Mission in Hong Kong: A Missionary's Dream

Dear Friends and Family,

Another great week here in KwaiChung! Elder B and I got a lot of good work done. I feel like I blinked and the week just went right by! Monday night is typically our ward's FHE activity but this past week it was canceled because the following day was a Chinese holiday. Instead of holding a formal FHE activity we had a birthday party for L and A who are two recent converts from this year. They are 19 and 20. Really great members! Because a few of the YM were the ones who organized the activity, of course things were forgotten! Most notably the food haha. So we as missionaries distracted and entertained everyone for a bit by just talking to them and building the suspense. The ward mission leader ran out and bought a pizza, and some other food. A ward member brought some soy sauce chicken wings (a staple food item here in HK), and a cake came out of nowhere! Not exactly sure how all the food got there but it was plentiful! It was a great time with members, missionaries, and friends all talking, eating, and being together.

Birthday party for L and A

Tuesday was hectic. We went out for dim-sum with a nice family for the Chinese holiday and soon after we were heading up to Shek Yam for an investigator lesson. The lesson went well and when we invited him to be baptized, he accepted! We haven't given him a date yet but will hopefully set one this week. After his lesson we were doing some finding and I stopped a lady who had just finished having lunch with the missionaries of another church. She called up a missionary friend and the two of them sat down with us and we taught the Restoration lesson...almost. There was a lot of dialogue and mid-way through some SUPER anti-Mormon man came up and tried to scare them off. They politely told him to leave which I was thankful for. Finally we ended the lesson having come to the conclusion that our biggest differences are that we have an extra book of scripture and a modern-day prophet, both of whih they think are unnecessary. We invited them next week to go with us to General Conference so they could listen to him and see for themselves. I think they were serious about coming. Later that night we ran back down to the church, taught English class, which was all about AMERICA! and then taught some lessons.

Between Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we scheduled a few lessons each day, went finding each day, and visited with less active members each day. Great stuff happening! One lesson in particular is especially poignant to me because he is a convert since December. He broke down in our lesson and just told us that he had no desire to read the Book of Mormon because he didn't feel like he had ever learned how to read and understand it. He's 60ish and his member wife just filed for divorce... It's heartbreaking really. I left the lesson feeling that we had helped this good brother, and also with the confirmation that spouses need to read and pray together. From his side of the story their communication is really poor and she just tells him to read and pray but they don't do that together. In a land where people don't even tell each other "I love you", it might just be cultural. Nevertheless, the gospel can really bless a family when they are all equally yoked and involved.

This past Sunday was full! We had 3 of our investigators at church. Add to that a 'walk-in' who wanted to see what church was like, and a member who brought her 22 year-old non-member son. Besides that we had 5 less-actives at church with us. We taught lessons from about 12:30 to 5 pm and then went with some recent converts and investigators into Kowloon Tong for the "My Conversion Story" fireside. This week are transfers so all the "dying" missionaries brought a recent convert to speak. It was a really good experience for everyone! We got home and broke our fast at like 9 pm and then I sat down to do call-in reports until 10:30. This past week we had 10 member presents, 10 other lessons, and 5 RCLA lessons. So another 25 hours worth of teaching roughly! (That's a missionary's dream!)