Happy Dragonboat Festival!

Dear Mum and Dad,

Yes, a duen mh jit faai lohk to all. Today is one of the bigger annual celebrations for the Chinese people, where they race dragonboats all day, up and down the rivers, in respect for an ancient Chinese poet and political leader who drowned himself in defiance of the evil emperor of the time. Every year, on the anniversary of his death, people ride boats up and down the rivers, banging a big drum to scare the fish so that they don't eat his body, and throw rice balls wrapped in leaves into the water, so that the fish will eat the rice instead of the poet. At some point some bright spark combined this with traditional races, and the dragonboat races were born.

This past week has been pretty busy for us here - things keep coming up to distract us or suck up all of our good finding time. Yesterday, working with the charity Crossroads, we packed a huge container of hospital beds which is currently on its way to Afganistan. The beds were pretty heavy, and this little service project took most of the day in the hot sun, so we all got very tired out and more than a little sunburnt. This is the most burned I've ever been on my mission and for many years before it. Ironically, when we got back home, we discovered that it had been raining the entire day in Kwai Fong. We had been on the large island of Dung Chung all day, which I guess is sheltered from the stormclouds because of the huge mountains all around. The particular place we were working was called Sunny Bay, and considering that we got sunburnt when the rest of Hong Kong was getting rained on, it certainly lived up to its name!

I went and got measured for my tailored suit last Thursday. It came to $650HK which is a little less than £65. I ordered two pairs of trousers (otherwise it would have only been $500HK) which I thought would be a good idea to extend the life of the suit. I'll be going to pick it up next week.

Now while we're on the subject of buying things, are there any specific souveniers people want from Hong Kong? I have about $600hk left in my account, and don't really have anything else I specifically NEED to buy, but if there are presents anyone wants, let me know.

This week my work has continued on learning to write the articles of faith in Chinese. I'm getting pretty close now - I wrote them all out yesterday and there were only five or six that I couldn't remember or wrote wrong. My pass-off is tomorrow, and I'm hoping to succeed - especially after hearing that apparently, nobody else as of yet has got the Extra Credit assignment for the Legend. This next Wednesday being President Van Dam's last mission conference, everyone is trying desperately to get the award in time so that they can have a meal with him. There's one other Elder I know of who has succeeded, and two more who are going to try this week, including my old companion Elder Sharp, who is six months younger than me in the field and who was my companion when I passed off the first thousand characters.

Rain has been hitting pretty heavily recently - apart from in Sunny Bay. It's been raining non-stop for several days, everything from light drizzle to a full on monsoon downpour, which is a lot stronger than the rain back home. I'm happy with the rain, though, because it's cooled things down a lot. Right before it rained, it was getting very hot, with temperatures as high as 30 Celcius. The rain makes it much nicer, and I'd far prefer to be a little wet from the rain than a lot wetter from my own sweat, thanks to all the humidity here. So far it seems a lot cooler this year than it was this time last year, which is good - but it's also been drier, which probably means that it'll get a lot hotter once we get into June and July. Because I took my late date coming home, I'll get three Julys on the mission, which just so happens to be the hottest part of the summer here. But I'd rather be on a mission for an extra month in the sun than be moping around at home for that time.

Anyway, all is well here in Kwai Fong. I'm enjoying myself and working hard. Things are a little slow here right now, but I don't mind - I know we just need to find that one prepared soul that God has waiting for us, and I know I can't complain about a slow few weeks or months when European missionaries tend to get a slow few years.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen