...and so is Christmas

Week 2,3, etc.

December 12, 2010

The best pleasures are always unexpected.  We were told that we wouldn’t have callings in the branch or be going to the temple very often.  So, of course, we were immediately called to the Branch Presidency of the Island 1^st branch (Did you know that Hong Kong was an island?) and we were given a weekly assignment in the temple.  The Philipina sisters are amazing – they have little in the way of possessions (some don’t even have a room in which to sleep, they sleep with the children that they take care of), they have to dry their clothes on  a bamboo stick out the window and yet they still seem so happy and cheerful.  Ebullient is the word.  I feel like I’m going to Church with a 100 of my daughters.

There was a moment today which was descriptive of their spirit.  We were having a baptism (since I’ve been here I’ve taught a baptismal lesson, interviewed someone for baptism and participated in the baptism ceremony) and a special musical number had been hurriedly organized – a guitar and six sisters  who had only practiced a few minutes.  It started and was semi-horrible.  Fright and shyness was taking its toll – the melody was being corrupted by thin attempts to find a pitch.  It began to die out – we’ve all been there, everyone sitting and wondering why time goes so much slower during acoustic pain, waiting for the inevitable silence and giggles.  All of a sudden, someone else joined in and then another and another.  They just refused to let the singers go down in defeat.  The singers gathered courage and began to sing better and soon the entire room was singing.  It sounded wonderful – there aren’t any other voices like those rich Philippine voices.  I’m sure the Lord has a choir of them to welcome us to the other side, because it’s like coming home.  I found myself weeping – they’re so cheerful among a horde of reasons not to be – and they did something important while I was doing something miniscule, contemplating the despairs of bad intonation.

To the left you see the picture of the Wan Chai building.  This picture was taken in the best spirit of photographic propaganda.  There are no trees near the building, no open spaces.  The building faces out onto a busy street – high-profile street, status street – but a street.  The reasons the trees are on the right and left sides of the building is that the Wan Chai police station, done in the communist tradition of ugly light gray and cracked stucco, is on the left and a busy intersection is on the right.  It’s not the ugliest spot in Hong Kong, but it’s not pretty either.  The picture is taken from the convention center plaza, catty-corner to the Church – this area is very well done, but in the wide-and-spacious-building theme.  There are 11 floors in the Church building – the area president lives at the top, we work on the next one down.  There are three chapels in the building and on Sunday they are all used simultaneously.  There is a branch which meets Tuesday through Saturdays because the Philipina sisters who go there can’t get Sundays off.  When the sisters come to Church it’s an all-day deal.  They show up for the block meetings, then do visiting teaching and home teaching, then do RS enrichment, then have leadership meetings, then eat together…  The Church feeds them twice a month because it’s the only time some get meat and vegetables.

To the right we see Sister Shirley Taylor.  She and her husband work with the financial records and do audit training.  She is an angel of mercy and has saved the Alleys on multiple occasions.  (Maybe she’s a Hell’s Angel.  She wears motorcycle goggles at her computer and is the one who introduced them to Marcie.  She claims it helps with dry eyes.)  She’s strange and wonderful, like Sister Alley.  This is their third mission: England, Latvia and now here.   I would like to have her on my side in any battle.  I’ve requested that she stand by the pearly gates when I’m trying to talk my way in.  She and her husband work in the cubicles across from ours – she has escorted Marcie to such shopping meccas as Wellcome market, the Japan Home Center and the wet market.  (In the wet market you have to hold your breath while you’re passing the pig carcasses.  I think pigs are pretty smart – even compared to horses.  If they weren’t such gluttons, I’m not sure I could eat them.)

And this is a shot of our area of Hong Kong.  The Church is to the left and off the frame.  Our apt is to the bottom and off the frame.  But you can see north toward the harbor – we’ve been there once on a ferry to see the Christmas light show. 

 It was basically lasers firing off into the night from the top of big buildings.  I wonder if the lasers have enough power to do any damage.  I imagine some poor goose getting nailed with a bright green light and flailing its way into the South China Sea.

We’re starting to get a foothold on our duties – we attended the Hong Kong PA council last Thursday.  It was great except we went one stop too far – the stop too far put us through the tunnel into the New Territories.  This is like a near-death experience.  People on that side apparently don’t come back to this side.  Cab drivers looked at us like we were aliens when we tried to buy our way back.  Thank heavens for Church organization – the area seventy, Sam Wong, called on our mobile and talked the cab driver into driving back to the Kowloon Wong chapel.  Marcie thought we were lost and about to be cast into Outer Darkness.  But we arrived in time to hear them talk about Church video clips, Family geneology partnering with local universities and a Journey to Bethlehem Hong Kong spectacular.  We got home on the top floor of a bus which wound through Kowloon like a snake chasing a rat, but we were with other couples so we sat back and watched all of it pass us by.  There’s no direct way from Kowloon to anywhere.  From some areas there’s no way at all –not even dimensionally connected.