This week in Paradise. Week 74 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   This was a great week. We had lots of lessons and lots of things go really well. We had an amazing p-day. Elder James scheduled us to go and cruse around Central on the Island. This was made even more awesome by the fact that he served in HK as a young missionary in the early 1960s. So he took us around and gave us a really neat tour. One of the things he took us to see was the old Asia area office. It was the former house of the man who tutored the man who became known as Chairman Mao and Shang Kai Shek (The man who kinda started Taiwan) The church bought it in the 1960s and used it as missionary housing and as a chapel. So Elder James was taking us around and showing us the way that things used to be. I started talking to one of the guards when elder Taylor went to use the bathroom and she was surprised that I could speak Chinese which is normal, but when I explained that the old man that was with us used to live in that building she nearly fell over. So she and Elder James had a nice chat. One of the conditions when the church sold the building in 2004 was that they had to remember the church used the building. So there were fun hints of that all around.

   Then he took us to a cool Chinese Baih Shan Temple. That was supper cool. He explained how important patience is in helping people go from that to Christ. It is a lot different so we need to be patient when people don't understand stuff like that. I have a video or two I will have to attach. 

   Then this week I went on Exchange to Ma On Shan with elder Stone. He is one of the new district leaders in Tolo so I was just checking up on him and seeing how we can better serve him. He is a really funny guy so that exchange was a blast!!! 

   I have gotten more used to my new responsibilities as a Zone Leader now so that is good. haha. I am just really tired. 

  Also to our great joy it got a bit chilly this week. about 61 F. So that was a nice relief. once it gets warm again I am going to send home all my cold weather stuff. That will hopefully make things a bunch lighter. 

Other than that it was just a really solid week. 

Love you all,

Elder Walker

All of us and Elder James

The old church building

Chinese Baih Shan Temple

Videos from inside the Chinese Baih Shan Temple

New Responsibilities. Week 73 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   This was an interesting week. On Tuesday we received move calls in their fullness. My companion elder Taylor and I will be staying together! I am really pumped for that. The interesting thing is that this move instead of the normal 9 weeks will be 5 weeks. That is so that we can get back with the rest of the world and do 6 week moves. This also means that the Missionaries in the MTC will now be there for 12 weeks. So this one will feel super fast. I was also called to be a Zone Leader. This means that me and Elder Darrington are step companions and Zone Leaders together. 

   SO what that means is that this week was ridiculously busy and stressful. So I got a hair cut. Lets just say that it is definitely not the best one I have ever had. It is kind of a tradition in the Tolo Zone to get a bad haircut right after getting the call to be zone leader. Elder Darrington gave me this one. It is a good hair cut. It is just very short. One of the young men in the ward said that I look like an egg. haha gotta love the Chinese bluntness. So I have been scheduling exchanges and meetings trying to figure out what it is that I am supposed to be doing. I bought a binder to organize things so I think that I am OK now. 

   So Elder Darrington and I called all of the new people and welcomed them to the zone. that was kinda fun. We also had a bit of a sad thing happen too. One of the elders that came to the zone from the UK decided that he did not want to remain in HK and that he needed to go home. Some of that is for medical reasons but it was sad none the less. So since I have a British companion we decided to take time one night and have Elder Taylor make an English dinner and then take the elder for a walk. Wile he was doing that I took his native companion to do some missionary work and teach some lessons just to get his mind off of the stress of the medical things that were happening. 

   The ward also had a goodbye party for some of the missionaries that were going home at the end of their service. That was fun, They are good missionaries and will be missed. 

   Also we got to help Lisa be confirmed a member of the Church. So that was really cool. Now we are just working on getting her to go to the temple. 

   Then another one of the young men opened his mission call after church he will be serving in the Sidney south mission English and Mandarin speaking. SO that was really fun to re-live some of that opening the call excitement. 

That is all for this week.

Love,

Elder Walker

p.s. also filled up my SD card so that will make my dad happy. 

Latest version of the Tolo Harbor Zone 

This was a ward trip to the beach, Turns out Chinese BBQ is awful and supper sketchy

nice view from the bay

new Lamborghini

standing with dads car 

Garth says this is a 4th generation and we have a 3rd generation but Gordon doesn't know that!

Baptism one! Week 72 from Hong Kong

Hello Every one,

   This week went quite well. I might actually go as far as to say that this was the best week in my mission. We got a lot of referrals from ward members and a few of them were very golden. Problem is that most of them do not live in our area so we will have to work on getting those turned over here soon. 

