November Flew By!

Our friends, Gary and LaRee Phillippi who were our office couple in Cambodia, came for a visit.  Another friend, Shelley Li, a Chinese woman who joined the church in Cambodia, came down from Shenzhen, China to go to Big Buddha with us.  A great reunion!

The cable car over the South China Sea is one of our favorite things to do.

This time we went in the glass floor cable car.  Here we are looking straight down on the mountain!

On the train to Disneyland!

Chueng Chau Island was on the agenda!  Here we are ready to take in the beautiful sunset!

The picture just doesn't do it justice!

Our Saturday Family Choir worked so hard to be ready to sing at District Conference!

Afterward we celebrated our success!!  (I say "our" since I played the piano for all the practices.)

 The music was awesome!  I was so proud of all of them!

Our wonderful choir director, Sister Rhegilyn, depended on the Lord to help her and the choir!

Sister Miraflor decided to go back to the Philippines after being terminated.

                                                        

It was a big day for Sister Jean!  She received her temple endowment.

Temple Day with Saturday Family.

Elder Towers giving fatherly advice to Sisters Lina, Jen, Czarina and Pearl who are leaving to get married.

Sister Jona Caluza opening her mission call to the China Hong Kong Mission!  We will get to work with her in our branch as a full time missionary now.  I had the privilege of helping her prepare her mission papers.

During Thanksgiving week we made almost 300 fleece blankets for the Area "Blanketing Hong Kong in Warmth" Service Project.

Tuesday Family promised they would put turkey on the table.  They followed through!!! :)

Thanksgiving dinner with Thursday family.  Roast Chicken!

Thanksgiving Dinner with the Senior couples

                                                        Unfortunately, David guessed the right number of candy corns!!!!!

The couples took a ride on the Aqua Luna to see the Christmas lights.

Hong Kong is awash in lights!

The decorations are up at the church.

David is getting in the spirit!

                                                                                       Couldn't resist kissing Santa Claus!

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Happiness is hugging family!

The very best thing about October was that we got to hug 7 members of our family!  

Tom, Kristin, Ryan, Eliza, Tyler, Olivia and Abby came for a visit!  

What fun we had!!

Tyler, Olivia and Abby arrived first so we celebrated their arrival at a French restaurant in Soho.

When the Monson's joined us we went to the Hong Kong Temple to do baptisms for the dead.

Here we are at the temple with 3 of our Filipina sisters.  Tom was able to baptize Maura in the black shirt for her grandmother and Ryan for her grandfather....a very spiritual experience for all of us.

                                       We took the cable car up to visit Big Buddah.

  Note that we are 12,968 km from NYC!

After climbing the 250 steps to the top, we caught a bus to a small fishing village.

This is Helen, a local Tai O village woman who advised us, "Don't eat the fish!"  She directed us to the place the locals eat....a small family-run Chinese place.  No English menu here, but whatever it was we ate was yummy.

We traveled via Star Ferry, 1st Ferry, subway, bus, taxi, cable car, trolley, shuttle, sampans, escalators and especially our FEET!  We nearly walked our legs off, but there were few complaints!

One of the few times we could see each other over the crowds on the subway!

               A "selfie" on our hotel shuttle bus.

Here we are going down the stairs after taking the longest escalator in the world up to mid-levels.
The escalator only goes up, so there are a million stairs going down.  (Better than the other way!)

Church was also part of our itinerary since we ARE missionaries! 

 Lucky Grandpa getting hugs from these darling granddaughters. 

 Liza and Livi sang a duet (practiced separately in SLC and Vienna, VA) which was a big hit with the Filipina sisters.  It was lovely.

The girls learned how to write Chinese calligraphy characters.

David and I took a class earlier in the month.

We thought of Howard one day at lunch at Tim's Kitchen

Shopping in Hong Kong is always fun!

We took a much needed break from the Big City and spent a couple of days at Chueng Chau Island.

We stayed at our favorite B&B.

Planning our day over breakfast

The harbor here is so interesting!  Always something to catch your eye.

Enjoying the sunset......

Chueng Chau is famous for the big white lotus seed paste buns stamped with a red Chinese character, so we bought some and gave them a try.

Beach day was loved by all!!!

Tom flagged down the owner of this Sampan and we took a ride.

The teenage son was asleep on the floor behind David's arm the whole trip.  

They must have been out fishing all night.

One morning these teenagers got up early to try some Tai Chi on the promanade in front of our house.

Livi planned our next adventure......a trip to Sham Shui Po for some snake soup for lunch!

Ryan had fun playing with his food. Tom and David enjoyed the fried cobra. Abby was not a fan!
The pieces of meat were a little "snakey" but the soup tasted like day-after-Thanksgiving turkey soup.

Liza and Livi ate their entire bowls of snake soup.....with the help of a little $40HK bribe from grandpa!  (They were a little low on spending money!)




Steamed pork buns were the favorite at our favorite Dim Sum restaurant!




We had one more day with the Monsons after Tyler's family left so we went on a boat trip with some Senior missionary couples.

Fishing for BIG fish....they looked like baby sharks...at a fish farm we stopped at was really fun!

We feasted on a big fish caught by Sister Powell.

Everybody had chopstick skills by the end of the trip!

You can tell by our smiles we LOVED having family with us!!!!

The rest of October was full of missionary work.  David was asked by 3 different sisters to perform their baptism.  He was honored to do so.

Sister Edylyn

Sister Veronica

Sister Jessa

We had a bridal shower for Sister Marian and made her a lovely wedding gown of toilet paper.

One of the traditions here is for the bride-to-be to get to dance with the "fathers" of the branch at the wedding shower.

October was a busy and really fun month!