Week 25 - Zone Training

Another great week here in the China Hong Kong Mission. Not alot to report on this week, other than we had a boss Zone training, where we talked about getting referrals for 3 hours. We even had a NCAA tournament bracket made for different ways to ask for referrals. We had to go back and forth asking "Do you know anyone" questions, and if you couldn't think of one you were out. Elder Cornilles from Tualatin Oregon took the championships. Yeah I lost in the second round.

Right after Zone Training we went to Tin Shui Wai which is like 2 wards over from mine, and taught someone who totally called us from a flier we gave them. First time that's ever happened for any missionary, but anyways it was a great lesson and she kept saying "God totally arranged this!!!" We also taught her son, and he also seemed super interested. His eyes were glued on whoever was speaking the entire time, and it was awesome. So powerful. (But Sadly when the missionaries in the area tried to contact them it turned out her son got super antied and passed it to his mom.)

Zone Picture

The only other significant event to happen this week was on Saturday I went on exchanges with Elder Stratford, one of my Zone leaders in Yuen Long and he's a Mandarin missionary. We taught a couple of lessons, and I had no idea what was happening, the only thing I was able to do was bear my testimony at the end. I did learn a lot from him though, and while on the trains going back and forth if someone didn't know Mandarin it went straight to me, which is like the first times that's happened to me, but it was a lot of fun.

The rest of the week, we met with some recent converts, and we met with our RC Jacky for the first time in a month because he is at school, and its a lot of fun teaching him. We get some laughs in, but also he teaches himself a lot which is great.

So that's my report on  the week, now I'm off. I need to get myself a new suit!!

Love you all

Elder Eveson

The Bracket

Distracted Weekly Planning

Week 24 - A Missionary's "Super Bowl Weekend"

Nothing really special happened this week other than Conference, and it was awesome!! I guess the coolest thing was we met a guy on the street named Shawn, who is from Nigeria, and he had 2 young kids who were black and obviously preferred Chinese over English. Actually now that I think of it they may only know a little English, but they were the coolest little kids, but anyways Shawn seemed super interested!! He even asked us for our phone number and we have been in contact with him, so we are super excited to teach him, or see how he does if we hand him over to some of the English missionaries.

Chelsea and Munich Bayern in Central
(If you know soccer, you will know them)

Talking about conference, we, missionaries call it the Superbowl weekend for missionaries!! I loved how the priesthood session started off. Elder Holland started by blessing the Priesthood holders about home teaching, and we missionaries just started dying because Elder Holland was also talking to us, but the talks that stood out to me the most was Elder Stevenson on the Saturday afternoon session. I loved his challenge to give up some of your TV/ phone time and read the Book of Mormon. He said if you can give 10 minutes to reading it, it could make a big difference in your life, and ain't that the truth!! I also love Elder Rasband's talk to end the Conference. If any of you are struggling with your testimony GO READ HIS TALK!!! I promise it will help!!

There isn't really anything out of the ordinary to report this week. No super spiritual lessons, just spiritual. English Class is becoming really good. When I got here we averaged 5 or 6 people at a class, but the last 2 weeks its been like 18-20 people, and there are regulars that have been coming for months, who are just now starting to meet with the missionaries. Its awesome!!

Today we had a ward activity and we just got back from Central. We went to a old church chapel that was turned into a Museum, and before it was a chapel. It was owned by a super rich guy. so yeah they had church in a mansion before! We also went around to some of the historical sites around there it was pretty fun.

So that was my week!! Shout out to my buddy Elder Loftus who I saw in the MTC choir that sang in Conference!!

Love you all

Elder Eveson

Us and Sister Yeung

Central, Hong Kong

My new friend at church

Week 23 - Trainee No More!

Very little to report this week. I just hit my 5 month mark last week, and it's crazy that I've already been out this long. Last monday we went to Ikea and had some very good food. Elder Oquist is from Sweeden  and he loved it there. So almost everything here in Hong Kong are both translated into Chinese and English, but there they had a 3rd language Sweedish, and he was freaking out!! We had some good meatballs, and we dropped some good money of food there.

Wednesday at Crossroads (a charity where Elder Jensen and I volunteer every Wednesday) was alot of fun. The rooms there have been having leaks, so one of the people in charge of fixing it was like "I know tar works, so I'm trying to convince my boss to buy more tar for this problem". So me and Elder Jensen spent a couple of hours on a room tarring the roof. It was fun and got some tar all over my legs and some on my fingers. That wasn't fun getting off, but the rest was actually fun, a lot better than weeding, that is for sure! After that, we had a zone find out in a new complex in HSK, We scheduled to be finding for 2 hours, but we spent over a hour talking to a very interesting man, and by we I mean Elder Jensen because the guy went on a 30 minute rant, and my brain can't process Chinese that long, so I got the beginning, but slowly zoned out. So there is something I could improve on. We then went on to ask him if he had any friends who might want to hear about the gospel, and he took us into the nearby shop and started introducing us to random people there haha! Most of them said they didn't even know who he was and told him to get lost!

Yeah we taught  some lessons, got Sister Tsang to a baptismal date!! Now we just need to help resolve her concerns. She loves meeting with us, and loves sharing about what she reads in the Book of Mormon, now we just need to help her stop smoking which we know she can do!

So that was pretty much my week. today we are meeting up with Elder Jensen's trainer and going to a the largest dirty mall in Hong Kong, and apparently they have dirt cheap gummy candies over there!

oh I totally forgot this week I finished training so I am no longer a trainee!!!

Love ya all

Elder Eveson

The epic walk in the ghetos of Hong Kong

Week 22 - Training a Mandarin?

So what another crazy week here in Hong Kong. A little miracle happened after we emailed in the Apple store in Central. We were 3 stops from Central when Elder Jensen found out he left his SD card in the computer in the Apple store. He was having a little panic attack the whole train ride back and almost died when it wasn't in the computer, but someone turned it into lost and found so everything was great!

That night we exchanged with the Mandarin Elders for 24 hours and Elder Rostedt another trainee that was with me in the MTC was my companion on Tuesday. That day, a new member who was baptized a week ago in another ward named Sister Yeung moved to our ward that day, and I was talking to the Elders in the Sgeung Shui Ward and it was arranged that we would meet her at the bus stop and help take her stuff to the apartment. I was supper nervous because I have trouble understanding older people because they slur their words a lot, and she called me and I had a mini panic attack. When we finally met with her, I was like "this is gonna be interesting" but then the gift of tongues really kicked in. I didn't understanding everything, but I got a lot of it, so we helped her move in had some dinner and went out finding. And once again I understood a lot of what people were saying! I handed out 1 Book of Mormon the 1st one I've actually handed out too! There was one person I was talking to that was normal and he was listening to me, but his friends was very interesting. She was speaking in half Cantonese and Mandarin. So Elder Rostedt tried to talk to her and me to the guy. We ended up giving him a restoration pamphlet, so yeah Tuesday was very interesting but also a lot of fun!

Also this week at crossroads, they needed some cleaning under their shipping containers, so what they did was just lift the containers with a crane, and we would sweep under it! yeah probably not the smartest thing to do walking under themm but, I'm here writing about it so we're all OK!

Another really cool thing Mrs. Tsang said we can no longer call her Mrs. and only can call her sister now haha! and she also accepted her baptismal invitation and said she was willing to try her best to stop smoking! Great things are happening in Tuen Mun! After the lesson a couple of YM from our ward, and a YW from the next ward over were studying in the chapel with a non member friend who elder Jensen actually taught a couple of times before i got to Hong Kong. We tried several times to schedule him but he was always "too busy". Well his friends pressured him into a lesson with us haha and we taught the plan of salvation. It was a little awkward but we were able to turn him over to the Butterfly elders a couple of days later!. (3 years later! his name was Tsui Chun Ho, and he is now a legit stud! He was baptized like a month later, and has stayed super active! I think he is even on a mission now!)

Then yesterday we had a 8 year old get baptized and his father called like every less active in our ward to come and we had like 7 come! it was awesome that was the first time they have been in the church in years and we looked around while singing "Nearer my God to Thee" and they were all singing! We are super excited to work with our Elders Quorum's President to meet with these people. Most of them still have a testimony, but here in Hong Kong it's work work and more work.

So thats my week! love you all!!

Elder Eveson

Me and Elder Rostedt

Also found a Lillard Jersey last week!

Week 21

My zone handed out 604 of Book of Mormon in August

To start off the week last Monday we went out to lunch with a member that lives on the other side of Hong Kong in Ma On Shan (I'll later finish my mission here!) but is known for feeding the missionaries very expensive food. He took us and 3 other companionships to a Japanese buffet in Tsim Sha Tsui and is super expensive. It was the first time I have ever had gourmet food in my life, and we all ate until we almost threw up. I had some Kobe beef, Caviar, King Crab, Lamb, and some other really good stuff I didn't know what it was. Even the corn was amazing!

This week was probably the hottest week here. In our apartment the average temperature has been in the low to mid 90's but there is nothing I can do about that. 

This week the lessons really didn't come. We did drop one investigator (Tim) but over the last month or so he stopped progressing and only scheduled when he had English questions to ask, and he already started talking to other Elders about it too, which really frustrated me and Elder Jensen. But also this week we taught probably the most powerful lesson so far on my mission and Elder Jensen said it was the same for him. One of our investigators sister Tsang who is going through a struggle choosing the church or a bad influence friend. She went to English class she seemed perfectly normal, but when we met with her after she was just not responding to anything. Then she straight up said  some personal things that I won't say and me and our member present turned to Elder Jensen and we  were like "I have no idea what to say". I could tell he was also panicking inside a little, and he kind of eased it into the Plan of Salvation. Then I really felt like I needed to share a specific scripture in Alma 7 and talked about Christ's suffering for all of us in order to know all our phyical, mental, and spiritual pains. After that it was like something changed in her. She was more engaged in the lesson and we both felt even though that was not in the lesson plan, it completely changed to entire lesson for the better. It was AWESOME!

Sunday we had stake conference and we had 4 investigators and 2 less actives there!

Today we decided to head to the island and hangout in the main part of Hong Kong (Central). My entire apartment got super nice matching ties for like $3.75 US and just had some fun. So yeah that's pretty much my week!

Love you all

First time eat Caviar

The group in the Buffet 

Sunset outside our apartment

Ran into my grandma's friend at Stake Conference

Central

Elder Eveson

Week 20 - Cheng Out Heaven!

So another great week in Tuen Mun down. Nothing out of the ordinary that happened this week other than last night we walked in the door right at exactly 10 again, so you could say we sometimes loose track of time when we have later lessons, but we didn't need call the president so that was nice. I totally did share the 1st vision on the street for the first time, but the guy was just being nice and let us talk to him. The second we brought up the Book of Mormon he decided to "go home" which happens alot here in Hong Kong  partly because the church screwed up the tranlations back in the day. they have since changed the name to better fit the English, but the damage has already been done haha. It's always nice when people actually listen to us explaining the translation errors haha.

We do have 1 super good investigator though. Her name is Mrs. Tsang she is super super good. She reads like everyday and always calls us to talk about what she has learned and she was like "I know I need to stop smoking in order to be baptized" before we mentioned the Word of Wisdom. So that's really the only struggle with her, but got some resources from the Assistants which should be able to help, so we are super excited for that.

Now to talk about the title of this email. Here in Hong Kong we call people feeding us "Cheng Outs", and we had 3 this week and one right after I finish emailing. So anyways next week is the Mid Autumn Festival so we are getting fed by members quite a bit this week. on Wednesday our Bishop (Bishop Wong) took us out to eat at a pretty nice restaurant with him and his wife, and it was super cool getting to get to know him better, and it was such a good meal!! Then Saturday we visited the 2nd Councelor in the Bishopric and got to know him a little better, and last night we visited the Elders Quorum President's (Future bishop) home and had more food, so this week was a lot of fun, but I'm most excited for the meal I'm gonna eat when I finishing emailing. A member that I have never met, but is loaded rich is taking all the Elders that work in Tuen Mun (so also Butterfly and Castle Peak Bay Wards) and also the HSK Elders to one of the most expensive restaurants in Hong Kong over in Tsim Sha Tsui!! he's taking us because last week was Elder Ledingham's birthday, so I'm super excited about that. It's an all you can eat very nicce Japanese buffet!

I guess the only thing that happened this last week was on Thursday it was Elder Ledingham's birthday, and the entire apartment pretended to forget (even his companion) and he even told people that we all forgot, but we bought a cake and some other yummy food and suprised him when he got out of the shower so it was a fun night.

Love you all and thanks for the love and support!

Elder Eveson

Week 19 - First Zone Conference

Well this week was probably the craziest week so far on my mission. It all started right after P day ended last week when we went finding. The first person we met we talked to on the street for over an hour and he invited us to his home! He fed us a lot of food and me and Elder Jensen were like "what is happening" but it was super cool and we talked to his son a little bit, The sad thing is we didn't have time to share a message because we needed to be home by 10 and by the time we finished eating it was 9:45. so we got his phone number and ran to the train station, and of course the train was gonna take 10 minutes to arrive and we needed to be in our apartment in 10 minutes, so Elder Jensen had the "bright idea to run home, and I was like no that's crazy, that's almost 2 miles away and the next thing I knew we were sprinting home. We did make it back before the train, but we were still about 5 minutes late and drenched in sweat, and I was honestly in a really bad mood because um I ran almost 2 miles in dress shoes, slacks, a white shirt and tie oh and of course I was carrying a bag too! I bet people were like "them Mormons are crazy" haha, but looking back it's a good story to laugh at and give Elder Jensen a hard time. We now call that experience the "Siu Hong River Run" because we ran from Siu Hong station along the river! (3 years later i still give him crap about it!)

Another cool experience this week we visited a member in our ward and we just like to visit him every couple of weeks because he has no family named brother Tang, but we were able to get Jacky a recent convert who was baptized the week before i got to Hong Kong and is 12 and he totally helped us which was awesome! He is such a great kid and the only member in his family! Anyways brother Tang is a little off and lives in a retirement home, but really enjoys our visits. 

Saturday was probably the craziest day this week because we had zone conference! it was awesome because every single training that day was focused around Jesus Christ and his atonement. Then right when we got back we met with one of our newer investigators sister Tsang and she is super excited to learn about the church and she totally went to church on Sunday, and me and Elder Jensen actually had to help teach primary and she stayed by herself and totally participated in Sunday School! Well back to Saturday after her lesson we visited a less active family and they welcomed us in and fed us dinner and we totally retaught everything we heard during zone conference that day about the atonement. Then we ended up having the same problem as on Monday and there was no way we were gonna make it back by 10 so we called President Lam to let him know, and a miracle happened because some how we hopped on the train went 3 stops sprinted home and was in the door by exactly 10! We were pretty proud of that.

And the week just gets getting better because on Sunday we had 4 investigators come to church, and a random guy walking in to learn about family history! and Jason one of the Priests in my ward bore his testimony on the savior, and some things we shared last night with the less active, He really never realized that part of the atonement, so yeah this week was great!

love ya all

Elder Eveson

oh and Elde mcgrath got transferred this last week and is training and white washing in Kowloon City!