Macau

We're on our way from Central Pier in Hong Kong to Macau, about 40 miles away, by turbojet boat.  It takes about one hour.  Macau is the gambling capital of the world but we aren't going to gamble.  

We are going with John Bell, Academic VP of BYU Hawaii.  BYU is trying to increase the Asia percentage of students there in Hawaii.

This the street in old Macau where the Church has been for many years.  Macau was a Portuguese colony and the old part still looks that way.

There are many scooters in Macau as shown by those parked in front of the Church.  The Church name is in English, Portuguese, Cantonese and Mandarin.

There are apartments above the church.

A very short walk from the church is the Lou Lim loc Garden which has been there for many years.

The park is an oasis in the middle of the most densely populated city in the world--650,000 people in 10 square miles.  That would be comparable to Salt Lake Valley having 25 million people.

Beautiful murals of sort of a water color in the museum in the park.

This is the back side of water like you see in Jungle Cruise in Disneyland.

We were there to teach the young missionaries how to facilitate self-reliance groups.  This is the group we taught.

John Bell speaking to leaders about the changes coming at BYU Hawaii.

This is a close as we got to any casinos as they are mostly on the island and we were on the peninsula.

Here are some wonderful senior missionaries who will be going home soon.  They have all served for 18 months except for two of the couple who served for a year.  They served in the Area Office, mission office, and some were temple missionaries.  All missionaries for the church are volunteers who pay their own expenses and receive no compensation from the church.
Also, we sure appreciate getting emails from some of you occasionally. Thanks so much! We wish all of you dear family and dear friends the very best in your lives!
By the way, this link is fun to watch if you have a little time:
Children's Bible Videos 

Kowloon Walled City Park

Hello Everyone!  So here was an interesting place to visit not far from where we live, the Kowloon Walled City Park. Before reading the rest of this post, please check out the following web site so you can understand about it better and then we won't need to explain: Kowloon Walled City  

The gardens were beautiful!

Here's one of the canons that the children were sitting on in the web site.

There are 12 different figures in the garden of the Chinese Zodiac. The guidebook says they were carved from white stones and arranged according to the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches in Chinese astrology. (Do we wonder what that means?)

In the mornings, wherever we go there are people doing their Chinese exercises.

The Fui Sing Pavilion was named after Fui Sing who was one of the five emperors of literature in Chinese astrology.  According to legend, Fui Sing was a god who would bless scholars with good results in examinations.

There were banana plants and papaya there, too.

Where's Waldo (oops, Elder Chandler?)

Can you see the turtles?

Here are two cute little boys who were with their parents walking the paths.  The parents were kind enough to allow us to take their photo.

We then decided to walk over to the local "wet-market".  (If you aren't interested you can quit now or quickly scroll through the pictures.)

We never see bikes or places to park bikes in Hong Kong so we must be in the suburbs.
BIG Bikes

Little Bikes

Look at all of that fresh ginger; it would be worth a lot in the U.S.

We bought some of these really long green beans.  They tasted a little different but they were really good.

These might be fresh figs.

The purple vegetables are small eggplant; everyone loves eggplant here.

Look at the hanging chickens that still have their combs on.

There are so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables that we'll never learn the names of all of them.  Many of them are really good.

Then we needed to find our way to walk to another bus stop and go home.

Back home in Hung Hom,  here's Elder Chandler ready to go back to work. This beautiful fountain is just inside our apartment/hotel where we live.

Here are some of the wonderful sisters who are ready for another self-reliance class.

We've had a lot of family home evening dinners lately with the different groups that the sweet Filipino sisters have prepared so we thought we'd throw in one more photo. Don't forget to have your family home evenings, too!
Here's some ideas for family home evening:
Family Home Evening Ideas