Olympics and other things - 44th email from Hong Kong

Dear Mum and Dad,

Before I say anything, I'll say this before I forget - both packages turned up this week. So we're all good.

Also let me say - don't worry about university financing, but please do something soon as far as sending me information goes. I am not decided upon BYU, and would really like to look at prospectuses from British universities. Courses of interest to me are computer animation, journalism (print), English Literature and Chinese. We've been talking about these things for a really long time now, and I'd like to actually get it all moving. So please actually send me some information soon. :)

And now other things: the Mission Olympics were last Tuesday, and they were a lot of fun. I ran the 100 metres, and represented Great Britain by wearing the Union Flag you sent me as a cape. Despite all logic to the contrary, I did not come last - I came second to last, and was very happy to do so. I wasn't intending to win, just to have fun, look cool and not come last, so mission accomplished.

We also got to watch the opening ceremonies of the real Olympics, which was amazing. I was really impressed by the huge show that they put on to begin the games; my favourite part was when they lit the flame. Did you see it? The torch was passed to the man who had the honour of lighting the flame, and then he flew up in the air, ran all the way around the stadium wall and lit the flame. Very Chinese.

Everyone is currently Olympics mad here. Every television is tuned into the games - and there are a lot of televisions here. So we'll be walking down the street, finding, and see a television display in the window of a shop showing Hong Kong vs Poland in Table Tennis or China vs Hong Kong in badminton. I guess every nation has different sports that they actually compete well in here.

Mission Conference ran late, so we had to cancel our weekly correlation meeting with the ward mission leader, and barely got back in time for the Family Home Evening we have at the church every week for our investigators and recent converts. So we were sticky and grimy with sweat, in shorts and t-shirts, and we hadn't planned the lesson that we were supposed to teach, as we'd had no time to go home, shower, change and plan. I decided to turn our unusual appearance into a lesson, and we talked about the Olympics, about having strength to overcome our trials and relying on the Lord. We shared Alma 26:12, where Ammon says that as to his strength he is weak, but he will boast in God, who has the strength to help him to anything.

I think it went well, but it was slightly spoiled when the Sister missionaries in our ward turned up about 15 minutes after us in regular proselyting clothes. They live on top of the train station, right next to the church, so they had time to go home and change, whereas we would have had to take a bus to get home from the train station which would have taken half an hour, and then would have had to take it back to the church again.

The glasses prescription didn't come a moment too soon - I snapped my pair in half the next day. They'd been wearing out for a while and weakening on the bridge of the nose, and they finally snapped in half. I wore the other pair for the rest of the day, but the screw is broken on one side so one of the lenses keeps popping out. It should do for the moment, but because we're so short on time today I don't think we'll have a chance to go new glasses shopping until next week, which means it'll be about 2 weeks until I can pick them up. In the meantime I'll try some superglue to hold my glasses together.

We have no time today because today is also our Temple day. It was a very good session - I was worried that I'd end up falling asleep as I'm still pretty tired from mission conference (even though I didn't really do much), but I stayed completely awake the whole time.

Brother S will be baptized on the 24th, and he is very excited for it. It seems that the rest of his family might take a while longer though; they're not really investigators yet, and due to bizzare schedules, it's pretty much impossible for us to teach them all at once. His wife has to work on Sunday and his daughter goes to another Christian church, but I'm sure that they'll gain more interest as time goes by. They seem to be happy enough going to activities at church and hopefully we can invite them to Brother S's baptism next week.

So all in all, it's been a really good week. I'm going to keep working hard, and praying for you all.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅 長 老