I Hope I Grow A Foot or Two...

The Journey is Over but the Flight isn't until tomorrow!

2009-08-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

Thank you for sending me so many happy final emails. I figured I'd take a second and say that I love you and I'm looking forward to see you tomorrow.

It's bitter-sweet, leaving the mission. It mostly feels bitter right now. But I'm sure I'll be a lot happer tomorrow once the flight is over.

I've come up with a new slogan - The journey is over but the adventure has just begun. I'm ready for a lot of new, amazing adventures in England. It should be fun.

Sister Dawson is next to me right now and is also checking her email. She just got one from Louise Roberts! I'm going to go read it.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen

My Blaze of Glory

2009-07-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

So much has happened this week. It's been one of the best weeks of my life.

This will be my last email while on a mission - my "ultimate" email. So last week was the penultimate one - right? Or am I not remembering the rules of English clearly? I couldn't remember how to say "guidance" the other day in a prayer, and I'm seriously concerned about what two years of American companions has done to my language. Please give me some time to adjust.

I won't really get much of a chance to send one next week, so you'll have to wait an extra day to hear from me. I hope you can take consolation in the fact that you'll be hearing from me in person instead of at a distance.

Several Family Home Evening lessons have been planned for a long time already; just leave it to me. I'm looking forward to sharing all about my mission adventures with you, but hopefully not boring you to death by making you look at every single picture I took over two years.

I've had a few particularly interesting adventures this week. Last Sunday was the Macau fireside, which was the best night of my life. But before getting there, we found out that I had a few little visa problems. It turns out that for whatever reason, there was a mishap with renewing the visas of my entire group. While most of my group have left now, so it doesn't matter, everyone who stayed past our two year mark and took our late date to come home have apparently overstayed our welcome - when the Church renewed our visas, they accidentally only renewed them until our date entering the MTC.

So I was given my passport to travel back to Macau, and went to the ferry. Before you get on the ferry, you have to go through immigrations, because you're leaving the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. There's a really cool machine that checks you out - you put your Hong Kong ID in a kind of ticket reader, and then put your thumb on a thumb print reader. Then you walk through without a problem - unless you've overstayed your visa, like me. So a man came over and took me to an interrogation room. Ultimately, I had to pay $160HK to extend my visa until that day, when I was allowed to leave, and when I came back to Hong Kong I had to apply for a visitor's visa instead of using my convenient work visa. Right now, Sister Kau who works in the Mission Office is at the Immigration Office applying for a new work visa for everyone in my group who is still left. It's actually kind of lucky that this happened, otherwise we would never have known our visas were expired, and leaving Hong Kong to return home would have been difficult.

So when I'd finally arrived in Macau, I was thrilled. I was so happy to be walking the streets again, and was even more thrilled when I arrived at the church and saw so many old friends. Since I've left, many of our investigators have been baptised and many members of the International Branch, who I was also really good friends with, have been to the Temple, been endowed and one family was even sealed in the Temple!

I was so happy to be back with my family. That's what Macau really is for me - my family. As I saw several of my recent converts again, like the W Family and A-B, I was so thrilled for them. As I saw the missionaries, many of whom had just started serving in Macau around the time I'd left, I was thrilled to renew my friendships with them as well. It was the happiest moment of my life.

In the fireside, one of the Sister Missionaries currently serving in Macau sang a Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief better than I think I've ever heard it sung before. As she sang the last verse, "He spoke and my poor name He named; Of me thou hast not been ashamed. These deeds shall thy memorial be; fear not! Thou didst them unto me", I felt such a wave of the Spirit, probably stronger than I've ever felt it on my mission, comparative only to the time I sat in the Nauvoo Temple dedication. Only this time was all the more special, because I felt the love that my Saviour has, not only for me, but for the people I've worked with throughout my mission. And I felt that He was well pleased with the work I had done and the service I had given.

I was to speak directly after the musical number, and as I arose and walked to the pulpit, I felt the Spirit follow me there. I poured out my heart as I spoke of my love for the people of Macau and my thanks that God had given me the chance to get to know them. I shared Alma 17:2, which talks about Alma's joy when he met with the sons of Mosiah, because they were still his brethren in the Lord. I bore testimony of the Saviour's love and how I saw it reflected in the faces of the members in Macau.

I've been thinking a lot about my plan to go out in a blaze of glory - I was never quite sure what that meant until last Sunday night. That fireside, and that testimony WAS my blaze of glory. I don't know that anyone felt the blaze quite as strongly as I did, and it was only witnessed by a few dozen people in a little chapel in the grimy, sin infested tail end of China, but I felt that blaze and I knew the Lord has accepted my mission.

So as that Sister sang "These deeds shall thy memorial be," I finally felt ready to go home. No more fear or doubt of the unknown. I'm okay with ending my mission now. I left Macau with the joy that, no matter what heartache at leaving I may go through in the next week of my mission, it's worth it, because I had one last day in Macau. And no matter what hard times may follow after I return to England, it's worth it, because I got to serve in Hong Kong and give everything I had in the service of God for two years.

That said, I still have one week to do the best I can, and I'm going to work until I drop.

I got back to Hong Kong on Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday was the infamous career workshop - a senior couple on a mission here taught us how exactly to go about getting a job and competing in the workplace. A lot of missionaries have been and had given me the impression that it's a really painful two days that leaves you completely trunky once it's gone, but I'm still feeling fine.

Coming up on Friday is our last Zone Conference, then my companion leaves for the Temple (he's been called as the new Assistant to the President, which means I'll be spending my last week in a threesome with Elder Bagley, my trainee; and his companion Elder Bloomfield) and Sunday is my Hong Kong Why I Believe Fireside, which should also be fun - but probably not as fun as the Macau fireside was. Tuesday is my exit interview with President Chan, and on Thursday I'll go through the Temple, visit the Peak where Hong Kong was dedicated and have dinner with the Chans. Then I'll stay overnight in the Temple with four of my old companions, as next Move the entire office staff will be my former companions - Elder Liu, Elder Fisher, Elder Kwok and Elder Clark. Then early Friday morning we'll go to the airport and I'll say goodbye to Hong Kong for a while.

Then I'll ask the person sitting next to me if he's ever heard of the Latter-day Saint church.

Then maybe a little later I'll ask the stewardess what my chances of getting a free upgrade to first class is, if there happen to be any spaces free. After all, if you don't ask, you don't get!

I don't think there's much else to say. I'm looking forward to seeing you next week. Don't worry about me too much if I seem distant or sad, or even a little weird. Missions do strange things to people. And don't make fun of my accent, just gently correct me when I say a word wrong. Tell Tim I'm looking forward to losing to him at Halo (because I've played Halo all of four times before in my life, and it'll be nice to build up his confidence by letting him win at something after I finish smashing him at Mariokart).

I love you all. I'm so thankful for your many sacrifices on my behalf. It's strange to end this chapter of my life, but I'm okay with it now. I know that God is guiding my path, whether or not I can see where I'm going.

I know with all my heart that this Church is true. If it weren't, I wouldn't have wasted two years in China trying to convince people to change their lives when they'd really, for the most part, rather not. I know God lives and loves each of us.

See you on Friday,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

My Penultimate Email

2009-07-23T05:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

I did hear about the Solar eclipse. But I didn't see it. It was similar to the last time there was an eclipse in Britain - the sky got darker a little, but there was nothing too special unless you were looking directly at the sun, which I didn't do.

