GONG HEY FAT CHOY ! May you all have health, happiness and prosperity in the year of the Dragon.

The Fireworks for the lunar new year celebration in Hong Kong were awesome. They went on like this for a good 30 minutes.

This past month has come and gone quickly. We are almost at our 4 month mark already for our mission. We have been busy working together with our 13 Assistant Area Auditors to ensure all the Stakes and Districts in the Asia Area are prepared for the year-end audits which are to be done in February and early March. Three new Assistant Area Auditors have been called. One in Beijing to cover the four English speaking International Districts in Mainland China, one in Singapore to cover West Malaysia and one to cover East Malaysia. We have had an initial training session with the new AAA from Beijing and will be orienting the other two new ones right away. Just found out this week that the AAA for Southern India, who we just trained in November has been called into the District Presidency. So we will need to have him replaced and a new person trained. Priesthood leadership depth is very shallow in most parts of the Asia Area so good people are in high demand. This will no doubt be a continual challenge for us to stay fully staffed. But this is why we are here.

Details are firming up for our annual Assistant Area Auditor training conference to be held here in Hong Kong March 9 & 10. We have learned that Elder C. Scott Grow of the Seventy and Chairman of the Church Audit Committee will be here to participate in the training sessions. So we will be busy preparing for that event over the next month. On February 8 we are scheduled to travel to Bangkok, Thailand to do some training in the Bangkok Stake and to do a couple of year-end audits. This will be our first foray outside of Hong Kong. We will take a couple of extra days to see some of the sights.

We continue to enjoy working in our Branch assignments and our weekly temple assignment. Also, Jolayne has been called as a counselor in the Hong Kong International District Primary Presidency and she has also been asked to do some one on one ESL tutoring via Skype with some full-time Church employees working in various Service Center offices in the Asia Area.

Our Branch Family Home Evening Group

These are wonderful, humble women who come here to Hong Kong to work as domestics to support their families back home in the Philippines. The Branch becomes their family here. When Elder Dallin Oaks was here last year he challenged these women to put a plan in place which will allow them to return home to be with their families as they are living here in an unnatural state. Some of these women have been here for more than 20 years and only see their families once every two years. There are thousands and thousands Filipino women working here in Hong Kong. Many of them do find the Gospel here and join the Church, which becomes a great blessing in their lives.

The past few weeks have been quite chilly and since there is no central heat our apartment, we sit around a little electric heater to take the edge off. One day last week it got down to 6 C - coldest here since 1995 they said. It is the humidity that makes it feel cold.

Our monthly couples outing in January was to Lantau Island where we rode the Ngong Ping gondola to the top of the mountain to visit the the Big Buddha and Po Lin Monestery. The Big Buddha is the world's tallest outdoor, seated bronze Buddha. There are 288 steps to get up the hill to the base of the statue. We then took a bus to the other side of the island to the Tai O fishing village - part of which is built on pillars/stilts over the water. We had lunch at a little authentic Chinese restaurant. It was really quite grubby and needless to say Jolayne and I had a hard time finding something on the menu we were prepared to eat. Next time we will pass.

Gondola to Ngong Ping Village

Ngong Ping Village

The Big Buddha

288 steps to the top

Po Lin Monastery

Tai O Fishing Village

This is not where we ate but our place was almost as bad

Took a little boat ride out to see the pink dolphins but did not see any.

Joi Gin for now. May the good Lord bless you all.

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS TO ALL

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given........and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

As we celebrate the Saviour's birth we wish one and all a very Merry Christmas!! May God bless you and yours with happiness and joy. May His choicest blessings be upon you. We know the Saviour lives and that through Him we can find peace. We are grateful for the opportunity to be serving Him on this mission and deem it a privilege to do so.

Christmas is certainly different this year without family and friends but we are enjoying the season. We listened to the First Presidency Devotional, which is always a highlight to kick the season off. Last week we attended a devotional and Christmas dinner for all temple workers complete with two roast pigs - heads still on. Earlier this week we attended our Area Presidency's devotional for all the full-time staff and senior missionaries. Elder Gong gave a nice Christmas message. The devotional was followed by a Christmas lunch and social with the staff. This included a white elephant gift exchange. The present I received was a tin of Pork Paste - it will be good to give back to some lucky person next year.

Temple Worker's Christmas Dinner

This evening - Christmas Eve - the senior couples are having a Christmas progressive dinner in our apartments. We are hosting the salad course so we have been busy getting ready for that. We will attend Sacrament Meeting on Christmas Day in our Branch and hopefully do some Skyping with family. The temple is open for half a day on Boxing Day so we will work at the temple for the morning. Many of the Filipino sisters in our Branch will be able to attend as it will be an extra day off for them. Our Branch Christmas party and dinner will be that afternoon so the 26th will be a busy day. The Area Office is closed on the 27th so we will have a day off to rest up.

Other December activities included our monthly couple's P-Day outing. This month we visited a Buddhist Nunnery and gardens - Nan Lian Gardens - very beautiful. Pics below.

This is our group - great people !

Nan Lian Buddhist Nunnery

Another highlight was an invitation to play golf on the one and only public golf course- Kau Sai Chau - in Hong Kong with President Aki of the Hong Kong Temple and two others from the Area Office. This public layout is on an island accessible only by a 20 minute ferry ride. There are three 18 hole courses in the complex. There is nothing else on the island but the golf courses.



Our work is going well. We are starting to get geared up for the year-end audit season. We also have three newly called Assistant Area Auditors we will need to orient and train. We have also started planning for our annual Assistant Area Auditor training conference, which will be held here in Hong Kong in early March.

Some Hong Kong Christmas Scenes

Our apartment complex lobby

Christmas Skyline

The Peninsula Hotel

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL !!

November Highlights

November 29, 2011

The Hong Kong Temple

We are really enjoying our weekly temple assignment and are starting to learn the ropes and feel more comfortable. We have had patrons on our shifts from Mongolia, Thailand, Indonesia, India and mainland China. It is humbling to see the sacrifices they make to come such distances to receive the blessings of the temple. The Church has constructed temple patron housing across the street from the temple which allows these people to stay at very reasonable rates. The senior couples working in the Area Office also have the privilege of attending the temple on the first Thursday of each month with the members of the Area Presidency and their wives, followed by a testimony meeting and a pizza lunch. We attended our first of these sessions in November.

Most Monday mornings there is a 30 minute devotional for all the Church employees in the Area Office as well as the senior missionaries which is a nice way to start each week. There is an opening song and prayer and a staff member or senior missionary is assigned to give a brief spiritual message. One week per month the devotional is held on a Tuesday and a member of the Area Presidency gives the spiritual message. We have attended two of these so far and they have been real highlights. We actually feel quite spoiled to have such close and regular interaction with the members of the Area Presidency, who are all very nice men and very approachable.

For the Area Audit Committee meeting in November, I decided to give a presentation we were given by Church HQ as part of our training materials on the role of the Area Audit Committee. Elder Gong, the member of the Area Presidency who chairs the committee said that would be fine and sat through the presentation and asked a couple of questions at the end. Then a few days later we told someone in the Church Audit Department in Salt Lake that I had given this presentation and he told us that Elder Gong actually wrote it. But Elder Gong never did let on to us that he did - a great example of humility.

Church Administration Building - Hong Kong

The Church Administration Building here in Hong Kong was completed in 2005. It is a multi use facility with the first 7 floors containing 3 chapels, cultural halls and various offices for the wards and branches which attend there. The Asia Area Office is housed on the next three floors and the top two floors have apartments for the Area Presidency. The big round window you can see near the top of the building is Elder and Sister Gong's living room window. We were invited to a welcome dinner in their apartment with the other members of the Area Presidency. Another special highlight.

The Senior Couples also had the pleasure of enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving Feast on the 26th. It was hosted by the Area Presidency and their wives. These people really are nice to us. The Area Presidency brought the Butterball turkeys imported from the USA and the Senior Missionaries provided all the trimmings. It was delightful.

Digging Into The Thanksgiving Feast

M'mm Delicious

We gave our first real live orientation and training to a new Assistant Area Auditor who has recently been called to cover the southern part of India and Sri Lanka. Since India is so far away it was decided it would not be practical to make the trip for a single training session. We did the session using Cisco Meeting Place. Not the most ideal way to do training as you cannot see each other like a video conference but it went OK. We will have a chance to meet face to face when we have the annual training session for all Assistant Area Auditors in the new year.

The Senior Couple activity in November was an open top bus tour of the main areas of Hong Kong Island. The photos below provide an overview of what we saw in the Streets of Hong Kong.

Took the Star Ferry from Kowloon to Central to meet the bus

And here is our bus


Hollywood Road is said to be the first street in Hong Kong


Sleek Skyscrapers Everywhere

Luxury Hotels - Marriott, Conrad Hilton and Shangri La


And Some Not So Sleek and Luxurious




Some Typical Shopping Streets




The Cat Street Antique Market

A Sea of Humanity



These Old Streetcars Date From The 1950's
They Call Them The 'Ding Ding' Because
They Are Constantly Dinging The Bell To Warn
People to Get Out Of The Way

They Use Bamboo Here For Scaffolding
Lashed Together With Twine - Even On
The New Highrises


A Couple Of Buddhist Shrines



The First Christian Cathedral In Hong Kong