Happy Father's Day

We hope all you great Dads have a great and happy Father's Day!

Here's a great man who is a great husband, father, grandfather, English teacher, self-reliance missionary, etc., etc.

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How's this for a serene playground photo?  These is another photo from the park where we sometimes eat and relax before going to the temple on Tuesdays.

Here's a couple of great guys, too!  On the right, a great returned missionary and on the left, a great new missionary going to Tonga to serve!  We love and are proud of all of our wonderful grandchildren, too!  Someday, they will be wonderful husbands, fathers, wives and mothers just like their great parents.

We wanted to throw this photo in, too, of this Dad and his little girl.  We often walk behind them as he walks his daughter the half mile or so to the bus to go to school.  He always carries her backpack and talks to her along the way and he seems like a really kind and caring father.  This seems quite appropriate since it's almost Father's Day.  Actually, there are quite a few Dads that we see around who are so kind and caring with their children.

To end the post, we thought you might like to see the bus line that went on forever when we had to leave the office early because of the tropical storm warning.  We were able to be the last people on one of the buses and we were happy to get on even though we were packed in and standing all the way home.  It's that time of year and, who knows, next time it might be a typhoon.

Great hats for this kind of weather!

It seems right to end the post with photos of our great parents- shown together as they were always together and helping us together.

Anyway, Happy Father's Day to all you great fathers out there!
The link below shows a good father's day video, too:
(Good Fathers' Day video)
Here's one more:(One More great video)
Just one more: (ONE MORE!)

Another baptism and a busy week!

Probably the nicest thing that happened this week was the baptism of Sister Grace Ann Amaro.  She asked Elder Chandler to baptize and confirm her and he did a wonderful job.

Here she is with the Sister Missionaries who taught her the lessons.  On the left is Sister Molina and on the right is Sister Caluza.

Click on the link below to hear one of the songs at the baptism:

Group performing at the baptism

Here's a few members of the group that were present at the baptism.

You can click on the link below to hear some of the sister missionaries at the baptism:

Sister Missionaries singing

The very same day of the baptism, we were in charge of the dinner to feed all of the members of the branch. Notice the boxes of oranges in the background.  We also were getting ready for a big meeting with Elder Michael Ringwood and others from Salt Lake so there are lots of handouts and other things we are working on in our office, too.

We're getting quite good at throwing a meal together for 120 people, although it is quite a production and lots of work. We do most of the work on Friday or Saturday and then put the food in crock-pots to cook during the day for the meal.  Last Sunday we made Hawaiian Haystacks over rice served with oranges and homemade cookies, and the sisters loved the food!

When we are shopping and storing the food for the meal, our office looks more like a grocery store than an office!

On Tuesday we had the big meeting with Elder Ringwood and others who came in from Salt Lake to teach the priesthood and relief society leaders, and the self-reliance committee leaders here in Hong Kong.  Here's Brother Au, the Hong Kong self-reliance manager, setting up for the meeting.  Since there were English speakers and Cantonese speakers and English and Cantonese listeners, there was a lot of translation going on so that's why there was a need for lots of headphones.  There were about 175 in attendance which was a pretty good percentage of those who were invited.

So, after a pretty busy week, some of the senior missionaries went out to eat last night.

After the dinner, some of us went to the play, "My Fair Lady".

We took advantage of the props set up for photos.

It was a pretty clear night so we took a few photos.

Awhile back we got quite a good video of the light show at TST and thought you might enjoy seeing this, too:

TST light show

Light show from our apartment

If you're not sick of the light show, here's one last video.  We can watch this every night from our apartment window, but we're too far away to hear any music:
More of the light show


We're wishing you all a great week with lots of "light"!!!!

Self-reliance in Macau

We really liked this picture of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethsaida.  This was actually on the wall of the hospital and we would see it as we would walk into the hospital.  Appropriate for a hospital, wouldn't you say? We know that Jesus Christ is the great healer of us all; physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Sunday was a busy day as Elder Chandler had his bishopric meeting and other meetings in the morning in Hong Kong and then in the afternoon we took the turbojet boat to Macau which is about 62 kilometers (40 miles) from Hong Kong to present a little symposium and attend the graduation of a self-reliance class there.

There wasn't much chance for photos so we got just a few from the taxi.

Pretty good balancing act; there are lots and lots of motorcycles and scooters there.

There are lots of Portuguese signs there, too.

Elder Chandler always says this area is so much like where he served in South America on his mission when he was young.

Here we are arriving at the church with Brother Leon Au, our self-reliance manager.

Some of the first people we saw there were two sister missionaries, Sister Bacocol and Sister Baluyat who sometimes serve in Hong Kong, too. They can only serve two months at a time there in Macau so the missionaries are shifted in and out of there quite often.  Fortunately, they now have several other missionaries who are from England serving there, too, and they are allowed to stay six months at a time so it is much better now.

First, we attended sacrament meeting and these sweet little boys were so cute we had to get a photo.  Their dad conducted the meeting and their mom played the piano so they got to sit on the stand during the meeting.  They were really cute and really quite well-behaved.

Here's the "Upright Group" who were graduating from the Education for Better Work and My Job Search self-reliance class.

Here they are again; also pictured is their District president, President Hong, Brother Au, and us.

Here's Elder Chandler giving them some good thoughts and a great presentation.

Most of the members are Filipino so, of course, they prepared some great food for us to eat after the meeting, too!

We love photos and everyone takes as many as they can! The sweet sister sitting between us is Nedy Dasala who is Filipino and who is also pretty amazing, as she has encouraged and has had just about everyone in their branch attend and graduate from self-reliance classes these last couple of years.  She also cooked a lot of the food that was pictured above.

Also, this week we had a public holiday so Tuesday we served in the temple that morning for the holiday. The temple was so busy with so many patrons coming and it was wonderful that so many of the Filipino sisters got the day off and chose to come to the temple. Isn't this a gorgeous photo of the Hong Kong Temple?  It's truly heaven on earth!

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!