Derrick.....and BIG Buddha!

We have a 17 year old young man named Derrick who comes to church most days.  He is an orphan who has been on his own since his parents died when he was 11.  How he managed alone in Hong Kong is amazing. The missionaries found him and he joined the church 4 months ago. He is thrilled to have a family.  All the sisters treat him like a son or a brother and he can’t stop smiling.  He goes to school and had a job until a few days ago.  His dream is to become a missionary next year when he turns 18.  Every other week we have Filipina food fixed by the sisters and he never misses a meal.  The rest of the time somebody is always fixing food for whoever stays around after church.  We usually go home about 7 or 8, but they stay until their curfew, whenever that is!  A woman today said she was so upset this week because she had been sick and was so afraid she wouldn’t be able to come to church…..”to come home and be with my family”, as she put it.

Here is a picture of Derrick next to David and some of our "Happy Thursday Family".  They are some of the most thoughtful and kind-hearted women I have ever met!

 

 It has been another Chinese holiday the past few days and since many women are given extra days off, we have had many more people come to church.  Any day they have off, they are here.  Thursday I met a woman who’s day off is Sunday, so she isn’t in our branch.  I told her I was happy to meet her and she said I would meet her again because she would be able to be there Friday and Saturday as well!  We also had an American woman who lives in mainland China and has church via Skype,come here because her son had to come to HK for surgery.  She came to church 3 days in a row and was so excited to be able to take the sacrament.  There is so much we took for granted before we came here.  How much we have learned already about what is really important!

 Hong Kong is a place filled with an amazing array of things to see and do.  Friday we had tickets to hear the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra play Handel's Fireworks and the Water Music Suite among other pieces.  It was a lovely night out!

Today we visited the world's tallest, outdoor, seated bronze Buddha and Po Lin Monastery.  To get there, we took about a 30 minute cable car up the mountain and could see the South China Sea as well as most of Lantau Island. 

 

The Buddha is so big that it's face alone weighs 5 tons.  Can you see him up there behind us on the top of the mountain?  The Sun-brella has UV protection.... It was a beautiful, cool, but sunny day.



 

 

Wherever you go in China, you climb a million stairs to get there!!!

 

 

This time there were only 268 steps but I climbed EVERY ONE of them!

 

 

Up on top, there were many other interesting statues to see.

 

 

As well as many warriors

 

 The Chinese architecture is so amazing.....

 

and ornate.

 

We ended the day with a new treat.....Mango Volcano!

 

 

 

FUN PEOPLE AND PLACES IN HONG KONG

Here in Hong Kong we have eight young sister missionaries and two elders who work with our branch as well as the other Philippine branches that meet on Sunday.  They are all from the Philippines and are really wonderful.  The only problem is that 5 of the sisters and one of the elders go home in two weeks and there is only one sister coming anytime soon. 

 

This is Elder Dugalog and Elder Aranis.  They take care of the sacrament every day.  Sometimes there are other men there to help, but these two are the stalwarts.  I love these two Elders.

 

 

 

The sister missionaries are assigned a certain day to help our Families so we have a different pair every day.  They are so cheerful and happy to be around!  We are sad so many are leaving us!

 

 

From David:



"We nearly always have new investigators (we call them visitors) at church every day.  Today we had three.  Many that attend our branch were baptized here.  It is interesting that many of our sister members have been in HK for many years (some 25+).  Some have worked as maids in the Middle East.  One just left for Toronto, Canada.  One absolutely amazing woman is leaving in two weeks for the Philippines for good I hope.  She has 4 children there.  We will greatly miss her.  Many are separated from husbands who are unfaithful to them.  Divorce is not allowed in the Philippines so they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  And so it goes.  But this is a fruitful place for missionary work. 

 

We were at the temple last week and the Shift Coordinator there, a Brother Lam, saw my name tag and wondered if I knew an Elder Towers who taught him the Gospel in 1962.  I was happy to say that I am his brother!  a sweet experience for me.  I wish Gary was alive to see the progress that has been made here since he was a missionary."

 
Another Relief Society Birthday Party!  Every family has done such an amazing job of preparing and carrying out the celebration!  This Happy Thursday Family even made little corsages for all of us!
The girl right behind David is the one going home to her four children.  She planned the whole evening.

 All these women were so excited to get awards!  They all did the voting so it was fun.

