Meet Cindy
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.
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| 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. |
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| This is Mom's co-teacher for her young women's class at church. The two young women, sisters, are on the right. |
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| This is one of the great hallways for the subway (called the MTR here) in Central on Hong Kong Island. I commented to Mom that Danny needs to see all of this. The design and engineering that have gone into the subway system here is remarkable. There is a whole city, complete with walkways, escalators, and malls all underground. It never ceases to amaze me. |
And now to Cindy, the young girl in the picture above with Michael and Coco and their daughter. A few weeks ago Mom and I were playing ping pong (every Thursday night) with Michael and Coco when Cindy walked up to us and asked if she could join us. She had just arrived 3 weeks earlier from her home in Beijing going to school at the HK Polytechnical college. She is 23 years old. She is friendly, outgoing, bright, and affectionate.
We welcomed her to join our pingpong tournaments every Thursday night. A couple of days later when we were just getting back from work I saw her in the lobby of our apartment building and walked up to her to say hello. She noticed our tags and asked if we were Christians. We said yes and she excitedly told us that she had gone to church a couple of times at another Christian church the last couple of weeks. Mom then invited her to join us the next Sunday. She quickly accepted and we made plans to go together that Sunday. The trick was that Cindy doesn't speak Cantonese, she speaks Mandarin or English, but we go to a Cantonese speaking ward. We simply decided I would go to our ward and Mom would take her to the English ward. The old, divide and conquer principle. What happened that Sunday was the beginning of our story but I'm going to let Mom tell this part.
Char:
I met Cindy in the lobby of our apartment and after a hug we headed to the MTR. It was so sweet, she put her arm around me and we walked arm in arm all the way to church. As we visited I learned that she had just recently learned about Christianity from her friends at school and so when she saw the name Jesus Christ on our tags it caught her attention. We talked about what Sunday means, I explained what would be happening at church and who would be there, what we do on Sundays, and how happy church made me. As we walked in I began introducing her randomly to those people I knew in the English branch. The first person (RS Pres.) turned out to be a professor at the University Cindy goes to, the second person was a Chinese convert from Mainland China, then people seemed to start introducing themselves, a remarkable number of them spoke Mandarin and everyone was amazingly warm and welcoming. One of my goals was to introduce her to the Young Adults I knew in this branch because I knew that I can't regularly go to church here and she was going to need friends.
After the meeting I explained that after our worship service we take another hour to have classes and continue to study and I introduced her to the young adults, most of whom just happened to be sitting in the row in front of us. The only way to explain it is that they all literally put their arms around her and took her to class, barely giving me time to arrange to meet her at the elevator in an hour.
At the end of church I sat on the couch in front of the elevator for 20 minutes waiting. Soon I was going up and down the stairs looking all over the building for her wondering what it could possibly be that I had brought my first investigator to church and promptly lost her! Finally I started to text her and got no answer and after another 20 minutes I finally called her. I got a quick text back saying, "I'm on the second floor learning songs. Can I meet you when we're done?" The young adults had taken her to choir practice! When we finally met up after they were done it was apparent the YA's had convinced her to go to the Break the Fast lunch, but she was conflicted, not wanting to be disrespectful of me. Of course I reassured her that this was a great plan and as I hugged her good-bye she looked me right in the eye and said holding her hand over her heart, "I love this feeling when I sing! I've never had this feeling before!" Her face was full blown wonder with the look of someone trying to figure out what had just happened. I smiled and tried to say something perfect about how that is the Spirit, but it got all swept up in the chaos as they pulled her away to get in a taxi. When I texted her a couple of hours later she assured me she was fine, that she was still with the young adults, hours later. She was invited to go to the YA's family night the next evening, which she did.
Dad:
After joining us yesterday to make dumplings, this morning we took Cindy to District Conference. We rode the MTR over to HK Island for the meeting and handed her off to one of the senior couples (the Smiths) who knew her by now. We then had to take off and head back to our Chinese ward. But our walk over to the island with Cindy was interesting. She told us how she was impressed with how happy we were and the fact that we were still married. She told us that her parents had been divorced for years and that most of the adults she knew were unhappy and divorced. She couldn't get over the fact that she was seeing so many happy people at church. She even asked us if all of our children also "have happiness in marriage?" We were so grateful to say yes, and she shook her head in amazement. I told her that we believed in God and that He loved her. I told her that she was directed to us and that it was no accident that she came to our ping pong game.
We check in with Sister Smith to thank her and to see how the rest of the meeting went, this is the report she sent:
Cindy is a very sweet and bright girl. She is excited with all that she is seeing and learning. We feel incredibly humbled that we got put in her path and are praying for her. We invite you all to pray for her too!
Saturday we will be attending the baptism of the young man (Easin is his name) who ran with us in our "race" last week, of course he beat everyone except the fastest senior runner who he let win! In addition, we continue to play ping pong with Michael and Coco. These are all people from mainland china. I feel like we are being blessed to meet these good people who can't receive the church at home but are excited to learn about it here.
One last picture:
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| Dumpling lunch yesterday with senior couples and friends. |
Well, time for bed. We love you all
Mom and Dad, Grandma and Pampa
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