Dear Family,
I started the week with some more surgery. When Doctor Dan removed my stitches from my hand a month ago, evidently he didn't get them all. So when Mom and I were at the beach last weekend, I was looking at my hand, and lo and behold another stitch had worked its way to the surface. Yikes! It was in there real good. And Mom and I couldn't get it out. So, back to Dr. Dan who broke out his head lamp, super glasses and stitch removal gear. Fifteen minutes later and I was a new man.
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| Wednesday night I joined the ladies and went to the Happy Valley race track in the middle of a rain storm. The chinese girl on the left lives just down the hall from us in our apartment building. She and Sister Snell (the tall Sister in the middle) have become good friends -- they are both single and enjoy getting together. She is from Mainland China and loves horse racing; so she was our guide. |
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| This is a picture of the horses on the home stretch. Very exciting! |
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| Here you can see the spectators and all the big-money boxes surrounding the track. Horse racing and gambling are a big deal here and this was a true cultural event. |
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We attended the temple Thursday night. The woman in the sweater is here from Beijing to attend the Temple. The other woman is her friend that lives here in HK and they were so excited to be able to go to the Temple together. The last several weeks we have met saints here at the temple that have come from mainland China. They frequently ask us to take their picture but what strikes us every time is the joy that emanates from them. Being able to go to the temple makes them so happy. We've even learned how to time our pictures when the temple doors are open so they have the picture of the Savior and open temple doors in the background! They love it!
There were so many mainlanders in our session this week that they did the session in mandarin and I had to use headphones to hear the session in cantonese. |
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| This is one of my good friends in our ward in Tsuen Wan. Her mother, Flora, is our translator and the other YW leader that works with Mom. Charise likes to play all of my hand games with me. |
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| She also loves selfies. |
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| The Reunion: This is Lee Yi Ling standing next to Mom. You may recognize her from Christmas cards over the years. I knocked on her door fifty-two years ago just a couple of weeks before leaving Hong Kong for Vietnam. She and her two sisters (they were all teen agers) let us in and over the next couple of weeks we taught the three of them the first two lessons (called discussions in those days). I then left for Vietnam. When I returned six months later I was surprised to find out that all three of the girls, together with their brother and parents had been baptized. I couldn't believe it -- I really had thought that they were only interested in talking to us because we were American boys. When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997 the whole family together with the three girls husbands and their children all emigrated to Australia. Mom and I have had opportunities to see two of the sisters over the last fifty years (one of them came to Cambodia to visit us) but I had never seen Yi Ling since leaving Hong Kong over fifty years ago. She and her retired husband are now in Hong Kong on vacation. When she found out we were here as senior missionaries she arranged to attend our sacrament meeting so she could see us. It was wonderful to be able to see her again, after so many years. She and her sisters have all raised their families in the church, several of their children have served missions and at least one of the sisters and her husband have served as senior missionaries in Taiwan. This was a wonderful reunion for me. To finally be able to see Yi Ling again was an unexpected blessing. We just sat down across from each other for the entire hour after Sacrament meeting and caught up on each other and our families. I finally learned the details of their entire conversion story which was so moving. See D&C 18:15-16. |
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| These are the latests pictures of the temple in Phnom Penh off the Khmer church website. It's coming along. So exciting! |
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Mom snapped this picture just after one of my most important meetings with our attorney in Jakarta, Indonesia and my contact in Salt Lake City who works on Temple real estate acquisitions. Working on this project has been a blessing and I have felt moved several times in the last few days as we've made some good progress. There have been lots of ups and downs, many complicated challenges. But I have seen the hand of the Lord in this work. Truly, a remarkable experience I can't wait to share with you. But we aren't finished yet. Pray for us.
Well, It is time to go. AJ, Kels, and Harps just landed an hour or so ago. They will be spending the night with Anderson's, AJ's mission president who lives here. So we get to see them tomorrow (and the rest of the week). We can't wait. I'm sure we will have lots of pictures and stories for you next week -- so stay tuned.
We love and miss all of you. Dad |
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