 

Our Saturday Family has about 100 sisters so we are divided up into 4 Family Home Evening groups for our FHE Activities the 4th week.  Our group is the Heleman Group.  Here is a picture of a few of us.

This is a sister who is 32 years old and has four children in the Philippines.  She is so excited about accomplishing goals in Young Women's Personal Progress.  One of her goals has been to learn to play the guitar.  Today she played and sang I Need Thee Every Hour for me so I could sign it off.  As I listened to her heartfelt song, it brought tears to my eyes.

This is Alyana, our one and only Primary member.  Her parents both work here in Hong Kong.  Nancy is not her mom.  She just wanted to be in the picture!

 

This is Labor Day weekend which is when The Chinese honor their ancestors.....it's like our Memorial Day....and it's called Ching Ming.  We went to a temple nearby that houses 3 religions in one....Taos, Confucius and Buddhist.  It was decorated so beautifully.  Many people were there burning incense and worshipping.  

 

 

 

 

After that we visited a really pretty garden right in the middle of the city.  It was filled with unusual bonsai trees, amazing rocks, and Chinese buildings.  We decided to eat lunch at the garden in a beautiful restaurant under a waterfall.    The food was all vegetarian grown by the Nuns in the Nunnery next to the gardens.  We had all kinds of fungus.  I wish I could remember all the mushroom names.  We had mushroom and lychee soup, mushrooms and tofu something, termite mushrooms with fresh baby asparagus and red peppers (so beautiful), deep fried pumpkin wedges with the shell still on,(delicious!) bean curd with bok choy, bean sprout and baby mushroom egg rolls, and to drink…..Fresh Winter Spring… a mix of fresh pineapple, star fruit and guava juice.  Dessert was fresh cantaloupe and slices of a fruit we don't know the name of.

 

This is Elder and Sister Pack who are the office couple for the Hong Kong Mission.  They help us administer our Saturday Group.

 

A BIT OF CULTURE AND A HAPPY SURPRISE

One of the exciting things about living in Hong Kong is that there are so many concerts, plays and cultural events.  The London Gate Theater brought a British troupe over to perform Pride and Prejudice.  We LOVED it!  We also went to Smashed ......a very unusual production by a synchronized juggling team.  Very different!

A most unexpected and happy surprise this week was that two of our beloved Cambodian friends, Heng Sokhom and Sea Samnang came to Hong Kong for some training.  We found out they were here just hours before they left and were able to visit with them.  Elder Heng was one of David's assistants.



This was temple week for our families.  Every day we started church at noon, ended at 2:40 PM and then rushed to catch the bus to the temple with whoever could take the time to go.  The bus takes us within a block of the temple.  When we are late and miss the bus, we have to take the MTR and walk several blocks to get there, so we really try to catch the bus.

This is some of our Thursday family leaving for the temple.

Jennifer was determined not to let me get lost since I had never been that way before!

Everyone takes lots of pictures wherever they are....such as waiting for the MTR......

 ......or riding on the MTR

Friday family celebrated the Relief Society Birthday with a little hula dancing in handmade grass skirts and leis....

Of course we had to join the fun.  Our sisters loved David doing the hula.

 

BUSY AND HAPPY

We have had a BUSY week……for example, on Thursday we caught a 7:30 taxi to go to the temple for a session with the area Presidency followed by a testimony meeting at the temple.  Then we walked to the MTR, caught the train, transferred to the bus and arrived at the WanChai building for lunch with the office couples.  We had to hurry through lunch because RS starts at 1.  Then SS, followed by church where we were the speakers.  At 4:30 we began our RS activity night which was learning to make folded paper flowers and butterflies for the upcoming District Art Festival.  This was followed by dinner prepared by the “Happy Thursday Family” sisters.  At 7 we had the opening fireside of the Asia Women’s conference.  Elder and Sister Gong were the speakers and talked about their trip last week to Cambodia!  I loved hearing about it.  David and Elder Smith went home because they weren’t involved in the Conference.  By the time Sister Smith and I caught the bus and then walked home from the bus station, it was almost 10pm.  A long, interesting day.

This is Thursday Family learning how to make folded paper flowers and butterflies for the District Art Show that is coming up.  Notice the paper swan made by one of the women to display.

