Brother & Sister Hughes - Vietnam

  Monday July 31, 2023,   Dear Family and Friends,    On Friday, President decided to use our frequent flyer miles and we flew to the center of Vietnam to a city called Hue. (Pronounced Hway). We spent our 40th anniversary on Saturday  there.. Then we flew to Ho Chi Minh City early Sunday to go to church. Hue was the capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. It is where the imperial city is located. It sits on 395  acres. It is the place where 9 Nguyen Lords and 13 Nguyen Dynasty Emperors  lived with their families . Hue was heavily bombed and attacked during the war. They have rebuilt a lot of their kings mausoleums and parts of the imperial city. They have also rebuilt ancient pagodas that were damaged. One pagoda was built in 1601. Their history goes back thousands of years, with different dynasties. We enjoyed our very hot day in Hue learning the history and had some fun stops along the tour for lunch and an herbal foot soak and we learned ab...

  July 27, 2023   Hello,     I have lots to write about and share. July 6-10th we had the mission branch tour and conference. We traveled in a large van with President Hughes’ counselor, President Phan, who is the acting president of the branch, President Vuong a counselor in the mission presidency and his wife Ngoc Trinh and with Elder and Sister Peterson who have been teaching on line several classes to the branch. It was a joy to see them meet everyone in person. The Peterson’s also brought with them pictures of Jesus and temples to give away. We visited 7 different homes or groups spread all across the south of Vietnam. They live hours and hours apart. Once a year the church pays for them to all gather and have a mission branch conference. They start traveling the night before or as early as 2 am to make it. Before the conference we arrange to visit some of the members. Each of the visits became ministering visits. Everyone in our van connected with a differ...

  July 3, 2023   Hello,    We have a new Preach my Gospel edition! It is wonderful. We will still be using the 2004 edition with the new version because only the 2004 version has been translated. We love the new version. At zone conference this week we focused on working with members from the new version. There was training on the importance of a weekly coordination meeting and supporting the Branches with their Sharing the gospel plan. The new PMG book online also has links to the general handbook sections about working together and missionary work, it’s great to see how they are coordinated to work together. We talked about supporting the leaders and helping them with their plan to grow and strengthen the church. Then on Sunday we were able to teach the leaders in Ho Chi Minh about the same things we taught the missionaries. Then we gave the leaders time to work on their Branch plans to share the gospel. We will be teaching the leaders in Hanoi on the 16th. There i...