I ultimately decided not to ask President Chan for permission to read Harry Potter - as you said, when does my mission end? Not until President Aitchinson releases me. But he did give me permission to use headphones to listen to General Conference on the way home, which is certainly a better use of the time. He also pointed out that as I travel home, it will be good to have the companionship of such uplifting messages, but I should make sure to let people around me know what I'm listening to.

This past Friday and Saturday I had the wonderful pleasure of exchanging with the Assistants to the President - I got to be companions for the day with Elder Liu, my old companion from Macau. It was a lot of fun, because he's an amazing missionary and really in tune with the spirit. We stopped people on the street and taught them the Gospel, and tried to contact a referral, but we couldn't quite find his address. On Saturday, there was a lot of AP things to do which I assisted in slightly, like giving people tours of the Mission Office and assigning Summer Missionaries to companionships.

I now have my flight plans, which were a little disappointing. Because my flight leaves at 9:40 in the morning, they want me to be at the airport by 7:00, which means I won't be able to attend the breakfast with all the other "dying" missionaries and their parents - so I won't get to see the Dawsons after all. That's sad. I also don't get to stay with all the other missionaries in a hotel overnight the night before, but will be with the Office Elders in the Temple instead, so that it's more convenient to leave early in the morning for the flight.

Also, it turns out that my entire baggage allowance is a mere 44lb which I believe is under 20kg. The mission says they'll pay for a second bag but want me to post all heavy books home on the slow boat. So I'll have to organize that - probably next Preparation Day. I'm going to do my best not to spend that £200.

Proms in the park sounds like fun, even if it's just the three of us. I believe the last time I went was 2001, because I remember them making us sing the American National Anthem and there not being any fireworks in memory of the Trade Center bombings.

I don't really have anything else to say this week. I love you and pray for you often. Enjoy the Summer Holiday.

Lots of Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

My final Mission Conference

2009-07-16T04:40:00.001-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

First off, no, the blog doesn't bother me - I'm fine with it. :)

This has been yet another busy week, as every week seems to be now. Today was a trip with the Zone to the Hong Kong History Museum, which was very interesting. It started at the formation of the planet and went all the way through to the turnover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. I get the feeling it was built after the turnover, because it seemed to point out every natural disaster and war in Hong Kong up until 1997, at which point, life became much better. The British were shown as being horrible Opium barons who failed many times at communicating with the locals, so we started taking things by force. Apparently our only contribution to Hong Kong was opium and gas powered streetlamps.

I found out something interesting - Hong Kong is the world's largest shipping container port, with most of the containers being stationed in Kwai Chung, my area. That's nice.

Another highlight of this past week has been Mission Conference. It was held this past Tuesday 14th July, which happens to be the 60th anniversary of Elder Matthew Cowley dedicating the land of Hong Kong to the preaching of the Gospel, atop Victoria Peak. As such, mission conference was very special - it was also held atop the peak. It was President Chan's first conference, and was a little different to President Van Dam's style, but it was also really enjoyable. As a missionary soon to return home, I was asked to give a departing testimony. I spoke of how God loves us, and said, "God loves the Chinese people. He loves the Philipinas...He even loves the Americans sometimes." I hadn't meant to say it quite like that, but it was said. Thankfully, the Americans of the mission (a good 95% of the missionaries) have already gotten used to my sarcastic comments about their homeland.

As far as Harry Potter goes, everybody in China loves it too. As per usual, I'm trying desperately to avoid posters and adverts on busses and trains, and trying desperately to steer all conversations away from the topic, for fear that a younger missionary will blurt out the ending and ruin my two years of successfully avoiding finding out what happens in the final book. Right now I am blessed to not know anything. I'm considering asking President Chan for permission to begin reading the final book on the flight home, but I don't know if I will. After all, just because I'll be done with the mission by that point doesn't mean I'm released yet.

Ivan's case has become more complicated - or, more rightly, we now understand his situation better. We went over to his house last Saturday to ask his mother's permission. It turns out that she's not 100% sane. Elder Fisher tried for a good 20-30 minutes to get her to calm down enough just to stop screaming and listen to us for a second, but no such luck. Eventually we left defeated. So now we're working on a new attack strategy. But it might be a while.

So what exactly is a Merlin season pass? Is that just a regular season pass with a picture of Merlin on it, or is that the name for the lifetime pass you can buy? :P Legoland sounds like a lot of fun - I'm sure we can arrange a trip when I get home. Proms in the park sounds like fun too. As does the next Harry Potter. But you know what's interesting? Thinking about all the things I used to do when I was at home, like watching films, listening to music, playing computer games, reading books and comics - none of that stuff really seems very important right now. Perhaps that'll change once I'm surrounded by it again, but right now it doesn't have a great appeal for me. The time in every Move after Mission Conference is always the fastest, and we already have some kind of Zone Leader meeting schedualed for every day for the rest of the Move. We'll see how things go.

At Mission Conference, we were privileged to hear from President and Sister Goo, who are the current China Hong Kong Temple President and Matron. 20 years ago President Goo was the Hong Kong Mission President, and another 30 years before that he was one of the first missionaries in the Southern Far East Mission. This mission has gone through a lot of changes in a relatively short period of time. It was interesting to learn that when President Goo first started his mission, they didn't even have the Book of Mormon in Chinese yet! It's interesting to think just how new the Gospel is here. Sister Goo spoke to us and told us of her trials growing up as a pioneer in Hong Kong - one of the first members back when she was in her early teens. She said that her mother refused to let her go to all of her church meetings on a Sunday, so she would wake up extra early and do every possible chore around the house before everyone woke up, to kind of "guilt" her mother into letting her go - but she was only to go to the first meeting, and then should come home. She wouldn't come back. She'd stay for Sacrament meeting, and when she got home, the house would be locked. She'd wait there on the doorstep until dusk, when her older brother would open the door for her. All because her mother's minister told her every week how evil the Mormons are.

Then one day she and her best friend (who had introduced her to the church) were called into her headteacher's office at the Lutheran school she was attending. They were both expelled on the spot with no explanation. It was only later that they found out that this was because they'd been inviting schoolfriends to church activities and the Lutheran church's activities had been losing attendance.

This was a great disgrace to her and her family, and many family members would tell her again and again how worthless she was for being expelled and joining some horrid cult. But Sister Goo wasn't going to take that lying down, and stuck to her dream of graduating from University and becoming a teacher, even when everybody around her told her that she could never do it. She said that on the day she graduated from BYU Provo, her family members thought that she was crying because she was graduating, but she was really crying because she was so happy to have finally achieved her dream, despite such hard opposition throughout her life. Both she as President Goo (who was raised in Hawaii) are amazing examples of Chinese pioneers.

And do you know who else are great examples of pioneers? Neil and Debbie Loffhagen. Thank you so much for your sacrifices on my behalf. I'm so thankful that God has blessed me with such wonderful parents. Two weeks ago, you gave me a quote from Marcos A. Aidukaitis' Conference talk, "Because My Father Read the Book of Mormon". I agree with what he said. Because the two of you read the Book of Mormon and walked against the wind, I've been abundantly blessed throughout my life.

I love you lots and pray for all of you often,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Fighting to the bitter end

2009-07-10T04:43:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Wow! It sounds like a busy week!