 

Here is an example of another day...... We left home at 7:15 to get to the office by 8.  I had to teach RS because one of our teachers couldn’t get off, so I had to type and print the points I wanted to use in my lesson.  I couldn’t do it at home because I realized I didn’t have a marker or paper!!!  It is amazing the things you take for granted!  Anyway, I got my preparations done, then attended two 1 hour sessions of Women's conference.

While Myrna was at the Asia Area Women's conference (there were hundreds of women from all over Asia in attendance, mostly expats including John Lear's sister who lives here in Hong Kong (Rosecrest Ward folks know John) and a woman from Hanoi that we knew from our mission to Cambodia) I went out finding with the branch and full time missionaries.  I got to go with Sister Amai and Sister Renci.  It was Sister Renci's first time and she was a little timid but Sister Amai was amazing.  She is the perfect missionary.  She talks to everyone.  The first park we went to we didn't have much success so we jumped on the Ding Ding (the little rail tram here in Hong Kong) and went to the park with the "black man" statue.  That is how the Philippinas refer to that park.  There we had a fun time and met a young woman that not only agreed to come to church that day but actually showed up that afternoon.  The missionaries taught her that evening and we hope for great progress.  What joy that was for me.  Sister Amai is fun to be with and we hope to get her on a full time mission soon. 

We had Branch Presidency meeting at 11:45.  We were late getting out, so I gulped down a PB&J sandwich from home about 10 minutes to one and ran upstairs to teach RS.  When I got there, someone else was using my room I had set up, so I had to move all my pictures and signs to another room.  Anyway, I taught my lesson and it went OK.  I relaxed during SS while someone else taught, and then we had to speak in church again.  After church we had the celebration of the RS birthday…..a pretty amazing presentation done completely by the sisters.  I only had to speak for about 5 minutes at this one.  We had a Philippine dinner again afterward and headed home on the ferry. 

These are the sisters who were in charge of the RS Birthday celebration.  Those letters were drawn by hand and cut out separately.  No such thing as a stencil in these women's life! 

 

 

 

 During the second week of every month we have a Relief Society activity.  Last Tuesday we learned how to frost fancy cupcakes.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday family wanted to learn how to make spring rolls.  Here we are, just getting ready to begin.  I wish I had a picture of the yummy finished product!



Late nights are not so bad when you get views like this on the ferry going home!

WELCOME TO HONG KONG!

 

 

 

We've been in Hong Kong almost a week now and are getting over jet lag pretty well. 

Every one here has been so kind to us!  Our apartment was loaded with food and there have been couples assigned to take us to dinner for the last 3 nights. 

Our apartment is nice but I won't take pictures of it until we find a place to put everything.  Here is the view from our window.  We are on the 15th floor of a very nice apartment building.  All the senior couples live here.

Note the stone dragon on the roundabout and the misty mountain between the buildings.

Our friends show us how to get to work and home again.  We have taken the bus most of the time but today we took the Star Ferry both ways and loved it.  I think that is the way we will like the best.  After dark the harbor is so beautiful.  It has been rainy and cloudy/foggy all week, but not too cold.  

View of the Hong Kong Harbour



This is the Wan Chai Church Office building and Chapels where we work each day.

We work with a great couple, Scott and Karen Smith.  He is the Branch President and David is his counselor and also the membership clerk.  On Saturday, when we have over 100 women attending, we have 2 other couples who help us.....Elder and Sister Pack and Elder and Sister Johnson.  We call each group a "family".  It's really the only family these women (and a few men) have here in Hong Kong.  Most have left husbands and children behind in the Philippines and Indonesia and work here to support them back home. 

Elder and Sister Smith and David waiting for the shuttle in front of our hotel

David wrote the following:  (I'm sorry it's blue.  I'm not a good enough blogger to know how to change it!!!)

We are assigned to the Victoria 2^nd branch.  This is the every day branch which means that we hold the 3 hour block Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday and Saturday.  One other couple serves with us or rather we serve with them.  The first four days the “family” of Philipina women are small...30 or so... but on Saturday it is about 100+.  These women are all domestic workers here in HK and are pretty much in slavery.  They are wonderful women and I think our assignment is pretty much an amazing one.  Today (Sunday) and Monday are our days off so today we went grocery shopping.  Weird except that we have already had five Sabbath days previous in this past week.  That is it in a nutshell.  Only this church would do something like this. 

 

 This is part of our "Thursday Family".  The other couple had come to take us out.



This is some of our Thursday family.  The other couple are friends who have come to take us out for the evening.



