27th email from Hong Kong

Dear everyone,

It sounds like everyone is having fun on holiday - I vaguely remember Goonhilly from when we went before - but as that was about ten years ago, I expect it's a lot more advanced and impressive now!

An interesting thought about Nephi beheading Laban - and very interesting to think that the story of the people of Ammon and their determination not to take the lives of others - perhaps we will think about sharing that story with him.

I'm so thrilled that you got to meet the now released Tim Ng. He honestly was my mission hero, and I find myself sharing with Elder Kwok many of the pearls of wisdom he taught me. It doesn't surprise me that he's having trouble adjusting to non-mission life; I remember when we were at the Temple for Moves - and he was going to have to wait around all day - and he was bored, so he went and found someone to go finding with while he waited! Then, I'm not sure if I told you this, but he randomly turned up at our first District Meeting this moves - his parents were visiting the area, meeting people, and he had come to check out the chapel. "Let's just forget the District Meeting," he said, "and go on a District find!" He really was a dedicated, hard working missionary, so I'm not surprised he's taking a little while to get used to not being busy every second of the day.

Yesterday was Mission Conference, and another huge load of old missionaries bore their "dying" testimonies. Included among them were Elder Alspaugh, and a load of other Elders I've served around before. Pretty much every missionary older than me is going home - Sister Van Dam had a bit of a cry when she thought about how the Elders going home were the group of missionaries that they'd met in the MTC when they started their missions.

Mission Conference was really good. The Assistants to the President had a fun little video they showed us of the difference between a missionary with teaching skills and a missionary without. It was cute and funny and taught us all the big difference that comes from having the ability to teach with clarity, using the scriptures and asking questions.

At lunch I went to check the post, as you'd expect, and had a postcard from Julian off in France, who seems to be doing really well there and enjoying himself. There was a big package on the table, but it was from America and said "Missionary Supplies" on the customs form in an unfamiliar handwriting, so I didn't even bother checking who it was for. Later as I was eating, Elder Kwok came up to me and said, "Elder Loffhagen - you're loved," and handed me the package. What a surprise to get a big Dear Elder package full of sweets and cookies! Thank you so much! I'm not sure if I'd really call them "Missionary Supplies", but whatever - I guess Dear Elder was being rather liberal in their interpretation of what "supplies" missionaries need!

I also got my certificate for achieving the level of Language Giant, and my cookie, which I'd been waiting for. I'm also pleased to say that I'm working my way through the character cards and learning to read 2nd Nephi chapter 31 - I can read two whole verses! Yay! Plus I've learnt the first 100 character cards. My goals for the end of the moves are to learn the first 200 and to be able to read chapter 31, plus to do my week-long English fast, which I failed at rather badly last time. But today half the District started an English Fast all together, so it should be easier to do one myself without other people always speaking English to me.

A little note about money - this is the first time I've had to request some, but it's rather necessary. I don't really want to have to ask, because I know you all have more of a need for it than me, but as I have temporarily misplaced my emergency fund and had to sustain myself with personal funds, I'm a lot lower than I would like - and my watch is about to die. I press the light button and instead of illuminating, the entire display goes blank for a few seconds. The battery's nearly gone. I'd use the pocket watch I bought - except it doesn't actually keep accurate time, and is a pretty big inconvenience to have to carry around. But another Elder, Elder Kinghorn, has a very special watch called an Octopus watch. In Hong Kong Octopus cards are kind of like the oyster card in London; you can ride the MTR by storing money on your card and beeping it on the ticket gates, and it quickly withdraws the money from your electronic account, saving a lot of time and hassle - but it also goes further than that; the buses also take the card, as do taxis, supermarkets, newsagents, bakeries and even McDonalds - some shops will only take Octopus cards and not real money! So Elder Kinghorn's watch is pretty special. Instead of fishing out his wallet and dropping coins all over the floor in order to get on the bus (like I do), he just beeps his watch. As my watch is dying anyway, I'm considering buying an Octopus watch, to simplify things. Except I have no money.

I'm not sure how much the watch will be - but it shouldn't be too much. Could I ask for maybe £30?

Anyway, that'll be it for this week. Sorry to end on a begging note! I wish you all well and hope you have fun doing stuff.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅 長 老