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
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