The city is bustling with activity as people clean their homes from top to bottom, buy new clothes, pay off old debts, give gifts to employees and friends, and prepare for the holiday itself with flowers, specialty foods, veneration of ancestors, and visits to their hometowns. Tết officially begins on the 16^th, but many people leave early to head to their hometowns in the countryside. In another week, the streets will be nearly deserted.

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It was fifty years ago this Tết.  The plane carrying my mother, brother and me began its slow, calm descent to the Saigon International Airport.  We were joining my dad who was living here working for a civil engineering firm.   I was nine years old.

I still remember the unexpected lurch of the plane and the steep surge as the plane rapidly changed direction and climbed upward.  We were shocked and stunned, frightened and confused.  Then the news – the Saigon airport was under attack, and we were headed elsewhere for safety.  The Tết Offensive of 1968 had begun.

Hong Kong graciously housed us and many other stranded travelers until it was deemed safe enough to travel to Saigon.  Ten days later we finally made it safely on the ground at the small terminal in Saigon.  As Customs officials meticulously scoured through our belongings, I explored the area around my seat.  Damaged walls were visible from the earlier attack, and I found an empty bullet shell on the ground.  But my dad had been safe during the attack on the city, and now we were there to join him. In a strange war-torn country,  and in an odd kind of way, we were “home”. 

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  Scenes from our Tết of 1968

Barbed wire across the streets

Presidential Palace

From the roof top of our house, watching
 attack scenes like this were not uncommon

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Fifty Years Later - Celebrations of Tết Today

"̀50 year anniversary of the general offensive and rebellion 1968"

Today, however, Tết is definitely the happiest time of the year. It is kind of a combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years all wrapped together. The festive spirit couldn't be brighter. 

The beautiful wide Nguyễn Huệ Street, or Walking Street as it is known to foreigners, transforms into a garden paradise at Tết. 

The pink water lily, or lotus blossom, symbolizes resurrection, purity, and enlightenment.  Growing out of muddy ponds, the flower emerges perfect and beautiful. It closes at night and opens each morning with the sun.  Truly a remarkable symbol.

Everyone's doing selfies! Buying new clothes for Tết is a popular tradition.

More selfies!

Tết gift bags lined up for sale at a local shop

Celebrations continue on into the night with song, dance and  festive foods.

 Tết lights outside the Catholic Archbishop's Palace

One of our branch members decorating the church building for Tết

Tết dinner celebration

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But for us, Tết just means continuing our service in trying to bless people's lives. Our last two weeks of mission time have arrived, and between Tết celebrations and mission assignments, we are fairly swamped.  There are more branch builders arriving soon, and Elder Coffey and I have the blessing of finding, renting, and outfitting 4 new apartments (2 as replacements for already existing branch builders and 2 for new branch builders), moving them to their new apartments and cleaning and closing out the old apartments - with help of course!

When we first arrived here, there were 3 branch builder apartments.  Now there are 11. There were 8 branch builders.  Now there are 26, with more on the way.  We think these are by far some of the top missionaries in the world. They are incredibly faithful, funny and fearless, like the stripling warriors of old. We just love working with them!

Moving into a new apartment, cleaning out the old.

The apartment is now all clean!! Branch builders and senior couples pitched in together.

So Happy Tết from all of us here! Some may wonder if miracles still happen in today's world. We know that the greatest miracle is the one that occurs in a person's heart when they discover the pearl of great price.  Well, here in Vietnam, miracles happen all the time.

The work moves forward like a stone cut out of the mountain.  Truly, hurrah for Israel!

Standing on Holy Ground in a Commune in Vietnam

Chúc Mừng Năm Mởi - Happy New Year!

2017 welcomes in the Year of the Rooster – an auspicious year to be sure.  If you were born in a Year of the Rooster (Years of the Rooster include 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017, and 2029.) then you might be very observant, hardworking, resourceful, courageous, and talented.  Roosters are very confident in themselves. Roosters are talkative, outspoken, frank, open, honest, and loyal individuals. They like to be the center of attention and always appear attractive and beautiful.  And being a surgeon is a good career for them.

