Absolutely Crazy!

Dear Family, We are exhausted!! This place is crazy. Less than one week after the biggest typhoon in years hits Hong Kong, we experienced the biggest rain storm to hit HK in over 100 years. Twenty-four inches of rain in just over 12 twelve hours. Over 20 landslides, two deaths, one airplane sliding off the runway and billions of dollars of damage.

I grabbed a few pictures off the internet to give you an idea of this event. There was major flooding everywhere, streets turned into rivers, the lower floors of shopping malls underwater, rivers of water in the subways and going down escalators.

If you want to see more, just go on the internet -- hundreds of pictures and videos.

So it all started here with this group. These are some of the kids we play ping pong with every Tuesday and Thursday night. After playing Thursday night, one of them suggested we all go out for some dessert at a place about 15 minutes from where we live. And even though it was my bed time we decided to go. Here we are at the dessert shop. The two young men on the left are both here from mainland China working in Hong Kong. Then you can see Cindy in back. I have my hand on the shoulder of the guy in the green shirt; he is an engineer, also from Mainland China, who runs a bunch of software for the giant cranes in Hong Kong's shipyards. His wife and two sons live in Japan (his employer is a Japanese company). The only problem with all these guys is that they all speak Mandarin (and enough english). I'm teaching them how to speak Cantonese which gets us all laughing.

This is the concoction invented by this shop. Lots of whipped cream, chocolate, vanilla pudding, and shaved ice. Ouch! Way good and way bad in calories, I'm sure.

While we were eating, it started to rain, and then to pour. We decided to make a run for it (of course, not one of us had an umbrella). So we dashed out into this downpour and made a run for home.

Here we are just before entering our apartment building --soaking wet.

And here we are inside the building -- getting water everywhere.

So we got home around 10:30 pm with a torrential downpour continuing outside. When we got back to our apartment we discovered that our AC unit was leaking down the wall and all over the floor. So we broke out the towels and bowls to catch the water and went to bed.

When we woke up the next morning, it was still coming down in sheets of rain. We couldn't even see the harbor from our window. We got on the news and checked out the weather report to discover that we were in the middle of what is called a "black rain" event. The whole city was shut down (offices, schools, etc), subways were flooded and shut down along with the bus system. We were told to stay home and stay protected. The rain finally subsided around noon and off I went to work.

 

This is one of the hundreds if not thousands of trees that came down during the typhoon just a week ago. A week later and still not cleaned up yet.

These are two of Mom's friends, Connie on her left, and Connie's aunt, also named Connie, on her  right. Connie invited Mom and several other sister missionaries for dinner last week. Connie runs a health food store in the mall next door and had some passes for all the women to get together for a chinese dinner.

We took Cindy to the temple to do baptisms Wednesday night. She had a cold so she ended up just watching as I baptized Jeff and then was baptized for Chinese names.

Of course, we had to grab some dinner afterwards, joined by the Smiths.

Saw this the other night when we were out walking -- the biggest African snail I've ever seen.

Last night, Jeff (the engineer guy in the green shirt who was with us during the rainstorm), took us together with the Smiths out to dinner. We had Japanese food. Here Jeff is giving Mom and Sister Smith fancy face masks (to get rid of wrinkles) that his wife (in Japan) wanted to give them.

This is my dinner -- a sukiyaki hot pot (I cook it at the table--that's a gas cylinder on the right side).

And here Mom is eating her Gyoza dumplings.

Another picture of Jeff.

This is Mom's YW class at church today. It was the birthday of the young woman in the middle, Alison. On the table you can see the delicious little chocolate cake which we all downed together.

To end this letter, I had to share with you my beloved Li hing mui. This is the  land of dried fruit cracked seed. Its everywhere. I grew up loving this stuff and pick some up here and there. Mom thinks its is terrible stuff. We just have learned to disagree on this one.

Well, it has been a very eventful couple of weeks. We still are working hard every day. And then we spend our evenings playing ping pong, going to the temple, and going out with the people we are meeting here. We love what we are doing but some days are exhausting. We are sleeping very well.

This is a remarkable experience. The work is fascinating. We are attending church and making so many friends. And this experience we are having with all these good people from mainland China is remarkable. I see the hand of the Lord in so much of what we do.

This morning in Sacrament meeting, I had just a brief glimpse into the spirit of what we are doing. The Stake patriarch was speaking, of course in Cantonese. We had a translator behind us translating for us, maybe more for Mom than for me. I tend to try to listen to the Cantonese and pick up as many words as I can but it is difficult. I don't really catch very much. So every thirty seconds or so I'll switch my listening to the translator to help me keep on course. It is a lot of work going back and forth trying to understand and appreciate what the speaker is saying. Today, the speaker told a story of how he trusted God in supporting his daughter when she served her mission. He told of his experience receiving just enough money from work opportunities to pay for her needs. Just as he stopped for a second and then bore his testimony of trusting God in helping his daughter, I clearly understood what he said and felt the spirit move through me. It only lasted a few seconds but I was able to completely understand and feel the power of this faithful, old patriarch. Such are the blessings of serving here. So many good things happening that we never expect or see coming.

We love this experience, but we do miss all of you so much. Our half way point is only a couple of weeks away. We look forward to being with all of you again. Thank you for supporting us in this remarkable experience. 

Love you, Dad (and Mom)