P-day, we hung out with our friend named Andy. He lives in Canada usually but comes to treat the missionaries everytime he comes back to Hong Kong. He's not a member but basically knows everything about the church and loves it. He goes to church every week both here and in Canada. He loves to take the missionaries out to eat in both places to very nice restaurants. He took us to HKU to meet his accounting professor friend who is a member from Utah that has been living in Hong Kong with his family. So cool. They wouldn't let us go into the college however because of the craziness going on. Then he took us to a an "American" Steakhouse type thing where he got us lamb, pork chops, and sirloin steak. We thanked him very profusely at every opportunity, but he always just tells us that we should talk less and eat more. What a guy.
Tuesday, we had an... interesting morning. We go eat breakfast with this very old man in our ward that lives in a tiny government apartment. He is not very mobile but somehow takes care of himself. We go over, he makes us breakfast and we help him with stuff or teach him some English words. This time though, he pulled out some English words that previous missionaries had given him and asked what they were. These dumb missionaries had taught him a bunch of different potty words and he had forgotten what they meant. We did not enjoy trying to teach him what they meant in two-year-old's
English. We did some finding, a turnover lesson with the other Elders in our apartment, and then got Mexican food from a stand in the mall with a kid from the ward.
Wednesday, Elder Finklea had a really long choir practice so I went on a split with Elder Sloan, my Canada roommate, in my area. It was fun to be the one who knew where to go and what to do for a few hours. We just did some finding in a spot I knew. We also met a recent convert that has been less active recently named Harry. Harry is one of Elder Finklea's converts from this area and Elder Finklea was super worried that there would be some big problem with the church that he would need to talk about. Luckily, he still has a strong testimony and wants to come to church, but his tutoring starts right at the same time as church. Next year, he's changing his tutoring time to be able to come to church. That was a fun relief.
Thursday, we did more service for Crossroads moving boxes from containers into trucks and taking stock. It was cool to see all the places that these boxes were bound for. That day, we loaded school supplies for Syrian refugees. Pretty cool. We also met a new friend on Thursday who has met with missionaries before, has read the entire Book of Mormon, and wanted to meet with missionaries again. We were so excited because this sounds like a golden set up. No. He just wanted to meet some new Americans and return his Book of Mormon. Yeah. Bummer. But he wants to keep meeting to talk about culture, so maybe we can change his mind... We also taught another lesson to Tim, our friend on date. He is awesome, praying on his own, reading on his own, he's excited for baptism, so we had a super awesome lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ where we discussed the importance of baptism a bit more. Super cool lesson.
Friday was a slower day. Lot's of finding windows, language pass-offs, all the necessary but not very exciting stuff. My language is slowly improving though. Thank goodness for Quizlet!
Saturday, the choir had its first performance in the evening. We went and the choir sang really well. There is one Elder who is a professional beat boxer and he brought the house down. Lot's of missionaries brought their interested friends and I think the Spirit was really there from the music. The dinner provided by the ward afterwards was super good too. I'm in love with mango pudding with fresh mangoes.
Sunday, I had to give a talk in church. That wasn't stressful at all. I gave it on the importance of having faith in Christ and how having faith is a choice that we have to make. I also talked about how we can grow our faith through many different ways but with an emphasis on serving those our around us. To grow our faith, first we need to act in faith. It went ok. I know the ward members really liked it because in that way that only people from Chinese culture can do, they came up to me with smiles and sincerely said "Hey, well you gave it your best shot." That's about as complimentary I could expect so I take that as a definite win. There was a huge birthday party after that too for the ward. Super tasty. 1/4 meals that we were given yesterday. Then we headed to a huge mall far away where the choir did a big performance. It drew a huge crowd and it was the job of the other Elders and Sisters to go hand out candy and passalong cards to them. We were only allowed to hand out specific cards and say "Merry Christmas". Absolutely no proselyting was the stipulation for being there. That didn't stop a few strong headed Elders, but nothing bad happened so we were ok. We got sandwiches from the members there too. Then we went to a family home evening activity in our ward. It was so much fun. Everyone was laughing, telling jokes, having a good time. We watched the new nativity video again. We ate so much good food (meal 3/4) and really got to know some of the ward members a lot better. It was also a Christmas themed activity so they all pooled to buy the missionaries gifts. So we had to walk home with huge grocery bags full of food, snacks, and a nice scarf. Super nice. We were all super grateful. Then on the way out, they bagged up the left overs for us to take home. 4/4. So awesome, the ward is so amazing.
That's it for this week. Sorry for the longer letter. I'm truly so lucky to be serving here. Besides all the temporal benefits, there is so much spiritual learning I have been able to do here. So many little miracles. I couldn't ask for better.
- Elder Murray
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