Picnic on "top of the world"

This last week our Branch said goodbye to our former Branch President, Rick Page who is moving back to the U.S. with his family and hello to our new Branch President, President Smith. How is that for a great bulletin board?  The Filipino sisters made it up in just a couple of hours before church. They are really creative and amazing.

We also took a group photo of some of us who were there at church on Sunday

On the 4th of July even though we had to work at the office we still found ways to celebrate.  Do you like our red, white, and blue?

That evening our Area President, Elder Funk, and his wife invited the senior missionaries who work at the church office building to a 4th of July picnic on top of the office building to celebrate.

Here's a cool reflection of our building off another building.

The patio is just below the steeple on the back side of the building. It is just off the Funk's apartment.

Of course, we all had to take photos.

The reflection at night was pretty, too. 

The rest of the photos are a bit of this and that. Here's a photo taken from our office on the twelfth floor of the top part of the new hotel building that was started a few months ago which is directly across from our office building.  It is kind of scary to watch some of the workers putting up the bamboo scaffolding so high in the sky, too.

We're always taking photos of Hong Kong as it is always amazing. Actually, the boat in the background is a gambling boat that goes out of Hong Kong harbor every night and when it is thirty miles out, the people can gamble.  The boat is out all night and comes back into the harbor the next morning.  That doesn't sound like a fun thing to do to us.

This Banyan tree is behind the temple and worth a photo, we think. (No, it's not our car, we've forgotten what it's like to have a car!)

The young lady next to Sister Chandler is Allie, a student in our English class.  She is getting ready to serve a mission to Temple Square in Salt Lake and so she went through the temple on Tuesday. Her parents are on the left and her older sister on the right is a returned missionary from Australia. Ellie has already taken the ACT and did well and is working on getting ready to take the IELTs test for her English proficiency as she wants to be pre-approved to go to BYU Provo when she returns home from her mission. It was wonderful to be in the temple with her and her family and many members of her ward.  Elder Chandler was able to officiate the temple session, so that was pretty special for him and for them, too.         We hope you have a great day!    

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!