A Week in the Life of a Missionary--January 7-13, 2013

This week we thought we would share with you what most of our weeks are like. We arise each morning, Tom at 5:30 AM and Garnalee at 6:15 AM. We shower, read scriptures, have breakfast, pack a lunch, and head out the door at 8 AM. We walk along the Promenade for 30 minutes to the ferry to ride across Victoria Harbor. We then have about a 10 minute walk to the Asia Area Church Office Building arriving at about 9 AM. We read and answer  the emails that have arrived. Depending on the day, the emails can take a couple of hours. On each Monday morning we have a devotional with all the missionaries and staff in the building. We always have a 1 1/2 hour Skype call on Thursday with all of the other senior family history missionaries in Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Mongolia that it is our responsibility to decide what to train the other missionaries on. Also on Thursday evening we go to the Hong Kong Temple to serve. Each Friday Garnalee has Sisters' Institute where all of the sister missionaries come together to discuss one of the latest conference talks. We have been building a data base of family history lessons and training materials for the other senior missionaries. Our thought is that when we go home the replacement couple missionaries won't have to start from scratch as they will have a bank of materials to draw. Each Friday we have Senior Lunch where all the missionaries couples come together for lunch and then we take turns teaching a lesson from Preach My Gospel. We leave the office around 4 each day for the hour trip home. Because our washer/dryer is so small, we have to do a daily load of laundry and sometimes it is a load started as we leave in the morning and another load when we get home in the evening. Garnalee does the cooking and Tom washes and dries the dishes. We have Family Home Evening twice a month with the other couples. We meet with Elder Wilson of the Area Presidency once a month. We have a temple session, testimony meeting, and lunch with the Area Presidency once a month. On our P-Day (Preparation Day) of Saturday we have more laundry to do, clean the apartment, and try to do some site seeing. We have Branch responsibilities that take up most our Sunday. We enjoy a meal on the 1st and 2nd Sundays prepared by the sisters in the Branch. Woven around our responsibilities we developing training materials.

Saturday, January 12, 2013, we went to the Flower Market, Bird Market, and Goldfish Market. We saw many beautiful flowers, such as the orchids here. We could also have purchased Narcissus bulbs to plant.

 

 We saw many colorful birds and a variety of cages to keep them in. We purchased a cage and then a plant to put in it.

 Grasshoppers anyone! We saw these bags of grasshoppers that a bird owner could purchase to feed their bird. We also saw bags of other kinds of insects.

This parrot is gray with a pick chest. The birds were beautiful.