Hong Kong

We start off this week on a very sad note. One of the members of the Victoria First Ward, Phillip Merrill, was killed while riding his bike on the street here a week ago. He and his wife were living here while he headed up the Asia Coca Cola division. Because they were the age of many of the missionaries and worked with many of us as a councilor in the Philippine Branch we all knew him. He loved to ride and would go out every morning on his road bike. While riding a week or ago Friday, he was hit by a mini-bus going at high speed. After many surgeries and after his kids were all flown in by Coca Cola he passed away early this week. This is a picture taken of all the Senior Sisters at their scripture study this week. It was included with a card containing each of their messages for Sister Merrill. Hornswoggled again, this is our choir director with the Golden Plate singers. We traveled out to the New Territories (outside the city) for our final choir  workshop. Here Lilian is teachi...

Dear Family, Today Grandpa had his very first baptism in Hong Kong. Yes, it's true! On his young mission he never actually had the opportunity to perform a baptism. Even though he taught people who were eventually baptized, he never got to do it himself. But today it happened. Cindy asked him to baptize her and that dream, hatched all those years ago when he left Provo to serve as a young missionary, finally came to pass. And not only did he have a Chinese baptism, he fulfilled every Hong Kong missionaries dream, he baptized a beautiful convert from mainland China. Over the years I've heard so many former missionaries dream about doing missionary work in mainland China, and while it is not happening in the traditional way everyone assumed it would, it is happening. As Miles said one night when we FaceTimed in for their evening scripture study, "If the gospel can't go to China, then Heavenly Father will bring China to the gospel!" And Cindy most certainly is one of...

From my journal, Sunday morning, July 9: I'm sitting in a regional conference right now listening to a Chinese choir sing "How Firm a foundation," and I feel like God is playing ping pong with my heart.  Thirty minutes ago I was watching my grandkids on Zoom while they performed their annual reunion dance program. I was overwhelmed with love and joy as I watched, and my heart was so pulled to Bear Lake it hurt. I wanted to be there so badly.  I had to remind myself--again--that being on the other side of the world was the right and good thing, but in that moment I wondered if there was any greater joy than being with my family.  But now, an hour later I find myself in this special regional conference where the whole congregation knows that the church is going to be reorganized to adjust to the strong out migration due to COVID and the political unrest. This is a step backward in growth and is a sad day.  And yet, as the choir began to sing my heart was over run with ...

 So you may wonder at the title. Seeing that the reunion took place in Bear Lake not in HK. But I beg to differ -- you guys sent so many pictures and videos that we almost felt like we were there. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I won't lie, being here while you were there was hard on us. Maybe the hardest thing for us in terms of being homesick since we got here. But the pictures helped a lot. We looked at them and watched the videos countless times.  Next August -- we will be there. Can't wait. So here's what's been happening here. Earlier this week Mom and I were running and we got dumped on by a rain storm. It was warm enough that it felt great. But still, we were drenched. If you look closely you can see a drop of water coming off Mom's nose. It took a couple of days for our clothes to dry out. We still play ping pong every Tuesday and Thursday night. This is Coco, my partner in our doubles tournament. We beat everybody. But then I got killed by this gentleman...