 

One night we went to Lantern Festival which was held outside.  It was raining, but we enjoyed being there

 

 

One of the best things about being on a mission is that we have the technology to Skype with our family.  Here we are.....talking together.... It is wonderful!!

 

David had a neat experience so he wrote about it to thank our MTC teachers: 
(Once again, I don't know why it's not written in white like everything else!)

Dear MTC instructors,

Last Wednesday, our first day here in Hong Kong, I had the opportunity to be in a first contact discussion with two Elders and a young mother from Beijing.  She is so golden and I am confident she will soon be baptized but the neat thing was that I personally committed her to be baptized at the end of the meeting and she accepted.  She then gave a truly beautiful prayer and I am sure she had never prayed before.  She is moving to Hong Kong and is excited to now be able to invite spirituality in to her life.  I will let you know when I know the final results with this young woman.  I guess you taught me well. 

Sincerely, Elder David Towers

 

OUR MISSION BEGINS........

 

 

Sunday, February 22, 2016 we were set apart to be full time missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!  What an honor!  All of our Salt Lake Family was in attendance.  President Paul Rytting presided and Ben and Tom assisted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Then we enjoyed our last Sunday Dinner at Monson's before leaving for the MTC on Monday.

 

We arrived bright and early......

 

First letter from the MTC.....

Hi family.  The first thing that happened this morning is that we were greeted by a man who said our assignment had been changed and they needed an F100 pilot to go on a special assignment…….  He turned out to be one of our old friends that we knew in Louisiana!  We had fun reminiscing.  Then we ran into them and their friends at the mall tonight and had ice cream.  The friends are neighbors of the couple we are replacing in HK who live on Towers drive in Salem and the 3^rd couple golfs with Roy Miller and he also bought the 10 acres of land from us that we used to own in Salem.  Talk about a small world!! 

The MTC is going well.  We love you!  Mom and Dad

These are our friends from Louisiana, Grant and Mary Jane Palfreyman.  They are the directors of the MTC.

 

  Day two.... A letter from David

Dear Fam....

It has been a wonderful day here.  I am so amazed at how many young Sister Missionaries there are here.  Tonight we had a devotional for all meissionaries with Elder Causee, First counselor in the Presiding Bishopric and his wife as the speakers.  It was terrific. Tonight also we were able to connect with the missionaries who are here learning Cambodian and it was super to feel of their spirit and excitement.  There are five sisters and nine elders leaving here in about one month.  I wish I would have had Weston’s bug pictures to show them.  We also have met several times with Elder and Sister Christensen who are the parents-in-laws of one of our elders, Elder Garner, that we have not heard bout or from since we came home.  He now lives in Kentucky in graduate school.  The world is so small in the Church.  We look forward to being back home this weekend before leaving for Hong Kong.

Love DAD (and M0M)

  

This is the group going to Cambodia!  Lucky kids!!

 

 

We were part of a big group of couples going all over the world.  It was so fun fun to meet everyone!

 

 

 

We were divided into Districts for our daily study.  Our District friends are Elder and Sister Fensky from Alberta Canada going to Toronto,  Elder and Sister Buchanan serving in their stake in West Jordan and Elder and Sister Towers from Utah, going to Hong Kong, China.

 

Wednesday evening we enjoyed going out to dinner with our good friends, Norb and Emma Kemp and Gary and Laree Phillippi, all of whom served with us in Cambodia.  We appreciated them all driving down to the MTC to "bust us out"!  We were having so much fun we forgot to take a picture!

 

 

We were so lucky to have great young returned missionaries as our teachers every day.

Sister Yazzi and Brother Smith did a great job in the mornings.

 

 

 

In the afternoons we had a great time with Brother Teuscher and Brother Swallow!

 

Jordan and Zach invited us to have dinner at their house the last night we were in Provo.  Some of our friends from Cambodia and Vietnam, Shane and Han Harrison, live in their ward so we all went to visit them first.

 

 

Zach made delicious Gnocci and Jordan fixed all the rest!  What a feast!

 

The last day we were surprised and excited to have Elder and Sister Haight who had been our missionaries in Cambodia, come to class to teach us about how to be great senior missionaries.  It was such a treat for us to see them.

 

 

We can't leave the MTC without the traditional map photo, so here it is!  

 

In two days we will be off to Hong Kong on another adventure!