Another email from me - 13th email from Macau

My beloved family,

Apologies if I misspell a lot of words - the keyboard I'm using is really frustrating. Plus perhaps I'm just a little out of practice using a computer.

A very final word on universities from me: Apply for Sheffield, Communications at Leeds, leave Bath Spa in and my first choice is Bournemouth. I have reasons for each of those decisions, but the major one is just guesswork and inspiration. We'll see how things go. Good luck and thank you again!

In other news, this week was fun. Today is Moves, but it doesn't effect us very much because Elder Liu and I are staying together for a third Moves. This is the longest I've ever stayed with a companion; I'm very happy because Elder Liu is one of my favourite companions. He works hard and his Chinese is great, so it's an equal companionship - if anything, I worry that I'm not working hard enough to keep up with him! He assures me that this is not the case.

Very few of the missionaries here in Macau are changing at the moment - just two are moving. But because of problems with visas, half of the missionaries here will have to return to Hong Kong in a few weeks. It's becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to get visas in Macau at the moment - the only Missionaries who are completely safe are Elder Liu and Elder Burk because they have visas, plus now any Hong Kong natives who come, and any Europeans that come here. As far as Europeans in the mission goes, the count stands at two: myself, and Elder Matthew Chan from Solihull.

Not to worry, though, because the Gospel is still going out to the nations of the world. We have an investigator, J, who might be baptised this coming Sunday. Personally, I'm not sure if he's completely prepared, so we're going to let Elder Hardy, the brand new Zone Leader here, decide in J's baptismal interview tonight. I am absolutely thrilled that Elder Hardy has come to Macau, by the way. He is one of my very favourite missionaries - he was in my older group in the MTC.

I'm very much hoping that Jess enjoys her birthday and can go meet some nice RMs at YSA dances. Some advice to you, Jess - go to the YSA conventions and make some new friends there. I didn't go on any before my mission and now think that they might be fun. When I come home we can go together.

I'm reached a perplexing situation. A few weeks ago Tom Morrison emailed me with a news update about my web comic. He told me that all is going well, but that he will run out of comics on the 5th of January. He was asking me what to do - whether I had any others he could put up, or if I had any other ideas. Honestly, I'd pretty much completely forgotten that the comics are even going up every week still, and as I hadn't heard anything in a long time, I'd assumed that perhaps they'd already run out.

After thinking about it a little, I keep remembering the charge in the Missionary Handbook - "You are expected to devote all of your time and attention to serving the Lord, leaving behind all other personal affairs." So perhaps you can let Tom know that I'm very thankful for his help over the past year and a half, but I can't bring myself to go out of my way to get more comics to him, whether by drawing, emailing or anything else. He can sort it out as best he can, but honestly if the website stops completely, I'm not all too bothered about it at the moment.

Please also let him know that I love him, that I'm expecting to hear his Mission call some time soon and that he's in my prayers.

Everyone is getting very excited at the moment because of the promised visit from Russell M Nelson on the 20th of February to Hong Kong to speak to members here. We're all semi-expecting (and certainly hoping) that he'll be calling together a special conference for the Missionaries. I'm going to start thinking of a good question to ask him now, just in case it's a Q&A session like when President Rasband came.

Last week I conducted the most peculiar baptismal interviews of my mission so far. Sister J and M are a mother and son from Mainland China that the Sisters have been teaching. They only speak Mandarin, so church isn't the easiest experience ever for them, but they have a testimony and they're happy to be baptised. The problem is that my Mandarin isn't exactly "jeng" enough to be able to chat with them in the interview particularly fluently. So we had a very special arrangement. Instead of just being completely alone with the baptismal candidate with the door closed, we propped it open a little bit, and Sister Chan (a "CBC" - Canadian Born Chinese) sat in and provided translation for me from Mandarin into Cantonese. It was very bizzarre - and first, we sat as far away form each other as possible with Max as I asked him the questions. Sister C wasn't all that needed with him, because he's only 11, his testimony is simple, he understands Cantonese and he speaks pretty simple Mandarin, so I got the gist of it. He didn't take very long. With Sister J, it was a little trickier. Sister C warned me, "she likes to speak very fast". So I would ask a question in Cantonese, Sister J could understand (more or less) and she would reply in Mandarin. Then Sister C would translate it into Cantonese - which I can understand.

Anyway, they both passed and are now baptised.

Anyway, time is running out. Thank you again for all the university stuff.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen