A Thank You, A T-10, and Truth and Time Management
Dear Family,
The Thank You:
Our week started Monday with a thank you dinner for this young man with his backpack on backwards. We met Will and his girlfriend Tilly in April when they came home from BYUI for the summer and Will has been our translator in Sacrament Meeting every Sunday. He has at least doubled our enjoyment of church. It has been so wonderful to have a translator who makes you feel like you actually understand what's being going on! He and Dad have also been ministering to an older couple in our ward and it's been a true blessing. He and Tilly head back to Idaho tomorrow and we will miss them very much. We took these two and two of their friends to dinner Monday night and spent the evening answering all their questions about dating etc! When you spend all day everyday with old people, it's just so fun but to spend a night like this. We forgot to take a picture *&%#, so this one taken earlier in the summer will have to do.
We are very pleased to report that we are safe and sound and the sun is shining! As we texted you on Friday, this week Hong Kong had the largest typhoon it's had in many years. It's quite an impressive thing to watch a city of this size prepare for a large weather event like this. They start several days in advance cautioning everyone that there is a potential storm headed our way, but as you know, storms are mercurial things that can shift direction or lose power unexpectedly, so you never really know if it's going to come until it's actually on top of you. But they start talking about it well in advance. As it gets closer everyone starts going to the market to gather food, and offices make arrangements for people to work at home. Gratefully, I had a very slow week at work and I spent a delightful day moving around Hong Kong gathering food and supplies and was able to get ahead of the rush. Just before the city shut down I had a last minute need to get lemons and sour cream, obviously not necessary but I had time! At that point the stores were packed, no shopping carts were available, and the lines were long. It felt like a real event reminiscent of the early hours of Covid.
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| Grocery stores were cleared out. This is the vegetable isle at our neighborhood store, but my favorite site were the several young men I saw in the apartment elevator with grocery bags full of Cup-of-Noodles. That's a long 3 days if that's all you have to eat! |
Typhoons are rated on a score of 1-10, but they skip numbers 4, 5, 6, and 7 for reasons I do not understand. When the storm is a T-3, it's basically just a stormy day. After T-3 it goes to an T-8 and at that point the city comes to a halt. Stores close, buses stop, and businesses send everyone home. To provide incentive for us to stay in doors we discovered that our church insurance won't cover any typhoon related injury if we leave our apartments in a storm rated 8 or above, so we were home bound by Thursday night! Thursday night it was at a T-3, and by Friday morning when we woke up it had been raised to a T8 and we cozied up in our apartment. By Friday evening it was a T-9 and by night time it was a T-10. We felt very safe in our apartment essentially just watching and listening to the storm rage around us. My only disappointment was that the most intense part of the storm was in the dark and was difficult to see! I stayed up till midnight which was the peak of the storm and I could see waves whitecapping in the bay, and the tree tops were whipping around like they were going to leave the ground. I finally went to bed about 1 a.m. and things were calmer in the morning when we could finally see out the window. There were broken planter boxes around the pool and the water was full of floating debris, and as if they wanted to remind me that there had been a typhoon in the night, there were two blades of grass stuck to our 16th story window!
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| Since we were stuck in the building, for exercise Friday we climbed all 22 flights of stairs... |
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| And walked every hall in our wing of our apartment building. We logged 1.72 miles! The light in Dad's back pocket is his phone playing the book we were listening to. |
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| Finally at about 4:15 p.m. Saturday the T-8 rating was lifted and we were allowed outside to check things out. There was debris everywhere, soggy wet piles of leaves and twigs |
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| And frequently there were whole trees that had come down. This was only a few hundred yards from our apartment. |
Today in Fast and Testimony meeting, most everyone talked about the storm, expressing their gratitude for safety and the lessons they had learned about preparedness. I couldn't help but think of the parallel between watching the officials educate, warn, and give preparedness instructions as the typhoon approached, and our own prophets who educate, warn, and give us preparedness instructions. I will avoid making this letter about that, but food for thought.
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And Time Management:
Tonight we had what has become our regular "Family Sunday Dinner". Cindy is a constant, but the other guests will vary. Tonight Jane came. Jane was Cindy's roommate for one week, moving in to the apartment literally 1 hour before we all went over to Cindy's apartment to eat on Sunday about 3 weeks ago. We met her twice before she moved to a permanent place on the island. She is here from the mainland and has just started work at Grant Thornton, one of the largest accounting firms in the world. We had invited her to church and this morning she finally came. She went to the Mandarin Branch and Kim Smith-(of Kim and Jeff, our partners in missionary adventures) sat by her. Kim's initial report was that Jane seemed a bit bored. But to the contrary, tonight she was full of questions and couldn't stop commenting on "the feeling." She kept coming back to how calm and peaceful she felt while at church.
Cindy started doing dishes as we began to visit with Jane ( she insists on doing them every Sunday). While we were kept talking to Jane, Dad started helping Cindy with the dishes and they were soon in a rousing conversation about how she could make better use of her time. She's been talking recently about needing to learn some time management skills, and today she was finally feeling totally out of control. Quite quickly we had two intense conversations going on with in a few feet of each other. Apparently no one has very talked to Cindy about how to manage time and she was peppering Dad with questions and was completely fascinated and intrigued as Dad talked to her about prioritizing, writing out a schedule, and the idea that sometimes she has to turn down an invitation to go out with friends. As I listened to their conversation out of one ear, it was as if she was having one epiphany after another. She couldn't get enough.
At the same time Dad and Cindy were talking, the Smiths and I were still talking to Jane, answering her questions, talking about the gift of knowing that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and has a plan that will allow us to return to him. We were reading out of the Book of Mormon, and we taught her about prayer, what it is, who you're talking to, and how to do it. As we talked, she looked at us and suddenly asked if she could practice? We said of course, and we shushed the energetic conversation Dad and Cindy were having. Everyone in the room folded their arms and Jane began to pray. She prayed in Mandarin. It was not long, but it was very earnest and sincere and the spirit in the room changed immediately. She told us shyly afterwords that she thanked Heavenly Father that she could be in our home tonight, she prayed for us to have good health and happiness and she prayed for her own family. I've watched many children learn to pray, but I've never been able to share that moment with beautiful adult forensic accountant from mainland China.
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| It was just short of chaotic for about 30 minutes tonight as we talked to Jane... |
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| ....and right behind us Dad was talking to Cindy. I finally had to pick up my camera that was sitting on the table and quietly take these two pictures. |
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| Jane snapped this quick selfie as she left tonight. It's not a good picture of anyone, but it marks the moment. |
It has left me quite thoughtful tonight. For all the ways I have tried to be grateful throughout my life for the knowledge the gospel has blessed me with, I find myself experiencing a new kind of gratitude and reverence. I have tried not to take these blessings for granted, but it is an entirely different experience for me to see highly educated and accomplished adults humbly and eagerly reaching to fill an empty longing in their live, responding immediately to "a feeling" they discover as they come in contact with the gospel. I am finding a new dimension to my own feeling and reverence for this thing we call "the church". I fear that despite my own best efforts over the years, I may have come up short.
Praying you will enjoy your own experience with "the church" today,
Love Mom and Dad/Pampa and Grandma
P.S.
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| This P.S. picture is of Cindy last week buttering her first piece of bread. She was so fascinated and kept asking us if she was doing correctly. Who knew they really don't eat bread and butter in China, but we served it with our spaghetti last week and she was all about trying it. These little cultural moments are always such a delight! Hugs and kisses to you all! |
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