Dear Mum and Dad,
Thank you for all of the birthday love. I picked up the package at the Temple yesterday. Please also thank all of the grandparents, because although I'm intending on writing to say thank you to them, I've not had the best track record at getting letters into the post box as of late. I wrote Julian a letter one of my first weeks in Macau which still has as of yet to be posted.
Ultimately, my birthday was fun. I didn't want to make a fuss about it, and I certainly didn't want anyone to buy me a cake, as missionaries usually do for each other, so I didn't tell anyone. A few people knew that something was up and knew that it was around this time, but nobody knew when. Some Sister Missionaries asked me when it was the day before my birthday, and I just said "soon". Then someone asked me a few days after and I simply said, "recently". So a few people are aware that my birthday has passed, but I'm fairly pleased with myself that I could keep it a secret.
As it happened, my birthday also happened to coincide with the mission half-way mark of one of the Elders in my District, Elder Wong. Elder Wong, who is from Canada, has been given special permission to serve a one month mission, and last Saturday was his two week mark. So we had a special pizza party for him. I enjoyed the irony of wishing him "happy birthday".
Scotland sounds like fun - I hope you all enjoy yourselves. I'm kind of excited to go visit Scotland too - there's an Elder serving in Edinburgh from the ward I'm in here. The noticeboard at church is filled with pictures of him and Chinese people he's baptizing, which is very interesting. Apparently there's a large Chinese community in Scotland, and while he's been there they've started a Chinese branch up there (or at least a group, if not a branch).
Give my love to Chris whenever you see him. I can imagine that the adjustment back to real civilian life will be tough for him, as I'm sure it will be for me.
We had an interesting meeting at the Temple yesterday - the Zone Leader Conference. Both President and Sister Van Dam came up and congratulated me on getting my language legend award, which was nice, although I felt slightly embarrassed by it - I'd rather people didn't make a fuss. Speaking of the Legend award, I've decided to aim for the "Extra Credit" assignment of learning how to write all of the Articles of Faith in Chinese. I've been working my way through and have learnt how to write up to number nine already, but ten to thirteen are the hardest, as they talk about the gathering of Israel, kings, rulers, magistrates, being honest, chaste, benevolent, etc. But I have about a week and a half before Mission Conference, so I think I can get it done by before I officially recieve my Legend award. It feels good to have a tough goal to work towards again - the big reason that I got the Legend in the first place was because I set myself goals for getting it all done a little sooner than I would otherwise have been ready, and then just pushed with every spare second I had at lunch and dinner to get it done. Then when I finished I enjoyed not having something to learn every second of the day - but it left me feeling a little bored, so it's good to have something else to learn. Beyond the Articles of Faith, I intend on learning to write the first 1000 characters before I finish my mission, and will learn the next 2000 when I get home. I also have to find some way of learning Mandarin, but I'll worry about that later. And I have to learn how to read simplified characters, which they use in the Mainland. But I'll worry about all that later.
I heard some interesting news the yesterday. There was a very talkative but not completely sane man who was nice enough that walked with us back to the church as we were going to an appointment, who said that supposedly, the new American ambassador to China is a member; a return missionary from Taiwan who still speaks Mandarin. If this is true, it certainly will be some good publicity for the Church up there. As it happens, I don't think we're doing too badly for publicity either way - I hear from another Elder who is from Hawaii that BYU Hawaii has good ties with the Chinese government, who actually invited their choir to sing in the opening ceremony for the Olympics, but they declined. Also, when Elder Russell M Nelson came a few months ago, he talked about how as a doctor who spoke a little Mandarin, he was able to set up exchanges between BYU and some Chinese universities a while ago.
He told an interesting story - he was taking notes at a General Authority meeting when the prophet at the time - I think it was Ezra Taft Benson - said that all in attendance should learn Mandarin. Well, Elder Nelson wanted to be completely obedient, so he and his wife started taking Mandarin lessons. A while later he found himself sitting next to a doctor from China at a doctor's conference and was able to impress him with some of the Mandarin he'd learned. It led to a lot of doors being opened for relations between the Church and the Chinese government. So he reminded us that we should all be strictly obedient, and should take our language learning seriously.
