Christmas Time

This was the last week of December and closed out the year 2017. A very special time for us, an entire year that we were able to focus twenty-four seven without worldly interruption in developing stronger testimonies and an increased awareness of the reality of Jesus Christ. 

We have been blessed in so many ways since our arrival here in Hong Kong including the expectations we brought into this Mission of how we would build the Kingdom versus the reality of how little it seems we have contributed. Yet our Father in Heaven has showered blessings on us and those we love and care about. We have learned that we are not measured by what we do here as much as it is that we came here. We simply answered a call and came,  and by so doing have felt the appreciation and love from on high.

We spent most of the week celebrating with Branch parties, office parties, Temple worker parties, and other parties of other friends. It was a partying week. We met for breakfasts, we met for lunches, and we met for dinners. We indulged in really good food and some food we would rather not think about. We had some quiet time with some of our closest friends listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas movies with nothing but light from our little Christmas tree and some illuminating fake candles. We also spent time on the busy streets of Hong Kong with all the noise of a big city and all the Christmas lights and decorations you can imagine. It even got cold one day last week as we approached Christmas day.

We called all our daughters and their families on the day after Christmas here in Hong Kong which was Christmas day in the states. It was so fun to see that all of them enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and Karen loved reminding them all that we would be with them next Christmas. I agree with Karen, two Christmas’s away from home is enough and we will appreciate being home next year a lot.

Our Sisters in our Branch love to party!   They sing and dance and prepare an unbelievable amount of food.

We had a devotional and dinner with all of the Temple Workers.  The members here who serve are amazing!

Our Second Chistmas in Hong Kong

We are in enjoying the Christmas season this year with so many opportunities to celebrate, participate, and reflect on all the goodness that can be felt at this time of year.

Hong Kong is always a spectacular view at night with hundreds if not thousands of building structures as tall as anywhere else in the world, creating a skyline of millions of colored lights reflecting in the harbor.

During Christmas time the City, as awesome as it is, really amps it up by adopting a Christmas theme of red and green with Merry Christmas and Happy New Year salutations illuminating in every kind of way you can imagine. Unfortunately, the motive behind this gargantuan effort and beautiful display is commercial rather than spiritual. None the less with the right attitude we can transform this mirage into something that feels very special and recognize all the goodness taking place in the present that “Charles Dickens” described so well in the past.

 This week we spent some time seeking out and spending time at a few of the numerous Christmas displays here in Hong Kong. Some were way out there like the one with the “Snoopy” theme, but then there were some very impressive and thought-provoking themes as well. We particularly enjoyed the Land Mark Mall’s atrium with robotic characters singing and a Christmas tree the size of the ones they used to have downtown when we were kids.

Each year a member of the Area Presidency teaches the sister's  institute class the week before Christmas, (for this lesson the husbands are invited to attend).   For some reason this year not one of the three were available, so I was asked to step in as a replacement. I felt a lot of pressure and was very nervous, so I spent a lot of time preparing. The lesson went well because of the participation and testimonies of those in the class, it turned out to be a lesson to me of fear versus faith even though the lesson material was something completely different. Faith will always trump fear!

This week brought another special opportunity for Karen and I to work a session together in the Temple. Our temple assignment has been a great influence of balance to us as Missionaries, and we understand that it’s a unique opportunity for us and appreciate this wonderful blessing.

Karen attended her first musical production in Cantonese, “Scrooge the Musical” performed by the Hong Kong Academy of Arts. It was a lot of fun and seeing a Chinese Scrooge made out to look Caucasian was a different twist for Karen and I. The songs were all in English and if you are interested, you can get a flavor of what they sounded like if you refer to the final scene of the “Christmas Story” where Ralph and his family end up in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day.

This week also included Christmas caroling with the younger Missionaries, our Branch Christmas Dinner, and a special Christmas Family Concert performed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Merry Christmas!

I couldn't help asking this little guy's mother if I could take his picture!  

Christmas Caroling with the senior  couples and a few young Elders and Sisters.     We passed out  about 150 Light the World pamphlets.  We also had cookies for the little kids!

The Elder and Sisters were able to talk to quite a few people,  it was really fun!

Cambodia

We traveled to Cambodia this week and met with Elder and Sister Dowd.  They will be returning home at the end of the month and their replacements, the Smiths, will not be arriving until mid-April. We have been asked if we can help, “bridge the gap” by supporting the Director of Public Affairs and the National Council of Cambodia during the absence of a Senior Missionary Couple being there. Very similar to what we did a few months ago with Sister Carol Ng in Malaysia.

It was close to a three-hour flight from Hong Kong to Phnom Penn and another hour or so getting through immigration because we had to get a Visa there at the airport. After collecting our baggage, we quickly found the shuttle driver sent by the hotel. We then experienced another hour of moving very slowly through narrow and congested streets to the hotel. After settling in we called the Dowds who picked us up, took us out to eat, and then to their apartment. We visited there for a while before they took us back to our hotel, “The Luminer”, where we then enjoyed a well deserved good night of sleep!

The Dowds introduced us to Sister Theany, the Director, with the rest of the Council the second night of our visit at a dinner organized for all of us to meet each other. It was a wonderful evening and a great opportunity for us to get to know the members who serve in Cambodia in Public Affairs. The dinner also served as the end-of-a Mission thank you event for Elder and Sister Dowd.  It was well deserved and a great blessing for us to witness the love that has developed between the Dowd’s and the Cambodian delegation attending the dinner.

Earlier that day we met Brother Lee who owns a tuk-tuk and makes a living moving people around in the City. He took us out to the “Killing Fields” and “S-21”. It was a very sobering experience and an introduction to unimaginable atrocities. Three million Cambodians of a total population of eight million killed by fellow Cambodians and an evil leader. Visiting these sights is probably an experience that would  be good for everyone to do once, but I know Karen and I hope never to do again.

The next evening, we met with Theany  and Vannak reviewing and teaching them how to use Corus, Newsroom, and the Public Affairs Network. They were great and were able to learn how to use the software in about one-tenth the time it took me. It will be fun working with them from Hong Kong for the next few months while there are no Senior Public Affairs Missionaries in Cambodia.

We had another chance before our meeting with Theany and Vannak for Brother Lee to spend some time motoring us around town in his tuk-tuk. Besides seeing all the back allies and markets of Phnom Penn he also found his way to the King’s Palace. We hired a woman tour guide to walk us through the royal complex including several royal buildings and gardens. 

Before we left Cambodia,  the Dowd's took us to the Service Center and to the Mission Home.  We were able to meet Elder and Sister Thurston who are serving a Humanitarian Mission,  and Elder and Sister Scott who serve as the Senior Missionary couple in the Mission Home.

Our Tuk Tuk driver,  Tree,  was wonderful.  He is a member of the Church,  and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79).   He serves on the District High Council.   He told me the most wonderful day of his life was when he took his 6 children (made possible through the Temple Patron fund),  to the Hong Kong Temple where they were sealed together in 2006.   

This little house is a very very nice house for Cambodia!  The people are so poor,  they are so humble,  and they are so happy.

Getting around in a Tuk Tuk was such a fun experience.  The Tuk Tuk is an icon for Cambodia.  It's a little cart pulled by a motorcycle.  There are hundreds of them everywhere.   There are also hundreds and hundreds of scooters.  In the city,  there are lots of cars that share the road with the Tuk Tuk's and the scooters.  It's an adventure.

Our ride a little way out of the city to see the "Killing Fields".   An experience that was very somber and we'll never forget.

It was fun to ride up next to the Elders.  Our driver Tree was honking and waving at them,  they were waving to him,  calling him by name,  it's obvious the missionaries and the members are very close.  The Church in Cambodia is very small,  having only been in the country for a short time.

Most definitely a third world country.  Electricity throughout the city at it's finest!

Christmas FHE

This week began with a special Christmas Family Home Evening with all the Senior Missionaries serving in the Area. The Seller’s, who were in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for ten years, were in charge of this activity and with Sister Marian Sellers playing the piano we all participated in a group sing along. We sang all the Christmas songs Karen and I know and then some we did not know both traditional and spiritual, and I must say it was not that bad and I enjoyed it a little bit.

