Happy Chinese New Year--February 4-10, 2013

Tom is still striving to learn Cantonese. Each Sunday we ride in the taxi to church, and we have to tell the driver pink building straight ahead. He decided to find out how to say that in Cantonese. He tested the phrases on three different people at church and nobody understood. He then asked how to say the phrases. He repeated it and they would say that's it! It sounded the same to him. As he says, "Cantonese is driving me crazy."

We spent 1 1/2 hours training the new Family History couple in Malaysia on Meeting Place, which is teleconferencing medium. It was very productive. W taught them about InSite, a site we use for storage of items.

We practiced and timed the Power Point presentation we will present to the full-time missionaries this week. We are going to train them about using Family History as a missionary tool in finding investigators and to bring back the less-active.

 Wednesday we went to Victoria Park which displayed acres of beautiful plants and cut flowers for the Chinese New Year. The Chinese decorate their homes at this time of year with flowers as they believe the flowers bring luck and good fortune.

This arrangement is made of Gold Berries. They are arranged in a cone-shape to be used as a centerpiece.

 Notice how inedible fruits look like the head of an animal. They can be arranged in pot, as the right picture shows, or left in the natural state to be hung.




Some of the beautiful flowers we saw.

 Orchids anyone?!

 These are  plum blossoms. Each flower used to decorate the home brings a different blessing.

 Mums in a variety of colors.

 Orchids are Tom's favorite and they in a variety of colors and are much different than the orchids we see in the US.

These small trees are seen everywhere for Chinese New Year. The orange fruit on them is some kind of citrus fruit.

 This tree is the same kind as the ones above. This was taken in front of the complex where we live. We left our complex Friday morning with no decorations around and returned home Friday afternoon to see the place all ready for the new year.

More Gold Berries used to make a bigger tree.








Below is the huge plum tree in our hotel lobby decorated with red envelopes that are used to give gifts of money at Chinese New Year.

Thursday's are usually our busy day. This week was our monthly Temple session and Testimony meeting with the Area Presidency. Tom and Garnalee both did the work for one of his family members. One of the sisters shared how her family has been blessed while they have been here serving their mission. We hope our children are being blessed while we are serving our mission. For our weekly conference call with the other Family History missionaries throughout Asia we did some additional training on how to use InSite and how to orient/train Priesthood leaders, Family History directors and consultants. Now that we have 2013 travel budgets for each of the countries in Asia, Tom worked up a spread to approve and keep track of senior missionary travel.

At our monthly meeting with Elder Wilson, Tom demonstrated how we use InSite to teach Family History missionaries. We also reported on how Family History is going throughout Asia. 

One of the highlights of the week for Garnalee, is Sisters' Institute held each Friday. We meet to read and discuss one of the messages delivered at the last General Conference. 

Several months ago we ordered "How Do I Start My Family History?" handouts that have a pedigree chart on one side and ideas on the other side. We wanted these to give to the missionaries when we do our presentation. They arrived on Friday. We were excited to see them as we had been told they wouldn't arrive until the end of the month. It does take a long time to get things here if they come by boat. 

Saturday we ventured out to find the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery in Sha Tin. There are actually over 12,500. This is the path we had to climb to get the monastery. The whole way was lined with life-sized in various poses. Tom stopped to pose along the path.

 Garnalee poses with one of the huge statutes we presume to Mrs. Buddha.

 This nine story pagoda is on the $100 Hong Kong note. We climbed tot he top of the continually narrowing staircase.

 View of Sha Tin from the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery.

 On the way back down the hill from the monastery we encountered a family of wild monkeys. They were jumping from tree to tree. This is a baby monkey.

We discovered the monkeys were jumping through the trees to get to this house where they were being fed. There is an area called Monkey Mountain not far from the monastery that will visit in the future and share.