I got a letter from someone yesterday. Somebody needs to talk to them about the exact content of the letters they send to Missionaries. The main bulk of the letter was describing the beautiful English countryside, which is a sensitive subject with me. While Hong Kong nature is somewhat more exotic than back home, it's not quite as peaceful as that of the British Isles. While it's nice to look at, if you stare too closely it might bite your face off - poisonous spiders and insects, more moquitos than you can shake a can of bug spray at, angry wild monkeys and dogs, and even the occasional cobra (Elder Marshall found one, but not in the jungle - in the High Street!).

At the end of the letter was a handwritten note that said "You must be counting down the days now! See you at camp." Yes, I will see you at camp. But I'm trying my best NOT to count down the days. It just gets more depressing every time I look at the calendar.

It has occurred to me recently that I am really scared to go home. I'm not just nervous - it actually does scare me. It's harder to come home than it was to leave. So for the moment I'll put it out of my mind and just work as hard as I can.

A brief note on the blog - a Sister missionary called Sister Wilson moved into our neighbouring district a few weeks ago. She told me that before my mission, she read the entire blog. She specifically remembers me wanting money to buy a new watch, and the fact that Immigrations into America was kinder to me than to the other Elders on the flight from Heathrow. It's put me in an awkward situation in that she has already heard all of my best mission stories. I have to wonder exactly what effect my blog is having on people with connections to the China Hong Kong Mission...

Anyway, this week has been interesting. Ivan has his baptismal date set for this coming Sunday. Both he and Elder Fisher have received a strong personal witness that it will definitely come to pass (I guess I'm just not in tune with the Spirit enough and I wasn't paying attention), but his mother has yet to be convinced. Elder Fisher is pushing forward with complete faith - I had his baptismal interview yesterday and passed. I feel that while prayers of faith are good, God also wants us to do everything in our power to make this goal come to pass. So we're going to try and arrange a time to go over to their house and make the case ourselves - explain all of the good things that come from membership of the Church and counter some Anti-Mormon lies she's heard.

In addition to meeting with investigators, we've been preparing for Zone Conference, which was held last Friday, and went rather well. Our theme for the Moves period is "Find Your Fire" so we gave everyone a candle and a piece of "sacred paper", promising them that provided they review it every day, any goal they write on the paper will be achieved. I've recently been thinking a lot about my goals for after the mission. I've felt that I really should devote the time spent at University should be totally devoted to studies, not to play. So I'm going to try my best to find a job, but as you've said, the world isn't doing too well right now. If the case is that I can't find part time work, I'll just live as poor as possible and devote everything I have to developing my time and talents. Outside of the subject of Communications, things I want to develop is my Chinese, including Mandarin, and my drawing. I can't remember if I've said this yet or not, but there was an Elder with me in the MTC, Elder Hamon, who will one day work for Pixar - that's his dream and I can see it happen. If I could draw like him, I'd draw for Marvel comics. The other week I was thinking about how I'm nowhere near as talented as him, and I said to myself, 'I'd give my left hand if my right hand could draw as well as Elder Hamon'. Then I answered myself - 'Elder Hamon's ability came from lots and lots of practice and learning. If you're willing to mutilate yourself for his gift, why can't you just put in the practice and effort to learn? If your desire is strong enough, you should be willing to do anything in your power to make it happen.' So after I finished talking to myself, I decided to take my own advice on board. I've come to the conclusion that the trick to being extraordinary at something is not to put in effort when you've set aside time to practice - everybody does that - the trick is to work on it in the idle moments when you're waiting for the bus, outside the toilet waiting for your companion, or just have a second with nothing to do. That's the time I've learned to pull out the flashcards and study - if I had relied only on the hour of language study a day, I would never have made it to language legend.

I've decided that the same principle applies in my drawing - the trick will be to do it in the few spare seconds I have, and to just practice and practice and practice. Yesterday while I was waiting outside I's baptismal interview, I pulled out a pen and my planner and just drew pictures of hands for a good half and hour. There is now a page of hands in my planner, in a bunch of different poses, and I'm a little better at drawing hands now.

By the way - no I never did find my lost money. Oh well, money doesn't bring you happiness anyway. I assume I must have thrown it away when I moved from West Point to Tai Po by accident. In this case, it has gone to a better cause - in Hong Kong, little old ladies who are retired try to grab some extra cash by rifling through rubbish bins and pulling out the recyclables to sell. I enjoy thinking of the look on one little old lady's face as she pulls an envelope out of a black plastic sack and discovers $400! That ought to make her day.

Yesterday was our District Leader/Zone Leader meeting, where we got to see the new President Chan in action. While Sister Chan chose to address us in Chinese (which was fine because everyone in the meeting has been in Hong Kong for quite a while, although she was throwing around some rather complex car vocabulary that perhaps not everyone got), President Chan spoke in English. His English is pretty good, but I'm fairly certain he hasn't needed to speak it much in recent years. I don't know if I mentioned that they're Hong Kong natives, and that up until his call he's been a Sealer in the Temple. They're both very excited and a little nervous. I'm making it my goal to do everything I can to support them.

Well, time is running out fast. I love you all. If there's anything I can do for you, let me know.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Happy Hong Kong Return to China Day!

2009-07-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

It's been a busy week. We've had a lot of miracles and a lot of memorable experiences.

Yesterday was a very interesting day here in Hong Kong - it was the twelfth anniversary of Hong Kong returning to Chinese rule. There are mixed opinions on whether or not that was a good thing here. For us missionaries, it just ended up being really annoying.

Every Wednesday we send a District to a regular service project at a charity called Crossroads - I think I've mentioned it before? We normally go and dig trenches or prepare shipments of cargo to third world countries. This week, our district went. It took us about an hour on the bus to get there, but when we arrived, the entire place was empty. Confused, we explored around a bit, and Elder Bagley mentioned that this had happened once before, on Christmas Eve, because the charity was closed. I suddenly remembered that it was a national holiday, and at that moment we spotted a passing staff member who lives on site, who was heading home with a bag of shopping. When he saw us he said, "I'm so sorry! We tried to contact you and tell you not to come today!" Well, all we could do was laugh, then hop on the bus and go home.

Later in the evening, everyone was anticipating a huge firework display that was going to go off in the middle of the Hong Kong harbour. A lot of missionaries had gotten special permission to go, but we'd had a better plan - after hiking up the infamous "Monkey Mountain" (so named because it has a lot of wild monkeys) with our ward last month, we'd found a large rock on the top of the mountain with a wonderful view of all of Hong Kong. Having been to the fireworks before, I knew that finding a good view is incredibly difficult, and we determined to hike up Monkey Mountain last night with the ward again to watch the fireworks. It was a missionary organized activity, but unlike the last time when we only had Young Men, this time we had a wide range of ages and genders - including an elderly lady, affectionately called "Paw Paw" (Grandma) but the locals.

We hiked most of the way up the hill and Paw Paw was getting tired, so half the group stayed to watch the fireworks at a bridge over a dam we found, which gave an excellent view, while the rest of us continued up the hill for an even more excellent view. We got there in time for the fireworks and watched the flashing lights of Hong Kong below us. We waited. And waited. And waited. I called one of the Mandarin Elders who was down among the crowds to see if the fireworks had started yet, and he said no. About half an hour after the fireworks were schedualed to start, he phoned me back and said that because of a protest on Hong Kong island, the police had cancelled the fireworks. Well, it seemed that everything we were trying to do that day had been cancelled, and again, I couldn't help but laugh. We all made our way back down the mountain and back home.