Well, time is short today as we have the Temple in a few hours and we all need to get ready. I love you lots and pray for you often.
Lots of love,
Elder Loffhagen
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Dear Mum and Dad,
This has been a fun week. Very busy, but fun nonetheless.
I have as of yet not had my steak with President Van Dam. I'm not exactly sure when he will arrange that with me, but I expect it'll be closer to Mission Conference, which is in about three weeks.
Sounds like Bournemouth was a lot of fun. It's nice to know the weather was good where you are. Summer is certainly on the way here - it's getting very, very hot. Remembering last summer when I walked around in the heat for up to eight hours a day, I'm not really anticipating the full heat of the season, but there's not much that can be done to avoid it - I'm hoping that it will rain, soon, and cool things down a little for a few days.
Today is Moves day, but Elder Marshall and I are staying together. This will be his very last move, so he's going to "die" and I'll "kill" him. It ought to be fun - over a year ago, I "killed" his trainer too. I like the poetic justice there. More poetic justice is soon arriving as Elder Bagley, my old companion (who I trained) moves into our District. So he'll probably be around to see me "die" next Move. I saw him born and he will see me die.
A lot of unexpected things are happening around the mission this Moves. The new Mission President, President Chan, will start his service in July, so President Van Dam's getting ready to leave. He's called a missionary in his last move to be a new Assistant, and has called my dear former companion, Elder Liu, to be a Zone Leader. Elder Liu was my junior companion in Macau only three months ago and hadn't been a District Leader yet - we're all speculating that he will be the next Assistant, which doesn't surprise me in the least, as he's one of (if not the) most amazing missionaries I've served around.
This week I had an interesting Pass-Off experience that I think is worth telling. As Zone Leader, I need to do pass-offs with missionaries working towards passing off the Missionary lessons to check their progress. A long time ago, when I was District Leader in Tai Po, I had a pass-off with a new missionary called Elder Nelson. It was his first move, and on his second attempt I passed him off.
When I came to Kwai Fong this Move, over half a year later, I found that he hadn't progressed any further in his pass-offs, because the district leader after I'd left had been very strict with him and he'd decided he didn't really want to try any more. I encouraged him to push forward with his pass offs, because I know he's a good teacher and that his Chinese is very good. So now at the end of this Move, he had passed off the second and third lesson and was ready for his Zone Leader checkup pass-off.
As we sat talking about it before we started, I asked him which lesson he felt was the hardest to teach. He said that the second lesson, the Plan of Salvation, was hardest when teaching missionaries in pass-offs, but the first lesson, the Restoration, was hardest when teaching real people. I thought that the difference was interesting and was reminded that pass-off lessons are never the same as real lessons. All at once, a prompting came to my mind.
"How about this," I asked, "why don't we go out on the street, stop a person, you can teach the Restoration, and that can count as your pass-off?"
Elder Nelson agreed, so off we went. We hadn't walked very far before I started to doubt myself - could we actually stop someone in such a short period of time? I've wandered around for hours without any success before - such a short period of time to find in, only fifteen minutes, might not yield results, and I would have wasted Elder Nelson's pass-off time. I told him that if we hadn't stopped anyone before we reached the top of a set of stairs we were walking up, we'd sit down in the shade of a tree and he could teach me a lesson on a bench.
Right then we met with a girl in her twenties heading off to university in Tsing Yi, Elder Nelson's current area. Unlike most Hong Kong people, it wasn't that difficult to convince her that she had time to stop, and I felt a special spirit in her. Elder Nelson taught her a Restoration which was a little more in depth than we usually have time to go over on the street, and she responded positively. We exchanged contact details and I passed her number over to the Sister Missionaries.
Elder Nelson did a good job, so I passed him, but I think I was even happier about the way the pass-off went than he was - I had felt a prompting of the Spirit and acted on it, and as a result, instead of teaching a practice lesson, we'd both had the chance to bear testimony of the First Vision to a prepared soul, and we had been able to invite someone to come unto Christ.
Yesterday I received a copy of a biographical DVD about President Monson I ordered entitled On the Lord's Errand. On the back of the DVD case is a quote which from President Monson which says, to paraphrase, "The sweetest experience I know is to follow a prompting of the Spirit and later find out that I was acting as an answer to someone's prayer or someone's need. I want the Lord to know that if there is an errand He needs run, Tom Monson will run that errand for Him." I want the same to be said of Matt Loffhagen.
On an unrelated topic, the other day I met an older Chinese man on the street who said he was from Leeds. I was thrilled to hear that and told him that I'd be starting at Leeds University this coming October. He said that his son is attending that university right now. I was happy to hear that there will definitely be a lot of Chinese people around for me to chat with after the mission - I definitely don't want to forget Cantonese.
Anyway, I love you all and pray hard about each one of you. When you see them, please say thank you to Grandma and Grandad, who have sent me a birthday card.
Love,
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
This has been a fun week. Very busy, but fun nonetheless.
I have as of yet not had my steak with President Van Dam. I'm not exactly sure when he will arrange that with me, but I expect it'll be closer to Mission Conference, which is in about three weeks.
Sounds like Bournemouth was a lot of fun. It's nice to know the weather was good where you are. Summer is certainly on the way here - it's getting very, very hot. Remembering last summer when I walked around in the heat for up to eight hours a day, I'm not really anticipating the full heat of the season, but there's not much that can be done to avoid it - I'm hoping that it will rain, soon, and cool things down a little for a few days.
Today is Moves day, but Elder Marshall and I are staying together. This will be his very last move, so he's going to "die" and I'll "kill" him. It ought to be fun - over a year ago, I "killed" his trainer too. I like the poetic justice there. More poetic justice is soon arriving as Elder Bagley, my old companion (who I trained) moves into our District. So he'll probably be around to see me "die" next Move. I saw him born and he will see me die.
A lot of unexpected things are happening around the mission this Moves. The new Mission President, President Chan, will start his service in July, so President Van Dam's getting ready to leave. He's called a missionary in his last move to be a new Assistant, and has called my dear former companion, Elder Liu, to be a Zone Leader. Elder Liu was my junior companion in Macau only three months ago and hadn't been a District Leader yet - we're all speculating that he will be the next Assistant, which doesn't surprise me in the least, as he's one of (if not the) most amazing missionaries I've served around.
This week I had an interesting Pass-Off experience that I think is worth telling. As Zone Leader, I need to do pass-offs with missionaries working towards passing off the Missionary lessons to check their progress. A long time ago, when I was District Leader in Tai Po, I had a pass-off with a new missionary called Elder Nelson. It was his first move, and on his second attempt I passed him off.
When I came to Kwai Fong this Move, over half a year later, I found that he hadn't progressed any further in his pass-offs, because the district leader after I'd left had been very strict with him and he'd decided he didn't really want to try any more. I encouraged him to push forward with his pass offs, because I know he's a good teacher and that his Chinese is very good. So now at the end of this Move, he had passed off the second and third lesson and was ready for his Zone Leader checkup pass-off.
As we sat talking about it before we started, I asked him which lesson he felt was the hardest to teach. He said that the second lesson, the Plan of Salvation, was hardest when teaching missionaries in pass-offs, but the first lesson, the Restoration, was hardest when teaching real people. I thought that the difference was interesting and was reminded that pass-off lessons are never the same as real lessons. All at once, a prompting came to my mind.
"How about this," I asked, "why don't we go out on the street, stop a person, you can teach the Restoration, and that can count as your pass-off?"
Elder Nelson agreed, so off we went. We hadn't walked very far before I started to doubt myself - could we actually stop someone in such a short period of time? I've wandered around for hours without any success before - such a short period of time to find in, only fifteen minutes, might not yield results, and I would have wasted Elder Nelson's pass-off time. I told him that if we hadn't stopped anyone before we reached the top of a set of stairs we were walking up, we'd sit down in the shade of a tree and he could teach me a lesson on a bench.
