What a week!

It's been quite a week with a lot of news! We met with the new mission president and he is fantastic.  We helped with the mission leadership conference. Spent an hour cleaning the kitchen at the church before we started preparing food for the conference (Remember the wet market? Eek.). Had a meeting with the Temple President and we are now ordinance workers and will be spending Tuesday mornings there. Yea!

We had several meetings this week with the leadership. 1) The Asia Area Presidency who presides over 22 countries and 11 missions. 2) The mission president over the Hong Kong mission. 3) The Temple president over the Hong Kong Temple. 4) A Stake President who presides over a group of congregations. We had meetings with ALL of them this week, discussing our assignments and much progress has been made!

We have been assigned to work with the Kowloon East Stake and will focus on one specific Ward (congregation) supporting and strengthening the members there as well as a few projects within that Stake. This will be an evolving process as they have not had a couple specifically doing this before.

The Mission President also has several assignments for us in the mission. We will be helping with leadership and Zone Conferences for the younger missionaries every six weeks and I will be taking care of the social media for the Mission. (Pictures, Mission FB page etc.). It can be a great missionary tool for family back home and letting them see what is happening with their kids as they serve here.

We have been asked to be the advisory couple for Hong Kong's FSY (For The Strength of Youth), which is EFY (Especially For Youth held at the BYU colleges) outside of the United States. It is a huge thing here in Asia and as the advisory couple, we will work with two other local couples, who will train the young single adults, who then run the program and work with the youth.  It is run just like EFY at Brigham Young University with speakers that are brought in, devotionals, etc but held at a camp type of resort here and will be sometime next July. The date is yet to be determined.  Our assignment is to support them in following the handbook that has been provided and creating solutions for issues that come up.  This will be an ongoing project with meetings etc. Should be really fun. Most of these kids know english and the speakers and events will be a mixture of both languages (english/cantonese).

AND...  Joe has been asked by the Asia Area Presidency to work on a few engineering projects for Taiwan and Mongolia.  It is a process for purification of indoor air to help with the churches  humanitarian pursuits in developing countries. Most people have no idea how much money the church donates to these causes, but it is in the hundreds of millions. These projects could get really interesting and as I have more information I will share.

As for me personally, besides a lot of great meetings with leaders it has been a week of learning how do laundry here (very different), shop, cook, walk to, get lost and then find the stores that we need stuff from. You know how you get in your CAR, and drive to the store and buy everything you could possibly need for a while? Nope! Or if you forget something, you just run to the store and pick it up?  Nope... Not happening here! Huge learning adjustment curve.

We are just starting Monsoon season, which means the water comes down in sheets that go sideways.  It was so funny....We were on our way to catch the bus to go to church and it just starts raining SHEETS of water and we had an umbrella and everything. By the time we got to the bus stop Joe's suit was literally soaked from the mid thigh down. If you know him, he is very fastidious about his clothing and he was not happy but of course Joe being Joe he had a great attitude and figured it would dry. We both commented that the next couple of months will be interesting. Ponytailed frizzy hair for me and wet dress-suits for him, ha ha. My Natalie said, "Just embrace it Mom". Good council for sure!

Really, I think that is the lesson here about what is really important and what isn't. So much of what we think matters in the scheme of things doesn't. Life is about a series of adjustments. They look very different at times in our lives but the question is, and what should never change are the principles and values by which we live our life. Are we doing the things that matter most and putting first things first? Or, are we caught up in things of the world that compromise our relationship with God and frankly, our peace? We have a weekly devotional with all the couple missionaries here and this morning we read a scripture in 1 Samuel 18:14.  David was the King at the time and Saul was very jealous and had all kinds of pride and other stuff going on and it says, "And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the Lord was with him."  

There you go... That is pretty much it.  Have an amazing week!

Love, Sister Kwan

We are at dinner with another missionary couple, the Holmsteads from Logan Utah and a Sister that came down from mainland China to attend the Temple here in Hong Kong.  We ate at a place called "Pepper Lunch".  You order the meat, rice, and vegetables and they give it to you on this individualized hot plate/grill that cooks the food when you get it.  It was good!

The kitchen group at the leadership conference. This was President and Sister Philips first one and had just arrived 4 days earlier. They are great! Lunch was pizza, a huge green salad and fruit salad, with homemade cinnamon/orange/lemon rolls for dessert. Elder Rosekelley (on the end) made all three kinds of rolls.  The missionaries were in heaven. 

President Philips and Elder Kwan solving the worlds problems. :)

AHH... A little piece of home!!  It was amazing and the food was exactly like back home.  It was beautiful. :)