This week we sat down with an investigator, I, and set a baptismal date. Ivan's situation is interesting - he told us of his great desire to keep all the commandments and be baptised, but unfortunately his mother is very much against him doing so. She's threatened to burn down the church is he comes back. Every now and then, he would sneak out on Sunday morning to come to church, but for the most point he'd been cut off from us - until about two weeks ago. I'm not sure why, but two weeks ago he started attending church regularly again, plus many of the activities we have during the week. I asked if his mother knows where he is when he comes to church, and he said that she probably suspects.

So on Tuesday we sat down with him. Elder Fisher laid down a few options for baptismal dates with him, and promised him that if we set a date and pray and fast, God will provide the way for him to be baptised. The only question in the matter is when. I prayed to know when he should be baptized, and immediately after the prayer, he got up off his knees and sat back in his chair. "Wow," he said, "wow. I just heard a really clear voice say 'three weeks' time'." As we looked at the calendar, he again felt very strongly about the 12th of July, which at the time was three weeks away (now it's more like two). The three of us committed to make it happen. We will fast, pray, and Ivan will ask his mother for permission. We're about to see a great miracle take place.

I think I would indeed like to go to the Manchester Conference, and if Julian and Chris are going, that makes things even better. Tell Jess I'd really like her to go too.

I do not know a Jessica Gray, but I do know this - One time when Julian went down from his school to visit Sally Ann, he was in the process of writing a letter to me, and she and her flatmates saw it. So I imagine that might be the connection there.

Everyone here has heard about Michael Jackson's death - what a surprise! Oh well.

Thank you for the extra money. I don't think it'll be necessary, but thank you anyway. I don't have much of anything I need to buy, apart from Dad's Buddha statue. A while ago I decided to buy some Hong Kong films to watch when I get home, but didn't want to have to go into those film shops while I'm still serving here. So I got a member by the name of Joe to help me out. For $150 he got me six DVDs which have all, at one point or another, been on the bus stop ads while I've been here. That should be fun. So now I'm done in that respect and probably won't be buying very much else before I come home - it's when I get back home that I'll be needing money. School, driving lessons, a car, a computer, new clothes...oh dear. So much to buy and no money to do it with.

In the meantime, if there's anything else anyone wants me to get, let me know. My time is up for today.

Love you lots,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Blaze of Glory

2009-06-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

I just dropped Elder Marshall off at the Temple and picked up my new companion, Elder Fisher. He is a really good, hard working Elder who has been finding some excellent alternatives to street contacting which he's been telling me have seriously blessed his previous area. He said that in the last three Moves, he's never scheduled a block of finding time and instead finds while they travel from one appointment to another. It sounds like fun, and a lot more effective than street contacting, so I'm looking forward to trying another style of missionary work.

My old companion from Macau, Elder Liu, has been called to be the new Assistant to the President. I'm thrilled for him, but he seems a little nervous in the role for now. Last Sunday was the Why I Believe Fireside, where "dying" missionaries bear their testimonies before going home. I was asked to translate for the meeting, alongside Elder Liu. It felt like being back in Macau again, because we always had to translate Church for the International branch members who couldn't attend in the evening.

Last week I dropped my iPod off with Elder Matt Chan, the other British Elder in the mission, who was up until today serving as the distribution manager. I had asked him to put the mission's Cantonese Sounds and Tones tape on it, which he has recorded to MP3. When I got it back, I discovered that he's taken the liberty of filling it with tons of EFY music and speeches, which I'm looking forward to listening to. Earlier today he mentioned a YSA convention in Manchester that apparently is going on in August, and asked if I was going to be there. I told him I didn't know anything about it - maybe you could look into it for me?

It's good to hear that Chris is getting back into the swing of things. I love him and can imagine how hard it must be for him now. Today at the Temple a native RM who served with me in Macau dropped by just to say hi to all the missionaries, and told me how much he misses being on a mission. I pointed out that when I go home, I won't be seeing anyone for a while because I live so far away, and that he is lucky he can just drop by the Temple every once in a while.

As I am now in my final Move as a missionary, I have given myself a theme for the Move: Blaze of Glory. I want to go out in style, working as hard as I possibly can - not that I've not been doing so thus far, but I just don't want to slow down now that my time is running out, and I certainly don't want to get trunky. This being the case, I was wondering if you could go on the internet and find a quote for me. One time Winston Churchill said that if the British Empire were to last for a thousand years, people would still look back and say that winning World War II was our finest hour. I'd like the exact quote because it might be nice to share in Zone Conference next week. I want to look back on my mission and say that this Move was my finest hour, because it was the time I Endured to the End and fought to the very last minute.

I hope your hand feels better soon. I wonder if anyone has thought about giving Grandad a Priesthood blessing for his memory loss? Perhaps it might help.

Please congratulate Tim for me. I really am very proud of him and all that he's doing. Tell him to work hard and stay worthy.

This past few days have been very interesting. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Elder Marshall took care of his packing. I was bored out of my skull. But Tuesday evening, we had English Class and a lesson with an investigator from Indonesia who speaks fluent Chinese and whose husband in a Hong Kong local. Just as we were about to leave for it, a man walked in and asked for the times of the meetings. He said that before he'd been really busy, but now that he has more time, he wants to learn about God. So things got shuffled around a little bit. The Threesome of Elders that we had (up until today) in Kwai Fong split up, one going with Elder Marshall to his appointment and the other two going to an appointment that they had. I grabbed a recent convert called S and we exchanged to teach this man, J, about the Restoration. I asked J why he had come to this church, and he told me that it's the most convenient, because it's close to his home. Well, I don't care why people come in so long as they stay for the right reason. So S and I taught a very good Restoration lesson. It was particularly good because I could say things like, "S, how do prophets help us," and "what happened when Joseph Smith prayed in the grove of trees?" and he would answer as if reading from Preach My Gospel. Half way through, S's friend J (who refered S to the church) came in and shared his testimony of the Book of Mormon. J will come to church on Sunday, unless he can't wake up, which he's afraid of, in which case he'll come to our ward FHE.

Yesterday because of a falling through of an arrangement for Elder Bloomfield, one of the Elders in the threesome which split up this morning, I got the chance to accompany him to the Temple. He has a Recent Convert from over a year ago, who recieved his Endowment yesterday. Elder Bloomfield was given permission to go and support him, and I tagged along as his companion. It was a wonderful experience as I saw this man enjoy the simple beauty of the Temple for the first time.

So in summary, this has been a very busy week. What with packing, translating for the Why I Believe, teaching walk-ins, going to the Temple and doing everything else we've done, we've been very busy and VERY blessed. I'm really excited for this next move and am looking forward to seeing what Elder Fisher and I can do together. In our flat this Move is the two of us, plus Elder Bloomfield and Elder Bagley, who was my trainee about a year ago.

I love you all very, very much. You can trust me to do my best as I serve in my finest hour and go out in a blaze of glory.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

A 3:00am Hike

2009-06-18T05:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

It's been a very, very busy week, and I'm now very tired - not least because I woke up at 3:00am this morning.

This week has been pretty full of exchanges. Last Friday/Saturday I went to Sam Seui Po, which is the ward that meets in the Temple, with Elder Rose who is a District Leader there. It was a lot of fun, but pretty tough as we had a meal with a older couple in the ward there whose two children - both RMs - are in America at BYU right now. They had more than enough food for six Elders to eat, and with just the two of us we were completely out of our league. First there was Portuguese chicken with rice, then fruit, then mango pudding, then cheesecake - all made fresh. I was full half-way through the chicken, so by the time we left, both Elder Rose (who is over 6ft tall and about 3ft wide at the shoulders, muscular and gigantic like Superman) and I barely made it home on the bus okay.

