English Class, visiting authorities, etc

We took a photo of Gary's phone with all the warnings that were on it at the same time.  It wasn't a very good day to be outside, wouldn't you say?  We survived, except getting pretty wet while coming in to work at the Area Office.

Here's "Professor" Chandler, the great English teacher, getting ready to teach the eager students in our new English class that we started up. We've had at least a couple of students take the IELTS' test from our other English class and they both did really well and passed so they will be able to apply and be accepted at any of the BYU schools, either BYU Provo, BYU Idaho, or BYU Hawaii, so you know he is a good teacher.  Of course, they were really good students, too! 

Here's our class of returned missionaries and others who are shown in the photo above and the photo below:

They take many years of English in their schools here in Hong Kong but they still need help in conversation, listening, writing, learning how to take the tests, etc.

After English class at the Kowloon Tong chapel, on Tuesdays we go across the street to the Hong Kong temple and we serve there on Tuesdays. These photo shows a little bit of the grounds and flowers there.

Here are some of the students from our Sunday Island 1 Branch "Starting and Growing your Business" self-reliance class.  The students named their class, "Sisters in Action", and they just graduated from their twelve-week course. I enjoyed helping run the videos and participating a little bit, while the Filipino sister, pictured on the left of Elder Chandler, Kathryn, facilitated the class.  In the self-reliance classes everyone participates and they run their own class and do a great job helping each other and giving each other good business ideas. Some of the sisters have businesses or have had business previously and some have failed so they are also able to tell each other what not to do in their future businesses!

Someone told us about Helen Foster Snow and above is a photo of her and who apparently was a member of the church  at one time and had some kind of influence in getting something about the seagulls and the pioneers in Chinese history books besides knowing Mao personally.  Strange, huh? I think she was very different and very liberal, not like most of us . Caroline Quak wrote a little about this in her Facebook page with the URL address as “gospel & the Chinese.  If you want to see this, go to facebook and write in gospel & the Chinese

                                                          

You can also read about her in Wikipedia if you would like:Helen Foster Snow although she isn't a hero of mine, it's a bit interesting to read.

About the best part of our week was being able to listen to Elder Quentin L. Cook who came and spoke to the missionaries in the Hong Kong Mission and the Area office senior missionaries. The photo above shows us singing together while waiting for Elder and Sister Cook, Elder and Sister Soarez of the Seventy, and  Bishop and Sister Waddell of the Presiding Bishopric. (You might be able to see us in the top left hand corner of the photo.) These good brethren and their wives shook our hands and spent some time speaking to us in the chapel. Elder Cook also gave all the missionaries an Apostolic blessing which was wonderful, too.

One of the sisters videotaped the General Authorities listening to us singing, "Called to Serve" but it is on facebook and so if you want to see it, you would have to go to facebook and paste in the URL in the "search Facebook"area: https://www.facebook.com/250362281649144/videos/1595904260428266/  Here's one more that is about the same but also on facebook and you have to be on facebook to go to the url : https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/10155283591064820/

Here we were helping to prepare lunch in the area office for the visiting authorities so you can see we're keeping busy in many ways.  Notice the absence of any crutches for Elder Chandler as he is healing well and able to get around pretty good without them!

 We'll be doing more food serving, and clean-up etc. on Saturday for the visitors so you don't need to worry about us getting into mischief!

We hope you all have a happy and safe weekend!