A Farewell Party

We were invited to a wonderful party yesterday at the Thursday Everyday Branch which meets just a couple of floors down from our office.  The sweet Filipino sisters invited us because we facilitate their self-reliance course on Thursdays. The family home evening/party was in honor of Elder and Sister Towers who will be finishing up their mission soon after spending eighteen months here working with the sisters in the different branches as their assignment. Previously, they served in Cambodia as the mission president and his wife for three years. They are wonderful and will be missed so much.  It was also in honor of Noravee who, after many years of working here in Hong Kong as a domestic helper, will soon be going home to the Philippines. 

This is Noravee and she is an amazing woman. Her husband is in the Philippines and he is paralyzed from the waist down from an accident he had many years ago. Now, she will be returning to the Philippines and trading places with her daughter who will be coming here to work as a domestic helper. Noravee supported her daughter through college, and her daughter has been the one taking care of her dad.  Now the daughter is old enough to come and trade places with her mother as there aren't enough good paying jobs there in the Philippines, even with a college education.  Being a domestic helper doesn't pay great and the hours are extremely long but they are able to support themselves better than at home. Noravee spent much of her only day off cooking most of the food for the party.

The decorations were so creative.  Here are balloons with photos hanging from them.

The sisters used their scarves to decorate the food table, and folded fan napkins to place on the table, too.

This photo shows some of the beautiful satin hearts which Noravee made and gave to everyone at the party.  They are all hand sewn together with a braided edge, and beautiful embroidery on both sides of the pillows which says, "I Miss You, Love, Noravee" Think of all the time and expense and work this was for someone who has no extra time or money and works too long and too hard anyway.  We will always treasure our pillow.

Look at the intricate balloons that were twisted and fashioned so beautifully. 

See all the butterflies they made, too.

It was pretty emotional when we sang, "God be with you 'til we meet again" to the Towers and Noravee.  Sister Towers is just like everybody's sweet little grandma.

The sisters did a cute little dance for us, too.

 So after they danced, they insisted that we dance, an you can see that we tried to ham it up for them since we aren't dancers if you click on this link: Chandlers know how to dance?   They already put this on Facebook so it's public anyway, as everything we do with the sisters, they put on Facebook.

Some of the sister missionaries were able to come for part of the time, and eat dinner with us.

Noravee gave the biggest heart to Elder and Sister Towers and she gave a wonderful tribute to them. 

Everyone who had purple clothes wore them in honor of Noravee who loves purple, even Sister Kendell and Elder and Sister Towers.

This sweet sister made this beautiful bird for the Towers.  It is made of 1,000 small folded pieces of paper.  We asked her how long it took her and she didn't know, only that she said she would work on it here and there when she would have a minute or two. It is so intricate and must have taken her forever. We tried to take a little closer photo in the next picture.

Of course, we needed to have a photo with Noravee and then many of the other sisters wanted one, too.

Then it was time to go home and as you can see from the heavy, slow traffic, our commute home was going to be an extra long one, with traffic even stopping in the tunnel under Victoria Harbor.

As we were climbing the stairs to cross the street, we took this photo of some of the sister missionaries standing in front of the church area office. Occasionally they stand there and hand out pamphlets and talk to people who stop and want to find out about the church. This night there were many who stopped to talk and ask questions about the church.

We appreciate these young Sisters and also the young Elders who are so willing to spend their own money and dedicate their time while the young men serve their two-year missions and the young ladies serve eighteen month missions. They share the gospel with great joy and enthusiasm and bear testimony of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and his gospel.

By the way, if you would like to see the result of how learning the principles of self-reliance helped one of the Philippine sisters who was a domestic helper here in Hong Kong learn how to save her money, plan, and return to the Philippines to support herself and her family, click on this link:  May Ann's bakery She is a wonderful person who is working very hard in her own little bakery and who is so happy that she can be home with her family and raise her own children.

WE LOVE YOU ALL, TOO, DEAR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

Lamma Island

Yum, Yum!  We thought you might be hungry so we thought we would start this post on an item you might consider making sometime. Doesn't that look like a great menu item?