Earlier this week Elder Marshall had a career workshop that all "dying" missionaries have to go through before going home, and it made him more than a little trunky. During this time, I was on exchanges with Elder Auduong, a new missionary whose companion is also going home this next week. We worked very hard - and had a lot of success. We scheduled a few new people and visited a less-active, who was very glad to see us and will probably be coming to church on Sunday - he's more less-active because of health problems than because of laziness - his leg is very swollen with some kind of long-term joint problem, and his two elderly parents aren't far from death and need constant attention. He asked us an interesting question; he'd heard of friends who'd joined Christian churches and had started earning more money at work or being blessed financially soon after - why when he'd joined a church did life get so much worse. I turned to Elder Auduong and asked him what he thought. He said that sometimes God gives us trials and sometimes he blesses us - but all things work together for our good. I shared from Joseph Smith's experience in Liberty Jail and we encouraged him to keep at it.

Last Sunday I got a very special chance to do something very few Cantonese missionaries get to do in Hong Kong - I attended the Mandarin branch in the huge Wan Chai chapel on Hong Kong Island. Elder Lee, who is the Senior Companion in the Mandarin companionship here in our zone, needed to go to Kwai Fong to church so that he could see an investigator, so he asked if we could go on exchanges for church time. I was thrilled to do so. It was a lot of fun - I love the Wan Chai building, which is 13 floors, houses church meetings in three languages and also has the Asia Area office on the top floors. I was a little nervous about how well I'd be able to communicate with the members in the branch, but most spoke pretty good Cantonese. I was also very thankful to walk in through the doors to the 6th floor chapel where Sacrament was being held and see Dick, one of the coolest members in Hong Kong. He was on the cover of the Ensign a while ago, and even though we'd only met once before, over a year ago, he welcomed me like an old friend and chatted with me like we'd known each other for years. He and two other native Hong Kong members were visiting the Mandarin branch for the day. Most of the official membership of the Mandarin branch is from Mainland China, and the Elders who serve here have always been struggling to build up their little branch so that they can learn the Gospel in their native tongue. Apparently it's a challenge because people always end up moving back to the Mainland very soon. Another large portion of the branch are white RMs who served in Taiwan and then married Chinese girls, becoming "Larry"s as we nickname them. Not sure why we call them that. There was one man there, a little older, whose Mandarin sounded absolutely fluent - he sounded like a native - I guess that's what happens when you live in China for as long as he has.

We all decided to do something really fun for Elder Marshall's last Preparation day, so we woke up at 3:00 this morning and took a taxi to a famous mountain called Lion Rock - so named because there's a big rock on the top that supposedly resembles a lion's head. I couldn't see it, though - I think it looked more like a monkey or a man with a big nose. We went up there in the dark and then watched the sunrise - the view was amazing, and you could see all the way across to Hong Kong Island, plus all of Kowloon in the middle. We took a moment to pick out the Temple among all of the buildings scattered below us - it was almost lost in a sea of lights, but the spire with the Angel Moroni was distinctly visible and instantly recognisable.

As far as my cooking goes, I wouldn't get any hopes up. I know how to cook Chinese food - in theory. In practice it's normally a lot easier and quicker to throw a can of chicken soup mixed with tuna fish over a bowl of rice, or to just go buy a meal somewhere else. Certainly I'd feel a lot more comfortable cooking Chinese food rather than western food, but that's just because Chinese food is just cooked in a big pot - you throw in all the ingredients, add whatever sauce you want on it and let it cook for a while. Not too challenging. Fried rice or real deal chau mien is pretty good though too.

Thank you for your prayers on my behalf. It's been taking my every effort to build up something in this area, but I am not discouraged. Last week, Elder Marshall found another family for us to teach, but as the wife is from Indonesia and the father, although Chinese, speaks fluent English, we'll probably turn them over to the International Elders who serve here. We also found a very prepared lady the other day who the Sisters are now teaching.

Anyway, Elder Marshall needs to go to the toilet and has asked me to cut this short. I love you lots and hope you will all be well and not catch Swine Flu (people here are so scared of it being the next SARS that they've closed the Primary schools for two weeks, but I personally think we're safer here than anywhere else because so many people are wearing face-masks and washing their hands so regularly).

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

The Legend Dinner

2009-06-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

First things first, about accomodation - go for it. It it's good enough for a Jest, it's good enough for me. Of course, I know that normally a tent is good enough for a Jest, but that's fine too. One thing I've learned here in Hong Kong is how to live in awkward places - I've had some certainly very "cosy" homes. Jamie and Harry sound like some fun people to room with (not least because I can glean some Mandarin off of Jamie) and as far as the kitchen goes, I've been living without an oven for the past two years, so if it has one it'll be a trade-up, if not - I've learnt to make some good meals in a pot and in the microwave - no doubt the same cooking style as most other missionaries, but probably with a lot more rice.

Which reminds me of something - for university, I want a rice cooker. A little pot that cooks rice to the perfect temperature automatically. I've figured I'll just live off home-made Chinese food for my stay at Uni, but to make it convenient, I need a rice cooker. Maybe you could look around at prices on your end? I can get one for around $300HK (£30) here.

Getting hold of a little Buddha statue will be no problem whatsoever. They are everywhere - in fact, I've visited one of the Buddhas whose picture you sent - it is the Big Buddha (well named - you can walk around inside it). I'll probably be able to find a statue without a problem. The only thing is it might be an authentic golden idol, ready to be worshipped - so be careful. I've heard some interesting first-hand stories from the kinds of spiritual company that follow these things.

So last Monday was my dinner with President and Sister Van Dam. It wasn't the steak I was hoping for, but it was a lot of fun. They took myself and the other four Legends to the R66 restaurant in Wan Chai - so named because it Rotates as you eat, taking 66 minutes to make one revolution. As you spin around, you get a birdseye 360 degree view of Hong Kong island, much like the Macau Tower which I went to when I first arrived there. It was a nice buffet dinner, and President Van Dam summed it up nicely by saying that "The kind of choices you have are, 'do I want the lobster or the prime rib first?'"

I sat next to President Van Dam, and when I found out that they'd just been in Macau the day before (As the Macau branches aren't within a stake, they're under the Mission and President Van Dam often goes out there for temple recommend interviews and callings) I was eager to know how everything was going over there. President and Sister Van Dam told me that as a result of a Temple Preparation class they've been running recently, there are several members of the International branch who are preparing for their endowments and to be sealed as families (President Van Dam interviewed six people for their own endowment). Also, in the Chinese branch, where I served, there were two Seminary graduates this year (a big feat for such a small branch) and three of the Young Men are planning on serving as Summer Missionaries this year. This thrilled me because most of the Macau Young Men were baptized while I was there! I asked President Van Dam if I could put in a request for a certain Summer Missionary to come work with me, and he asked which one I wanted before Sister Van Dam reminded us that it wasn't President Van Dam's choice to make - so I need to be especially nice to President Chan when he comes in next month.

Which reminds me - I don't think I'd mentioned that one of our investigators from Macau, A-F, was baptized a few weeks ago. He is really amazing - he's seventeen, and was fellowshipped wonderfully by the branch. He was the Seminary class President for a long time while he was an investigator before getting baptized!

