Happy 4th of July - 38th email from Hong Kong

Yesterday was Mission Conference, and in the monthly newsletter that we all picked up, I read in the announcements for important dates over the next week: "July 4: 4th of July". I personally thought this was rather obvious, but I guess it didn't occur to whoever typed up the announcements to write "July 4: American Independence Day" or something more sensible.

My district at the moment, like many on my mission, features mostly Americans. So we just had a big district American breakfast. I was adamant about eating with brown sauce, baked beans, and that bacon and sausages were meant to be eaten separately from the pancakes, but such is life. I get a little stick from time to time for being "weird and different" because I'm English. Interesting when you consider that every single American missionary in Hong Kong is a foreigner in another country, they still find cultural differences between two English speaking nations peculiar.

To let you know: Grandma's package still hasn't arrived.

Mission Conference was a kind of casual goal of mine to pass off the level of Language Master - you have to be able to read a selected chapter in the Book of Mormon and learn 1,000 basic characters. The suggested learning goal for completing this is before your year mark in Hong Kong, but I was fairly certain I could learn it faster than that. Last week, I looked at what I had to do, how long I had, and decided that my goal was indeed within reach. So I studied hard and passed on Tuesday, the day before Mission Conference. This meant that in the Conference, I received my certificate from President Van Dam and a few cookies from Sister Van Dam. The names of all Elders and Sisters who achieve these goals are read out in conference, and then we go up in front of everyone and receive our awards. I'm certainly not normally a shy person when it comes to standing in front of a crowd - but I felt somewhat embarrassed as I went up, because I was achieving it before most of the rest of my group, and my older group.

At the close of Conference, we were all told to stay in our chairs after the prayer for a minute. We sat there for a second, and one of the APs slid a CD into the computer and it started playing some kind of fanfare. Then in strode one of the office Elders, dressed as some kind of Grecian herald, with a parade of "flags" behind him. Many of the senior missionaries were carrying these flags, which were actually bamboo poles with Converse shoes attached on the end in various colours. They paraded into the room, and the herald read from a scroll he was carrying, announcing that next Mission Conference will be the China Hong Kong Mission Olympic games - made to tie into the Beijing games, of course. We're all now very much looking forward to it.

But the absolute best moment of the Conference was at the end, when everyone was talking amongst themselves, and President Van Dam came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said, "I'm so proud of you for getting your Master." I felt very appreciated and vindicated, and certainly felt President Van Dam's love in such a simple gesture.

Please congratulate JJ and Becky for me. But don't worry - I'm expecting to be home longer than 9 months before I get married.

At the moment we're blessed with a great many people to teach. One man we found just last Monday - he has a bad gambling addiction (he's been to the hospital over it) and has been significantly humbled by the experience. We're meeting with him regularly to help him overcome this problem, and he wants to come to church with his whole family on Sunday. He's also been reading excitedly from the Book of Mormon, which is really good for him because it gives him something useful to do when he wants to gamble. When we phoned him yesterday, the day after giving him the Book of Mormon, he'd read several chapters already.

It's been a while since we saw our Mainland friend J Hi D - because he has no phone number, and has stopped turning up, we're not certain how to get hold of him. We tried phoning his Mainland phone number last week with no success (but it did cost a lot of money). But this week, we randomly bumped into him on a park bench. We talked a lot about prayer and the importance of seeking a testimony, two things that he struggles with. Hopefully now we can continue to meet with him again.

Anyway, time is precious this week. The breakfast took a long time, so we're somewhat behind schedule.

Love you lots, and I pray for you often,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅 長 老