A Flurry of Thanksgiving Activities

The week of Thanksgiving came with a flurry of activities. The temple being closed, the Arnells had two of their married daughters visiting them (center bottom). We escorted them to Hong Kong Peak (night view - bottom right); then they treated us to a free Chinese instrumental concert participated in by a member of their ward, Janet Leung (right bottom), who plays the erhu.

Thanksgiving dinner was enjoyed by the temple missionary couples at the temple president's residence (part of the temple complex) where we enjoyed a traditional feast (left top and bottom).

The week ended with an invite to join the young men and young women of our ward at the home of the Wong's (upper right). He is our high priest group leader and she the Young Women's president. It was a barbeque with a Thanksgiving flare (complete with Indian headbands) and a pie eating contest (Susan's contribution) as pictured (center top and right center).

These activites were interspersed with cleaning and organizing a new temple missionary couple's apartment. They will live five floors above us in our building and arrive next Wednesday.

Still Things To Do

Though the temple is now closed for two-week's cleaning, there are plenty of things going to fill our days. A family (the Taylors, lower right) Lowell sealed in the temple just before it closed, came from the mainland where they and a number of other couples are teaching at a university. There were two teenage children sealed to their English-speaking father (gold suit) and Spanish-speaking mother (between them).

We toured reclaimed land areas (right center) on Hong Kong Island with Lowell's friend and wife, Craig and Tussy Norman (center middle) seeing the first post office built in Hong Kong (center top) and a 100-year old blue building (center bottom). The red brick Church administration building (background top right) is built on what used to be the waters edge.

We visited a touring exhibition of an animated (digitalized) famous Chinese scroll being anxiously photographed by approximately 3,500 visitors every hour (bottom right). (http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh96/orientation/flash_4/index.html) Tickets (which have been sold out) were provided to us by a wonderful sister in the Kwun Tong Ward who felt impressed, after standing in a 3-hour line to get tickets, to give them to the missionary couples. We met and thanked her at a function in the Kwun Tong Ward building to which we were invited by a young temple worker, Brother Kai Shing Yau (top and center left) who, with the help of other youth, provided a "Thanksgiving Dinner" to a large group of members and investigators (lower left).

Susan attended a Stake Evening in Excellence with the young women of our ward, whose presentation was a spiritual take on the Wizard of Oz complete with Dorothy, Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin man (center top and middle).

Who Has Time to Sleep?

With our new time schedule at the temple, we are back to working either mornings or evenings again. This should make finding sufficient time to sleep a little easier, though Susan is still generally tuckered out by the time any of our shifts (regardless of time of day) are over. We did manage to go to dinner with four other missionary couples and catch a ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty last Saturday after a busy shift at the temple that day. The performance wasn't over until 10:30 p.m. however, which made catching enough sleep before Sunday's meetings a little challenging. Lowell fortunately had his Sunday School lesson prepared ahead of time.