Things are going well for Elder Marshall and I. Last week, I felt like we really got somewhere as we found a new family to teach, the N family, and began teaching a part-member family. The N family is wonderful - so far we've met the Dad, the Grandad and the four year old daughter. We saw them on Saturday for our little kids English class we teach and afterwards shared the Family Proclamation with them and taught them to pray. The father, without being asked, got his little girl to fold her arms and bow her head, and he said a prayer that God would bless their family. Afterwards, they bought us ice-cream from MacDonalds and we talked about their family. The Grandad had a big interest in why our church is different and what the Book of Mormon is about.

We also began teaching a member's father. Brother T has a big problem with his leg and so can't come to church, so we've started seeing him to give him some encouragement. Every time we went over, he said how his father, who is elderly and bed-ridden but joins in our conversations, really wants to learn about the gospel and the Plan of Salvation. Last week we decided that even though he's a little more aged than most investigators, and can't come to church, we should teach him anyway. So we started slowly with the First Vision and encouraged him to pray.

I'm happy here in Kwai Fong. The work is not always easy, but my back has been strengthened that my burdens feel light (Mosiah 24:15 - I shared this scripture with Brother T as it's one that's helped me through times of trial) and I am submitting cheerfully to the will of the Lord.

I love you all lots and pray for your happiness.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

The Van Dams' Last Mission Conference

2009-06-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

MyLDSMail seems to be having some problems. It keeps coming in and out, so this will need to be short. It probably doesn't help that the computer I'm using is absolutely terrible. It keeps disconnecting from the internet, it's very slow, and at some point somebody broke the space bar on the keyboard and replaced it with a Start key. But then at least my space bar half-works. Elder Marshall's doesn't work at all and he's having to use full stops (.) instead of spaces.

I picked up the suit today. It is very nice. When the lady was fitting me, the suit jacket that was "my size" was far too tight, but I was convinced to get it anyway on the condition that the lady tailor it to leave me a little more room. Unexpectedly and possibly a first for Hong Kong, when I picked it up it was perfect - maybe even a little more space than is needed now, which is nice.

As far as Buddha statues go, if not a fat one, what kind? I assume you mean an old-fashioned Buddha - but what I'm thinking of might be completely different to what you're thinking of. Could you email me a picture of what you're looking for? To be honest, the most common Buddhas here are fat and jolly.

I wonder if it could be a huge problem if I didn't have a tuberculosis test when I get home. I've discovered that what the nurse said was true - Americans don't get immunized, they just get regular checkups. Because of this little concern (which doesn't even seem to be that prominent in Hong Kong), I've already had to be immunized and was X-Rayed when I entered the MTC. Perhaps we can just explain to Church Headquatres that there's no way I could possibly have TB.

Please congratulate Tim on passing Seminary this year. I'm really proud of him. Tell Jess I love her, and tell Beth the same when you next see her. Also please thank Grandma, Granny and both Grandads for the money for my birthday, and also for the cards, which meant more to me than the money anyway.

So yesterday was President and Sister Van Dam's final mission conference. They finish their mission on of the first of July, so I'll have a good month with President Chan. Everyone was a little tearful as they said goodbye. As one of the five Elders who achieved Language Legend this Moves, I was asked to hold up a banner during the closing hymn, Called to Serve, which stated the theme of President and Sister Van Dam's mission: A Sacred Time, A Sacred Place, A Sacred Message, A Sacred Messenger. As I was at the front of the room, my back was turned and I didn't see Sister Van Dam apparently crying a lot throughout the hymn. I think everyone was about to start crying. After the closing hymn, we all sat there for a minute, not wanting to leave, until President Van Dam encouraged us to stand up. I was one of the first to stand, which is a nice metaphor for what I've decided to do now as the Van Dams leave. President Chan has come big shoes to fill, and a lot of missionaries are probably going to make things worse by complaining about how much they'll miss President Van Dam. I've decided that whenever anyone complains, I'm going to say something about just how good President Chan will be. I want to support him in the first few weeks of his mission when a lot of people will be missing the Van Dam flair, by helping others to look forward to all the fun they'll have with him around. Considering that part of the reason I chose to stay to my late date was to support the new mission President, I think this is a simple way I can help him.

Elder Marshall bore his "dying" testimony yesterday too. It's a little weird for him. But Sister Van Dam gave every missionary who goes home this Move a little bell, which symbolizes a bell that is rung when a runner reaches his last lap so that he knows when to start sprinting. I'm hoping to ring it any time Elder Marshall might want to slow down as he reaches the end. You can be sure that I'll be going like a maniac this time next Move.

Anyway, sorry but time is up. The computer and myldsmail really isn't working too well, so I'm just going to send this now and hope it doesn't crash.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Happy Dragonboat Festival!

2009-06-11T01:33:00.000-07:00

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

21

2009-05-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Time is limited because we could only get the email time for one hour, so Elder Marshall and I are sharing it - half an hour each.

Time is moving by really fast - I can't believe another week has passed already. A lot of exciting things happened this week.

Last Sunday was Stake Conference, held at the large Ho Man Tin Chapel which is our stake centre here. It felt to me more like General Conference than anything else - with the choir up on the stand and the camera recording the meeting so that it could be broadcast to other rooms (because of the lack of space here, chapels have a tendency to go up instead of out).

Strange to hear that Chris is going to be done so soon. It sounds like he loves his mission field just as much as I love mine - although it does worry me that he's in such a rush to get back there. I hope he hasn't found himself a girl whilst up there; that's the only reason I could see to dash back up as soon as quickly...

...just in case you're wondering, such temptations are not clouding my own judgement about coming back to China.

Personally, I'm not in the least bit worried about swine flu. And the more time I spend away from all media influences, the more I realise that the British press does love to blow things out of proportion just to sell a newspaper. Nine times out of ten, these things blow over, and on the rare occaison that all the plagues, wars and rumours of wars actually amount to something, it's just a friendly reminder to be humble, repent and get ready for the storm.

I am crawling ever closer to my Language Legend award, and rumours seem to have spread far. While talking with one of the Assistants last Sunday night, I asked if there was anything I could do for him, and he said, "Just get your language legend for me, that'll do." Again, another of the office staff encouraged me when he (Elder Lee, the Housing Coordinator) came to inspect our flat this past week.

I've passed off the three thousand characters and the Book of Mormon (which I still read a chapter of in Chinese every day, but it's getting tougher now because I'm in the "Isaiah barrier") and have translated a General Conference talk by President Monson from English to Chinese and back again. All that's left is the annoying little MVP, which I'll be tested on tomorrow. I feel that I know it pretty well, so I'm not too worried - and if I don't pass, there's another chance the week after that. As frustrating as it's been to get so close and have the qualification changed right in front of me, I'm glad that I get the chance to learn more vocabulary - even if some words are a little pointless, ie Pansy (Saam Sik Ji Loh Laahn) or William Tyndale (Wai Lam Ding Douh Yih), neither of which tend to come up in the casual conversation with Chinese people - nor in English for that matter. And I refuse to learn the full word for Oregano (Mah Yuk Laahn Heung Chou) on the grounds that I don't know what it is in English, let alone in Chinese - but just in case, I learned the way to say it in characters (Ngauh Ji) which is much easier and probably more helpful.

Time is almost up - I'm sorry this email has been so short. I love you all and pray for your safety and happiness. Pray that I will pass my legend test tomorrow.

