Hong Kong!

Hi Everybody,

Before we left Seattle had a minor mechanical delay so it was fifteen hours on the plane, but we were very happy to arrive here in Hong Kong last night at 9:30 pm and be greeted by Elder and Sister Whitman, the Area Executive Secretary and his dear wife, who waited patiently for us to arrive an hour late and then waited while we went through customs.  It is always wonderful to walk out from a strange airport in the middle of the night and be greeted by kind and caring senior missionaries!  They took us by train and taxi to our apartment which is pictured below.  Our fridge and pantry had been stocked with a few essentials so we are very blessed.  They gave us this first day off to get on the right time schedule so we did a little walking on the harbor promenade and did a little shopping, too. 

We love our apartment building and our apartment (1,422 apartments in the complex).  We are spoiled here.  If it was just closer to the office it would be perfect.  We like the nice palm trees but it's quite chilly today with the wind off the water.

Here's a photo Elder Chandler as you look across Victoria Harbor to Hong Kong Island.  We live in Kowloon and this is in front of our apartment building.

We walked along the Promenade along the harbor.  The above and following photos are all taken looking across the harbor.

There's a new building under construction by where we live and across the harbor is the Two International Finance Center which used to be the tallest building in Hong Kong at 1,364 feet.  Now the tallest building is the 118 story International Commerce Center at 1,588 feet.  Hong Kong has at least 1,294 buildings of 100 M (328 feet) or higher.

We thought it was pretty cool to see a sampan, too.

Here's some road construction near us and expansion of the subway (we think).

This is Whampoa shopping area with a big ship as part of the shopping.  This area used to be in the harbor so someone thought it would be cool to build a fake ship.  We wandered through Aeon which is a very large Japanese grocery, etc. store which made us feel at home (and it was very crowded).

The Hong Kong convention center is the building with the wavy kind of roof and is pictured to the right of the ferry.  The Church area office building is right behind it but you can't see it.

Here are some other residential buildings around our complex.

This picture and the one below are views from our apartment window which is on the 12th floor.

Here's an interesting "statue" by our building which represents a dragon.  It is made of several big rocks all hanging together. Right now we're kind of "dragin", too, but we'll be ready to go and get to work tomorrow.  We miss you all back home but we are very happy to be here and to serve the Lord in our humble way and in any way that we are asked to serve.