Happy Easter!

Dear Mum and Dad,

Yes, a big happy Easter to everyone, and a big thank you for the Easter package that I received the day before yesterday. It was wonderful, although I almost didn't open it because I was afraid it was a birthday package. Then Elder Cope pointed out that it said to open it on the outside, so I did. I shared the Cream Eggs with the other Elders in the flat, who noted the difference between the American version and the proper British one - the home grown eggs are a lot more rich and don't taste like wax.

As far as my birthday comes, and in light of the talk by Elder Hales (I think) at the beginning of the Saturday Morning session of Conference, I think a very good idea would be not to go too nuts. I'm about to hit a large period of debt, so I don't think I want to worry too much about buying lots of things. I propose that you don't put any more money in my account while I'm on my mission, because I'm sure I can get by on what I have. I have a far smaller desire to go crazy buying expensive toys before I leave Hong Kong - better to save the money. Now I have to ask myself as I buy everything, do I need it, or do I only want it? That said, after plans suddenly changed last week we didn't go camera shopping, so we're going today. If I see a cheap enough iPod Touch, I may not be able to control myself.

Elder Cope bought a second hand 32gig iPod Touch for $2000hk, which I hear is a good deal. I don't want to throw $2000 into any purchase right now though, not even a camera. Luckily because Hong Kong apparently doesn't have sales tax on electronics, it's cheaper to get good tech here than in Macau, so with luck I won't need all the money you've put into my account. We can just call that my Birthday present.

I have interviews with President Van Dam tomorrow so I'll ask him about phoning home a week early. This will be my penultimate interview with him, as he goes home in July. It'll be sad to see him go, and I've heard that he and Sister Van Dam are dreading it as much as I am. They've been booked for some babysitting in September already!

After Conference, I made a big long list of goals as a result of what I had learned. I decided, after Elder Bednar's talk, that I have a to increase my Temple attendance when I go home, and go more often than every six weeks. That's not easy, considering the distance of travel involved, so I've decided that I need to get my full driver's license and a car of my own in order to do so - I don't want to have to rely on anyone else for rides to and from the Temple. While it'll be a big sacrifice in time and money, I think it's essential if I want the Lord's guidance as I go through university. While I did just mention that debt is bad for me and I should avoid unnessesary expenses, I think that driving is fairly essential (more so than an iPod touch or a new DS).

As I continued making my list - including Home Teaching, member missionary work and other things, it occurred to me that there really isn't enough time to do everything that's required of me. This mindset really did worry me for a while as I added up all of the things I need to do and weighed into balance my ability to do them. I'm definitely lacking. So I spent a lot of time studying President Eyring's talk from last General Conference, which talks about this very problem and has all new meaning to me as I think about how getting off the mission means an increase of work to do, not a decrease. It's really, very easy as a missionary. It just increases my growing fear of coming home. But I guess it's one of those Adam and Eve kind of things. In the mission field, life is good and simple and happy, but there's only so much I can progress here. I need to choose my new trials and challenges for myself rather than run from difficulty - only as I do this can I progress. I've said to others many times that if I had the choice of staying on my mission forever, I think I'd probably say yes. But looking at it from the Adam and Eve perspective, I remember that being a missionary is not enough to gain exaltation. There's more trials ahead of me and I can't hide from them, nor can I hide from the world. I just need to be sure that I don't let the world drag me down - I need to maintain a missionary mindset outside of the mission field. I'm not sure how easy that will be, but I'm going to need to give it a spin.

Sometimes these email sessions are a way for me to think things through as I type out my thoughts. Sorry if that got a little too ponderous.

Yesterday I had my Language Legend pass off. It was structured very differently - after all, I was doing it with a different person, Sister Au, who is a native. She was a little tougher than Elder Carter and my last attempt - she tested me on 300 character and would only allow me to miss 12, whereas Elder Carter tested me on 450 and let me miss 10%. Thankfully, if I didn't quite remember the sound or tone, she would give me a second chance. Ultimately, I missed 12 and then remembered one of them at the end. So I scraped through the character test. I also read the Book of Mormon with her and passed that too. But I didn't know the MVP well enough (which is fair enough, because I didn't think I did but figured I'd give it a try) and so I still have one little challenge to pass. Mission Conference is next Wednesday, so my day of glory will need to wait for until next time - now I only have one more Mission Conference with President Van Dam in which I can get the Legend award. So I'm going to work hard to get it done. Having gone through the section of the book that I'm tested on, I've found that I'm missing about 500 words from the book that I need to learn, which isn't that much when you consider that I already know a few thousand of them. But vocabulary has always been my weakest point to my Chinese, because I find it very hard to learn vocab (as it's all sounds) whilst character cards were relatively easy (because it's all pictures, which is how my mind works). So we'll see how long it'll take, but I want it done by the end of the Move.

Anyway, time is running out. I love you all. You are in my prayers. I'll do my absolute best not to go nuts buying a camera today. It'll probably be cheaper to buy a non-Sony and new memory sticks than to buy another Sony camera, so today might be the end of the long hold that Sony has had on my pocketbook. We shall see.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen