Hong Kong

Hey everyone, Another week has come to an end. And, as usual we have been very, very busy. Let's get right on it: I've been pulled into a critical project regarding one of our countries. This is me with Polly and Steve in one of the offices we've turned into a "war room". I spent a lot of time here this week.            Here I am playing ping pong with Paul, a Chinese table tennis coach. The whole time we were playing he was giving me instruction non-stop. We call this our ping pong diplomacy. We are attracting more and more people who want to come play every Thursday night. And now Tuesday has been added to the schedule.   A fun moment near our office. We were out for some lunch. Our first day at the pool. So Mom and I went to the "Fish Market" on Saturday. This isn't fish for eating. These are pet fish in fancy aquariums. This street was full of shop after shop after shop of fancy fish, turtles, aquariums, fish food, live insects for fish food, and...

Meet Eason. He's got Ollie's hair and Owens personality so of course we love him! Standing here with us and our good friends the Smiths, you might recognize him as the runner who respectfully didn't win our 5k a few weeks ago, letting the fastest senior runner cross the finish line three steps a head of him! The Smiths met him in an elevator in January and have been befriending and teaching him the gospel ever since then and we've all become friends. He lives in mainland China and comes over the border every weekend for lessons and time with Smiths. Today he was baptized, but not without being stuck at the border for hours. He left at 6:00 a.m. this morning for a 45minute trip into Hong Kong so he could attend sacrament meeting before a baptismal service scheduled for 12:30 p.m.. But he was inexplicably detained at the border for hours and we had all given up on it happening today. But he never gave up and came hurrying into the church at 3:00 p.m. just in time for an u...

 First of all: Happy Mom's day to all six of my daughters. We miss you all and wish we could be there with you on this important day. We hope you have a wonderful day and that your kids cook for you and clean up afterwards. Yesterday (our Saturday), we learned how to make chinese dumplings. We already told you about this little family we met several weeks ago, Michael, Coco, and their daughter Gennie. We've been playing ping pong with them every Thursday night in our apartment building. So yesterday, Coco and her daughter taught a bunch of us how to make dumplings. Mom was very involved. I had to work for part of this and played some ping pong with Michael. Then we all sat down to a great meal. Here, Mom is watching Coco cut the cabbage for the dumplings. Just in front of Mom is another friend of ours, Cindy. I'll tell you more about her in a minute. Also joining us for lunch was Elder Tai's daughter Kealani. When AJ and Kelsie lived here they used to babysit Kealani. S...

 Dear Family, One thing for sure is that life moves at a rapid pace here. No lazy days sitting on my deck looking at the lake! Monday was another holiday and since we had worked for 9 hours on Saturday we were ready for a break. A large group of the couples had put together a 21 km. bike riding expedition from Tai Wai to Tai Mei Tuk. It was a great idea, the weather was perfect, the company was good, and the Thai lunch was delicious, but the trail was way to crowded! It seems that everyone is finally coming out after COVID and according to others who have done the trail before, Monday was very congested. Their were families with small children, groups of rowdy teenagers, intense bikers trying to work out, and at least one group of old people just looking for a pleasant morning. Things were going along pretty well for us until we were all--16 of us-- trying to merge back onto the trail after stopping to take a picture. When I swerved to get around one of those posts placed to preven...