Right then we met with a girl in her twenties heading off to university in Tsing Yi, Elder Nelson's current area. Unlike most Hong Kong people, it wasn't that difficult to convince her that she had time to stop, and I felt a special spirit in her. Elder Nelson taught her a Restoration which was a little more in depth than we usually have time to go over on the street, and she responded positively. We exchanged contact details and I passed her number over to the Sister Missionaries.
Elder Nelson did a good job, so I passed him, but I think I was even happier about the way the pass-off went than he was - I had felt a prompting of the Spirit and acted on it, and as a result, instead of teaching a practice lesson, we'd both had the chance to bear testimony of the First Vision to a prepared soul, and we had been able to invite someone to come unto Christ.
Yesterday I received a copy of a biographical DVD about President Monson I ordered entitled On the Lord's Errand. On the back of the DVD case is a quote which from President Monson which says, to paraphrase, "The sweetest experience I know is to follow a prompting of the Spirit and later find out that I was acting as an answer to someone's prayer or someone's need. I want the Lord to know that if there is an errand He needs run, Tom Monson will run that errand for Him." I want the same to be said of Matt Loffhagen.
On an unrelated topic, the other day I met an older Chinese man on the street who said he was from Leeds. I was thrilled to hear that and told him that I'd be starting at Leeds University this coming October. He said that his son is attending that university right now. I was happy to hear that there will definitely be a lot of Chinese people around for me to chat with after the mission - I definitely don't want to forget Cantonese.
Anyway, I love you all and pray hard about each one of you. When you see them, please say thank you to Grandma and Grandad, who have sent me a birthday card.
Love,
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
Dear family,
On a practical level, I have more than enough shirts for the rest of my mission now, thank you :)
Nice to hear that the week went well.
This past week has been very busy. I've been on three exchanges with other missionaries. The first, last Friday/Saturday, was Elder Kwok, an old companion of mine, who is currently a district leader in Tsing Yi, a small island next to Kwai Fong. We had a lot of fun together - it was clear to me that we'd both grown a lot since the six weeks we'd spent together. Back then, I was a relatively inexperienced new senior companion, and he was in his second Move. We taught some very good lessons together, and I got to see him working well with his district, which was good to see.
Because Elder Marshall went back to visit Macau last Sunday, I was with another Elder called Elder Fulmizi for Sunday and Monday. He is relatively newer in the field, having been out for seven or eight months, but he is very bold and active in finding. It was an interesting exchange.
Finally, on Tuesday I went with the brand new Elder Wong. Elder Wong's situation is very special - he's from Canada and as such speaks fluent Cantonese. He's training to be a doctor, but somehow it was arranged for him to come to Hong Kong for just one month in between years at school for a unique mission experience. He's really great, and I had a good time going with him on Tuesday - especially because he had to go to Wan Chai on Hong Kong island to renew his permanent Hong Kong ID card, so I got to take him there and show him around the beautiful Wan Chai church building, which is one of the most expensive (and impressive) Church buildings in the world. Hong Kong island is my favourite part of Hong Kong - it's so busy and exciting and shiny and full of unique, interesting people. We were on the MTR (the Hong Kong version of the Underground) and a man was staring at our nametags - not that uncommon. I said, "Leih Hou" and he responded "Konichiwa" (or however you spell it) which is Japanese for the same thing - "Hello". It turns out that he was from Japan on holiday here for a week. This is the kind of fun multiculturalism that makes the Island so much fun.
Incidentally, on the train ride home, a sister came up to us who is a member of the Aberdeen ward, which is the ward next to my old area of West Point.
I'm trying to be secretive about getting my language legend for the moment - and succeeded until yesterday to keep it a secret from Elder Cope, the Elder you spoke to on Sunday. I guess he thought I was joking when I talked about it up until yesterday. One of the "prizes" for getting language legend is that President and Sister Van Dam cheng me out (that's missionary Chenglish slang) to a restaurant of my choice. When I heard about this, I decided to swear an oath of sorts (but not a real one) that the next steak I eat will be the one President Van Dam buys for me. So now having achieved my Legend, I'm greatly anticipating this. It's too bad, therefore, that a wonderful member from the adjacent Tsuen Wan ward (who is pretty well off, as he's head of the Hasbro toys distribution for Asia) is chenging pretty much all of the missionaries in Kowloon West to lunch at a place called Outback Steakhouse today. Curses! While technically, I've achieved my legend, so I'm allowed to eat steak again, the condition was that I would have that first steak with President Van Dam. So as not to spoil the moment, I think I'll have to order chicken today instead.
A little incidental story about a cheng out in Macau - a very rich member family called the Tangs took all of the missionaries in Macau out to dinner in a nice restaurant, which was also fairly cheap. They told us all to pick our meals, and most of the Elders and Sisters went for meals that cost MOP20 (which is about £2 - such is the approximate price of a normal meal eaten out at a restaurant here) but I found myself incredibly tempted by the look of the rack of ribs, which cost a whopping MOP70 (£7)! When Brother Tang asked me what I wanted, I said, "I don't really want to tell you. It's too expensive." "Well what is it?" he asked, and I showed him the ribs. "That's not expensive!" He said, "You're from England! Everything in England is so expensive! I think that's a pretty cheap way to feed a missionary from your country!" And so, I felt a little awkward chomping down on a huge rack of ribs as everyone else casually enjoyed their noodles.
Let's hope your son doesn't develop a reputation as a leech.
Anyway, enough about food. This next Friday is Zone Conference, and Elder Marshall and I have been preparing hard to make sure that it's a memorable experience for everybody. Every Move has a theme, and we made this Move's theme "There's Treasure Everywhere", encouraging the missionaries to go out and find the "treasure" of prepared souls. This theme actually came from a Calvin and Hobbes comic, where Calvin's digging in the back garden for buried treasure. Hobbes asks him what he's found and he says "two rocks and this weird root." Hobbes says "Wow! All that treasure on your first try?" And Calvin says, "There's treasure everywhere!" The idea we're trying to get across is that they can find prepared people and see miracles every day, but it's not always going to be what we're expecting - we need to look hard to find the everyday miracles that God blesses us with to make our days a little smoother.
Because the Mission Focus is partly on the Book of Mormon, we've decided to show everyone a film called How Rare a Possession. I don't know if you've seen it - it's about an Italian pastor who finds a Book of Mormon in a rubbish bin that is missing its front cover and title page, so he doesn't know what the book is called. He begins preaching from it at the pulpit, and when the other church leaders threaten to expel him from the church if he doesn't burn the book, he chooses to leave the order and begin a search for the true church who teach of this book. He finds it, but the outbreak of war stops him from being able to leave his home in Sicily. He writes letters to Church leaders over several decades, pleading for someone with the authority of God to come to baptize him. Finally, it is arranged and he is thrilled. The final scene of the film is of him making his way inside the Switzerland Temple, and a General Authority speaks about how so many of us overlook the great treasure that is the Book of Mormon.
Anyway, time is almost up. I love you all.
Elder Loffhagen
On a practical level, I have more than enough shirts for the rest of my mission now, thank you :)
Nice to hear that the week went well.
This past week has been very busy. I've been on three exchanges with other missionaries. The first, last Friday/Saturday, was Elder Kwok, an old companion of mine, who is currently a district leader in Tsing Yi, a small island next to Kwai Fong. We had a lot of fun together - it was clear to me that we'd both grown a lot since the six weeks we'd spent together. Back then, I was a relatively inexperienced new senior companion, and he was in his second Move. We taught some very good lessons together, and I got to see him working well with his district, which was good to see.
Because Elder Marshall went back to visit Macau last Sunday, I was with another Elder called Elder Fulmizi for Sunday and Monday. He is relatively newer in the field, having been out for seven or eight months, but he is very bold and active in finding. It was an interesting exchange.
Finally, on Tuesday I went with the brand new Elder Wong. Elder Wong's situation is very special - he's from Canada and as such speaks fluent Cantonese. He's training to be a doctor, but somehow it was arranged for him to come to Hong Kong for just one month in between years at school for a unique mission experience. He's really great, and I had a good time going with him on Tuesday - especially because he had to go to Wan Chai on Hong Kong island to renew his permanent Hong Kong ID card, so I got to take him there and show him around the beautiful Wan Chai church building, which is one of the most expensive (and impressive) Church buildings in the world. Hong Kong island is my favourite part of Hong Kong - it's so busy and exciting and shiny and full of unique, interesting people. We were on the MTR (the Hong Kong version of the Underground) and a man was staring at our nametags - not that uncommon. I said, "Leih Hou" and he responded "Konichiwa" (or however you spell it) which is Japanese for the same thing - "Hello". It turns out that he was from Japan on holiday here for a week. This is the kind of fun multiculturalism that makes the Island so much fun.