   The best thing that happened by far was the fact that our Investigator Lisa got baptized this week!!! She has been investigating for 16 years. So we were the end of a very long chain of missionaries to teach her. The service went quite well. We had a lot of her friends and family come too. That was a lot of fun. We also promised while we were teaching her that we would sing at her baptism. SO us and the primary got up to sing and it went really badly. haha the piano turned in to an organ and the kids had no Idea what was happening haha. Other than that nothing huge happened.  During the ordnance her feet came up. And (Elder Taylor baptized her) because Elder Taylor did not know how to say bend your knees in Chinese so he just stepped on her feet haha that was funny. Then she took like 20 min to change her clothes and come back out. 

   Earlier in the week elder Harding and I went on exchanges. I went to his area and slept at his house that was fun but we had an awful day together. One of their investigators with a baptismal date got "anti-ed" and another investigator gave back a book of Mormon. I have never had that happen. That's ok though.

   Elder Darrington also had his birthday so we bought him a cake. I will attach a video. 

   Also it is supper weird that it is 2017!!!! I left in 2015. It seems like time is flying by! I hope everyone had a good new year!!!

   Yeah so not a whole lot to say but this was a really good week.   

Love,

Elder Walker

Singing Happy Birthday to Elder Darrington

dim sum for Elder Darrington's birthday Thank you to his parents!!!

Me and Elder Taylor. We spent a few language studies working on how to say the baptismal prayer in Cantonese

 Us Lisa and the stake president

This is to prove that it happened in China!

This was parked out by the church this week

Christmas! Week 71 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   Well I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. We had a great one here in Hong Kong. I have some great pictures so at the end if I have time I will jump on another computer and send them out. (we are in the Apple store and some genius designed a computer that doesn't have a USB port. Thank you Apple) 

   Last p day we went to the Island to see some of the Christmas lights. However it was the middle of the afternoon so there were none. We got some pizza and rode the ferry. So that was a lot of fun. While we were waiting Elder Darrington talked to a few people from Mainland and at the end they wanted a picture with us so I will have to attach that. I love going on the ferry it is so much fun!

   Then we had a our Zone Christmas party that was fun. We had a breakfast turkey. What is that you ask? It is a turkey marinated in syrup. Turned out pretty good. We also had pancakes and other breakfast foods. Elder Taylor and I were in charge if the syrup, so we made Maple, vanilla, and strawberry flavor. They were really good and the strawberry was definitely a hit. 

   We also celebrated Festivus. That was great. If you don't know what that is then you have to watch more TV.

   There was also a member of our ward who had her wedding. That was fun. That was the first wedding I have been to in a long time where I didn't have to take pictures haha. That was fun. She is a RM from Temple Square and her new husband is a non member so that was a little sad, but the wedding was great so that was fun.

   That brings us to Christmas. We had all our gifts under the small tree my parents sent me. We woke up Sunday morning and opened them in our PJ's family style. That was good fun. Elder Taylor and Garcia had a blast. I am very excited to spend next Christmas with my family. 

   We also got some fun news that we will be getting iPhones in about February. That will be really useful. That way we will be able to be in contact with people much easier. No one uses proper texting here because it is just too expensive. We will see if that really happens though. 

Love,

Elder Walker 

new mission vehicle!!! haha jk

Please ignore my loud voice on the videos!

A message for Grandma's and Grandpa's.

Elder Walker reciting a scripture in Cantonese to see if we could guess what it was.

A short video talking about their exercising. Little brother Jensen is a distance runner so he was a bit surprised to hear that they run about a quarter of a mile! 

random people at the ferry dock

cool shot from the ferry

festive display in TST

Elder James reciting the Grinch from memory at the zone Christmas party 

Festivus for the rest of us 

Wedding

Can you see the tiny tree behind all those gifts?

Christmas Socks

The room right after skyping home.  He was able to use a member's tablet at the Church.

Merry Christmas!!! Week 70 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   Well this is my mass letter before Christmas. So MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Hong Kong is much much more pleasant to live in in the winter. The weather is bearable now. So that is great! 

