Week 24 - Sunset Peak, Christ-like attributes, Ding Ding Sing, Tim Confirmation and post baptism lessons

Things just keep moving along and here we are again on another P day. This week hasn't been too bad. Things are still pretty much the same for me here. We do a lot of street contacting everyday, we do all of our studies, we aren't currently teaching anybody. So it has been kind of less exciting in that respect, but it is still a bunch of fun.

Monday, we went on a hike to Sunset Peak. It was super steep, stairs straight up the mountain to the top. It was smoggy, but the view was pretty amazing. Then, we stopped by this little pizza shop which had a really good deal on pizza. Cheese is expensive here so cheap and good pizza is hard to come by. 

The middle of the week was full of more finding. We continued our post-baptism lessons with Tim. Wednesday, I gave a training on Christlike attributes in District Council. It went ok. Thursday, we did our service at Crossroads again hauling desks and school chairs into the back of a truck. We also had our regular interviews with President that evening. Friday, we did a district find in an area that was an hour away. Another Elder and I were actually able to place a Book of Mormon so that stoked us out pretty good. 

Saturday was a special day. On Hong Kong island, they have these street trams that have been around for over a hundred years. They call it the Ding Ding. For Light the World this year, the church paid for one to get decked out with Light the World advertisements. On Saturday, I went with the mission choir, donned a red tie, and helped sing hymns out the window of the top floor of the church Ding Ding as it drove across the entire island. They had a church film crew film us for an upcoming video and also livestream it on facebook. It was a ton of fun watching people's heads turn and then smile when they see a Ding Ding full of singing white kids. We sang pretty much straight for 3 hours so my voice was pretty hoarse by the end of it. It felt really cool to not just go out and ask a few people on the street if they want to listen to a message, but to actually sing that message to everybody on the street. 

Sunday, Tim finally got confirmed. It was super cool, he seemed pretty excited out about it. It is a really special opportunity to see the gospel change people like that. I know it's corny, but he really did seem brighter and happier afterwards. 

Well that was my week. There were some boring things but some really good things too. I just keep plugging along. See ya!

-Elder Murray

Week 23 - New Year 2020, Blackout year, Hotpot, Korean BBQ

Well it is a new year. I guess this starts my 2020 blackout year letters. That's pretty nuts. This week was a pretty decent week.

On Monday, our hike turned out to be too long and too far away, so we just had hot pot. It was still way fun. 

Tuesday, New Year's Eve, we had our usual day of studies and finding, nothing special to report. Then a member took us out for Korean BBQ. Sooo tasty, but I ate too much meat and kimchee.

Wednesday we had Zone Opening Exercises and a district find in our area. No new friends yet, but we found a new place that looks promising. Then, we went to a dinner appointment at the home of a member family's friend. It was really cool because the family really enjoyed our message and the food was fantastic. All around a good experience.

Friday, we had Zone Conference. We got a lot of good training and I met a lot of people in the mission I hadn't seen in a while. 

The rest of the weekend was pretty normal, pretty boring but that is good. For Pday today, we went on a big hike and now we are getting pizza. That's all for 

Week 22 - Christmas, Tim's Baptism, Victoria Peak

Another one down. This week was a pretty exceptional week what with Christmas and all. Our friend Tim also got baptized this weekend which was the cherry on top.

For P day, we went up to Victoria Peak on a tram and took some cool pictures of the view. It was amazing to see a view I've seen a million times in pictures for myself. Unfortunately, it was a pretty cloudy day but I still could see all the famous tall buildings on Hong Kong Island. I'll make my way out there again sometime soon on a clearer day. 

Christmas Eve was full of meetings with members. We had a caroling activity planned in the evening but couldn't stay long before we had to go visit another member. The only thing that made it feel like Christmas was the bus ride home when the bus driver played Christmas music.

Christmas was fun because I got to call home in the morning, but other than that, it was a pretty normal day. It's kind of nice around here that it doesn't feel too Christmassy because then I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Besides just doing normal missionary work, we had members feed us dim sum for breakfast and then hot pot for dinner. Can't complain about that. 

Thursday was the real fun Christmas celebration. In the afternoon, the whole mission got together for games and a devotional. We had a minute to win it competition between the zones (which we failed sorely at) and had a lot of fun. We had a super nice dinner of pasta, salad, breadsticks, and chicken parmesan, then a Christmas themed devotional with the Philips and a member of the Seventy, Elder Homer and his wife. It was really cool, they all gave really powerful testimonies of the Savior and their gratitude for his birth. 

Friday, we taught Tim his last lesson and had a District white elephant party. I came home with a cool bag with a cat on the front. Tim's lesson went really well and he seemed just as committed as ever to get baptized.

Saturday, we had Tim's baptism. It was stressful for a minute because I was chosen to perform the baptism and I had to memorize the blessing in Cantonese, but then I put it into perspective that it isn't about me at all. It isn't about my fears concerns, it was all about Tim. Once I remembered that, I was a lot less stressed about memorizing the blessing and it went on without a hitch. Tim bore a really simple but powerful testimony that this church was true and that he knew God was directing it today. It was very cool to see how much the Spirit had helped him grow and learn. 

We ended the week off with a normal Sunday full of church, studies, a bit of finding and then a dinner appointment with members. It's a blessing how much the members help us out around here by giving us meals and advice.

That's my first Christmas down! Only one more to go!

-Elder Murray

Week 21 - Tim is so strong; Korean Fried Chicken; Hong Kong Island, Christmas Party, Chinese traditional medicine

Not too much to report for this week. Our friend who is close to baptism, Tim, is still going strong. We taught him about the Word of Wisdom on Tuesday and he totally was immediately willing to live it. Tea is a big issue for people around here because it is such a huge cultural thing, so I started to explain that there are some things in the Word of Wisdom that we just need to have faith on, like coffee or tea, because we may not know exactly why we are commanded not to consume them. He cut me off and was like "Oh, no, that makes sense. People can get addicted to those kinds of stuff too." Elder Finklea and I were just like "Great!" What a kid. He's always surprising us. Tuesday, before we even finished saying hello, he pulls out his copy of the Book of Mormon having read 7 chapters ahead of where we asked him to read and had all of these awesome questions. That was soooo awesome to see. He's real about it all. 

Wednesday, nothing too special happened. One of our new friends who came to church last week canceled his lesson with us so that was a bummer, but a member took us out for Korean fried chicken. It was super tasty so it made up for our friend.

Thursday, we taught Tim again about tithing and fast offerings. No issues there either. The only thing that makes him cooler is the fact that he's super into boxing. 

Friday, I went out to Hong Kong Island with Elder Finklea for another choir performance in a mall. It was super awesome, I got to hand out a lot of pass along cards with candy to passersby. People loved it and took lots of photos and videos. Some people wouldn't even stop walking on their way and would just snap a photo as they walked. Pretty funny. 

Saturday, we had our ward Christmas party which was a blast. We had blasted our potentials list with texts about it hoping to get some new friends to come. Three said that they would and zero actually showed up. We had a fun time nonetheless. The only bummer really was that afterwards, I got really sick to my stomach. 

Sunday, I woke up feeling not so great but forced myself to go to church. Once we got back, I slept for 5 hours and then tried not to throw up as I did studies. Elder Kwok tried to do some Chinese medicine on me by having me rub Mentholatum clockwise on my stomach and then having him pinch and pop my back.  I'm feeling alright this morning after sleeping really well but I don't know if it was that or the clockwise rubbing or the back pinching that fixed it. 

Nothing too special besides those things this week. I'm getting pretty excited for Christmas even though not much will happen. We will do something to make it fun though.

Week 20 - Tim, Sister Phillip's Interview, Service, Fancy Foods, God Loves Everyone

I don't really know how to start this email this week, but hopefully I'll think of something clever and witty so you think I'm funny and not just funny looking. 

This week was a pretty darn good week, but a really tiring week. We have been hitting our finding windows pretty hard having almost two a day every day. Nothing special to report there. We go out. Say a prayer. Try to say "hi" and stop some people. They're always too busy. What else is new. Every once in a while we'll get to share a quick message and hopefully exchange numbers, but so far they either aren't willing to give us anything or block us immediately. That's why I'm so grateful that we have Tim to teach. He's super amazing. On Monday, we taught him the principle of obedience and the first few commandments. This is always the scary part of teaching because people usually have a lot of questions about the commandments or have trouble understanding obedience. But Tim's a legend and totally was like "Yeah, makes total sense. I'll start now". Gotta love the guy. We are meeting with him twice weekly now that his date is coming up. 

On Tuesday, it was time for regular interviews with President. To save time though, he only interviewed the people who he didn't get a chance to interview 5 weeks ago when we came in. Bummer, but I got to have a "Sister Philips interview" instead. It was so much fun, she is the nicest lady. She asked about Christmas traditions and things so that she could try to make the Christmas celebrations at least somewhat like home. She also told me to not worry about making mistakes in the language because when she was learning English, she learned it was okay to let people know she couldn't understand them and then they'd be so much more open to helping her learn. I've been trying to apply that and it has been super helpful. 

Thursday, we had our usual Crossroads service. We dug into some more shipping containers taking stock of toys and school supplies and things. It was pretty fun but one container had a ton of spiders just chilling on all the boxes. Thursday was the day of way too much food, because when we got home, we got invited to dim sum with the Elder's Quorum president and some people from the ward. The other missionaries in the area also got invited. It was super tasty but I probably ate too much. I'm really learning to like the fish dumplings that they have here. They are super popular. Then, after another lesson with time which went super great, he's got no problem keeping the Sabbath day holy, we had another meal invite. This time, it was our friend Andy from two weeks ago who wanted to take us out for dinner with the mandarin Elders, a couple from the office, and the Philips. He took us to a waaaay nice place. It was fun to talk with him again and the Philips. We ate roasted baby pig, roasted goose, shark fin soup, lobster, and a super fancy cake from a nice bakery. I've probably never had such a rich-person meal in my life. Absolutely crazy. I did feel bad about eating the shark fin soup but I couldn't just refuse when he was paying so much. Now the sharks are going to come back to get me someday. 

