Rubber Ducky, You're the One...🎶

Dear Family, 

It's Double Duck week in Hong Kong, it's the event of the decade here at the harbor! Ten years ago the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman took the art installation Rubber Duck on a world wide tour to harbor cities. Intended just to make people happy it was apparently a real hit. To celebrate the ten year anniversary he has brought it back to Hong Kong but doubled the fun! they are intended to be positioned in the harbor to represent the symmetrical chinese characters of happiness (‘囍’) and friends (‘朋’), 

Here's a picture of them being towed into place...they're huge! 

They're on the other side of the harbor but we can see them every time we go walking.

We went over to see them yesterday and this picture barely does them justice. You have to look at the boats that are out there to get a good idea bout how big they are. But if they were intended to make people happy, they succeeded. There was something about the absurdity of these giant rubber ducks in the middle of Victoria Harbor that made it impossible not to smile!

And happiness and friendship are a perfect expression for the experience we continue to have here. It's so very satisfying to wake up every morning and know that we have meaningful things to do and friends to do them with. This week was no exception. Monday was the farewell party for President and Sister Homer. They came to Asia the month we left and Elder Homer has been the Asia Area President for the last two years. They will be returning to Salt Lake the first of July 

The staff had prepared this enormous buffet for them and we senior sisters were leaned on heavily to help them pull it off. It was a delicious spread with egg tarts, mango mochi (the white desert), coconut bread (in front, fruit and...

...a whole pig! You know you're in China when a Monday afternoon desert bar includes a whole pig with feathers on it's ears!

And it was an epic win for the ladies at ping pong. We trounced the men 11-3!  We don't expect it to happen again so we had to take a picture!!

The Smiths, above are becoming dear friends. Kim Smith and I work together putting together the temple trips in the Asia Area; I do the missionaries and she does families, but there is lots of cross over. Elder Smith is the Area Auditor and besides doing amazing things with the financial reporting in the Area he is a missionary extraordinaire. He has an easy confident way of talking to everyone--and I mean everyone! The subway, the grocery store, the elevator, the gym. It doesn't matter where he is he can strike up a conversation with anyone and pretty soon he and Kim are going to dinner with them and giving them the lessons. They are the ones that put together table tennis night and it's a constant source of new people who hear the ping pong balls going and poke their heads in to see what's going on. Dad and I watch these two and are trying to be more like them.

This week I took the opportunity to attend a baptism. We are so isolated on the tenth floor of the building that I seldom hear about these events, but they happen regularly in our building. I happened to be downstairs and heard that it was happening and I was suddenly envious of my senior missionary friends who get to do these things on a more regular basis. So I snuck in the side corner. It was a sister in the everyday branch who has been learning the gospel for 3 years. Everyone knows her in the branch and everyone loves here. This group, her entire branch, was there to support her and the love and excitement was palpable in every bit of the meeting. They sang with gusto, the almost shouted "amen" at the end of every prayer, and the expressions of love and joy were robust and noisy. And then everything became very reverent and quiet as they listened to Sister Jonas bear her testimony at the end. With tears streaming down her cheeks she exclaimed, "This is what I have been praying for for three years! I asked God to show me happiness, and this is my happiness" These kinds of moments are the the gift of serving here. 

This is a picture of Dad on a video call as an official member of the building committee for the Indonesian Temple. I was in the office as a fly on the wall listening as they discussed so many of the details necessary to keep this project moving and as interesting as it was, it was more overwhelming. I grew up with only a dozen temples in the whole world, and if you'd have told me that I would one day be listening as a silent "participant" in a meeting for a temple in Asia I would never have believed you. I would never have believed that I would be anywhere near such a remarkable event. And as the meeting ended Dad pushed back his chair and spun around to look at me with wonder and tears in his eyes. Sometimes we just have to pinch ourselves at the opportunities we have been given.

Cindy is continuing to learn and progress. We've started inviting her to come to our apartment and read the Book of Mormon a couple of times a week. We told her that when we read as a family we took turns reading 3 verses each and she liked that, so we each read 3 verses, she reads in Chinese and we read in English. It's a great variation of our old routine. 

We had her over for dinner and she was amazed that Dad had built his guitar.

And then she insisted on doing all the dishes by herself. It felt like a cultural nod of respect from her. It was very sweet.

All in all, it's been a good week. Hope you're all enjoying your summer and getting ready for a great week at the lake!

LOVE,

Mom and Dad

P.S.

We also went to the Maritime Museum yesterday and these two cute statues just made me so happy! How often do you see such cheerful Chinese tomb statues?