Week 39 - Chinese New Year/ Deep Clean

Hey everyone I don't have a lot of time, but I'll highlight some of the things from this week.

We had a zone find in TSW and it was a lot of fun, and I'm pretty sure me and Elder Smith won when it came to who got the most #s. We talked to a lot of cool people, and one part was pretty funny. We saw a high school aged kid and I was like "we got  free English class" and he responded in English I'm fluent I go to a international school. but he was super cool and got his number.

On Thursday we had the great opportunity to go to the temple and it was a great time to get away from the stress of missionary work. Also that night I taught for the 1st time with our Elders Quorum's President and he is super powerful and really wants to help our new investigator! Then in Elders Quorum he stressed on helping the missionaries!! Gotta love Brother Yu!

Then on Saturday I went on exchanges with Elder Chin from HSK and it was alot of fun, and I even go lost in our area. Actually I knew exactly where we were, but didn't know the best way back to the church because we always walked home from there.

Every Chinese New Year there is a tradition to clean their entire apartment. So missionaries do the same! so that's my entire P day!

So yeah that was my week love you all!

彥長老

Elder Eveson

Temple day pictures below!!

Week 38 - New Comp

Hey Everyone this week was amazing. Mainly because we saw alot of super cool things happen in the area. We have 2 new investigators and both Elder Smith and I think they have some legit potential! One, his name Agothon and he is a college student and we met him on the street and talked to him for 10 minutes or so and we scheduled him, met with him, rescheduled him and he had some super good questions. 

Then the second person we met is Brother Yiu who is actually quit a miracle. With him me and Elder Smith just had a name and a phone number we got off the street the day before and we both could not remember which person it was, and I honestly didn't remember getting the number at all. So I called him and asked if he would have time that we could meet up and we could share a message with him and he was like Sure! and i was like when!?! and he said tomorrow and I said is 8:30 good and he was like YA! and so we met him by his apartment. When we saw who it was me and Elder smith were like ooooohhhhh its him. We only talked to him for like 30 seconds and left and didn't think much of it. We went in planning to teach the restoration and as we did some get to know you questions he said he was baptized. and I asked which church, and he said yours. I didn't believe him and I showed him my name tag and he said yeah your church! and it turns out he was baptized some 30 years ago and talked about hanging out with the missionaries all the time, but like 20ish years ago had his records removed from the church because he didn't feel like he could "endure to the end" so we shared the atonement with him and he was really open about his problems. Then I shared something that was quoted in General Conference in October and I asked him if he has ever heard of it, and he told me he reads General Conference talks on his phone sometimes, and showed us the gospel library app on his phone and I was like "AWESOME" to simplify everything he came to church and enjoyed it and said he would come again next week and rescheduled! what a miracle right?!?!

Also President and Sister Lam spoke in our ward yesterday and it was super good. President Lam even promised our ward could reactivate/ baptized 30 people this year if they really believed, and put in some effort. And he also said members should feed the missionaries more and I was just sitting there holding in my laughs because I was like YESSSS!

Yeah rest of the week was finding a lot of potentials. We are gonna be on the phone a lot with all the numbers we've been getting! I really like some of the ideas Elder Smith is bringing to the area, and it really is helping the missionary work even better than before!

Love you all!

me and Elder Fakatou's new onsies PJS

My new companion, Elder Smith

Elder Guinn

Elder Tsang

Elder Eveson

Week 37 - Transfer week

Another great week down in the books. I've been in Tuen Mun my baby area for 6.5 months now and I'm loving it here. On Tuesday, we had our last zone training of the transfer on Joy and we spent alot of time discussing the atonement of Jesus Christ and in my opinion it was probably the most spiritual training so far on my mission, and that's saying a lot because we've had training from members of the 70 and President and Sister Lam. Then after, it was time to say bye to everyone leaving and the pictures at the bottom will explain a little of what happened after.

Wednesday we met with all the RCs (Recent Converts) from Tuen Mun since Elder Jensen got here and it was fun to just sit, eat and talk and share a message instead of a just regular lesson. So that was great. We also got to visit the Yu family on Friday night and they are a great family super nice super funny and they are the only family that are fluent in English and they usually don't have the chance to speak it, so it was a win win for both of us. And yes I may have played with toys with their kids only because they forced me to do it haha.

Thursday morning we went to Kowloon Tong to switch companions. Elder Jensen went back to Causeway Bay and Elder Smith came to Tuen Mun. Most of the days we have gone finding while I show him around the area. We have gotten like 10 phone numbers during those times so that's good, right!!

Oh yeah and there is alot of new people within the 3 wards in Tuen Mun. All 5 companionship's have someone new, so it's alot of adjusting in the field and also in the apartment!

Well I'm running low on time love ya guys!

彥長老

Elder Eveson

First 4 photos, after zone training and before transfer

Our investigator Shawn and his son

Week 36 - Happy New Year

Ayyyyy everyone since I skyped last P day I didn't get the chance to say Merry Christmas, but I can say Happy New Year!! So transfers are this week and on Thursday Elder Jensen will be moving back to his first area Causeway Bay on the Island and Elder Smith is coming to Tuen Mun. I've met him before but I don't know a lot about him, but it should be fun. Also Elder Oquist and Ledingham are going home this week, so that means everyone in the apartment are getting new comps too! and the funny thing is both have never heard of their new companions haha! Elder Earls was like "who is the world is Elder Guinn?" haha so last night was really interesting and also very messy with all the people packing. 

Our ward also decided to do a combined Christmas party with the butterfly ward, and they told the missionaries that they needed to perform 2 songs during the performance part of the party. Well since I'm a really bad singer, us elders had to get really creative! We sang Rudolph the red nose reindeer but you know made it a lot more fun and energetic! I was the guy yelling after every line stuff like "light bulb, Columbus, and all that good stuff!" Everyone loved it and it was definitely the highlight of the show! Then for the second performance (we didn't plan) all the missionaries just sang silent night haha. And of course Elder Earls had to be Santa!

Christmas was really fun we ate dinner at our bishops place and he actually got sick so his wife wouldn't let him eat any of the regular food or the ice cream, or the smoked Salmon. New years was nothing special I actually forgot it was new years until I got to church so that shows how my new years was haha, but everything is great. Since the last time I sent a mass email we got 2 solid baptismal dates 1 at the end of the month and 1 in mid February, So I'm excited for that. I finally got the chance to go to the one of the world's largest Buddha's somewhere I have never gone to in the several past trips to Hong Kong.

On Christmas day after church, we also visited brother Tam in the hospital again with bishop Wong and Bro Lo. He is doing a lot better now, and was able to laugh and mess around as well. He is still very sick, but his spirits is back to usual!

The workers at Cross Roads wanted to thank us for the service  we do every week, so we did a refugee simulation where we had to make paper bags and try to sell them to shop keepers and of course me being the person I am was the 1 person chosen to get picked on the most, which I didn't mind it was just funny. Then I was the one called out all the time. It was a lot of fun and crazy to realize what some people have to survive every week and what they are willing to sacrifice to live. So we gave the head guy of the charity David contact information with the churches refugee director and he was super excited to maybe work with the church.

A couple of weeks ago, sister Lin from our ward invited us to teach seminary, and the day i dreaded finally came haha! We were given about an hour to teach from the seminary manual, which happened to be from the bible (my bible knowledge and vocabulary isn't that great haha!) Also seminary started at 6:30 am! so we had to wake up at 5:30 in order to get to the chapel and prepare! I was pretty nervous, but of course everything went good and it was a great experience. Sadly only 2 people showed up that day haha. Then right after, I went on exchanges with elder Rostedt, and we helped a LA member move apartments, which was pretty difficult in suit pants, but oh well.

oh and we had a pretty boss zone Christmas Party that was capped of with Elder James one of the senior missionaries quoting the entire Grinch story word for word, that man is powerful and a stud. This is like his 4th mission in Hong Kong. He literally goes home after a mission and 2 months later has a new call and is again serving in Hong Kong.

zone selfie

So that's the highlights from the last couple of weeks, love ya all and hear from you next week!

Elder Eveson 彥長老

Week 34 - Merry Christmas

I'm gonna start off by saying this our numbers were very poor this week, but we got alot of stuff done. We visited a part member family on Monday and the daughter who is 10 and is not a member was completely cool with us coming over and teaching her. Also we got  2 other families to come to the performance of the Messiah and we are starting to work with them. One family already really likes us because they are regulars for our English class and they have a good relationship with all the missionaries in Tuen Mun!! (Kelvin, Katie, and Coco)

We also started teaching a guy from India named Chanresh. We started teaching him and he really likes me and Elder Jensen. He even woke up early to exercise with us haha. He has no religious background of God, so we slowly introduced that to him when we meet with him, and also the Messiah performance he stayed and talked to us and the other missionaries for like a hour!

Then the messiah performance itself was super good. It was 1.5 hours of straight music singing about Jesus and there was twice as many people than they were expecting, so I guess the smallest zone in the mission brought in by far the most people, so powerful!!

Then last night I probably had the most powerful experience on my mission. We visited a member in the hospital who fell and was paralyzed from the waist down, and got so sick he can barely talk and can't eat, and even with this circumstances he straight up told us he is still super happy and was so happy to see us. We gave him a Christmas card and a pass along card with a picture of baby Jesus and he kissed it and said he loves Jesus. I have never met someone as powerful as brother Tam and dispite all the challenges he faced family and physically he never lost his testimony. gotta love that man!! I also had the opportunity to give my first blessing ever in Cantonese. We offered to give one to him, and he said he wanted me to do it haha! I was super nervous, but with my limited Chinese I felt the spirit and gave him a simple blessing of comfort to overcome his life's challenges and also reminded God was aware of his pains and will always be with him. I was a great experience and testimony building experience for me. (He eventually was able to check out of the hospital, but wasn't able to come to church very often due to his health. He was such a great example of enduring to the end and keeping the faith despite his health problems. After my mission in July 2019 a year after i got home, I was able to meet up with Bishop Yu from the Tuen Mun ward. Sadly brother Tam passed away in early 2019, but he said he continued to stay faithful to the end. Such a great man!)


>
> So that's my week's highlights. so MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!
>
> Elder Eveson

Elder Fakatou dressed as Santa at his ward Christmas party!!!

 hey look a pig in the church saw the guy cut it into tiny pieces too and it was sooo good!

Exchanges in HSK finding on the border!

Week 33 - Another Week Down

Hey everyone, another week in the beautiful Hong Kong! Not alot happened this last week. The only things out of the ordinary was we had zone training on Tuesday. It was alot of fun. We all invited members to attend so we could practice teaching the Christmas initiative, and we also did a family feud game with districts againest districts, and I'm sad to say my district did not win, but its not about winning it's about learning right???

The Tuen Mun Elders also had the wonderful opportunity to teach English class!! and I didnt know we were teaching it until about 20 minutes before our weekly meeting to discuss what is gonna be taught.. so we literally planned the entire thing walking to the church, and guess what everyone loved it!!! They also really liked the church's Christmas video this year, so that was great.

ummmmm we also had a district find where we got kicked out of every place we went to, but did get 1 phone number!!! and I went on exchanges with Elder Hanson, which was alot of fun where we hit the streets and went finding for days!!! There are alot of great things happening this week in our stake, and we are hoping the members invite their friends to these activities. In hong kong a group of members are performing the Messiah and we have been told alot of non members will attend it, and the Asia Area Presidency wants the missionaries to go crazy at this event and talk to everyone!! It's gonna be AWESOME!!

Oh and I almost forgot on Saturday we visited less actives with the young men in our ward, and were able to drop off Christmas presents to them, and also share a Christmas message! They all really liked us visiting them, and it for some it was the first contact with church members in years, so some progress is being made!!

Remember that guy who was pressured by his friends to meet with us, and we turned over to the butterfly elders? Well he got baptized this week! (3 years later is on a mission now!)

Love you all for the love and support. hope you all have a great Christmas!!

Elder Eveson 彥長老

I took too many selfies with Elder Yeung & Huang

what 2 years on the mission will do to you haha

Week 32

AYYYYY all of my friends, everything has been great this week, and the highlights of the week was... 2 new investigators!!! Something that is really hard to find in Tuen Mun!!! but yeah thats cool. We got both of them to come to a meet the Mormons activity at our church, and half of our zone was there because they all got RCs, less active, or investigators! There were a total of 28 people there and we were expecting like 15 max!! Also something that I have forgotten to say this, but a couple of weeks ago when Elder Wong came and spoke to our mission he promised us that if we do what he taught us, the mission's baptisms in November and December would double what it was in September and October and guess what it's happening!! Our zone in November alone doubled the 2 months before, and there are more to come in this month too!! Also as a mission in 2 weeks, after the mission made some changes, baptismal dates went from like 60 to over a 100!!! It's so cool to see the work moving forward here in Hong Kong!

So this week I had to do a lot of exchanges this week as Elder Jensen had to start prepping for zone training tomorrow, so I spent a lot of time with Elder Clark in his area in Yuen Long, so I guess I'm now like a half Mandarin missionary even though I can't understand anything of what people are saying in Mandarin. I also got to go on exchanges with my district leader Elder Huang, and it was so much fun! Taught a couple of lessons and went finding, and learned a lot from him, so that was a lot of fun!

Also this week we had our quarterly interviews with President Lam, and all I can say is even though he's only been a member for like 20 years, he is a very powerful man. I always learn a lot from him and I respect him very much.

So that's my week. Our lessons have dipped in the last couple of weeks because of meetings and also the lack of investigators, but we are hoping our 2 new ones will start to show some potential!!

With Elder Yeung

New Suit made

Love you all!!!

 Tuen Mun Apartment

DIstrict Selfie

彥長老