January- Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Hong Kong

To start the New Year out right we went to a lovely park here in the city called Victoria Park.  And we went shopping at the nearby Ikea store.

Don't you love all the pigeons and Elder Chandler looking spiffy in his suit?  Fortunately no pigeons were flying overhead at the moment.  They might have added a little color to his white hair.

There was about any kind of pigeon there that you could imagine.

We also watched some people racing their little miniature boats around there.

The children were enjoying a little playground.

It looks like this place has the right idea for a New Year's celebration.  They're probably going to ring in the new year with a big pop.

The streets on Hong Kong island were super-packed with people all trying to find a good place to see the fireworks.

We wanted to stay to watch the fireworks but after we had a dinner with the senior couples at the Area Office we were exhausted.  We are vowing to watch them on Chinese New Year when they set them off earlier but here's what we missed the other night; but we heard them!:

2017 Hong Kong Fireworks

We also had an extra day off after the New Year so we went on a strenuous -mile or so (2 to 3 km) hike to hike Dragon's back.  It is called that because it goes up and down along the ridge of the mountains. We took the ferry, then the train, then the bus to get to our hike.

There were some pretty spectacular sights along the way.

Some of the trail had steps but lots of the trail was uneven rocks.

Here's Elder Chandler taking a short rest.  Notice the trail; this was how it looked pretty much all of the way.

You can see the little town and Shek O beach below.  Shek o translates either as rocky bay or big rock in Chinese.

Anybody care for a little golfing?

When we got to the top we were as high or higher than the hang gliders.

Here we are at the top of Shek O Peak. It was around 70 degrees--not bad for January 2.

Then it was time to head down.

Near the end of the hike back, we were happy to find a couple of benches to take a short break.

Here's what we saw when we got back to Hung Hom.  It is the moon and the planet Venus.

Good Night Everyone.  Happy New Year!

Christmas time is almost over

Hi Everybody,  Welcome to the 1881 Heritage 

 If you are interested to know what this place is all about, click here: 1881 Heritage

We had a great Christmas activity on Monday, December 26th, for our Sunday Branch as many of the sisters had this as an extra day off.  Most of the activity consisted of Filipino dances which were colorful and well-done.  They designed their own costumes and choreography and did a great job.

If you haven't laughed today and you need to, here's a link to our senior missionary Tinikling dance.  Tinikiling dance 

Here are some links to the dances:  Dance, Another dance, more dances

Dances galore, Last Dance

We had dances an songs and games and a great time was had by all who were able to come.

Here's Elder Chandler busily serving dinner to these wonderful sisters.  He does this a lot as well as set up, take down, and wash the dishes.  He's a great man!

Here is our Christmas choir we had on Christmas Sunday but there are a few extra people in the photo. Below is a link to a practice for our Christmas choir.  This was the first time I ever played the piano for a choir and I was happy that for the performance it all turned out okay.  I'm not that good and I wouldn't have done it but there aren't many who are able to play the piano in our branch.

Choir Practice

Thank you for bearing with us in all our Christmas posts.  The Filipino sisters say that they start celebrating Christmas in September in the Philippines so be glad we didn't start showing these kinds of posts then!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

 We hope you are enjoying parties and family and, most importantly, remembering our Savior's birth.  We celebrated again by going to TST (Tsim Shaw Tsui) and watched the Hong Kong 3D light show. It was pretty cool to see the images displayed across a couple of buildings and on the clock tower as seen below in this little video:

Here's another of the View across Victoria Harbor: View across Victoria Harbor

We also had a great office party with staff and senior missionaries.  There were some great games and good food, too.

We didn't lack for gifts for our "White Elephant" gift exchange.  There were a lot of after exchange exchanges as that was part of the exchange but everyone seemed pretty happy as there was mostly a lot of candy exchanged.

We've also been involved in many different choirs.  This link below is for our Sunday branch and the practice for the choir that we sang in last Sunday.  This Sunday will be our last Christmas choir.

Island 1 branch Christmas choir

To end this little post, we thought you might like to see what a Chinese doctor's prescription looks like; actually it is multiple pages- about 6 of them.  Unfortunately, Leon has been sick so he went to the traditional Chinese doctor who prescribed lots of herbs, insects, and other assorted delicacies to be boiled down to one delicious thermos full of medicine.  Leon says he has a hard time drinking it without throwing up and we believe him as the smell is super awful.  This photo was taken a few days ago and Leon is feeling much better so maybe it works.  We don't think we want to get sick enough to try this though.  Leon lived in the USA for many years and he could go to regular doctors here but he chose to go to a traditional Chinese doctor.



Here's our little Nativity which are just made of nuts that are hand painted in China.  Sweet, huh?
Our wishes for you are that you stay well and you all have a very Merry Christmas!