Friday, I did some finding in an area that our MTC teacher used to live in and showed us on Street View. That was cool.

Saturday, I went with Elder Mumford and Elder Kwok for most of the day while Elder Finklea went to two choir performances. We had a lot of fun finding down at the pier together. A very fine lady is now praying for us each and every night to stop corrupting the bible. So that was fun. We celebrated our exchange and the end of the week by getting Taam Jai (hong kong ramen) and mango drinks. So good.

Sunday we had a friend who texted us earlier in the week come to church. He has met missionaries before but only now can meet with us. So that was cool except he stayed for the Sunday School lesson about the book of Revelation and Joseph Smith Translation. Yeah... instead of milk, this guy got straight into the gristle. But he still wants to come back so that was good. Then I had to follow Elder Finklea to two more choir performances. It was really cool, but I mostly just sat there or turned pages for the pianist.

Today, we got some more baau. My favorite is the coconut covered honey butter filled one. Can't be eating those very often though. Now we are picking up my film and getting my camera fixed.

It has been a good week to be a missionary. I really have got to feel the love that God has for everyone. And when He says everyone, He MEANS everyone. Sometimes I'll not want to talk to someone because they don't look like the kind of person who would be interested, but Elder Finklea will talk to them and have a really good spiritual conversation with them. Your background or circumstances really don't matter that much. Everyone is invited and everyone can experience His love. 

See you all later!

Week 19 - Andy, Our Canadian Friend; Harry staying strong; Crossroads Service with school supplies for Syrian refugees; Quizlet; Choir and Professional Beatboxing Elder; 4 Meals on Sunday and Talk on Faith - "Well you gave it your best shot!"

This week has been a pretty interesting week.

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

Week 18 - Retraining Cantonese Listening; Apartment Cleaning; Love Companion, Love the People, Love God and Love your Mission Leaders; Thanksgiving Zone Conference and Dinner; Tim is getting baptized; Exchanges with Elder Lee;

Well this makes three weeks down in Hong Kong almost. It's so weird still. I feel like I'm getting the hang of some things, but others not so much. Cantonese is still kicking my butt. Some people speak with really weird accents or really mumble so I have to retrain my listening. Slowly, our apartment is getting cleared out of junk and garbage, but a certain member of the apartment enjoys filling the new space with more junk and garbage. At least I have my little area where I can keep things clean.

This week, we had Zone Conference with the whole mission for Thanksgiving. The thing I took away from all the trainings was something President said about his only expectations for every missionary. Number one, love your companion. Number 2, love the people. Number three, love God. Number four, love your mission President and his wife (which the handbook now has us just call "mission leaders"). I really liked that because if we really do all four of these things, all the other stuff will fall into place and our lives will be so much easier. We will truly be motivated to do the right things for the right reasons. After Zone Conference, we had a Thanksgiving feast. We had super tasty sliced ham and turkey with mashed potatoes, a weird pear salad, and pumpkin cake for dinner. It was so tasty, very nice to get some American food again.

Every day this week we have been doing a lot of finding to finally get some more people to teach. We have one kid  named Tim who is a former that wants to start taking lessons again, but that is not nearly enough to occupy our time. He's awesome though, he set a baptismal date the other day. Elder Finklea couldn't even finish getting out "Are you willing?" before Tim said "Yes!" Super cool. But the finding isn't as successful. There is a lot of walking involved, a lot of rejection, but a lot of funny stuff too. The only bummer part is that I had been experiencing some weird pain in my shoulder and chest as we would find and it really made things not fun at all. I talked with the mission nurse and it turns out I've inflamed the cartilage in my ribs or something. So now I'm on an "anti-inflammatory dose" of 12 ibuprofen a day. Sick. It's doing a lot better now though so the work goes on. 

The other cool thing that happened this week was an exchange with some Elders in Tsing Yi. I got to go be with Elder Lee and one of his companions for a day. We had a blast teaching English class, teaching a lesson to a recent convert, and getting destroyed at a ping pong activity. It was fun to talk with him about how much things have changed since high school. We also had this guy named Andy, who lives most of the time in Vancouver, take us out to dinner. It was a party, he's not a member, but he loves to treat the missionaries when he's in town. He speaks crazy good English but all at a monotone, so it is hard to get when he's joking sometimes. Elder Finklea and I are going out with him today too. 

Other than that, it's been a pretty good week. Members fed us so much this week that I didn't even touch all the groceries I bought last weekend. I'm so lucky to be here. It blows my mind every day. See you around.

-Elder Murray

Additional pictures sent last week