Do you know someone born in one of those years?  Do they fit the mold?

But watch out - If you are a rooster, the Year of the Rooster is actually unlucky for you – sorry. Go figure!

To help prevent bad from getting worse, stay away from red, avoid 1, 3 and 9, and don’t go east. All very unlucky, they say! There are 12 of these animals, and they rotate on a 12 year cycle. Sister Coffey is a dog.  Elder Coffey is a horse.  Guess we’ll be safe this year!

But we always start the year off big – and Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, is a great way to welcome in the New Year. The amazing array of flowers in Ho Chi Minh City - thousands and thousands of flowers brought in special for the occasion, excites the senses, but especially the bright yellow Mai flowers. "Mai" sounds like "may" in Southern Vietnamese, which means luck, so the Mai flowers are the luckiest of all the flowers for Tết.

Tết is a bit like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's all put together. The central event of the occasion is a big dinner with family and friends.  Or several big dinners, as Tết will last for up to 7 days. We were blessed to be invited to three dinner celebrations.

This is the home of our Branch President and his family, who live with his wife's parents and other extended family members on different levels of the home.

For another meal, we spent 2 hours traveling first by bus, then by tuk tuk. Our friend lives in a commune in the southern most part of the province, and the only way to her home includes crossing two small bridges that are only big enough for motorcycles or tuk tuks. Thus the need to travel by tuk tuk - our first experience with this!

After a very long wait at the bus stop, we finally found a tuk tuk going our way, but it was full.  Ten people were already loaded in.  But they seemed undaunted and cheerfully let two more on board, as we squeezed, squeezed, squeeeeeezed in until we found a spot to sit.  Elder Coffey was assigned to a tiny plastic stool in between the two passenger benches, amidst poking knees, bags, and assorted wares. The tuk tuk stopped to pick up more people along the way.  At it's peak, there were 17 people in and on our little tuk tuk! Finally we reached our destination and gratefully piled out.

Elders hopping off the tuk tuk on their way to our friend's Tết dinner.

After the 2 hour ride, we walked down alleys and around corners and over bridges to finish the trip to her home.

Elder Coffey makes his way down one of the alleys.

The Elders cross the last bridge. Notice the hanging sausages

 drying out in the sun to the left.

Branch members and missionaries gathered at our

 friend's home to celebrate.

Our wonderful friend who graciously hosted us in her home that day. 
She has been taking the missionary lessons from us 
and is such a wonderful person.

Helping prepare the red dragon fruit in the kitchen.

As the meal concluded, we invited the missionaries to share a spiritual message before they left. One of the Elders began sharing the message. He is one of the newest Elders here and is still learning the language. 

As he spoke, he struggled with each word and phrase.  Sometimes he would have to stop and think how to say the next part.  Sometimes his pronunciation was not clear and the investigator had to guess what he was trying to say and help him a bit. His companion/trainer watched, patiently, never intervening, never showing any signs of impatience or frustration, even though any of them in the room could have delivered an eloquent, fluent message.

Instead, we watched as this humble Elder struggled, paused, then continued with his message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our hearts went out to him as he endeavored to find the right words with his limited vocabulary. It seemed like it took forever.  But with that slowing of time came a power into that room that filled the hearts of everyone present. The Holy Ghost, in powerful majesty, bore eloquent testimony of the truthfulness of the young Elder's words.  The Spirit filled the home, the room, and the heart of each person there.  What the Elder lacked in language, the Lord provided with the language of the Spirit.  What he lacked in fluency, the Spirit amply supplied. We realized then that we were witnessing a sacred, hallowed moment in time in a little commune in Vietnam. We stood on holy ground.

"Do ye not remember", Nephi reminds us, "that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of angels?" (2 Nephi 32:2) 

This was the tongue of angels.  

The Lord has said, "...that the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world..." (D&C 1:23), and "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." (Alma 37:6)

Thank you, Elder, for your simple message that day.  It was a lesson we will not soon forget.