2nd email from Hong Kong

Hello all!

So after a full week in Hong Kong, I have thankfully managed to adjust to the smell somewhat. It's just the taste I'm concerned about. We just helped a member move house and she took us out to a restaurant to say thank you. We had chicken feet, octopus tentacle, pig stomach and all kinds of fun stuff. Half way through I'd had enough and tried very hard to decline more without being rude; thankfully, the member assumed my stomach couldn't handle the oily spicy foods, and that I was feeling sick. Yes, I was feeling sick, but never because of spice.

I'm doing a pretty bad job of throwing myself head-first into the Chinese food culture; but it's not my fault! I can't help it if they had so much English food here that I can just live off that! The first meal I cooked for myself here in Hong Kong was beans on toast! Really outside the box, huh?! And then one day when we were picking up some drinks at a supermarket (Blackcurrant and Aloe Vera - the Aloe Vera gives it an interesting chunkiness that concerns me) I spotted the sauce section. Well, I couldn't help but look - and guess what I found? Brown sauce, English mustard, Worchester sauce! I bought some HP sauce and Colmans mustard then and there, but decided to wait for the Lea and Perrins - I've also spotted mint sauce while on my travels. Unfortunately, no sign of Salt and Vinegar crisps - that would make things complete!

Anyway, less about how I'm not adjusting properly, and more about how I am. I'm sure you can understand that a lot of the time really confused as to what's going on, with everything happenining in Chinese, and certainly, Sunday was interesting. It was Fast Sunday, because they get conference a week later here. I understood very little of what was going on. I know that our Gospel Doctrine class was on the Garden of Eden, because there was a picture of Adam and Eve on the board, but I couldn't figure out much more of anything. Priesthood was a blur, as was Sacrament meeting. After the sacrament was passed, the person conducting was saying something, and my companion, Elder Alspaugh leaned over to me and whispered, "They want you to bear your testimony." Now, as unexpected as this was, I wasn't unprepared. I know how things work in the church - the new missionary always gets called on to speak, his first week in the ward. And even if they hadn't called on me, I wanted to bear my testimony anyway; so I'd written a testimony and got Elder Alspaugh to check for grammatical accuracy. I took it out of my bag, though, and he said, "you should do it without the notes." Well, this scared me, but I gave it a shot anyway. My testimony made a lot less sense and was a lot simpler, and I didn't get to talk about Member-Missionary work (because I can't without notes) but I did it!

That night, I decided that I needed to learn this language quickly. As I look at Elder Alspaugh and how at home he is with the Chinese people, to the extent that he's lost a lot of English skills and certainly doesn't get my rather unique sense of humour, but will laugh and joke for hours with the native Elder in our room in Cantonese, it's clear that I'm not being fair to the people of Hong Kong if I'm not doing everything in my power to learn their language. So I set myself a goal - we have a book called Catch the Vision, which is basically Preach My Gospel but in Chinese, with lots of learning excercises. I determined that by the end of the month I would know everything there was to know about the first section - which meant this week learning about 200 vocab words. I determined that with the Lord's help, I could achieve this lofty goal.

And the next day, Monday, I strived really hard to learn those words. I've noticed that the Lord blesses us with help not so much based on how much we do, but how much effort we put into it. Somehow, even from just learning the few words I'd learned that day, I could understand a lot more! I could understand about 60% of what was going on around me! I was so surprised! Not every word, of course, but the meaning behind sentences, what people were talking about, etc. We taught a man we found on the street who had a lot of concerns - prophets, the Book of Mormon, praying, and afterwards, my companion turned to me and said, "Did you understand any of that?" "Yes, I said, "I understood most of it!"

My companion, Elder Alspaugh, is an interesting character. Another Utah boy, my relationship with him is very different from my relationship with my MTC companion. While Elder Dallin and I were both learning together, and I tended to pick things up a bit quicker than him and would help him, instead being with Elder Alspaugh is like being with a teacher all day, every day. He's got the language down, he knows his teaching style, and he's pretty set. He teaches me, he talks to people and sometimes gives me the gist of what's going on, he shows me how to be a missionary. It's a very different experience. He's also been called as District Leader, so he gets two experiences that are new for him at once; training another missionary, and being in charge of a district. He's on the downward slope on his mission now - he got his departure date on Tuesday. He's leaving in early May. That seems like an awfully long way away to go telling Elders about it now, but whatever.

Grandma's money did indeed arrive safely - I'm half way through a thank you letter to her and Grandad, but considering the postal strikes, it may be a while before it gets there. It was a wonderful treat; I got to see Hong Kong money before I arrived there, and when I got here, I had something to buy things with, without needing a cash machine!

Also, your letter did arrive with me in time. Thank you very much for it; it was so nice to have something waiting for me at the Mission home. We don't get post sent straight to our flats the way they do in Britain; it all goes to the Mission home and then when the Mission President goes to visit people, he brings it with him. So last Tuesday, when we had interviews, he brought all the stuff for my zone with him. Elder Alspaugh got a few letters, and was happy. Elder Ng, who is one of my Zone Leaders, actually, had his birthday a little while ago, so he had a present or two.

General Conference will indeed be a good time. I'm really looking forward to it. I asked President Van Dam during our interview if it would be alright for me to use some email time to print out the talks in English from lds.org and then read in English as I watched them in Cantonese, so I could understand what was going on, but he said it wouldn't be necescary - there's a special English showing for the missionaries, so that everyone gets to understand it in their native tongue - unless we have an investigator coming and want to sit with them.

On the way into the library just now, we bumped into one of our investigators and he agreed to go to conference. So maybe I won't know what's going on after all. But President Van Dam said that if this was the case, companionship exchanges could be arranged so that perhaps a native missionary could go with Elder Alspaugh and our investigator, and I could listen in English.

How exciting that the computer actually blew up! I guess that's what Linux will do to things! But I guess that computer had 98 at the time, huh? Maybe you should upgrade to Vista :P Or better yet, buy a Mac! I'm thinking I might like all of my birthdays and Christmases saved up while I'm away and just have a MacBook when I get back...but then I also want a PS3. And an iPod. And most other cool technology under the sun!

When you talk about iPod classics, I'm not sure what you mean. I assume it's a new device that came out after I left, but I saw a girl on the bus the other day with an iPod that looked kind of squished, like it was half the size, and suspected that might be what you were talking about. I think for Christmas I might like one of those; no doubt they'll be a lot cheaper over here though!

I'd absolutely love a postal vote - and each party's manifesto - if a surprise election happens. I really want to contribute to democracy, seeing how so many people here tell me stories of what it's like without it. We meet a lot of Mainland people, who are by far the most receptive to the Gospel, but unfortunately all speak Mandarin!

Well, my time's nearly up!

Elder Loffhagen