   This week wasn't super exciting. I did get to go on an exchange with Elder Darrington. He is one of the Zone Leaders here and is also a Mandarin Elder. Which means that teaching together was a bit of a stretch. I was surprised at how well we were able to teach together. Both of the lessons that we taught together were to people who could understand Cantonese. So that helped me out a lot. I started one of them in Mandarin and introduced myself and explained that I don't really speak Mandarin. She looked very confused so I just said it in Cantonese and then she understood and we laughed. We also went on a very long bus ride to a place way up north that I have never been to before. Like it was far enough away that I saw stuff growing out of the ground! We got of the bus and walked into the village. There was no sound from the road, no sound from people. The whole place was really really creepy. We didn't see a person the whole time we were there. There was just very skinny sick dogs. We walked around a corner and got that "Get out NOW" feeling so we both looked at each other because we were both feeling it, and obeyed and got out fast! So that was really really scary.

   Then this Wednesday we had our ward Christmas party. They had all the missionaries sing songs and things it was really funny. There were also a lot of potential investigators there so that was awesome! 

   Last night there was a choir performance of various selections of "the Messiah". It was REALLY good. I was very nervous because I have been to a few Chinese choir things before and usually they are pretty bad. So I was very happy with this one. It was also a lot of fun because I was able to see some of the members from Sha Tin so that was a lot of fun catching up with them.

   Everyone in my apartment got their packages from their families. So we put all the wrapped gifts under our tree. I am so excited for Christmas! It is just the best. The only bummer about having it here is that there is no real Christmas cheer like there is in the states, unless you go to a mall. It is really strange to think that next year I will be home for Christmas. 

   One last time. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Love,

Elder Walker

This is elder Taylor and I at the Christmas Party with one of our investigators. 

The following pictures are the ones I pulled from their ward's FB page.  Fun to see their chapel, stage, food and people!

Week 69 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   This was quite an interesting week. We had a lot of really great things happen, along with some not so great things. 

   To start off the week we had a really great time at Zone Training. Everything had a nice Christmas theme, so that was lovely. All of the trainings were really really good. I am really excited to be working with this new set of leadership. 

   We also had a very interesting experience with an investigator named Lisa. She was scheduled to be baptized on Christmas day. However she ran into some trouble with her parents not liking her joining the church. Remember that she is 33 years old. So we couldn't get in contact with her for a few days and we were really worried about her. So we said a prayer and during the prayer she called us! We were really excited. However the problem came when that phone call was about an hour long and she was telling us how much she hates us the whole time. This was really out of nowhere. Usually her lessons are really funny and we have a good time and all of the members really like her. So we still had a lesson scheduled with her for that Friday so we said look if you want to talk we will be there. So we were pretty sure that she was not going to come. But she came!!! With a cake!! So we ended up having a really good lesson with her. We will have to see what happens. 

   On a more worldly note, Elder Taylor broke our shower this week. I don't know why but there is often some kind of issue that happens with him and the shower. haha This week it was when he turned off the water but the water did not stop it just came out full blast. So we had to call the office and get them to call a repair man. so in the meantime anytime we wanted water we had to go up to the roof and turn it on and off when we were done so that we did not use a LOT of water. I will attach a video. It was quite the experience. 

  We also had our interviews with President Lam. I always love those he is the best. I would love to just listen to him tell me things and stories all day long. 

  That is all for this week!

Love,
Elder Walker 

sticker I got this week!

Video of Gordon and Elder Taylor explaining the shower situation

It makes me laugh that almost every video starts with "okaaay"

All the roomies on the roof showing the water pipes and the view

some random lady on the street who was so surprised that we spoke Cantonese she wanted a picture with us. I said I wanted one too. I do not even know her name.

pipes on the roof at night

view from the top of our building 

Week 68 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   Well judging by my inbox I can see that everyone back home is "busy". 

   Any way, this week was nothing special really. I had to do a lot of paperwork closing the last reporting period and opening the December one. I did not think this much paperwork would be involved in missionary work. So that was fun in its own special way. 

   It was Yoshi's birthday this last Friday. So I got his phone number from the missionaries that serve in his home ward. Turns out they completely forgot! So they made me promise that I would not call him until after they did. haha so we called him and sang to him. haha that was fun.

   We also got to give one of the new sisters a blessing. I guess she had something wrong with her foot. That is dangerous because foot problems will put you out of this mission. She will be fine though. 

   I also wrote a letter to Elder Taylor's parents. That was fun. I knew my parents would enjoy something like that, so I figured so would his. 

   We somehow got conned into making Yorkshire puddings for this upcoming zone training. The only problem that we will have is finding muffin trays. If we can't we will go to the backup plan. Which is bananas. They are cheep and easy, and they won't ask us to make stuff for the zone again. So really it is a win win. 

   That's it for this week. Hope every one has a great week next week! 

Love,

Elder Walker

This is a very common grocery store. We buy food here. neat huh?