Week 12

I have no idea what week I'm on. I just finished climbing Lions Rock, which you can see the entire city from the top. I was only completely drenched in sweat. So now I'm just chilling in a Apple store and probably smelling really bad so yeah.It was really tiring it may only be like 2.5 miles but its almost all stairs, so my legs are killing me right now, but the view was worth it. Last week for p day we got 12 Elders together and played soccer on a turf field, and I can say I am definitely not even close to as good as I was before, but it was a lot of fun. We just need to do it in December when it's not super humid and hot. 

We are holding the Book of Mormon

The last 2 days have been the hottest time of the year. It almost hit 100 degrees and add the humidity.  I'm soaked when I just walk over to the church for a lesson, but I've gotten used to it. So me and my companion planned to have weekly planing last Thursday, but we still haven't gotten around to it, so hopefully today maybe? I've become pretty good friends with a recent convert named Jackie who is 12, and we just like to mess with each other because I still can't really have a conversation with him. He does like to troll me a little bit. He pretended to be someone else when he found out it was me and it took a good couple of minutes to figure out he was messing with me. so that's how the language is going. OK it's not that bad, but that was kind of funny. Did I mention I lost our phone last week? We were taking a little break from finding, and my trainer was trying to make me make a phone call (I'm stuck carrying it around) Somewhere during that conversation a giant Cockroach ran by and scared both of us, which made us run away of course. After we just started finding again only to realize the phone wasn't in my pocket anymore. When we returned to the spot, the phone was gone and nowhere to be found. Apparently i put it down during that time, so it's actually the cockroaches fault not mine, but no worries the office just gave us a new phone.

I'm pretty sure I have won every game of 21 in the mornings when we play basketball, and everyone gets pretty mad because I make like 5 3s in every game. So yeah that's my life this week in Hong Kong. The lessons were lacking this week. We had a couple people cancel on us, and we have been trying to catch up on records. So that's taken a lot of time. That's one of the problems of not having iPads. We got like 5 10 pound binders full of records that we had to catch up on. I never expected so much paper work on my mission!!

Love ya all

Elder Eveson

On top of Lion Rock

We are all wet when we play soccer in 100 degree

Beautiful Hong Kong

Week 11 - 2 weeks in Hong Kong

Yay I've been in Hong Kong for almost 2 weeks now!! I'm still adjusting to all the heat and humidity. Actually I've just accepted I'll be sweating 24/7 for the next couple of months because AC is really like really expensive here and we only get 2 hours of it a day and sleeping time. The nice thing is we do teach most of our lessons at the chapel which has AC but sadly we do all of our studying in the apartment, and as I was thinking of what I was gonna say this week I realized I have like nothing to say, so here is a short shpeel about my week. We kill alot of cockroahes every night. I get alot of mosqito bites here, which was something I wasn't expecting. Oh and did I mention it's hot here?? ok well here are a couple things from this week. 

This week went great. Sister Chan, one of our investigators, got baptized the same day as her granddaughter and it was great to have her entire family there even though some are inactive or not members. Both her and her granddaughter were both super excited to finally be baptized. She has such a strong testimony of the gospel, and it has been a great experience to teach her even with my limited Cantonese.

On average, we teach 2-3 lessons a day and during the free time we will go finding in the hot sun. I've been asked what do I eat here, and I eat a lot of bakery for dinner. There are a couple of shops by the chapel and it is dirt cheap. I can buy enough bakery to fill me for the rest of the day for like 2 dollars. 

So last p day we decided to just play basketball with another set of Elders (Elder Chen and Peterson) at a different chapel, and for some reason we couldn't get the hoop down. We tried it like 30 times and it didn't work. So we grabbed like a 100 chairs and used it as a net to play some badminton. After that and failing to get the nets down again, we decided to shoot with the hoops up and of course we got the ball stuck. Let's just say we got both of Elder Chen's shoes stuck on top of the backboard trying to gett it down. After about 20 minutes of trying to get his shoes down, another set of Elders showed up and lowered the hoop with the exact same keys we were using. So the moral of the story is we will never give the keys to Elder Chen again.

We did have one cool experience this week while finding. We were on a bridge, and my trainer was like "which way do you want to go, and I was like immmmm let's choose the right. The very first person who was an old man we talked to for about 20 minutes, about his previous religion and about Jesus Christ, and it turned out he had a pass along cards from some sister missionaries in his pocket from about 8 months ago! Isn't that crazy!! He was really interested and said if he wasn't so sick all the time that he would definitely be willing to go to church. The only bad thing is that he doesn't have a phone, but he did tell us where we could find him at anytime of the day. That was a great experience to me because I thought I was choosing a random direction to go, but instead we were lead right to someone who wanted to listen to our message. ( I am now home and editing this 3 years later but i wanted to talk about what happened to him after this. We taught brother Lee every once in a while at the park we met him in. He had a very serious form of cancer which prevented him from being able to really progress. He was always really nice to us, but over time lost his faith in God due to his lack of health. we continued to swing by while we were finding just to say hi, but sadly that's all that really happened.)

