Hong Kong

Hey everyone, They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. So here we go with 25 pictures. Luckily, I have not written 25,000 words. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking. One of the parade participants at the annual bun festival on Cheung Chau Island a week ago. Another parade participant. One of several dragons. And this is the bun tower at the bun festival. At midnight, contestants climb up this tower to pull the buns off and put them in a bag on their waist. The higher up one goes, the buns are worth more points. Google "bun festival hong kong" -- there are some great videos of this crazy, very unusual contest. And these are the buns. Delicious! And available all over the island. I even worked my way into one of the bakeries down a side alley for this picture., A couple of the chinese girls in our office wanted to take us out for some french toast, Hong Kong style. Yes, that is a giant slab of butter on the top with a bottle of syrup by my hand. Back to t...

 Dear Family, READER ALERT: Long email and shameless plug for temple attendance. In the last conference President Nelson said, " we are doing all within our power, under the direction of the Lord, to make the temple blessings more accessible to members of the Church." As Jenni pointed out to me, this is not a feel good statement, this is truly what the brethren are doing. And our experience in Bangkok was a perfect example of this. Thousands of dollars spent to help 38 missionaries do 6-7 ordinances each. This is the power of the temple to build and point lives in the right direction. As you know, I've been working with helping returned missionary return to the temple my entire mission. Most recently I've been planning a temple seminar for recently returned missionaries who live in a countries where there is no temple. This was one of the Asia Area Presidency's attempts to be responsive to this focus that has been coming from the brethren. We finally had our first...