Reaching the Half Way Mark of our Mission

Karen and I have passed our nine-month mark now and are beginning the last half of our mission so we thought it would be good to list some of the things we have experienced thus far.

Patience –
When we arrived as new Missionaries we thought that we could hit the ground running and immediately make many significant personal contributions to the mission. We soon found out how naïve we were. We had no idea of how unprepared we were to deal with the complexities that come with working in multiple countries each having different time zones, languages, and cultures. We also were unaware that the Mission itself, with its own way of doing things had a culture completely different than what we had ever previously experienced. Although I had spent much of my professional career in management the processes and procedures adopted by management here were as foreign to me as were the customs of Mongolia.

Humility –
Learning the role of being a volunteer Public Affairs Missionary, working for an employed Public Affairs Director and following their leadership was no small task for myself, yet being told to be anywhere, at any time, from anyone, was a completely new and difficult notion for a previous Domestic Chief Executive Officer like Karen with her innate ability to simply ask, “how high” when someone with authority demand she jump.

 It would be proper for us to admit that it took several weeks for us to realize this new concept of not being in charge, and to fall in line. We have since learned that not being in charge and following others direction is not a high price to pay when you consider the price associated with being in charge.

We have learned as Missionaries that Heavenly Father does not need us at all, whether it’s leading or following to accomplish the building of His Kingdom. He just lets us come along for the ride. His real interest is us, His sons and daughters  is hoping that in the year and a half that we are here that we will come to know Him.

Faith –
It was like an out of body experience for us to arrive and be placed in a role we felt inefficient, based on our personal view of the experience we brought to the Mission. To feel like we are not really making any preconceived contributions yet we immediately begin receiving bounteous blessings. We soon realize that maybe it is not a matter of doing what we think we ought to be doing here that is bringing all these blessings to our lives and the lives of those we love but that we are receiving blessings simply we are here.   That because we accepted a Mission Call and came with a righteous intention to fulfill our Call is a fulfillment of the Law of Sacrifice and the abundance of blessings associated with this law. We believe we have learned that this Mission with the support of all our children is a true witness to all of us that blessings are in store for those that trust in the Lord and are willing to step into the dark before seeing the light.

Left to right:  Elder Doplan,  Sister Amemita,  Sister LaBongo, and Elder Belnap.  We are enjoying burgers, fries, and shakes at Triple O's.   Elder Doplan, Sister Amemita, and Elder Bellnap  are all leaving this week.   They are amazing,  we are really going to miss them.

Sister Brojan and Sister Arago (2 sisters on the right),  brought 2 investigators to our Saturday Branch this week.    Sister Brojan leaves this week to go home.  She is wonderful and is really going to be missed.

We,  along with 10 other senior missionaries visited the Hong Kong Maritime Museum located right on the harbor.   This picture was taken from the Museum windows.    We really enjoy sight seeing with the senior couples.  They are all wonderful and we have become very good friends.

Sister Missionaries

This week in addition to our regular weekly activities we enjoyed a night of entertainment at the Hong Kong Coliseum. The Kendell’s, Chatterton’s and ourselves attended the International Military Tattoo, a show of Military bands from around the world. It opened with the flag raising ceremony and National Anthem of the People’s Republic of China. Two flags were raised in celebration of twenty years of the reunification of Hong Kong to her Motherland and the establishment of the SAR, Special Administrative Region, “One Country two Systems”. The pageantry and precision of the participants were spectacular. Bands from China, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom (Scotland), and the United States all participated. Karen and I learned first hand that the Netherlands have a fun sense of Humor and the Scotts have great respect for their Scottish legacy. The band from the Netherlands entered the arena on bicycles and the Scotts in Kilts. Playing an instrument while pedaling a bike is quite entertaining but it does not create the goosebumps of The Royal Regiment of Scotland emerging from a tunnel with the sound of drums and bagpipes playing the Ode to Joy.
We felt goosebumps a second time when the U.S. 7th Fleet Band marched into the arena dressed in their white uniforms and performed the T.V. theme song from “Peter Gunn”.  The Peoples Liberation Army/Navy and the Russian Bands marched with the high goose step that we don’t see on our side of the world. It was a very interesting evening as band after band displayed great admiration and respect to their respective Countries.

The finale featured all the bands coming out on the floor together with a choir of 500 voices performing from their seats, “Tomorrow will be Better”.

Saturday, after our block of meetings the Branch held a special activity recognizing three special Sisters. The first, Sister Amai will be leaving in a week to serve in the “Manchester, England Mandarin Mission”. She is a Filipino domestic worker that has been employed here in Hong Kong for the last five years. We love her and are excited to see her have this opportunity and know she will be a very special Missionary. The other two Sisters, Amenita and Baloyot are finishing their Missions this next week. Karen and I have made it a habit to take the younger Missionaries out to lunch or dinner so that we can get to know them better. We have enjoyed multiple opportunities with these two and are really going to miss them. They are both from the Philippines and will be returning to humble environments. Although they have been very good Missionaries we worry about what future opportunities will be available to them. It is hard because we have become so emotionally attached. There are three other Sisters who serve in a different branch that will be going home with them that we are close to,  and will miss as well.

