YSA Hong Kong Self-Reliance Conference

We had a wonderful Young Single Adult self-reliance conference this past weekend.  It all began at the Kowloon Tong church.

The participants were separated into groups that were to organize and present business plans. No one complained about who was in their group as it was done randomly by Elder Chandler who assigned their names to different groups and who couldn't read the Chinese characters of their names!

Brother Au, the Hong Kong Self-Reliance manager taught the groups.

     Then it was time to board the buses to go to 
Sai Kung.

Here we are, beautiful setting wouldn't you say?

Everyone loved the great Chinese food, too.

Here's the google map with Sai Kung pictured on top.

The groups picked out of a hat what kind of business they were to study: restaurant,shop, or boutique hotel     They were assigned to go into the town and then when they came back they had to make a business plan for their future business. Most of the groups were up until about 1:30 am preparing these plans. The next morning they were ready to present their business plan for their future business.

We were amazed at how quickly the nine groups were able to make power point presentations with facts and figures and calculations and SWOT analyses.

These were long hours of work with no breaks except for a couple of stretches here and there.

Some of the people pictured on the front row judged the presentations. (No, we didn't as our Cantonese is nonexistent, but we were good time keepers.) The winning groups in each of the three categories received cups with the self-reliance logo on the front.  This was really a great conference and some of their ideas may actually become new businesses.

And then it was time to pack up and head home again.

As we arrived back from the conference to the Kowloon Tong church, there was a scouting open house going on, and so we took a few photos as we thought you might like to see some of what scouting looks like in Hong Kong.

These scouts had constructed this wood structure that day.

They were also constructing small wood projects.

Pretty nice scout leader uniforms, huh?

Even the little scouts were having fun.

Brother Au, our self-reliance manager, immediately dropped his bag in the church and then went to help with his church calling in scouting. It looks like they had fun constructing this zip-line, too.

To end our post, and since these photos appeared on Facebook, we thought Tim and Julia wouldn't mind if we include them in our post, too.  What a great way to spend their wedding anniversary in Washington D.C. and visiting the temple.  Families can be forever! Here's a link to a sweet little video you might enjoy Families can be together forever.  We hope you all have a great day!

Hong Kong Disneyland

Does anyone have any ideas about where this train is going?

Here's the train at the station.  Do these clues help?

You guessed it the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort!

Welcome to the "Happiest Place on Earth".  Hong Kong Disneyland is a small version of California Disneyland and has fewer rides but is still lots of fun. We went there with some of our fellow missionaries, Elder and Sister Jenson who, incidentally, were friends in our neighborhood when we lived in Sandy some forty years ago.

You might like to just scroll through the photos and see if any of it looks like Disneyland California.

Jungle Cruise

The nice thing about a bit of rainy weather was that there were no lines!

There's Mystic Mansion in the background.

Mystic mansion is Hong Kong's version of the Haunted house but not as good as California.

Grizzly gulch is the Hong Kong version of Big Thunder Mountain railroad- only better!

Of course, no Disneyland is complete without Small World which is about exactly the same as Disneyland California.

Space Mountain was great, too!

And, of course, no Disneyland is complete without Swiss Family tree house, now better known as Tarzan tree house. 

All of Disneyland is rather jungle-y looking which contains it and kept us from seeing out to the "jungle of Hong Kong". 

Here's a blurry photo of some strange people. When it started to rain a lot we took in Mickey's Philharmagic show which was in 3 D or was it 4 D?

The downpour of rain doesn't ever let up so it chased lots of us away and we left early.

The Disneyland train station really is beautiful!
We're wishing that "All your Dreams Come True"!