September 17-23, 2012

Notice the window washer on the side of building. Want a job?

Yacht or not. The Chinese junk is a tourist attraction which we will do later.

Notice the passage ways for the dragon. The buiilding next door looks gold in the sun.

Notice the hole at the top of the building of for the dragon.

Construction with bamboo scaffolding

Tallest building in Hong Kong

Church office building for Asia where we go each day. This is the Wan Chai address. We ae on the 10th floor.

Many of the buildings are built with holes for the dragon to go through

2nd Tallest Building in Hong Kong that looks like it has a claw at the top.

Bamboo scaffolding used for construction

Saturday was our monthly Senior Couple Activity. We took a Rickshaw bus which is a double decker open topped bus and we all got a sunburn. We toured the old part of Hong Kong and the urban part of Hong Kong. We thought we would share with you some of the buildings in Hong Kong. It is fascinating to us how the bamboo scaffolding is used to construction buildings. We have seen buildings fifty stories tall encased in the green mesh with the bamboo.

As we ride the bus around Hong Kong, the only vechiles we see are buses, taxis, and luxury cars. The cars here have a tax equal to the purchase price of the car so only the well to do can afford a car.

Each day we pass dealership show rooms with Mercedes-Benz, Maserati, Lotus, BMW, Honda, and Porche for sale.

We like the method of tipping here. When we receive our bill it includes a 10% gratuity.

We rode through the hills of Hong Kong on Wednesday afternoon and went to a shopping area called Stanley market. It was fun to wander around. A person could spend many dollars there buying everything from clothes to chopsticks. Tom bought me a Tiger Eye necklace because I was born in the year of the tiger. He was born in the year of the pig or boar and it is kind of hard to find anything for that year except a little pig statue that looks like Wilbur.

Tuesday, at our weekly devotional, Elder Wilson reported on his recent trip to Mongolia. Over the last 20 years 80% of the young missionaries have been Mogolians serving within their own country. It is difficult for Americans to get a visa into the country. Therefore over 1000 returned missionaries are a great assest to their country.

Tom purchased three custom  made suits which he looks very handsome in. We also purchased two  custom made suits for Garnalee.

Thursday evening we had our first evening of serving in the Hong Kong temple. Tom thinks this will be one of the best parts of our mission.

Friday we wrote a letter that will be used to introduce new Family History missionary couples.  
After it is translated into Thai, Mongolian, Taiwanese (Madarin), Cambodian, and Indonesian, we will be able to send them to all of Asia.

An interesting note about Hong Kong: one of every ten citizens is a millionarie. That's 84,000. In the US the ratio is one in 2500.