Chuffing Pipes. Week 78 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   This has been yet another week lived in Hong Kong. The weather was actually a bit chilly this week so that was really great. 

   Well the subject line is a quote from my companion Elder Taylor. We had yet another water based emergency in the Tai Po apartment. This time we discovered a large amount of water coming out from a cupboard under the sink. Turns out the pipe that accepted the drainage from the washing machine came off. So we made a few attempts to fix it  but with no success. So we are yet again out a washing machine until the office elders can help us out. So we can stay tuned for that next week. 

   We had a lovely Zone training meeting. All of the trainings went really well. I gave one and used an awesome analogy to formula one, about starting your relationships with Investigators properly so that everything just goes much smoother. I think it was cool. I showed a couple videos of F1 starts and pace laps. It was fun. I forgot how cool Formula One is.

   Nothing else too out of the ordinary happened.  We were less active finding and accidentally knocked on a members door who was completely active. So we just shared a quick message and had a nice little chat and got out of her hair. I think it was nice. 

   Sister Chen left and so we had a ward party for her. I will put some pictures up from that. 

   Also the sisters form my group left this week. That is supper weird!!!!!! That means that the clock is really ticking now and I am really conflicted about going home.  The sisters that were trained in the MTC with him are the ones that went home. 

Love,

Elder Walker

some of these will be of people, but most will be of things. 

Tony one of our Inv. who moved to England this week. super sad to see him go.

Tolo Harbor Zone and a third of the hosts of heaven who were cast out.

sister training leaders and Zone leaders 

the Missionaries and Sister Chen who left.

us and Dennis. One of the members who is supper funny

MOVE CALLS Week 77 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   Well as the title suggests we got move calls last night. That was fun. None of the Elders in the Zone are changing so that is good I like all of them. Some of the sisters are changing and they are opening Tai Wo sisters. Which means that we will get sisters in the district. That will be weird again. One of the sister training leaders is going so we are getting a new one. We are all really sad about that. However there are no mistakes in the mission field so we just press on.

   Speaking of which, this Thursday we got to watch a world wide broadcast from Salt Lake. That was really good of course. They changed the schedule which is interesting. The major change is that planning is now the first thing in the morning, lunch is half an hour, and we only do planning and 30min of personal study on p-day. The changes take some time to get used to but are nice. The thing I like most is the half hour of journal writing time at the end of the day. The thing I like the least is the 30  min of lunch, only because that is less time than it takes just to make rice never mind eat it and be out the door. And you can forget about washing the dishes. There is just not a way to do it. So we end up having to have a crappy second half of language study so that we can actually eat.

   So every month the Zone leaders and Sister training leaders put on a 3 hour training meeting. We learned earlier that that would not be happening anymore so we were not ready when President Lam announced the fact that we will be teaching one this Tuesday!!! By the end of tonight we will have put in about 6 hours of planning. Then add the study time that has suddenly been filled with preparing for this meeting. I am really excited for it though. I am making a really cool analogy to Formula 1. Specifically the importance of the start. That will be really cool.

Gordon would set his alarm and get up in he middle of the night to watch Formula 1 races!

   We have almost come out of the Chinese New year celebrations so that is great. We saw a really cool dragon dance that I will try and send. The drums are supper loud!!!

He didn't attach a video.

That is all for this week!

Love,

Elder Walker

Happy New Year!!! Week 76 from Hong Kong

San lihn fai lohk!!!! (Happy new year! with no tones)

   Well this was an interesting week indeed. We had Chinese new year. It is a week or so long celebration which started on Saturday. So today is day 3. Which means that most of the shops are closed. So that will make buying groceries an adventure. It is a good thing that the members are in a good mood and like to invite us over for dinner during this time of the year. Welcome everyone to the year of the chicken! (or rooster but there is no difference in Chinese) So that was fun. However because it is new year most of the people we meet with are busy or in mainland or something like that.  

   Last Monday we had our yearly deep clean. That was fun. We completely re-arranged the furniture and stuff. I think we might have made it worse. That or we just changed the problems that we had. One new problem is that Elder Taylor has had a broken desk for a while. So the housing elders brought him a new one. It was from Ikea and therefore he had to build it. To be fair he did quite well. aside from putting the top desk surface on backwards. So now there is a hole right where one would normally write things. haha he was so sad. It is not fixable so no going back now. 

   I went on exchanges with Elder Harding. He is one of the district leaders and he his hilarious! SO that was a lot of fun. While he was here elder Darrington did his eyebrows. So that was fun hahaha. 

   We also had a meeting with the sister Training leaders to talk about new key indicator goals for the next month. I was really glad that we did that, because last night when elder Darrington and I were totaling the numbers and things we definitely did not have time do talk about it so I was really glad that we had done that. 

   More next week!

Love,
Elder Walker

This was one of my language studies this week. It is the sacrament prayer in Chinese

this is our ghetto dryer exhaust pipe

Elder Taylor trying to build his desk. you can see the hole I am talking about.

Good grief!  That is one messy apartment!

Elder Harding getting his eyebrows done part 1

This made us laugh!  Who knew this was a thing that Elders do?

Elder Harding getting his eyebrows done part 2

Exchanges. Week 75 from Hong Kong

Hello all,

   First off I don't think that there is spell check on this computer this week so we might be in for a nice treat. haha good luck trying to read this. 

   This week was pretty standard. Elder Darrington and I had to go to the other district leaders district meeting. That was fun. They are all really good. One of the district leaders asked us to give a training when we came. So we were talking about finding people to teach. So we wrote the word "referral" on our legs and made some joke about thinking outside the "socks" and then rolled our pants up and showed it off. haha it was really funny.

   Then I went on exchange with Elder Lee. He is a native from HK so I got to listen to nice Cantonese all day, as opposed to most trainees. haha.

Elder Taylor is great and he is really funny and we all love him. So that is great.

   This Friday we got to go to the Temple and that is awesome!!! While we were coming down we saw a very, very tall man in the dressing room. Turns out it was Bishop Christopher Waddell. I am not sure if I spelled his name right. Anyway he is the presiding bishop of all the church and spoke in a broadcast to all the missionaries awhile a go. He was really nice so we got to speak to him for a few min. That was cool.

   Then that Friday night we got invited over to the Lau family for dinner. They have a daughter that just got back from her mission in LA. They are a lovely family. The food was great too. It was a little weird because one of the missionaries we went with knew the daughter in the MTC... and the clock keeps ticking.

   I also got to say goodbye to one of the sisters in my group. She was going home a little early for school. But it is still weird to see her go.

   Yeah it was a pretty normal week. Today as per the Chinese tradition we are going to spend all day cleaning our house and re-arraigning the furniture.

Happy new year!!!!

Love,

Elder Walker

伍長老

bad picture of us and the rest of the district

Elder Darrington writing on my leg

me and Elder Lee

me and my district leader Elder Harding

us, our roommates and the Lau family

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