Week 17 - Hot Pot, Balut, Jif Jafs, Fish Balls, Doritios and Nature Valley Granola Bars; Whitewashing; Sunny Bay Service Project; Thanksgiving Ward Party

Hello again!

It's been another week in Hong Kong. For P day last week, my companion and I and the AP's went to an all you can eat hot pot meal which was super tasty. I'm having to pick back up my chopstick skills. Then we went to one of the most famous malls in Hong Kong called the Dragon Centre. Nothing too special. Malls aren't really my thing.

Tuesday, we got back to the grindstone. We are whitewashing this area, so our weekly planning was pretty short and consisted mostly of looking through hundreds of old paper records to find potentials to call. We did get to go to a hospital to teach one of Elder Finklea's recent converts. Then we've been doing a lot of finding out on the streets. Apparently street contacting has been really hard ever since the protests got bad. People either don't want to talk, or if they do, they are afraid to give us contact information or plan to meet again because "the situation is so dangerous, it could go south at any time." I think they are exaggerating things a bit, but it's crazy how much everyone is being affected here. Nonetheless, it's still fun to just be walking around Hong Kong talking with everyone. 

Wednesday, after another finding session, we had District Council. It was decent, but at the end, an Elder brought Balut for everyone to try. If you don't know, Balut is a boiled egg but inside it is a developing chicken fetus. If you every dissected a frog in biology, then you have a pretty good idea what Balut looks and smells like. Seriously, when you crack it, it just falls apart into egg yolk with baby chicken pieces embedded in. It didn't taste too bad, but I couldn't bring myself to eat much of it. Unfortunately, I don't know where the pictures went, another district member took them and I don't know where they are.

Thursday, we did a service project out in Sunny Bay for an organization called Crossroads. Sunny Bay is this pretty undeveloped part on the way to Disneyland Hong Kong . It was cool, I got to see the ocean. We did a lot of clearing of branches from around shipping containers and cutting vines and things. It was hard work, but they gave us lunch and a bunch of these packages of things called Jif Jafs. They're double chocolate oreo type things, but they are so so tasty. 

Friday was just more finding and studying. We taught a lesson to a former in the church building which was cool. We invited him to come to church with us and start meeting with missionaries again and he agreed. So now our teaching pool is up to one person.

Saturday was more of the same except in the evening, the two wards in our meetinghous held a Thanksgiving party. It was a ton of fun and all the food was super tasty. They love the missionaries around here so they handed us gift bags full of American foods like Dorito's and Nature Valley granola bars. It was super nice. I was especially grateful for the chance to practice Cantonese. All the ward members are super patient when I have to ask them to explain something or say something again. I also learned that night that I'm serving in one of my MTC teacher's home wards and got to meet some of her friends. It was just a really cool night. It felt like any other ward party at home but with a lot more fish balls.

Sunday we had hours of meetings and church so we only had time for one hour of finding and then all of our studies, meal times, and Elder Finklea's Zone Leader duties. But once again, members just kept handing us bags of food and candy to take home. It's so nice, I've gotten really good at learning how to be extra grateful in Cantonese. 

So that's been my week. Not too crazy. No protests outside our window yet but some other elders told us how they looked out their window the other night to see a flaming bus in the street. Jealous. Really though, the area I'm in is far from the heart of the craziness so that is a blessing. We don't have to spend time indoors. Today I'm hoping to go get my film developed and then see an all wooden monastery. Should be fun.

-Elder Murray

Week 16 - First Week in Hong Kong, Dim Sum, War Zone, Tiny House Apartment, Cheap Food, Cantonese Testimony

Sorry in advance if I never got to respond to your emails last week, it was a little crazy. 

Anyways, Hong Kong is pretty fetching dope. We got in on Wednesday night (or maybe Tuesday night, hard to tell) and rode a big bus from the airport to a hotel. On the way, we had to pull over for a full fleet of cop cars to whizz past us. We were all looking through the windows as we passed through the city, we saw for a split second down one street a bunch of protestors and tear gas a few blocks away so that was pretty lit. Fortunately, that's the closest we got to any violence. The hotel was nice and had a very nice western breakfast in the morning. The next day, we walked all the way to the mission office by the temple for some new missionary training. We had to take a train to the government offices to apply for our ID cards, which was super long and boring, and then we came back to walk to a dim sum place for lunch with President Philips. Before we walked, we were all told not to take any pictures or anything because we were about to walk through a battle zone. Right on the street where the temple is, there is just so much vandalism and graffiti, it really did look almost like a war zone. The bricks in the sidewalk were all pulled out and lying in the street, street signs and guard rails were pulled out to make barriers, there were spots where things had been burned, glass shards and trash were everywhere. It was crazy. This continued on for multiple blocks getting progressively worse. Apparently this had all taken place just a few days earlier right as we got the green light to go.  Honestly though, you really have to be here to understand that even though these things can happen really anywhere and can be really bad, we are in our house waaaaay before it happens and missionaries are far from being targeted by anyone. So I'm not worried at all. It does make it hard for street contacting because everyone seems kind of on edge. 

Anyways, the dim sum with president was good, I had chicken feet again which were not my favorite, but they had cinnamon covered BBQ pork buns which were to die for. Then we walked back and did interviews for the rest of the night. We also got the chance to head out with some missionaries to do some street contacting. It was a blast, I can definitely understand and speak Cantonese better than Mandarin so that's a plus of being here. President Philips is a sweet guy, super chill and super concerned about the missionaries' wellbeing. 

The next day, we left the hotel with all our luggage, took a train to the office, and met our trainers. My trainer is Elder Finklea from St. George. He's a total stud, he has been out about 10 transfers, three of which he was trained in the area where he is now training me. He's a zone leader and worked in the office for a few transfers so he's pretty familiar with the whole of Hong Kong and how to do the work. It's awesome. Our apartment is tiny which I can deal with (it's like living in a tiny house or something) but it's filthy. Elder Mumford is in the apartment too and he's freaking out.  There's trash everywhere, nothing has been cleaned in weeks.

The night we got in to our apartment, Elder Finklea and I cleaned out the office we are going to use to just have one clean space. Today, we are going to hit it hard. 

Other than that, Hong Kong is amazing. I'm in Kwai Fung which is kind of on the outskirts of the larger city but it is still packed in tight everywhere you look. It's crazy packed, our apartment is literally attached to the MTR station and separates it from the police station. Apparently it can get exciting down there sometimes late at night. Everything is so conveniently close and food is really cheap. I bought some groceries and got a sack of potatoes, a crate of 24 eggs, some dumplings, broccoli, and some other stuff for 46 Hong Kong dollars. That's like 6 US dollars! It's crazy. 

Church was super cool, I bore my testimony in Cantonese and I didn't see too many confused faces when I spoke so I'll take that as a win. The building has the universal carpeted walls that all church buildings have. The members are super nice, on Saturday night, we met one who was cleaning the church and he was just like "hey, come eat with me." He got us some really good curry. 

So I'm doing pretty good here in Hong Kong. It's still a bit of an adjustment, everything is so different, but it's really similar to Taiwan. It's really busy, really packed, but I'm just letting that all just float past me. It's hard work, but it's a cool place to be working hard.

-Elder Murray

(He didn't give descriptions with pictures but the first looks like the last with his companion in Canada and the last looks like dim sum in Hong Kong) 

Hong Kong Arrival

President Phillips sent email that they had arrived

Week 15 - Good news - on my way to Hong Kong!

Well I've got some good news. I'm on the way to Hong Kong right now. We got a call yesterday at 8:00 AM saying that we got the greenlight to leave and we would leave at 4:00 AM the next morning. So yeah. Pretty wild. I spent most of the day packing and prepping. We had to drive down to the Richmond office for dinner with President and Sister Wahlen and then slept at the AP's house. It doesn't seem real. It was weird to say goodbye to Elder Sun and Elder Tan. We're all pretty stoked because we were all fully prepared to stay for a long long time in Canada. It's also pretty sketch because we have heard a little bit of what's going on right now on the news. But we'll be fine, the areas where all the crap is going down are closed. The funny part is that the older group of Hong Kong missionaries are still stuck for another transfer due to Visa problems. Anyways, not much else happened this week, lots of lessons and finding through Tai Chi and ping pong. It's hard to leave Willoughby right now because I feel like I'm finally just getting comfortable in the area, finally able to talk somewhat with our people we are teaching. Seriously, they just barely started to acknowledge my existence, but I guess it's time to go. Wish me luck! I may have time to write a more fleshed out letter later.

-Elder Murray

Week 14 - Baptism, Canadian Toque, Halloween, Cello Playing Again, Chinese Flashcard on phone

Happy Halloween! This week has been pretty good. I'm still plucking away here in the great white north. I got a real canadian Toque (beanie) this week so that's pretty flippin sweet. 

The big exciting thing that happened this week was that our friend was baptized on Saturday. It was pretty great to see. He is the first in his family so far. We had his friend from the priest quorum baptize him. The only problem was that our friend is like 7 feet tall and the priest is like 5'2". So he had to be dunked three times, the last one on his knees. It was really cool to see how he changed afterwards though. After the confirmation yesterday, he and his family came to practice fencing in the gym. Both Elder Sun and I noticed that he seemed more confident, stood a little straighter, and just seemed more sure in who he was and what he was doing. He's in high school so that is super important to have. Hopefully is family will notice too and follow his example.

Other than that it was a pretty normal week. Lots of time was spent on my part trying to follow conversations in Mandarin and trying to chime in every once in a while, but that's rare still. It's tough, I don't have nearly as much time as I would like to study, but I'm still getting better. Thank goodness for phones so that I can have chinese flashcards on me at all times. 

On Halloween, we had to be in at 6:00, but as we were driving home, there was a huge house fire right next to the temple. It was crazy, there were a ton of fire trucks, the flames were super tall. Luckily they got it under control, but the house butts up right next to the edge of the temple property, it was pretty exciting. The house was abandoned so nobody got hurt. The mission office thought that since we had all this extra time on Halloween, it would be a great chance to deep clean our apartments. Gee... Luckily I still found time to put up some halloween decorations and carve pumpkins with Elder Sloan. It was a blast and our apartment is now sparkly clean.

Yesterday evening, Elder Tan (Elder Sloan's companion) and I went to a rehearsal for our Stake's performance of the Messiah for Christmas. Our ward mission leader was super kind and rented us instruments to play for this and service opportunities at senior care facilities. So I got to play cello for a while last night and meet some new people. There's a few members of another faith that came too so we got to chat with them for a bit. President Wahlen is keen on the idea of having us use this opportunity to reach out to people through music. In any event, it's just nice to be able to cello again. 

But yeah. That's it for this week. Life goes on. I've got that 1/8th of the way checkpoint under my belt now so that's nice. Hope things are doing pretty good on the homefront. See you later!

-Elder Murray

Week 13 - Christmas Materials and New Handbook, Mandarin and Finding Fun, Skyped Cantonese, Stay Positive and Happy

This week was a pretty darn good week if I do say so myself. We had zone conference on Tuesday where President Wahlen came and showed us all the Christmas videos and materials we'll have to use. It was super cool, no spoilers, but the church made a historically accurate nativity video and it's awesome. Part of the stuff from the missionary department for Christmas is a giant chalkboard set up thing for a big city square or something. The idea is that there are prompts or questions all around the chalkboard and we as missionaries go around talking to people about them and the church but in normal clothes, no tags, and going by our first names. Everyone is pretty stoked about that one. Also we got a little more information about the new missionary handbook coming out soon. There's been a lot of crazy and fun rumors and theories about what exactly will change with it. I personally hope there's a specific clause in there that allows missionaries to go see Star Wars episode 9, but that's just a guess. The real big change though is that it's going to be a lot more reliant on our agency to make righteous choices and be responsible. One of the big things President wanted to teach us is that we should look at everything we do with the perspective of how it will fulfill our missionary purpose, not just if it falls in line with a rule or guideline.

The work this week continues to be work. My Mandarin is getting better slowly, but I'm still practically deaf and mute in all of our lessons. It's good though, I do what I can. Our zone has been doing this "Amazing Race" type challenge thing where you have to do a bunch of objectives while out finding. One of them is to use analogy of the gospel with a rubber duck, or compliment 10 people on their shoes, or use the word llama. It's been pretty fun, making the work seem less like work. One of the brighter spots is that one of our friends this week passed his baptismal interview and is planning on getting baptized next week! This whole time we've been kind of wondering how well he's accepting what we are teaching because he's a 17 year old, but there have been little signs along the way. Like, he started to come to church in a suit, he started to pray on his own, he started to go to youth activities. Then, when we got to brass tacks about the interview questions, like being asked if he believes in God and the Restoration and stuff, he was like "Yeah, of course I believe it." So that was pretty cool to happen this week. We're still working with his family. 

Elder Sloan and I also had our first Cantonese tutoring over skype. The teacher told us that he and two other people had been hired by the MTC to specifically teach all the Hong Kong missionaries their languages so that they can be ready when things ease back up. Apparently this came directly from the Quorum of the Twelve I guess. No pressure or anything. I was planning on just focusing most of my time on Mandarin, but I guess I've got to focus on both. No problem at all...

Other than that, it's been pretty normal. I'm still getting used to things, finding a groove, but it's been a fun ride so far. I had an exchange with an Elder who is going home in a few weeks, he gave me a lot of advice on how to stay positive and happy throughout the whole two years. He had a bunch of crazy stories to tell. He had some really rough challenges to overcome, but he was always able to look back on it fondly and see the bright side of things. I'm going to try to be like that, have no regrets, just good stories. He said that's why God gives us challenges on the mission, they're tender mercies so that we can have cool stories when we get back. I like that perspective. I think it can apply to a whole lot of other stuff too.

Anyways, see y'all around, eh?

- Elder Murray