The Branch activity was a good send-off with lots of food, song, and a great video presentation. Many hugs, tears, and photos were part of the evening as well as final testimonies declaring the love that is associated with Missionary work. We hope that these Sisters will do well returning to a life far short of the comforts that await us when we finish our service. We realize that if we don’t gain anymore from this experience than a sure knowledge of how blessed we are it was not for wont, and that the meek truly will inherit the earth.

This week we said goodbye to 3 Sister Missionaries.  Sister Baluyot (top) and Sister Amenita (bottom right),  have been serving here in Hong Kong and are leaving to return to the Phillipines.  Sister Amai (bottom left),  is from the Phillipines, she lives here in Hong Kong,  and is leaving this week to serve in the Manchester England, Cantonese Speaking Mission.  We love these Sisters.  They are always so happy, and they love serving our Heavenly Father.   What a blessing it has been these past 9 months to get to know and love them!

Jacob Stewart Bennett

We continued to learn and grow this week as Missionaries serving in China, thousands of miles from our home and family. We experienced the harsh reality of being away from our children this week when our eighteenth grandchild was born. Jake came to us on the 6th of July and is doing his part in bringing a fair balance of the number of boys versus girls in our family. Although we could not be there it was a wonderful experience for us to see photos of all Shannon’s sisters and their families at the hospital supporting her. As parents of five very independent stubborn girls it’s hard to hold back tears when they gather in love and show Christlike compassion to each other. It’s a testimony that having mom’s wonderful example has taken root in our family and will flow into future generations forever.

We had a new experience at the Temple this week. In the past, we have participated in sessions narrated in Thai, Mandarin, Mongolian, Cantonese, and English. In addition, we have also experienced patrons speaking Russian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Indonesian. We can now add Khmer, the official language spoken in Cambodia. We worked with a group of fifteen or so Cambodian patrons this week and it was a spiritual treat. It’s hard to wrap our minds around the sacrifice and commitment required for members in this part of the world to receive their Temple Ordinances. The patrons that we met this week understand and except in all likeliness that they will never see the inside of a Temple again in their lifetime.

 With this knowledge, they come to the Temple with a determination to absorb all they can in the sessions they are able to attend in the few days they are here. It is a lesson to us to witness that because of the righteous desires of their hearts and through the influence of the Spirit their minds are enlightened and they learn in those few days what it takes most of us a lifetime to learn. They leave here stronger and better prepared for whatever challenges await them in their future lives. Our testimonies of the Temple Ordinances have grown significantly as we have participated in Temple work here in Hong Kong.

Each week we experience a good week with our Mission Companion. An immense benefit of being a Senior Missionary is that you bring your companion with you into the Mission Field.  Another is that in our case one of us will never be saddled with the burden of being the Senior. (you can guess which one of us wears the pants) We love being together 24/7 and getting the chance to remember why we fell in love, I’ve learned that if I were not already married to mom I would seriously be chasing her. Our Mission has confirmed to me what one of my High School friends told me years ago, “Lynn, when you got Karen you got the catch of West High School.”

Our newest Branch member,  Lynette.  She is amazing!

Our Sister Missionaries.  They are wonderful.  These Sisters  are from the Philippines.  They work really hard with the Philipino people.   

The men who patrol our apartment complex are all Gurkha soldiers from Nepal.   This is Jimmy.  They are all so nice and they love all of us senior missionaries who live here.  "Better to die than be a coward" is the motto of the world-famous Nepalese Gurkha soldiers who are a part of the British Army.   The weapon of the Gurkha is a special knife called a Khukuri Knife.  Lynn used to see these soldiers when he was a missionary here,  they carried their knives tucked in the back of their pants.   Jimmy told us that's how they carry them when they aren't on active duty.  Otherwise they carry them on their hips.   When Lynn asked Jimmy where his knife was,  he said they weren't allowed to carry them here,   they keep them at home.   The tradition is if you draw your knife,   you must draw blood,  if they don't draw the blood of another, they knick themselves on their hands and draw their own blood.  These soldiers  are very respected and it is fun to see them around here all the time.

Elder and Sister Funk invited the senior missionaries to a 4th of July Barbecue.  Their apartment is on the 11th floor of the Wan Chai building that includes a nice patio.  It was so fun.  

Best part of our week,  welcome Jacob Stewart Bennett.  Jake arrived on July 6th.  Congratulations to Shannon, Dave, Madi, Ryan, Abigail, Chloe, and Kaitlynn!   What a blessing to your family and to all of us!

Reorganize and Refocus

This week Karen and I were able to organize and refocus on some of the responsibilities we are involved with here.

The following responsibilities are not in order of priority but listed as a record of how we spent a lot of our time here as Public Affairs Missionaries.

Newsroom:
Corus was updated a week ago consistent to all requisite software, for all program developers annual assault to build a latest and greatest version. We missed the provided training that was held during working hours in Salt Lake and sleeping hours in Hong Kong. So, after hours of fiddling with Corus we were able to publish one syndicated article to Hong Kong’s English edition and two articles to Malaysia’s English edition.

We believe that after another day or two of fiddling with the new software, we will be able to begin training the Missionaries and Media Specialists assigned to other countries in the Asia Area. We will also be posting two syndicated and one original article each month to the Hong Kong Newsroom English edition.

News Brief:
As we have mentioned before we have been having trouble working with a new research and newsletter software called Meltwater that the PA department recently purchased. This is really Karen’s project and with Meltwater she puts out two to three newsletters a week. The recipients of these newsletters are the Area Presidency, Legal, Public Affairs and others as directed. These newsletters contain articles from various newspapers throughout the area reflecting issues requested by the recipients based on issues being worked on. It is an important role that helps keep everyone aware of what is being said and done regarding these issues in the various countries.  The software program was working well for a couple of weeks,  and then quit working. Karen has not been able to put anything out for a couple of weeks and has been working diligently with the computer techies at Meltwater, Hong Kong, and Salt Lake without any positive results. This week while laying awake one night contemplating the problem,  an idea of how to work around the problem and post the articles came to her mind.   The next day she was anxious to get into the office and find out whether or not her idea would work. You guessed it, it did work and she successfully delivered four news articles of helpful information. It really was quite impressive how she solved the problem.  She tested her idea first and it worked,  so she took her idea to our PA director Tom.  He was impressed with her idea and told her she could use it temporally until headquarters in Salt Lake has figured out a permanent solution.   I know I never would have figured it out.

Opinion Leaders:
We are still working on the Opinion Leader Database/CRM but are still on hold waiting for Salt Lake before we can move forward.  We are really anxious to get this done as it will help all of the countries to better organize and build relationships.

Fact Sheets:
I did some searching to update and better organize the information in the Fact Sheet files. We started a photo bank so that we will have easier access to photos needed for annual updates. We reconciled the numbers on the India and Nepal Fact Sheets to the Power Point presentation used by the Humanitarian Missionaries. There have been times in the past where members of the Area Presidency would experience embarrassment when during a presentation the numbers on the handouts were not consistent with the numbers on the screen. So, they have suggested that we and the Humanitarian department work a little closer together in this effort.

Public Affairs Missionaries in other Countries:
Each week we have a call with either one companionship or the entire team of Senior Public Affairs Missionaries. This week we were on a call with Carol Ng and the Humanitarian Senior Couple in Malaysia so we missed our call with the Dowds who serve in Cambodia. Which was our loss because they are always really fun to talk to. In our weekly meeting with Annie we talked about adding the National Directors in a weekly call going forward. The purpose of adding these calls is they need the same support and training we are now giving the Missionaries. Annie assigned us Cambodia, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia because they all have an English Newsroom edition. She gave us all of their contact information so we will be following up on that shortly.

Projects:
We have two special projects that we can talk about, the first is the University Games which we have mentioned before. This week we confirmed that we have a minimum of five stakes in Taiwan that will be participating. The soccer team has reserved the following dates for us:
1)      Sunday, August 20 – Open to doing a fireside (details haven’t been planned yet)
2)      Tuesday, August 22 – Open to traveling to Central or Southern Taiwan to meet with members, but not both
3)      Saturday, August 26 @ 2-9 p.m. – North Taipei Stake: Face to Face Conversation, Soccer clinic, and Community Outreach Project; North Taipei Stake welcomes members from the other stakes to join.

We are expecting 60 or more kids to participate in the Community Outreach Project. We are teaming up with a non-government charitable organization that will be bringing at-need children to a soccer field where member children will join with them to meet the soccer players and be taught how to play. The team challenged us this week when they told us they could facilitate up to 100 kids.  This means we have some more work to do.

The Face to Face Conversation will be a format similar to the Studio “C” face to face that you can find on you tube. All the players are returned missionaries and will participate. We are being told that it will be broadcast live on Facebook.

The fireside is still being planned. The issue is will there be one large meeting or will they want to spit up the team and do multiple smaller firesides. The Stakes are meeting on this and we will be getting it finalized shortly.

The second project comes from our assignment as interim support for Malaysia. We are working with the Humanitarian Missionaries to provide Hepatitis vaccinations, a water pump, washing machines, and collaborating NGO’s for women’s shelters in four different cities in Malaysia. We had a long meeting this week and have the projects approved conditioned on what I would consider certain common-sense issues. We also are following up with young single mothers and caring for their new-born babies. We are hoping to make friends with this department of the Ministry so that we can gain credibility as a caring loving organization. We hope that as we do good things those in power will recognize us for who we are.

I should also mention that the week ended with a baptism and a holiday, (Establishment Day) with amazing fireworks.

July 1st celebration of "Establishment Day".  The busses coming into Wan Chai were backed up as far as we could see.