We pretty much spent the whole week fine tuning our presentations and getting ready for the trip to India and Malaysia. Garnalee packed everything over the couple of days prior to departure so Tom stayed out of the way. Tom is coming down with a cold just in time for the trip. :-(
Garnalee did some training with Anna Poon from Singapore. She is the FHC director there. She had prepared a nice PowerPoint to train consultants that she shared with us. Danny Chin, records acquisition manager for Asia, came by too. He showed Tom the Family Search Wiki page that has some helpful tips on doing research in Asia.
Rather than spread Tom's cold to everyone in the Temple on Thursday night, he went home and went to bed early.
At the senior luncheon Friday Elder Heaps and Elder Frandsen made a presentation on the take-aways from the recent meetings with Elder Neil Anderson and Elder L. Whitney Clayton who were here last week. During the lunch time, Elder and Sister Bertin shared about 15 different fruits commonly available here that we may not have tried. They included star fruit, Lychee, wax apple, guava, dragon fruit, mangosteen, and others. Some were very good, others were just for the experience.
We left for the airport at 8 PM Friday night. The flight was non-stop from HK to Hyderabad. In the airport we met a young Indian couple from Rajahmundry who had just gotten married in the HK temple. We also met the MLS senior missionary couple, the Allisons from Calgary, Canada and know the Whiteheads who just went home. The Allisons were escorting the couple to the Temple.
We arrived at Hyderabad 3:30 AM Honk Kong time (1:00 AM local time). We were glad to have the extra 2 1/2 hours to try to get some sleep before our long Saturday.
At 2 PM Brother and Sister Pulla, Stake Family History Consultants, picked us up to take us to the Church where we would be doing a Stake Priesthood leadership training at 5:30 PM. Right after the training, we began a fireside with several Young Single Adults joining the group. Several members bore their testimony of the importance of FH work and then we were given an opportunity to add some remarks. Garnalee spoke about some of the stories she remembers about her father and mother. One of the great new features of Family Tree is to be able to upload stories. She intends to do that soon.
On the way to the church we saw a procession of musicians (drums and horns) who accompanies a group that was carrying the body of a deceased ancestor to be cremated. The body was carried on a stretcher and was covered with a white cloth. It was adorned with flowers. There were about a dozen pall bearers who carried the stretcher at about shoulder height along the uneven street.
After the presentations were over, everyone wanted to have a picture taken with us. It was after 9 PM before we left the church. Brother and Sister Pulla took us, along with a niece and nephew, to a restaurant called Paradise, for dinner. On the way to the restaurant we passed another procession of drummers and horn players. We immediately thought it was another funeral, but it was a wedding. These music accompanied processions celebrate all of the major events in a person's life.
The famous dish in Hyderabad is called Biriyani. It's a flavored rice dish with mutton or chicken. We had both. There were several sauces to put over the top. One sauce was a milky color made with yogurt, cilantro, and carrots. The other sauce looked kind of a creme chicken gravy made with green chillis. It was very spicy. I think the Pullas were a little offended that we didn't eat more, but we ate all we could. We arrived back to our hotel at about 11:30 PM. Long, but rewarding day.
We discovered that our adapter to load photos from our SD camera card to the computer, is still at home in HK. We'll have to add photos when we return home from Malaysia.
Garnalee did some training with Anna Poon from Singapore. She is the FHC director there. She had prepared a nice PowerPoint to train consultants that she shared with us. Danny Chin, records acquisition manager for Asia, came by too. He showed Tom the Family Search Wiki page that has some helpful tips on doing research in Asia.
Rather than spread Tom's cold to everyone in the Temple on Thursday night, he went home and went to bed early.
At the senior luncheon Friday Elder Heaps and Elder Frandsen made a presentation on the take-aways from the recent meetings with Elder Neil Anderson and Elder L. Whitney Clayton who were here last week. During the lunch time, Elder and Sister Bertin shared about 15 different fruits commonly available here that we may not have tried. They included star fruit, Lychee, wax apple, guava, dragon fruit, mangosteen, and others. Some were very good, others were just for the experience.
We left for the airport at 8 PM Friday night. The flight was non-stop from HK to Hyderabad. In the airport we met a young Indian couple from Rajahmundry who had just gotten married in the HK temple. We also met the MLS senior missionary couple, the Allisons from Calgary, Canada and know the Whiteheads who just went home. The Allisons were escorting the couple to the Temple.
We arrived at Hyderabad 3:30 AM Honk Kong time (1:00 AM local time). We were glad to have the extra 2 1/2 hours to try to get some sleep before our long Saturday.
At 2 PM Brother and Sister Pulla, Stake Family History Consultants, picked us up to take us to the Church where we would be doing a Stake Priesthood leadership training at 5:30 PM. Right after the training, we began a fireside with several Young Single Adults joining the group. Several members bore their testimony of the importance of FH work and then we were given an opportunity to add some remarks. Garnalee spoke about some of the stories she remembers about her father and mother. One of the great new features of Family Tree is to be able to upload stories. She intends to do that soon.
On the way to the church we saw a procession of musicians (drums and horns) who accompanies a group that was carrying the body of a deceased ancestor to be cremated. The body was carried on a stretcher and was covered with a white cloth. It was adorned with flowers. There were about a dozen pall bearers who carried the stretcher at about shoulder height along the uneven street.
After the presentations were over, everyone wanted to have a picture taken with us. It was after 9 PM before we left the church. Brother and Sister Pulla took us, along with a niece and nephew, to a restaurant called Paradise, for dinner. On the way to the restaurant we passed another procession of drummers and horn players. We immediately thought it was another funeral, but it was a wedding. These music accompanied processions celebrate all of the major events in a person's life.
The famous dish in Hyderabad is called Biriyani. It's a flavored rice dish with mutton or chicken. We had both. There were several sauces to put over the top. One sauce was a milky color made with yogurt, cilantro, and carrots. The other sauce looked kind of a creme chicken gravy made with green chillis. It was very spicy. I think the Pullas were a little offended that we didn't eat more, but we ate all we could. We arrived back to our hotel at about 11:30 PM. Long, but rewarding day.
We discovered that our adapter to load photos from our SD camera card to the computer, is still at home in HK. We'll have to add photos when we return home from Malaysia.
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