Interesting information, The Russians, and our apartment

 Hello Everybody!  We hope you have had a great week.  We were able to attend a temple session with our Area Presidency and their wives last Tuesday. Afterwards we had a nice lunch where they told us some of the great things that are going on in our Asia Area.  Elder Funk had been in Viet Nam where the church received full recognition from the government.  The new mission there will have only 12 missionaries to begin with.  He was also in Taiwan for the 60th anniversary celebration of the church.  He reported that 60 years ago the mission president of the Far East Mission sent 4 missionaries there.  One was killed in a bicycle accident so he asked the others to return to Hong Kong because the work was moving very slowly. The begged to stay so he told them they could stay a little longer.  Now sixty years later there are 16 stakes and 1 district in Taiwan.

Elder Wong, on the left, had been to Mongolia to create the 2nd stake in Ulan Bataar.  Elder Pon on the right will be leaving to live and serve in Beijing and will be replaced here in Hong Kong by Elder David Evans who we met in Seoul, Korea at the mission president's seminar in 2013.

When we went back to work there were some of the office guys at lunch watching a Golden State playing Cleveland basketball game that they had prerecorded.  They are Golden State fans and we could hear them cheer all the way down the hall. Isn't that great that they are so excited about American basketball?

Friday nights after work when we can, we like to go with the senior missionary office couples to different restaurants. On Friday, after work we rode the subway and then trekked our way up to Ivan the Kozak's restaurant.  Our son-in-law, Wayne, served a mission in Russia so I think he would have loved the food.

This was our server who we think might be Ivan's wife. 

Some of you recognize the Kendells.

Here's the group of missionaries that went.

Leg of lamb, anyone?  These were cooked in stone pots.

Elder Chandler tried Chicken Kiev.

There's more than one way to eat Lamb.  Elder Towers is the Everyday Branch President.  He and his wife and the Kendells go to church Tuesday through Saturday to help the Filipino sisters be able to attend church because they only have one day off a week.  My brother, Don, might be interested to know that Elder Towers served in the Central Atlantic States mission as a young man and he remembers an Elder Cragun, although they never were companions or in the same area.

This isn't a great picture but there were even rugs on the ceiling.

Here's Ivan and he came out and talked to us. When we paid our check, we left him a pass-a-long card.

As we were leaving there was a man on the street playing a beautiful melody on his violin.

Some of you have asked to see our apartment so here it is.  It is 650 square feet which is a step up from our 500 foot Tokyo apartment.

It is really modern and nice, too

We have our very own water cooler which is great.

We also have a spare bedroom but this bed doesn't have a cushion so it is very hard.

Here's our room with a queen-size bed.

Bathroom

We call this our "Easy Bake" oven, named after the little children's toy ovens.  It actually bakes pretty good but it is very small. We also have to change Fahrenheit to Celsius when we set the temperature. We then have to open the window and turn on the fan every time we bake or cook so the fire alarm in the hall doesn't go off and scare everybody. There is a sign in our kitchen that tells us to do this.  It was easier to move the oven to the window so that's what we did.  By the way, we have heard the fire alarm go off in the hall numerous times but not when we were cooking!

Here is our kitchen stove.  It has one induction burner where we can cook with a regular pot. The other one is only for this wok because it is concave or convex or whatever it is and the wok is the only one that works on it.  We have been known to even boil water and cook soup in our wok.

This dehumidifier is a great appliance to have in a very humid climate.  We have to empty it twice a day because it takes so much water out of the air. We're thinking we could even use this for water storage!

This is our very small clothes washer which will also dry clothes, too.  Unfortunately, it takes quite a long time to dry a very small load of clothes so we usually hang them up on a rack that we put up in our living room as we aren't allowed to hang out our clothes in this apartment building.

Here is part of what is called, the "Wet Market" , (You can click on "wet market" above to see what Wikipedia says about it.)  It is located only about three or four streets away from our office. Elder Chandler was instructed by our "boss", Leon, on how to buy there.  You buy each thing separately and you have to do it really fast as there are lots of people waiting to buy stuff. The produce he bought was really good.

These are really fun little trolley type cars that everyone calls the "Ding-Ding. This line was actually built in 1903 and the first trolleys were pulled by horses. By the early 1920s they became electrified and have run ever since.  The double-decker cars are all really old and I think the clog up traffic more than they help. So we'll bid you a fond farewell for this week as we watch the"Ding- Ding" go out of sight. (Click on Ding-Ding for more info.)