A group from Salt Lake working in Church publishing visited us this week as part of a world-wide tour of all the Areas of the Church. The purpose is to introduce a new approach the Church is taking to protect the integrity of published products. In addition to the Church’s visual identity we are now including proprietary developed fonts, light and color schemes, and patented style guides to protect the integrity of future Church published products. Going forward it will be much easier for you to determine whether or not what your looking at or reading has been produced by the Church.

The temple reopened this week after being closed for three weeks,  so we were able to attend our Wednesday evening assignment and again for our first Thursday of the monthy morning session with the Area Presidency. 

Thursday morning after the session we gathered across the street for a Testimony meeting and an official welcome of the new Missionaries that have arrived since our last Thursday Morning meeting with the Presidency. This included Elder Randy and Sister Teddi Jones, Elder Stanley and Sister Carol Parry, and Elder Allan and Sister Arendje Whidden. The Jone’s will be serving as the Branch President of the every-day Branch, the Parry’s are legal, and Whidden’s are the Mental Health Couple.

We worked in the office and had another good week from our cubicle, we also had a fun play day. Elder Thong and I were the first to ever ride the Ocean Park Mine Train roller coaster with Virtual Reality Goggles. It was really fun to have this pioneering experience as a missionary, it connected me to my pioneering ancestors. Elder Thong is from Singapore and Sister Thong is from Hong Kong and were called from Seattle where they will be returning after their Mission. They met while attending school at BYU Hawaii and he is currently serving as the Area Financial Auditor. We have become good friends and will miss the daily association we share with them as Missionaries. Developing new life time friendships has been another wonderful perk allowed us by serving here in Hong Kong.

              Ocean Park with Elder and Sister Thong

We went to lunch with Thongs to the "Jumbo Floating Restaurant"  in Aberdeen.  We had Dim Sum.  A little scary having Chinese people make your menu selections for Dim Sum,  but we survived!

FHE with the Senior Missionaries.  Dad and Eder Thong trying to make music with the pop bottles.  They did pretty good! 

Saying Goodbye to Sister Barcocols

Our December calendar is beginning to look the Chinese New Year fireworks. We have so much going on here right now that it will be difficult to keep up with it all. Karen knows how to use the invite function in Outlook and is wearing it out here in December.

This week begin  visiting a secluded white sand beach on the east side of the peninsula at Clear Water Bay. The temperature was in the low sixties so besides ourselves there were only a couple other people on the beach. We enjoyed the sounds and sights of the serf as each wave would form, crest, and crash before disappearing into the sand.

After about an hour we left and stopped for lunch at Big Bite when we received a message that Sister Barcolcols’ brother had passed away unexpectedly, and she would be leaving to go home to the Philippines later that day or in the morning. Her flight was postponed a day, so we were able to see her and offer our condolences before she left.

We love and worry about the Sister Missionaries serving here that after their Missions are returning to a quality of life that would be difficult to endure. We wish there was more we could do for them and their families.

Horse racing is big here in Hong Kong and has been for years. I remember as a young Missionary seeing billboards advertising the races at the “Happy Valley Race Track” and hearing the name, “the Hong Kong Jockey Club”. So, Karen and I mostly out of curiosity decided to go to the races this week. Having never been we did not know quite what to expect and are pleased to report that it was a lot of fun. The horses were amazing, not only were they physically marvelous but the way they competed against each other to win was more like a human than an animal.

We had a good week at the office and continue to progress with the Opinion Leader Data Base and CRM. We had productive conference calls with both Salt Lake and Washington D.C. concerning how we can best utilize the system. We also saw “Light the World” kick off in all the countries in our area and are excited about the campaign being a great success similar to last year.

We took the Filipino Sister Missionaries (Sister Cory joined us), to lunch to say a sad goodbye to Sister Barcolcols (sitting to the left of me).   Her brother passed away,  President Lam sent her home to stay.  She would have completed her mission here in February.   He told her she needed to be home with her family and finish her mission teaching them the gospel.  Sister Barcolcols and her brother  were the only 2 members in all of her immediate and extended family.  Her brother had completed his mission and was engaged to be married in the Manilla Temple in May. 

Left to right:  E/S Beckstead,  Sister Barcolcols, Sister Cory, Sister Salangnad.

Who would have thought our first horse race would be in Hong Kong!  This was really fun!