Macau

It's always nice to start a new post with a happy event.  Jenny was baptized this week.  She is very special and she is very happy to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We are all very happy for her.

Our group of senior missionaries received permission to travel to Macau last Saturday.  Macau is the gambling capital of the world.

Entrance to the Guia Lighthouse and Park--the highest point in Macau.  As you can see, everything is in Portuguese since this was a Portuguese colony.

View from the aerial tram to the top of the peak.

Standing on the peak.  You can see some of the hotels in the background.

Residential towers under construction in the distance.

One of the weird shaped hotels and casinos.

Here is the lighthouse on the top and a small church next door.  Immediately to the left of the small church is where Macau was dedicated for the preaching of the gospel.

In the distance is the 2.4 km bridge connecting Macau to Cotai Island (still part of Macau)

Here's all the sweet sisters in our little tour group.

Actual dedication site by Jeffrey R. Holland.

Not sure if these are dragons or dogs but they are cute.

This Muslim style home was built for the wife of a former premier or president of Macau.

You see a motorcycle or scooter here and there in Macau--actually lots of them.

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Entrance to the Lou Lim loc Garden very near to the LDS church.  It is all decorated with flowers for Chinese New Year.

You probably didn't know there were bonsai trees in China.  The one in the middle is even a little forest.  Here's a link to the Bonzai tree video: Bonzai trees

Remember, it's going to be the year of the cock or rooster, so we're seeing them everywhere.

This is the facade of St. Paul's cathedral.  The church burned down leaving only the front.  It's on a hill in the middle of Macau and a very popular tourist spot.

Looking down toward a shopping area from St. Paul's cathedral facade.

How do you like this pork chop sandwich?  If you look carefully, you can see the bone in it.  You'd better bite carefully, Elder Chandler!

These are big slabs of jerky that were being sold.  Elder Chandler bought a peppered piece of jerky.

There were just a few people on this shopping street.

St. Anthony's cathedral

Getting ready for Chinese New Year.

There was a big square full of New Year's decorations.

Here's our whole group--imagine how they all looked 50 years ago!

The tallest structure in Macau--sort of like the one in Las Vegas.

We went inside the lobby of the MGM casino.

How's this for a fish tank?

Here's a link to a video in MGM:  MGM lobby

Studio City hotel and casino and no we didn't do any gambling or even go in a casino.

A-Ma Village and Temple.  It's very ornate, beautiful and made to look old but it was constructed about 15 years ago.

It's good luck if you can get a coin in the bowl on the turtle's back but we weren't lucky.  Maybe this is a form of gambling now that we think about it.

The beginning of the City of Dreams water show in Macau.  It is the most over-the-top extravaganza you can imagine (but at least it's clean)

Venetian Hotel.

Here's the Eiffel tower in Macau at 492 feet it is about half the size of the real Eiffel tower.  This one just opened in September of 2016.

These videos are from the water show that was listed above:

Here's a link to click on below:

Water Show

Click on the link to see more below:

Motorcycle part of watershow

If you want to see more of the water show that people have recorded you can google Macau water show and see quite a few videos.

Before leaving Macau, we stopped at Fernandos, a Portuguese restaurant.  It's an old restaurant out in the boonies but very popular.  It was a cultural experience and the Portuguese food was good, too.

We left Macau and arrived home at midnight.  Good night Macau.  Good night everyone!

Another Week- boodle fight

Hi Everybody!

Here's something new for us.  The Filipino sisters call it a Boodlefight (sp?)  This was our family home evening dinner.  They don't use plates or spoons for this type of dinner; they just stand up or sit down and kind of stir the rice with with a vegetable into a ball with their fingers and eat it. They said that this was the kind of dinner the new Philippine president had at his inauguration; so it must be great! It was a different kind of dinner.  Elder Chandler really liked the fried chicken and I liked the fried eggplant.

Here's Friday night family home evening dinner, too!

This photo is out of place but it can't be moved or deleted, so enjoy!

Here are the New Year resolutions that we were given at family home evening.  We think they are worthy to try to do, too.

Also, there wasn't much going on this week so as we were walking home from the bus coming home from the office we took a few photos  of the Mr. Potato Head display they put up at a little mall near our apartment.  The little children here really liked it.

We also took a few photos on one of our nightly walks; this is taken looking across the harbor.

Here's our favorite dragon boat.

Aren't these beautiful flowers that are planted on the temple grounds?  We took this photo as we went to serve in the temple on Tuesday night.

Everyone is getting ready for the big Chinese New Year celebration.

We took these photos when we were going to buy lunch to take back to the office. Aren't the trees beautiful?  We thought it was amazing that they were blooming in January.  We came to find out on closer examination that they aren't real flowers.  The trees had lost their leaves and thousands of these kind of cloth blossoms have been attached to the trees. (The earlier photo was showing a close-up of the attached blossoms.) Below you can see it again.

2017 is the year of the fire rooster so we are seeing many roosters around these days. There are also years for the water rooster, gold rooster and earth rooster in case you are interested in knowing.  It doesn't look like the rooster horoscope is very favorable for those born after Chinese New Year, January 28th which makes them born in the year of the roosters.  If you're interested you can check it out but we don't believe in any of this:  Rooster horoscope  We hope you have a nice weekend, too!

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!