Incidentally, on the train ride home, a sister came up to us who is a member of the Aberdeen ward, which is the ward next to my old area of West Point.
I'm trying to be secretive about getting my language legend for the moment - and succeeded until yesterday to keep it a secret from Elder Cope, the Elder you spoke to on Sunday. I guess he thought I was joking when I talked about it up until yesterday. One of the "prizes" for getting language legend is that President and Sister Van Dam cheng me out (that's missionary Chenglish slang) to a restaurant of my choice. When I heard about this, I decided to swear an oath of sorts (but not a real one) that the next steak I eat will be the one President Van Dam buys for me. So now having achieved my Legend, I'm greatly anticipating this. It's too bad, therefore, that a wonderful member from the adjacent Tsuen Wan ward (who is pretty well off, as he's head of the Hasbro toys distribution for Asia) is chenging pretty much all of the missionaries in Kowloon West to lunch at a place called Outback Steakhouse today. Curses! While technically, I've achieved my legend, so I'm allowed to eat steak again, the condition was that I would have that first steak with President Van Dam. So as not to spoil the moment, I think I'll have to order chicken today instead.
A little incidental story about a cheng out in Macau - a very rich member family called the Tangs took all of the missionaries in Macau out to dinner in a nice restaurant, which was also fairly cheap. They told us all to pick our meals, and most of the Elders and Sisters went for meals that cost MOP20 (which is about £2 - such is the approximate price of a normal meal eaten out at a restaurant here) but I found myself incredibly tempted by the look of the rack of ribs, which cost a whopping MOP70 (£7)! When Brother Tang asked me what I wanted, I said, "I don't really want to tell you. It's too expensive." "Well what is it?" he asked, and I showed him the ribs. "That's not expensive!" He said, "You're from England! Everything in England is so expensive! I think that's a pretty cheap way to feed a missionary from your country!" And so, I felt a little awkward chomping down on a huge rack of ribs as everyone else casually enjoyed their noodles.
Let's hope your son doesn't develop a reputation as a leech.
Anyway, enough about food. This next Friday is Zone Conference, and Elder Marshall and I have been preparing hard to make sure that it's a memorable experience for everybody. Every Move has a theme, and we made this Move's theme "There's Treasure Everywhere", encouraging the missionaries to go out and find the "treasure" of prepared souls. This theme actually came from a Calvin and Hobbes comic, where Calvin's digging in the back garden for buried treasure. Hobbes asks him what he's found and he says "two rocks and this weird root." Hobbes says "Wow! All that treasure on your first try?" And Calvin says, "There's treasure everywhere!" The idea we're trying to get across is that they can find prepared people and see miracles every day, but it's not always going to be what we're expecting - we need to look hard to find the everyday miracles that God blesses us with to make our days a little smoother.
Because the Mission Focus is partly on the Book of Mormon, we've decided to show everyone a film called How Rare a Possession. I don't know if you've seen it - it's about an Italian pastor who finds a Book of Mormon in a rubbish bin that is missing its front cover and title page, so he doesn't know what the book is called. He begins preaching from it at the pulpit, and when the other church leaders threaten to expel him from the church if he doesn't burn the book, he chooses to leave the order and begin a search for the true church who teach of this book. He finds it, but the outbreak of war stops him from being able to leave his home in Sicily. He writes letters to Church leaders over several decades, pleading for someone with the authority of God to come to baptize him. Finally, it is arranged and he is thrilled. The final scene of the film is of him making his way inside the Switzerland Temple, and a General Authority speaks about how so many of us overlook the great treasure that is the Book of Mormon.
Anyway, time is almost up. I love you all.
Elder Loffhagen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