Elder 羅

2009-04-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Apologies for speaking too much about coming home. I can assure you that I'm very much enjoying my time here. My problem is more like Mum's nightmares about going back to school before you've broken up for summer rather than anything. I'll put it in the back of my mind and just enjoy the next little while. It doesn't help that in Mission Conference on Tuesday, I saw some of my friends from my older group give their "dying testimonies" as they prepare to go home in three weeks. But not to worry - consider the issue dropped.

As far as the XBox goes, I believe that you got the super Dixons insurance for it. You're going to want to get it to them soon, though, because you bought it April of 2006, so the three year warranty ends any day now. The papers for it were in the middle drawer in what was my bedside table. Good luck getting it fixed - it would be a big mah faahn to have to buy a new one.

The Temple sounds wonderful. I'm looking forward to our Temple session, which will be later today. We're really blessed here to have such a blessing so close - especially after seeing Mongolian and Cambodian Saints crossing the continent on trains to get here for the blessings of the Temple, I'm thankful that we Hong Kong Missionaries can go every six weeks.

A lot happened over the past week - it was one of the busiest of my mission so far. Since last Thursday, I had my interview with President Van Dam, exchanges with the Assistants, Mission Conference and a few planned service acts. Lots of fun.

President Van Dam said in the interview that it's fine if I call you a week early, which would be the 3rd of May, right? If I call at 10:00pm my time, it should be 3:00 in the afternoon for you - will that be okay?

We also talked in the interview about goals and plans for after the mission - that was President Van Dam's topic with all of the missionaries for interviews this time around. I guess that kind of goes against what I just said about not talking about going home, so I'll just give you the highlight. I mentioned my goal of being married and raising a family, and President Van Dam jumped on it (as apparently he has done with most missionaries) and asked "Do you think you've met your wife yet?" I responded with a definite "No." So in case you were wondering, I wasn't dating anyone seriously before the mission - if I had been, you can be assured that you'd be the first to know. In fact, hearing all the tragedies I've heard from other Elders about Dear Johns and other such problems, I'm very glad I chose not to. But all the Elders here enjoy hearing the story of the time Bishop Terry challenged me to date 20 girls before I left, and how I didn't actually make it past 5.

The exchange with the Assistants to the President was a lot of fun. I'd previously casually mentioned to Elder Weagel, who was a good friend in the MTC and current Assistant, that one thing I'd always wanted to do on my mission was sleep overnight in the Temple - as the Mission Office is for the moment located inside the Temple. I suspect that the overnight exchange was arranged to help me with this goal. But either way, it was fun and a good learning experience. I saw the Mission Office in a very different light when those lights were turned off and it became a normal study room instead. I also found myself very thankful to not have served in the Office myself - the jobs to be done; especially the job of Distribution Centre Manager, currently being filled by Elder Chan from Sollihul; look really boring - lots of sitting around and waiting for things to do. Elder Weagel and I were out finding in the rain for most of the day, though, which was fine. We had some good success.

Mission Conference was fun, but everyone was a little sad because only half of the Mission was in attendance. Our unique method of having Mission Conference - ie having it once every Moves period - is not the Church standard method and as such has raised some concerns with Elder Watson of the Asia Area Presidency, who has requested that we do things a more traditional way to fit in with how things work in missions that take up a larger geographical area. As such, President Van Dam has shown us all a great example of obedience by splitting Mission Conference over two days, with only half the mission in attendance each day. While it seems a little pointless, I've ultimately decided that it's better to be obedient to something that seems a little unnecessary than to be disobedient. I'm willing to follow President Van Dam's example and enjoy the fact that we're allowed to at least have some kind of Mission Conference still.

It was a good conference - the theme was "It Shall Be Done". We watched a film which we'd watched a year ago, about a one-armed man and a blue vase. He's given a hard, somewhat pointless assignment but he does everything in his power to get it done anyway. The parallels between the film and our half-Mission Conference seem very clear now. I'm thankful for President Van Dam and the wonderful way that he leads us by example.

The new white shirts fitted fine - thank you very much for them. There is actually a Marks and Spencers here in our Zone which we walked past the other day on the way to the Tsing Yi chapel for a baptismal interview. A white shirt there is $98HK, which I don't think is very worth it. So thank you for sending me shirts so that I didn't need to go buy any new ones.

Camera shopping was fun but tiring. In the end, after toying with it for a while, I bought the cheapest option available; which was not a Sony. I got home and explored it and quickly learned a valuable lesson - while not spending too much is important, when there are purchases that need to be made, quality should not be compromised just for a cheaper price. The camera's fine, but it's no where near as clear as my Sony was. I can't help thinking that if I'd just spent $100HK more for the Casio camera, I would have been a lot more satisfied. But there's nothing really wrong with the one I have now, so it'll do. But next time I'll be sure to spend the money for a quality product when it's nessesary.

By the way, the word "Pocketbook" came from Star Wars Episode II. You may be interested to know that the other day, I was testing out an umbrella before going outside. I member walked it - this particular member is one of those many Chinese people who take pride in their English - and told me that it was bad luck in China to open an umbrella indoors. I responded in Chinese that it's bad luck in England too, but I don't care much for "luck". She then said, in English, "I don't believe you are from England." Well that's interesting, I thought to myself, as she hadn't heard me speak English yet. I therefore told her, in English, that yes, I definately was from England, but she still didn't believe me. Out came my Driver's Licence, and we both read the words "United Kingdom" very clearly on it. That seemed to satisfy her, but apparently her argument came from the fact that I sound different to relatives she has who live in Newcastle. Whether or not I've picked up an American twang, we can at least be thankful that I don't sound like Chris probably does by now.

Anyway, time is up. I love you.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Happy Easter!

2009-04-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

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

Adjusting to Hong Kong

2009-04-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

As we all sit around emailing together in the smokey, noisy, dimly lit gaming arcade that is our only real option for internet access here, the five of us missionaries are sharing the news we're getting from our families about General Conference, which we are very much anticipating. Elder Cope's parents told him that the messages are very bold, encouraging us to be a covenant people. Elder Marshall's family say that Elder Holland's talk is powerful. I told them all that a new X-Men film is coming out soon.

Not that I'm criticizing - I just thought it was funny. You also talked about General Conference, so don't think I'm poking fun or anything.

This past week I've felt a little like a new missionary again - I'm having to readjust to the busy, fast paced life of Hong Kong. Ironically, while life is faster paced, missionary work is slower. Finding and teaching in Macau was very easy - I've been describing it as the "South America" of our mission, because when I was finding there I really did feel like I was shooting fish in a barrel. But back in Hong Kong, it's not quite so simple. But to quote Dad's favourite story, "This is good." Here I can learn and grow at a much faster rate, and the lessons I've learned in Macau have prepared me to come home to Hong Kong and go about things with added and increased zeal and desire to serve. So I'm looking forward to my time here and my opportunity to do my part in Kwai Fong.

The names you listed from Google Maps sound familiar, but I'm not completely suk sik (I can't remember how to say that in English, so I figured I'd use Chinese and hope you get the idea) with my new area yet. It seems nice, though - quiet but busy. There's a little bit of every flavour of China that I've found in my previous areas.

Speaking of Google maps, actually I discovered this street view thingy yesterday. We were at the Temple for a leadership meeting and afterwards Elder Matthew Chan, the only other British Elder in the mission who is currently serving in the office as the Distribution Centre Manager, showed me. He showed me his house and took me on a little tour of some English countryside. We tried home, and then the Reading Chapel, but neither seemed to work - now I know why; they haven't done it yet. Hearing from you about how the media has convinced people that this technology is bad makes me cringe - it would be absolutely impossible for Google to have 24 hour real time cameras pinned on every single house in the nation - in the world, even. But such is life. Personally I think it's amazing and will make finding directions to things even easier.

