Just Another Week!
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 prevent motorized vehicles from entering bike trails, I cut off a young woman--probably in her mid 20's--who came up on my left. She skidded to the ground scraping up her hand up pretty bad and tearing her pants. Several of us jumped off our bikes to help, grabbing water bottles and tissue to clean her hand. I was apologizing profusely, trying to help her rinse her hand and stuffing money into her pocket to cover the replacement of her yoga pants, but the girls English was minimal, and her mothers was non-existent. People speaking Chinese often sound angry to me, but there was no question here. Her mom was not happy, in fact she really was very unhappy with me, pointing at me and continually talking! After a few minutes two trail patrol men rode up and they started barking Chinese too and it was impossible to know what was going on. The sisters that were with me started getting ready to ride off and trying to get me to go with them, but I had visions of the patrol guys chasing me down and that seemed unpleasant so I kept hesitating. About then one of the senior elders who spoke Cantonese rode up and started helping. After a minute or two of listening to the conversation with the mom and the patrol he just looked at me and quietly told me to get on my bike and go. The mom was still yelling as I rode away, my hands shaking and my backpack only partially zipped up. I was very grateful to learn later that the only angry person was the mom and that the patrol men kept reminding her that it was a public bike path and accidents happen. It was a relief to know that no one was going to come arrest me, but way more adventure than I was planning on. And later that night when Dad and I were watching a movie I felt pretty bad because I'm pretty sure this girl was still icing her hand.
As if that wasn't enough excitement, about 30 minutes after my adventure one of the men in our group fainted dead away as we stopped for another picture. Something about exerting and then stopping with out a cool-down made him real dizzy. Luckily he had his helmet on because he crashed to the ground with a giant thud. One minute later his wife was sitting on the ground light headed, possibly trauma from watching her husband go down, who knows! I'm telling you, at that point Dad and I just put our heads down and tried to get to the end of the trail. This was way more excitement then we had signed up for!
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| Beginning.... |
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| ...Middle... (Like Dad's bike? A tad small!) |
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| ....Middle.... |
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| ....End! |
Otherwise the week has been full of work, more ping pong, egg tarts, dinner with the elders in our ward, and Dad preparing like crazy for his Gospel Doctrine class. Dad's been super busy trying to get a Mission Presidents visa renewed (probably won't happen) and I've heard him on the phone to people in Vietnam, Pakistan, Temor Leste, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and an attorney in SLC about Myanmar, with different issues in every country.
My favorite job this week was writing a humanitarian proposal to send to the Church to get funding for computers to make it possible for the Filipino sisters to enroll in Pathway. This will be a pilot program with hopes that it might go world-wide to provide computers to young people who qualify for Pathway in everyway except having access to that one simple tool. In addition, I also was able to interview a handful of mission president's wives in the area in an effort to gather information about how Primary functions around Asia. There are so many kids in the world attending Primary without music or teachers! I also attended a meeting with Elder Johnson of the Area Presidency along with a woman in Thailand and a woman in Taiwan who are in charge of training the Primary sisters around Asia. It's breathtaking to see what it takes to keep the organization of the church going.
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| We took our elders out for dinner his week. it was a small and delicious noodle shop. |
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| The temple is always a good idea. |
Love to you all! Please have a good week,
Love Grandpa and Grandma
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