This week we are emailing in a library and planning to go to some turf fields to play soccer. We don't really know we are going to do because it's raining, and apparently a typhoon could come in today, so yeah that's fun.

So it's still really hot and humid, but I still love it here, and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord here in Hong Kong, so until next week!!

Love ya all

Elder Eveson

So I have been lacking on my picture taking and have 1 from this week and it isn't a good one, so sorry I promise some next week

Week 10 - Hong Kong!

Well, I didn't get to email when I first got here, so I have been here for 6 days now! My trainer in Elder Jensen from Ephraim Utah and he actually turns 19 today. So yeah I'm a year older than my trainer, and I have about 6 inches on him. 

We got picked up at the air port by president and sister Lam and the assistants. i asked them if the heat was as bad as i remembered it at the end of June, and they said "it isn't actually that bad today" we then walk outside and i started immediately sweating haha. Elder Earls' glasses actually fogged up a couple of seconds after we walked outside haha.

My first 2 nights I stayed at the mission home in Kowloon and I felt like everyone I talked knows my grandma which is crazy, the office Elders, Mission President and his wife, and the AP's. and I also had a dinner appointment with one of my mom's friends here! On Thursday, I met my trainer and had to say bye to my entire district, except Elder Earls, who actually lives in my apartment. I was assigned to the Tuen Mun area in the New Territories and is like a hour outside of town. The second I got there we went to 3 straight lessons, so you can say my first day was really long. It was a lot of walking in the extreme heat and humidity. Our last lesson was a good 30 minute walk from the nearest light rail station into the boonies of our area out in the middle of nowhere haha. And let me tell you! You remember i thought my Chinese was decent? Well that was a lie! I've realized the teachers speak super slow and really simple in order for you to understand! I can't understand anything being said here! Luckily Elder Jensen's Chinese is super good and he did a lot of the talking

with me jumping in with a simple testimony and stuff like that.

So in Hong Kong  the schedule is from 7am to 11pm, but we wake up at 6:30 to go play basketball at the park, so no 8 hours of sleep for a while! There are 6 Elders in my apartment and there is like no space in it. We got 6 beds in a tiny living room and its super hot because we only get 2 hours of air condition a day and 8 for sleeping. So have accepted that I'll be sweating 24/7 until Octoberish.

On Wednesday we  volunteer at a charity called crossroads. It's located at a old refugee camp, and it's really run down so we usually do maintenance and clean up there. the regular volunteers do more of the day to day work such as shipping and that stuff.

Yesterday one of our investigators Sister Chan had her baptismal interviews and she passed!! so we got a baptism next Sunday! Her testimony is strong and she really had a desire to be baptized! she started tearing up when she bore her testimony in our last lesson!!

So yesterday was my first Sunday, I had to bear my testimony in Chinese for the first time in front of a group, and they had me and my companion sit on the stand with the Bishopric. I said like 3 words but I think it went well I guess. 

So right now I'm in Kowloon emailing in a Apple store with about 20 other Elders, so I guess this is the place to hangout on P-day. We have like our own little section in the store!

I'm running low on time, but that's about it.Ii love it here even if I'm constantly feeling super gross, but the work is growing here in Hong Kong!!

love you all

Elder Eveson

Last week in MTC 

We left MTC to Hong Kong

Week 8 - Almost Out of Here!

I GOT MY FLIGHT PLANS!!! I leave for Hong Kong Monday morning! I thought this day would never come, but in no way am I ready to leave the MTC. I guess I know enough Chinese to get by (not true), but that is expected. I wasn't expecting to be fluent after just 9 weeks. My stay here at the MTC has been a life changing experience. I have learned so much in the short 9 weeks I have been here. My testimony has grown so much here and I have made so many great friends. 

So this week I was called as a zone leader for the last week (I was district leader 7 of the last 8 weeks), and we have 23 new missionaries coming into our zone today, so I am in charge of giving them a little orientation and welcoming them to the MTC and helping them adjust to their new life in the MTC. That also means that our zone is doubling in size in one day! And there are over 800 people entering the MTC. The curb was crazy today. With 800 missionaries coming in, that meant there were some 800 hosts waiting to greet everyone so yeah this place is absolutely crazy. There are also 171 new Mission Presidents coming in today and most of the Apostles are here too, so the main building is shut down to all missionaries. So we now have to eat our meals in the gym which means I can't play basketball anymore :(, but its all good I still love it here.

This morning our entire zone did a temple session today, that was great. I am so lucky to be able to go to the temple every week here, and having a temple in Hong Kong and being able to go every transfer. 

And the Cavs won the finals so I guess I'm still kind of mad about that. Funny story about how I found out. My companions friends was leaving so she gave my companion a box of cereal, which I was holding. when I found out Clevland won by some random Elders I threw the box at the ground and kicked it and he wasn't very happy with me. That may not be that funny, but when you haven't really seen the real world in 8 weeks stuff like that makes you laugh like crazy.  

Well this is my last email from here in the MTC, the next time you hear from me I'll be in Hong Kong!!

LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Elder Eveson

Zone Picture

 My basketball buddy Elder Lloyd who's off to Argentina ​



more friends off to Argentina 



The man the myth the legend President Newell

Elder Eveson with Elder Lange from Germany

Zone Sleep Over



Week 7

ummmmmmmmm so nothing out of the ordinary happened this week. Just another week full of classes and learning one of the hardest languages in the world, which is really a struggle, but is slowly coming. It's crazy to think that in 2 weeks, I'll be in Hong Kong, and I'm not gonna be able to understand what anybody is saying, but I am still super excited to go! 

The MTC is absolutely crazy right now. Next week there are going to be 118 new Mission Presidents are gonna be here to be trained, and almost all the Apostles and 1st Presidency are gonna be here for the training. It's really cool that they're all gonna be here, but they close off more than half of the cafeteria and there's like 800 missionaries coming in next week, so the rest of my MTC is gonna be absolutely crazy.

The last couple of days here have been extremely hot ( I really don't like the heat) so when it rained one day I was literally the happiest man here in the MTC. So many people were complaining and I was like FINALLY!! 

Sorry I didn't have alot to say this week. I do get my travel plans on Friday, so me and my district are super excited for that. Another sorry for not having any pictures this week. I didn't take any this week and I already know my Mom's gonna be mad but oh well. Once again I'm sorry Mom!!

Love you all!!

Elder Eveson

Week 6 - One by One

My new name tag both in Chinese and English

Well another week down, and only 3 more to go. I have really come to love this place, but I am definitely ready to leave, but too bad I still got 3 weeks to go. We got a new district last week, and and they're alright I guess, and since I'm now a part of the oldest district in the zone, we finally had the opportunity to pull the same pranks on them that were done to us. So there is this little puppet of a Chinese lion and what we did was while all of the Elders were in the stalls we have a little drum, and we have the lion dance around the stalls and we flicker the light. Yeah it's pretty pathetic, but when you're in the MTC for this long everything becomes funny. The Elders just laughed, and we deny it ever happened. We just say it was the mysterious "poop" dragon that only strikes when a new district comes.

The language is still extremely hard. This last week has been extremely hard teaching our "investigators" which our teachers act as investigators they had. One had a baptismal date, and a couple days before, he said he no longer wanted to be baptized because he said his family would abandon him if he did. It's extremely hard to first figure out what we should do, and second we don't know how to say a lot of stuff. He just keeps throwing curve balls at us every time we teach him, and we don't have time to prepare for them and our other "investigators" don't keep their commitments, so that can be frustrating at times. I guess they're just prepping us for the field and having us figure out how to help people with their problems on their own.

So Elder Bednar spoke here yesterday, and it was probably one of the most powerful devotionals I've ever heard, and that's saying a lot. I've seen several different apostles speak in person, but this one was just so different. The foundation of his talk was that Jesus Christ Knows every single one of us personally. His talk was titled "One by One", and he used the Saviors visit to the America's in 3 Nephi as the foundation of his devotional. I usually space out during some parts of every devotional, but this time my eyes and ears were glued on the podium, and I listened to every word he said. After his remarks the choir of over 800 missionaries sang a song that he wrote called "One by One" and it was the first time it had ever been performed, and it will be published in the New Era next month, and I highly recommend reading through the lyrics. It's such a powerful song, and singing it after a talk by a Apostle of the Lord it that much better. 

So that's everything that happened this week. It's the MTC nothing happens. I don't know what happens out in the real world except for the NBA finals I got my connections here in the MTC. Go Warriors! Wish it was the Blazers, but oh well! Oh and one last thing people keep asking me hows the food here, and a scriptures that describes it perfectly is Jeremiah 4:19 and you'll probably break down laughing, or else it means the MTC has broken me. 

Love you all!!!

Elder Eveson

  Yeah, that's why I don't like to wear glasses.  That is my comp's glasses

week 5

Well 5 weeks down and 4 more to go until I'll be on a plane to Hong Kong!! The oldest district of the zone left yesterday morning, so that means my district is now the oldest. Along with them leaving, we inherited all their Elder's food and decorations. We got a couple of Chinese posters, mini Chinese dragons, and the best part was probably over 50 pounds of food, and right now we have no idea what to do with it. Everyone here is really gonna miss them, and Ii guess I'm gonna need to find some new people to play basketball with everyday. 

So here in the MTC they don't announce who is speaking at devotionals until about 20 minutes before it starts, but I did found out Elder Bednar is speaking here next week, and I'm sooooo excited for that! 2 Apostles in 3 weeks what could be better than that? Another thing is my companions have been dragging me along to choir every week even though I'm the worst singer in the world and we're performing a new song never heard before that was written by Elder Bednar, and we're gonna sing it with one of his 4 year old granddaughters WHAT COULD BE COOLER THAN THAT!! I'm super excited for next week.

Lastly, because Hong Kong is such an international city, our name tags have both English and Chinese on them, and in my opinion I think they look pretty cool. I saw mine at the front desk, but I won't get it until later this week so I'll send a picture of it next week.

 Sorry I didn't have a lot to say this week because nothing really happened this week.

 I love you all

Elder Eveson