Christmas in Hong Kong

Christmas in Hong Kong is quite an experience! Culturally they celebrate Christmas very differently than we do in the States, where at home we celebrate with family traditions and most everything shuts down. Hong Kong in general has more "community" traditions verses individual family ones and the city is all a bustle and open every day no exceptions except maybe Chinese New Year. One example is, many wards (congregations) have their Christmas parties on Christmas Day. I know of about five, one of which we are going to! Hong Kong decorates the city like nowhere I have ever seen before. Even in our apartment complex there is a massive real Christmas tree in the lobby. I have no idea where they even cut it down, or how they got it into the building. Seriously, they must have used a crane or something but it's beautiful. Everywhere you go you see all kinds of the most elaborate decorations. You hear Christmas music in elevators, markets, malls, and YES, it's Christian Christmas music and is quite beautiful.

The obvious question is how is it being away from home during the holidays? Christmas time with my kids has always been a huge deal with a lot of traditions and fun things we do as a family. I would be lying if I said I didn't have a few weepy days here and there, and I can do without singing "I'll be home for Christmas", but the good news is we are SO BUSY doing all kinds of cool stuff!

We were invited over to Payton Kwan's for a real traditional Hong Kong BBQ. He works for the church in the Asia area office and he is the connection that helped Joe get 24 completed generations of his genealogy. Their apartment is about 500 square feet. Payton, his wife, two little girls, and their helper live there. This is normal Hong Kong living. They are blessed to have a roof top in their building that they can use for BBQ's and other outdoor entertaining. Hong Kong style is you have a table full of different kinds of meat like fish balls, chicken, pork, beef, shrimp (they were dead but still had eyes, eek) etc. and everyone has their own skewer and you just BBQ it like you would a hot dog. It's Hong Kong, so no s'mores, but if I had known I would have brought marshmallow and chocolate and introduced them to that incredible goodness. :) Next time! We really enjoyed the time with them. Their girls are so sweet and they are the a great family. Joe and Payton are related but their genealogy doesn't connect back until the 1500's.  Who has genealogy that goes back that far? AMAZING. I think there are only about 100 common Chinese names, that's why there are a million Wongs, Chans, etc... Interesting, right? Anyway, we love them.

We have been to several Christmas parties, devotionals, and dinners. It has been fun to see the different ways people celebrate here. On Sunday was our wards Christmas devotional/dinner. They had a beautiful program of the Christmas story with a Chinese twist. The narrators were dressed up in old traditional Chinese robes with fake mustaches and long beards as "wise old Chinese masters" and shared the story of Christ's birth with musical numbers in between. The program and music was traditional Christmas music, and of course was in Cantonese. For one of the songs, the music started and it was my favorite arrangement of a primary song called "He Sent His Son". My Aunt Sue's mother wrote it decades ago. It was sung in English... It was the coolest thing ever to be across the world and have something so familiar that I love. Yes, I was a mess. We both really enjoyed the whole program. For the dinner, they had asked me to make the dessert and I made a layered brownie, chocolate pudding, whipped cream and fresh raspberry trifle. There was a huge catering pan and a smaller 9x11 and I thought they were going to lick the pan. They had never had anything like that before. It's funny because they will tell you, "We don't like things too sweet", but that's not been my experience. Ha ha... It was fun.

Christmas Day (today) we invited the Senior missionaries over for brunch and we all made something to share. We had 14 people in our little apartment but it was so fun. Later we are going way out to the New Territories (close to mainland China) to a Christmas party and then to another church building that night for a concert the young missionaries are putting on. It will be a very fun day.

Tomorrow (26th) we have a special all day Zone Conference for the entire mission of 119 young missionaries. We are catering it from a very high end Italian restaurant. The owner is a member of the church here and the mission is only being charged about a quarter of the real cost. They are going to have two kinds of pastas, two different salads, fresh bread, and olive oil/balsamic vinaigrette and we might see tears, ha ha. They just don't get food like this... EVER. It's pretty cool because they will have all just talked to their families and it will be a good fun focus to be spiritually fed and have a couple really fun meals. The second meal is New York style bagels, savory and sweet, lots of different meats so they will have options, and a table of different desserts the Senior missionaries have made for them. They get to play some fun games and have the day together. I'm looking forward to it!

This season has made me appreciate how the little things we do and experience together as family and friends that may not seem like that big of a deal but really do create lasting memories for you and your loved ones. Appreciate and love those around you because tomorrow is not promised. This year we go into this season with three less people here (physically) and it is a reminder that life goes on and we need to make it count. We need to say what we need to say. Tell others we love them. Forgive who we need to forgive. Realize that most things are just not that big of a deal and enjoy right now. Letting go of things we have no control over gives us a lot of peace. Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us so that we could choose. In the end, hopefully we are choosing Him. This is why Christmas is a big deal to me. It celebrates the birth of Him who made it possible for all of us to become more of what we need to be. THAT is the good news of the gospel.

This morning I was in the kitchen listening to Christmas music while preparing food for the brunch, and I could physically feel peoples prayers on our behalf. Family members who have passed on feel very close as well and we feel the love of the Lord. The truth is we are never alone. Thank you. We love you and are so grateful for you in our lives.


Merry Christmas!
Sister Kwan

Merry Christmas!

A real Christmas tree in the lobby of where we live. It smells amazing.

Roof top of the apartment building Payton's family live in.  It's in a little 
village that is way out in the New Territories for the Hong Kong BBQ.

We had fun. It was quite an experience.  If you look off into the distance, the tall buildings you see is Shenzhen in mainland China.

Joe's turn to carve the turkey and a different Ward party :)

This was the dessert I made for the party. If you look, the big pan underneath they had already devoured, so I put the small pan inside the big one.

Brunch for the Senior missionaries at our apartment.  I made an egg frittata and everyone brought all kinds of good stuff. Waffles, bacon, fruit, a berry cheesecake, juice, etc.

Sister Barlow even made cinnamon rolls!

14 people in our little apartment. We all had a great time.