Having a baptism for these two friends, Jessa and Lea, was a great way to start the year! I wish you could have heard their testimonies about how they tried to hide from the missionaries, but finally realized they needed to listen. They said how thankful they were that God didn't give up on them.
I'm including this picture of Wednesday family so you can meet Quentin and Angela Lee, the newest addition to our group. He is the tall (6'7") black man in the middle and she is in front of him. He plays the part of Scar in the Hong Kong Disneyland production of Lion King and she teaches acting and dance. It has been awesome having them join us with their great singing voices and fun laughter.
Sister Noravee, standing next to me holding a paper, is the one who made the pretty red heart pillows for me and Sister Smith. Mine is already in my office so it's not in the picture.
They were embroidered with "HAPPY THURSDAY FAMILY LOVES YOU!".
These girls are all named Joy. The middle one is in Wednesday Family. Her name is perfect for her! She has the most beautiful smile! The one on the left is going to baptized in March and the other one is in Saturday Family. You just can't have too much JOY!
Elders Mangrobang and Ferrar taught us how to speak some Cantonese. Since the Sisters work for Chinese families they wanted to know things like how to ask their "little bosses" (the children of the big bosses), "What's your problem?" and "How much does this cost?" for when they have to go shopping. You can see from the reaction of Sister Susan that they were having fun!
We love to celebrate birthdays! The Family members make it a big deal for all their friends. It is a really special time and a great way to help each Sister feel important! This is Sister Leah and this picture was on her Facebook post. David found the hat someone gave him on his birthday and bestowed it on Leah. She loved it! She wore it while she taught the Relief Society lesson.
Here we are on Skype joining the family in singing Happy Birthday to Eliza! I just LOVE Skype!......AND visiting with our family almost every week!
We celebrated another wedding of a girl who investigated the church because she had met a man online who is a member. She was baptized recently and moved into our branch just in time to have President Smith perform their marriage. He came to Hong Kong from Australia for the wedding and her parents and son came over from the Philippines. We are always so nervous about these online romances and marriages between cultures! There is such a huge learning curve. We wish them the best and hope they both adjust. David told this guy he hopes he likes rice! He said he'd rather have "Barby"......meaning BBQ.
I bet you have never heard of a Service Project like this one. We participated in a District "SOS.....Service on the Sabbath" and did soap cycling. An NGO here collects used soap bars from all the hotels, scrapes off all the grunge and brand names and then gives the soap to orphanages or homeless people. We did it in the parking garage of our building so the lights were weird. All the helpers got to take home as much soap as they could carry.
After a warmer than normal December we had the coldest recorded January in 60 years in Hong Kong! It even snowed in the mountains. David bought a down jacket and we wrapped up in scarves, hats and gloves. Since there is no central heat in our apartment or the church, it was pretty nippy! We have been making good use of our little space heaters. We moved Sacrament Meeting into the Relief Society room so we could at least heat it up a little. There was no hope of heating in the chapel. This picture was in the newspaper, but must have been taken up near the Chinese border.
Months ago we planned a little weekend get-away to Macau. We decided to go in January when it wasn't so hot. Well....it wasn't hot!! It was FREEZING cold! It was so cold that we didn't even leave the hotel except to go across the street to the "Dancing Water Show". We didn't do any sightseeing, but that turned out OK because the #1 thing to see in Macau is the Venetian Hotel and that is where we were staying! It is huge! Even after 2 days we didn't see everything there! Unfortunately, they don't have central heating either, so we kept our coats on even inside the building.
We got a "special invitation" to have a free souvenir photo taken at the Water Show. When we picked it up afterwards, this is what we got!!
Everything is decorated up for Chinese New Year next month. It is the year of the Monkey!
We have some pretty fancy cars in our apartment parking lot. this red Maserati looks good to me!
Can you tell it was a windy day?
In light of the fact that we have three wonderful grandchildren and their parents coming for a visit soon, I decided to order a cheese sandwich at Tim's Kitchen to see what it was like. I wanted to be able to tell the kids about it in case it sounded good to them. Well......it was just what it said..... a cheese sandwich..... two pieces of white bread, no crusts, with a piece of processed cheese in the middle! That's it! Maybe it will appeal to someone....who knows?
David says the picture just doesn't do it justice!
That's all folks!
