"The dream that I haven't even thought of!"

Dear Family,

You know how sometimes you just need to be reminded that Heavenly Father is aware of you? You're going along in life and it's fine, but heaven just feels a little quiet? If I'm being honest, I've been feeling a bit like that lately. I've been fine, my works been picking up, we've been on some great activities, and Hong Kong never stops charming me, but you know the feeling, things are just a little flat. I show up at work everyday and work through all the assignments I have and then I go home. Tuesday was no different, I showed up and continued to work through the variety of job tasks that I have; managing translation projects for Newsroom and the Liahona; the details necessary so that groups of missionaries to travel to the temple; feeding new missionaries etc. Then Wednesday, I'm staring at my computer and I realize that I've finally succeeded in assembling the spreadsheets, getting all the travel documents and instructions gathered, and I'm ready to push send on emails to the Mission Presidents, and the Travel, Finance, and Temple departments, and suddenly, out of no where, I am in tears, I am staring at these lists of names of missionaries I've never met and I realize that I love them so much, but even more importantly, I realize that Heavenly Father loves them too, and it feels like He is saying "thank you". "Thank you for slogging through all the details, the cycles of hope and disappointment and worry, and for finally getting the project this far down the road. so that these young people can go to the temple." And I have to say that heaven cracked unexpectedly in that moment. it was like a hug.

Thursday night we took ourselves to our regular 7:00 p.m. dinner/ temple night. We made a last minute change of dinner plans so instead of eating in the park we went into the giant mall that is by the train station and went up to the food court. As we sat down to eat we bumped into our friend Sister Smith who said that they were with a friend and his colleague from Vietnam. They were going to a 7:30 session, but his friend, a woman, needed to get to the temple at at 6:45 like we did, so would we mind walking her up to the temple with us. Of course we said we would. A minute later as we watched them all weaving through the tables with their food I looked at the this Vietnamese woman, and she looked at me, and we stared at each other as our brains whirled with recognition. This extra woman tagging along with the Smiths was one of our favorite missionaries who served with us in Cambodia (she is from Vietnam)! Unbelievable!! We were both so shocked and so excited to see each other. There was hugging and exclaiming and joy all around as Smiths just stared in confusion. Sister Pham had just arrived in Hong Kong and had been talked into having some dinner before she went to the temple. (Please note here that these members who had the chance to come to HK for business had squeezed in temple time with their business plans because they were so happy to be in a country, even briefly, with a temple!) Pham Ti was planning on doing some baptisms Thursday at the same time Dad and I were planning on doing sealings. Dad and I quickly changed our plans and when we got to the temple we went with Ti to the baptistry where Dad was able to be the baptizer and confirmer as she did the work for her aunt and her husbands grandmother. It was a miracle. She wasn't going to stop for dinner and we weren't going to eat in the food court, but we both made last minute plan changes which put us in the same place at the same time, and instead of us both being in the temple on different floors, never knowing the other was there, we were able to share some sweet and sacred time. Just like that, a regular temple night to become an extraordinary evening. The next morning she texted me the sweetest text, but my favorite part was when she said "it was the dream that I haven't even thought of!" And that it was. Only Heavenly Father could have know how happy a surprise like that would be for Dad and I. Only He could have made that happen in this ridiculously large city, in that ridiculously large mall, in this ridiculously large church. Heaven hugged again!

After our temple session.

Here we are just before going inside the temple. Her friend/colleague on the right also remembers us from our days traveling to Viet Nam. He laughed and told Dad he remembers him standing up at the pulpit and telling everyone, "my wife says I have to remember to smile!" He thought that was so funny. It's a little alarming if that's all he remembers!

Dad snapped this picture while we were eating. I don't think she likes smiling because she has braces!!

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In other news, we did go on another great island adventure, this time to Lamma Island. This is a bigger island, but still no cars, just little ATV's bustling around everywhere. It included a nice walk, or hike depending on who you talk to. The trail was paved and the views were beautiful.

The bay full of fish farms and houseboats

Exploring an abandoned school

And caves where the Japanese planned during the occupation, to hide speedboats in these caves that would come out and go on kamikaze missions to hit US warships. Thankfully the war ended before they were able to execute on their plan.

I love to use my google translate to on these banners we find in the different temples. I loved this one that said: GOD IS LIGHT! Something we agree on!

One of my favorite moments of the day was watching this crane as it very carefully took this grocery bag of lunch and delivered it across the worksite to a workman!