Several of the senior missionary couples decided to go to Lamma Island yesterday.  Here is a photo from the ferry pier looking at a pretty cool sailboat that was docked there that we saw before we got on the ferry.

This the beautiful Stonecutter's bridge that we passed while on the ferry. It's total length is 5,236 feet, the middle span is 3,340 feet, the clearance is 241 feet above the water and the two towers are 978 feet tall just in case you want to know.

Here's looking back at Hong Kong in the distance. We traveled 22 kilometers or about thirteen and a half miles to get to the island which was about a thirty minute ride.

Everywhere there were so many different kinds of ships and boats that we passed.

 

We saw a lot of little fishing boats as we got closer to the island.

Welcome to Lamma Island.  If you want to read about the island, click on this link: Lamma Island

There were many little fish farms in the bay by the island.

Before lunch, we decided to take a hike.  It is very beautiful there and the foliage reminds us of Hawaii.  The temperature reading was 93 degrees  Fahrenheit (record high temperature for the day), the humidity was at 63 percent.  Calculated with the heat index, the weather station said it felt like 114 degrees. We can believe that because our clothes were soaked completely through with sweat. Actually, every day now is really really hot and really really humid and every day when we walk back from the office our clothes are soaked.

Here's a little orchard of papaya trees, sugar cane, etc. that we saw while walking, too.

Also, we thought you might consider painting this mural on your house.

Here are some of the views from higher up on the hill.

On the trail we passed this little fruit-snack kind of stand and we just had to post this because these people are doing what they can to be self-reliant; just like we teach the sisters in our classes for those who are planning to open some type of little business when they go home to the Philippines.

There was a sign posted by this cave that said that the Kamikaze cave held strategic importance during the Second World Ward for Japan's Hong Kong-based 'kamikaze team' .  they concealed speedboats here to be deployed on suicide missions against Allied shipping.

We saw some people out enjoying the water. Notice the umbrellas.  People use them in the sun a lot here like they did in Japan.

Copied and pasted from the guidebook: You 

will see Tin Hau temple near pier in Sok 

Kwu Wan village. Its history dates back to 

1826 when it was built and later, in 2004, it 

was restored after a fire.

It is a small building and it keeps a rather 

modest facade with distinguished Chinese 

architecture and detail.The temple is 

dedicated to Tin Hau, the protector of 

fishermen.

Here's Elder Chandler thinking about lunch.  We ate at the Shark's Fin Seafood Restaurant.

The next few photos show what we were going to have for lunch.

On the right by Gary is Jim Sheffield, son of the high school seminary teacher from Springville. (Maybe some of Carol's siblings might have known him there.) He and his wife came to visit her sister, Sister Nielsen, whose husband, Elder Nielsen is also from Springville.

Here's one of the dishes we had.  He's looking at you!  We also had clams, calamari, scallops, shrimp, chicken, sweet and sour pork, bok choi, watermelon, and fried rice with ham and shrimp. 

We met this sweet lady who is a member of the church.  She came over to our table when she saw our missionary name tags to say "Hi".  She is from the UK and she is attending school in Hong Kong for the summer.  She was happy to see us.

After the dinner we walked about some more before the ferry boat arrived. This looked like a Banyan tree so we took a photo.

Here comes the ferry!

It was time to go get on and leave the beautiful Lamma Island. As you can see, Lamma Island isn't far from the south side of Hong Kong Island.  This area is known as Aberdeen.

Fortunately, it was air conditioned. Here's some of the group inside the ferry.

We're back after our pleasant "three hour cruise". (Does that sound like Giligan's Island?)

This is the International Finance Center.  The shorter building in the middle is the "baby IFC" at only around 40 stories.

Residential towers in Kennedy Town on the Southwestern side of Hong Kong Island.

We had to get a photo of this boat because it seemed like such a contrast between it and the modern skyscrapers here.  

We thought we would end with a photo of these two sweet real sisters who are in our family home evening group.  The one on the right has been less-active in church but we are happy that she is now attending family home evening with us.