Christmas Season here in Hong Kong had plenty of commercialism on the streets but was full of the true Spirit of Christmas at church.........and it was lots of fun too!!
We decorated our apartment and put up our Christmas Tree.......
Every planter in Hong Kong was filled with vivid red poinsettias.
The lobby of the Church Headquarters where we work had a beautiful display of over 50 Creches from around the world.
At night the city was alight with Christmas scenes on almost every building.
President and Sister Gong were reassigned to Salt Lake City, so Sister Gong invited all the Senior Missionary Sisters to a farewell dinner in her home on the top floor of the Church Office Building.
This is the official photo from our Christmas Social with the Area Presidency
All of our branch members and missionaries practiced hard to make our Christmas programs go well. We got to have 6 Christmas sacrament meetings programs this year instead of one! This was our program which included the words to all the songs we used. We used the programs when we went caroling the next week. We began with a favorite Christmas song from the Philippines called "Christmas in Our Hearts". It really put all our Sisters in the right spirit.
This is our missionary choir. We had 10 young missionaries who had practiced for several weeks. Then, the week of the performance, 5 of them were transferred and we got 5 new ones who only had one practice to learn the songs. The Lord really helped us in our performances!
The week of Christmas, we went finding with our branch members and missionaries into Central Hong Kong. We sang carols and passed out Christmas pass-along cards.
Sister Smith took our picture one morning when we were just getting ready to go caroling!
These 3 women (without reindeer antlers) were so excited that we stopped to sing for therm!
Our Family Home Evening Group chose to sing and dance to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Note the great red nose David made! This was only a practice. Their real costumes were really cute, but since we were in it, we didn't get a good picture and everyone else only took videos.
I only had to play the keyboard for the songs.
David was very versatile.......He was a Wise Man one day......
. .......a little kid another day...........
............and Santa several days in a row!!
There was lots of great food.......................
............crazy skits......
..........and a million photo ops!
This is a picture of my very favorite moment of the whole Christmas season. On Christmas Day we joined another branch for a party. During the enactment of the nativity, Jospeh, who of course was performed by a woman since that is usually all we have here, began to cry as she tucked the baby Jesus into the manger. She cried through the rest of the story. I know she was feeling what a great responsibility Joseph must have felt on the night of the Savior's birth. We all felt the spirit of that Holy Birth.
We were blessed to have President Randy D. Funk and Sister Funk come and speak to us at our Sacrament Meeting on Christmas day. We felt honored they would take the time to be with us. They asked if they could have a photo with us afterwards.
This is Sister Nimfa Tagaro, one of my prize piano students and helper in the Family History Library. She left us to go work in the Bahamas with her cousin. I will really miss her!!
After Christmas we joined the mobs for Star Wars at the Imax!
We spent New Year's Eve at the Smith's apartment playing games and watching the incredible fireworks out in Victoria Harbour.
Here are some pictures we took one day in Central just as a comparison between our Sisters who come to church each week and those who are out on the streets "waiting for nothing" on their day off (as one of our Sisters said),
This was some kind of Santa suit competition we came across!
We love the difference that is so obvious in our beautiful, sweet Sisters who have light in their eyes!
We are truly blessed to be able to serve our mission with these wonderful people!
