Sunday, April 7, 2013

Birthday, Easter, Kelly Farewell--March 25-April 7, 2013



For Jennifer Chan's birthday we several of the couples took her to lunch at Al Dente, an Italian restaurant close to our building. Jennifer is a paralegal for the law department in Hong Kong for the Church.







Garnalee had a bad cold the week of March 24. She stayed home one day and worked on the trivia questions we were doing for the Family Home Evening we were are in charge of in a couple of weeks.

Thursday, March 28, we had a torrential down pour. We have a short walk from the bus stop to the temple but because of the heavy rain and even with an umbrella we were both soaked by the time we arrived. The street was running a river of water and we both got a shoe full of water when we stepped from the street to the sidewalk.

Heather celebrated her 30th birthday this week.

The office was closed on Friday, March 30,  Good Friday. We went to the Brass Factory in the New Territories. Tom bought a singing brass bowl. He can really make it sing, Garnalee on the other hand can't get it to sing. Tom also bought a beautiful wood bowl carved from the tree trunk of a tree.

We went to see the movie "Oz, the Great and Terrible" on Saturday with several other couples. It has been rainy all day. Next to the movie theater is an indoor skating rink. We could feel the cold air coming up from the floor. There was just a thin layer of ice on the floor but seemed to be enough for the skaters. This would be a fun place on a hot summer day.
Saturday, March 30 we attended a fund raising concert for a school that educates underprivileged children from China and Hong Kong. The founder of the school is an LDS woman from Hong Kong who is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. The concept is educate children through the arts: music, dance, and drawing.





Tom prepared the lesson for the combined Priesthood and Relief Society meeting. We downloaded several videos from the Church website on the Savior's Atonement and Resurrection. We had the computer and protector all set up ready to go and it worked fine. However when it came time to present the videos the projector wouldn't project onto the screen so we ended up setting the computer on the pulpit with the microphone to project the sound. It would have been better if everything had worked correctly but it was a good lesson. In the evening we went to the Wan Chai building for an Easter concert by the Hong Kong China Stake and Song of the Heart singers. The music was exceptional. Garnalee bought chocolate covered  Maltser bunnies for an Easter treat.

We had Monday, April 1, off for Easter. Tom went to the office to meet with a non-member who was searching for information on his ancestors. Tom found some information for him from Family Search and then ordered a micro film for him. Hopefully the film will have the information he is looking for. Tom and Garnalee were in  charge of Family Home Evening and they had the couples play a trivia game about Church History. Garnalee had typed up 160 questions for the game but we only used 60 of them. We did play an April Fool's joke on the couples. Our first Trivia question was: What is the newest mission in the Church and is the southern most mission? We saw this on a video of a young man who is waiting for his mission call and  had a joke played on him by a friend. The friend had prepared an official looking envelope and a letter with the mission call to Antarctica and he was to speak Emperor Penguin. It was very funny to watch the young man's reaction. We got all of the couples to laugh about the joke of a mission being in Antarctica.

April 4 is Ching Ming Festival which is like our Memorial Day back home. The Chinese people visit the graves of their deceased ancestors, sweep and clean them up, and leave flowers or other mementos. We had a temple assignment that day since the office was closed and spent 7 hours in the temple. Unfortunately there was a Branch activity also planned for that day that we missed. They went to Cheung Chau Island and they had a wonderful time but we were needed at the temple.

Saturday, April 6, arrived with a Monsoon warning in effect. We took the Cowleys to Stanley Market since they hadn't been there yet. We had an enjoyable time visiting and shopping with them. They are becoming good friends.

Sunday morning, April 7, we watched the first session of General Conference before going to our own Church meetings. We are assigned to select quotes from all of the talks that will be used by the Area Presidency and the Area Seventies as they go to trainings and Stake and District Conferences.

 The Filippina sisters perform a farewell dance for the Kellys. The sisters really love to perform. Many of them sang songs to the Kellys.
 Elder and Sister Kelly look at the scrapbook given to them as a farewell gift.
The sisters perform another dance for the Kellys and get into place to spell out "Farewell." Then they spelled out "We love you."
 And finally "We miss you."
A group photo on the day of the  Kellys' farewell.














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