A Lot of Baptisms - 6th email from Macau

Dear all,

It's getting a little chillier here now. Not anywhere near as cold as back home - I'm still in a short-sleeve shirt, but most of the locals aren't. I discovered just how much I miss being cold - a rather strange thing to think, but I have a lot of fun memories of nice English winters. The other day we were walking past a Superdrug-style shop and the warmth coming from inside, along with the bright lights and displays in the windows, suddenly reminded me of what it feels like to go Christmas shopping. But so far there is only one shop selling Christmas products - they have a nice collection of Christmas trees in the window.

A Macdonalds plush toy Charizard would do the job perfectly for Elder Liu. He'll think it's cute.

If you can get me V's full name (including her real Chinese name) and address, I can probably get the Elders in her ward to track her down and see how she's doing. A question related to Chinese baptisms in Reading Stake - do the Chinese speaking missionaries there speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Either will be fun; perhaps I can help teach any lessons they have in Cantonese when I get back - or alternatively I can sit in on some Mandarin lessons and learn that language. I heard a little Missionary Mandarin last Sunday in a fireside, and if I concentrated, I could understand it.

Speaking of which, that's one of the big things that happened this week - the Macau Why I Believe fireside. Both Macau and Hong Kong have them - the Macau one is once every two Moves - it's a fireside where missionaries who are going home get to share their testimonies. The Macau one is a lot smaller than the Hong Kong one as a lot fewer missionaries serve here. They ship the Elders and Sisters over here for one last visit to their old area. This time there were three missionaries speaking; Elder Tensmeyer who is a Mandarin Elder but served in Cantonese work for a while in Macau as a Zone Leader; Elder Greenhalgh who served here over a year ago in International work; and Sister Corbridge who was "born" here about a year and a half ago. She was in my group in the MTC, which is rather nerve-wracking as it points out that I'm getting steadily on to the point where I only have six months left. Because she's taking her early date to go home, and won't finish until next Move, I don't need to worry too much yet, but it was still rather strange.

Regardless, the fireside was a lot of fun and it was good to see the three of them again before they all go home; as I'm here in Macau, I won't see the Elders again before they "die" and I'll only see Sister Corbridge once again, at Mission Conference.

Mission Conference this next Move will be the ever exciting Mission Christmas Social, and I'll be singing in the talent show with my quartet; Elders Volk, Work and Weagel. We all sang together in the MTC for fun, last year in the talent show and for Elder Rasband when he came. Elder Work has arranged things this time, and we'll be singing 'Tracting in a Winter Wonderland'. We won't have a chance to practice beforehand, which shouldn't be a problem because we didn't practice last year either.

Yesterday I had to face my fear and do one thing I had hoped I'd never need to do; interview a sixteen year old girl for baptism. Interesting that this is my biggest fear as a missionary. Still, the interview went well, she passed, and then when I asked her who was going to baptize her, she asked me to do it. So this next Sunday I'll don the white clothes to do so. This means that every Elder in my District has baptized someone this Moves; Elder Liu baptized our friend Brother G from the Mainland, Elder Burk, one of our Zone Leaders, baptized B, and last Sunday Elder Gregory baptized two of our investigators, H and V. H and V are twins, and a rather big guys. As Elder Gregory is 6"something tall and 3'something wide, when we asked H and V who they wanted to baptize them, they pointed out that the only person who could logically do it was Elder Gregory.

Interestingly, before Elder Gregory was a Zone Leader here, he was District Leader, serving with Elder Liu and teaching B, H and V, as well as our other investigators. That's the interesting thing about Macau; the Zone is so small that we see each other all the time, and all the baptisms really are a team effort, not just one companionship. So we also attended the baptism of one of the International Sister's investigators this past Sunday, F, who is a really nice man from the Phillipines who is always all smiles, bringing the total baptisms last Sunday to three.

One big request I have for Christmas is pictures. Pictures of everything; pictures of the family. Pictures of the house. Pictures of country lanes and fields. Pictures of snow, if you have any. Pictures of spider's webs covered in dew. Pictures of Bracknell chapel, and of the Bishop and the members. Pictures of Warfield school and the pictures the kids have drawn. Pictures of the busy Reading town Centre, of the Oracle, of Christmas lights and Santa's grottos. Pictures of the Christmas tree at home. Here in China, Christmas is just another bank holiday; nothing special. I'd love to see what you all see at this time of year. What's more, I'd really just love to see your world; what you're up to, things you're doing. But I'm sure that's exactly what you want from me, so I'm going to send you a CD with all of my pictures on.

Anyway, I love you all. I'm always thrilled to hear reports from home on any little thing.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅 長 老