Happy Valentines Day! - 20th email from Hong Kong

Or, in to give it a more Missionary appropriate name, Happy Lock Your Heart Day!

There are two talks given by prophets past that missionaries are to read every moves. One is called Beware of Pride, and is particularly relevant because while this Mission is very obedient, many missionaries have a problem with pride - myself included. It just comes from being in a hard mission speaking a hard language, I guess.

The other talk, Lock Your Heart, instructs us as missionaries to keep focused on the work, and not let romantic thoughts cloud our focus and lead us astray. As such, today being Valentines Day, we read it as a companionship for study this morning.

It was shortly followed by a talk on dating from the February Ensign, and I took particular sadistic glee in reminding my companion, Elder Walgren, that it was particularly relevant to him, as he would be needing to start dating in about five weeks. We joke around about that a lot - that because he's going home soon, now's the time he should be trunky and unfocused. It's not in any way true, but we joke about it anyway.

The weather here at the moment is ridiculously cold. We haven't had any snow, but it has been cold enough at times. Last Monday was particularly frigid, making things rather awkward as it was the Mission Activity - we went up a mountain to a tourist attraction called "Big Buddha", which is the largest sitting bronze Buddha statue in the world. Despite it having been constructed in 1992, a lot of people worship it as if it were an ancient relic. Worshipping idols is something the Chinese people do well.

I was hoping to climb up Lantau peak on Monday, it being right next to Big Buddha, but Elder Walgren and I quickly changed our plans when we discovered how cold it was. I've had enough of hiking up mountains in freezing, stormy weather, and Elder Walgren wasn't up for it at all, so we left it at that. After touring around a bit, we headed down the mountain frustratingly early compared to when I would have liked to have descended, but it was really too cold, and we were too underdressed, to do anything else.

Some brave Elders did indeed climb up to the top, and had fun stories to tell, and other Elders had tales of taking a very steep country path down the mountain, which wasn't as impressive as Elder Walgren and I, who took the bus.

The other day, I did a pass-off to gauge where I am in my preparations for Lesson 4, and found, as expected, that I was seriously lacking. I hadn't expected to actually pass, but I wanted to see what I needed to learn to improve. So Lesson 4, being the one with the most new vocab and the longest to teach, is still a way off. I'm no longer certain about my goal of succeeding before the end of the moves, but I'm going to work hard and do my best.

By the way, could you get me Murray Hamilton's address? I want to write and thank him for all of the inventive Seminary lessons he's used to teach me over the years; I've found great, enjoyable success in using a similar style in teaching families in the ward here. With one family, Elder Walgren and I made Gold Plates for them out of gold card, and they wrote down their testimonies on them. It was so sweet to see the message that their youngest daughter, who is 8 years old wrote - one day, a few days before her baptism, she awoke in the middle of the night after a nightmare. She woke up her "helper" (the Filipino maid the family employs) and asked for help. The helper said that if she prayed, God would comfort her. So she did so, and it worked. She felt comforted and peaceful, knowing He was there to protect her. As I read her testimony, I realised that we hadn't just made a fun interactive lesson for this family; we'd given them their own Golden Plates - their own records of their testimonies that they can keep, which they will be able to look at years later and remember times in the past that God has blessed them.

Another lesson, which we taught to the Bishop's family last night, which really reminded me of a Murray lesson, was the Armour of God. Rather self-explanatory, really. I made some armour out of cardboard and tin-foil, and we dressed up their 8 or 9 year old son, Peter. Peter recently broke his leg rather badly, and is in a huge cast, and so he has to hobble around on crutches. He was really thrilled to put on all the armour and wave around the sword and shield (the sword was actually a retractable Tai Chi sword I bought at Big Buddha). We then explained to the family how they can put on the Armour of God through scripture study, prayer, and going to church. We then taught about service - Peter right now needs a lot of service, as he can barely move, but we should also look for opportunities to help others as well.

It's sad to hear that Grandma's back in hospital again. Hopefully she will recover soon. Please pass on my love to her.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. Elder Walgren had to go the the Temple for a District/Zone Leader meeting, and so he went up with the District Leader from Aberdeen (the district next to us who actually share our sisters!) which left his companion, Elder Wong, and I, together for most of the day.

Elder Wong is a Hong Kong native, which means that he probably has the most frustratingly close to home calling of any missionary in the world. He is currently serving in his native mission, and therefore cannot serve in his own stake, but can visit it for activities or special meetings. In fact, during Chinese New Year, the native missionaries serving in Hong Kong go home to their families for 4 hours, because such is the importance of family during the New Year celebrations, and they're normally within an hour from home. Elder Wong came out on his mission one moves after I arrived in Hong Kong, meaning that while we've been here for about the same time, he's three moves younger than me - he's also immediately proficient in the language. Kind of cheating, if you ask me.

But I really love Elder Wong - we have so much fun together. We went finding together and talked and joked as we went - he even put on a Missionary accent, talking like an American trying to speak Chinese. It was really funny. But even funnier was when he tried to stop someone in the street who just kept walking. Elder Wong said "Leih Hou Sing Saang", and in response, the man said, "I'm sorry - I'm busy!" Elder Wong turned to me and said, "Why did he just speak English to me? I'm Chinese too!" I guess a lot of people see the missionaries as all being American, even if they're clearly not. But then, a lot of ABCs, BBCs and CBCs (American, British and Canadian Born Chinese) get called to the mission, many of them, like Elder Ng and Elder Chan, not actually speaking their ancestral tongue.

Well, time's almost up, so I'd better get going. I love you all and hope you're all having a wonderful time at school, work, play, church, etc etc etc. To quote our beloved, recently deceased prophet, President Hinkley, in his admonition to missionaries, "Don't do anything stupid!"

Elder Matthew Loffhagen