I've been recently brought to the realisation that the world has continued on without me. Being on a mission is like being in a time capsule for two years - I realized the other day that things I'd been doing a few weeks before the mission, and my entire life back home, happened two years ago. The newest Elder in my District, Elder Cope, has a 32gig iPod Touch, which he bought here in Kwai Fong for $2000HK second hand (which was a pretty good price before the pound crashed, but is now around £180) and I have to say that this "new" piece of technology is absolutely incredible. While it's not exactly being used to its full potential right now, as he's only using it as an MP3 player, it's undeniably very cool. But the last thing I need is to waste money on tech - especially as I anticipate what will no doubt be a very rocky period of student debt coming in the near future. The nice thing about a mission is that I've learned to comfortably live out of a suitcase without modern gizmos - although I am going to go buy a new camera later today. That's a somewhat essential piece of missionary technology. But I'll try and get the cheapest I can. Considering that all of my memory sticks are Sony, though, I may be out of luck if I don't want to buy all new memory for the camera. But if it's cheaper, I'll just do that. I really don't want to waste too much money, and I know that £100 is a lot for you to part with all at one time for such a trivial expense.

Good to know that Tim's doing well, and that Jess is being loved. Please thank Julian the next time you see him, and apologize that I haven't replied to his last letter - it's written but not yet in the post box. Also when you see Chris after he gets back, again, apologize that I haven't replied to his last letter. I think he'll understand.

Pretty much all letters and correspondence between myself and anyone back home has ceased, almost entirely because a little while before I went to Macau, I decided that I really didn't care anymore. I can talk to people in a few more months. This probably isn't the best lahm faat (what's that in English? Way of thinking?) but Elder Ng told me that he got to be the same way when he was about the same time through his mission. One of the Sisters who were in my MTC group, and who served in my District when I was District Leader for the first time, Sister Corbridge, sent me a wedding invitation a few months back. She gets married to some nice man in three days, but I've also not gotten round to writing and congratulating them.

Monday the 4th will be fine for the call. But would that not put things right in the middle of school/work time? Or I could call in the morning (your morning)? I found out recently that Elder Ng had asked President Van Dam for permission to call on the British Mothers' Day instead of the American one, which is what Elder Chan has done, so actually we had permission all along, which I didn't know or even consider. I wish I'd known that sooner, but it's a little late now.

Well, time is running out. I love you all. Tell Tim to keep up the good work, keep doing the right thing, and keep repenting when necessary. I'm very, very proud of him. Tell Jess a similar thing, with an added emphasis on how much I love her and want her to choose the right. Also mention that I know a lot of single, attractive Return Missionaries who speak Chinese, should she be interested in their email addresses. If you see Beth, tell her I love her and that she's in my prayers.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Now in my last area -

2009-04-02T03:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

This past week has been rather bittersweet. On Saturday I got a call from President Van Dam, who called me to be a Zone Leader and pointed out that I had been in Macau for quite a while and was definitely leaving. It hurt a lot to leave Macau behind, but I was willing to follow what the Lord had planned for me. This morning I boarded the ferry by myself and traveled back all alone, to Hong Kong to meet with Elder Marshall, my new companion.

This week has had a lot of very special moments. As we wrapped up the final lesson I would have with the Wong family, 10 year old J G offered the prayer. The family was quiet and calm throughout the prayer (sometimes a challenge for the little J Y) and I felt the Spirit as I saw the joy that had come to this little family. The past few weeks have proven that Brother Wong's passing really has been a blessing to the family. The Branch has poured out love upon them, strengthened them and even begun an extensive cleaning project in their home. It's been wonderful to see this miracle in action.

Many people have expressed their sadness at seeing me go. Our Branch Mission Leader, Brother Chuck, bought me two boxes of famous Portuguese Egg Tarts, one of the famous local delicacies of Macau, to say goodbye. Another Sister in the Branch, Esther, arranged to have us over for dinner. Because she lives with her two little sisters and one little brother, she wanted to make sure that we would have enough males with us to balance out the numbers. We overcompensated and brought two recent converts, J and C B, as well as an investigator, A-F, who will be baptised next month. It turned out unnecessary, as neither Esther nor one of her sisters, Sabrina were home. We found ourselves instead having dinner with the youngest sister, fifteen year old Celestia, their brother A-K and our guests. It was a very interesting meal, and a nice end to my stay in Macau.

So now I find myself in what will likely (but not 100% certainly) be my last area on my mission - Kwai Fong. This seems like a nice enough place, although I've not seen that much of it yet. It's in the heart of Kowloon, which constitutes all of the busy parts of Hong Kong that aren't on Hong Kong island itself. It's interesting to discover that I suddenly find myself Zone Leader over a lot of missionaries I've served around before - something that hasn't happened to me too often - as I find former companions like Elder Liu and Elder Clark here, as well as old District friends like Elder Burk, Elder McAllister, Elder Nelson, Elder Hyde, Sister Au, Elder Kinghorn and many more. I know those names probably don't mean much to you, but they do to me. It's nice to come into a Zone and already know a large percentage of the missionaries here, which ought to make my responsibilities here a little easier.

My new companion, Elder Marshall, is very cool. I wonder if I'll be able to keep up with him. He's from somewhere in America, but breaks the trend I've had with Utah companions - he's one of three companions I've had who aren't from Utah. I couldn't say where he IS from, though. He was my older group in the MTC, so it'll be interesting to serve as companions with him now. He also used to serve in Macau - he left right before I got there - so we've had a good time chatting about our old area.

It's nice to hear that Tim Ng made such a big splash with the ward. Don't hold your breath for me being quite so incredible when I return home - and there's also no need for him to hold his breath for my visit - I'll have a lot of other things to worry about when I finish. I'd long known that he was hoping for BYU; he talked about it when he was here. I also knew he'd been having visa problems because he sent me a Christmas newsletter.

As far as the phone call home goes, I'm also allowed to call the day before and the day after the American Mothers' Day - that's necessary for the American missionaries who are over twelve hours ahead of home, rather than the convenient 7 hours we enjoy. If it would be easier, I could call on Saturday or on Monday - or on Sunday morning. I'm sure we'll be able to work it out, but if it's really inconvenient, I might be able to ask President Van Dam for a more convenient time, like the week before or after. No guarantees that he'll give permission though.

As far as money goes, with the current exchange rate, the money in my account is not enough for a new camera. I also need to invest in some new shirts, because my old ones weren't very white anymore, so I left the worst ones in Macau. I'm thinking of trying to open up the camera myself and see if I can find the problem, but I couldn't find a small enough screwdriver. That said, I'm right by what is rumoured to be the best place to buy electronics in Hong Kong, Sam Sui Po, so I might try having a look there over the next few Preparation Days.

I'm looking forward to General Conference next week. I can't believe it's been six months already! But such is life, and time in Macau flew by particularly fast. Now I'm ready to do what God wants me to do in Kwai Fong, even if it's a little different to the things I've been doing thus far.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen

24th email from Macau

2009-03-27T02:34:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Sometimes the weeks go by so fast that I think all I do is email home. This week is probably one of my last in Macau - Moves is next week. So this probably being my last Preparation Day in Macau, it's too bad that I'm feeling a little under the weather. It's just a simple cold - don't blow it out of proportion. It just means that I won't be going to play ultimate frisbee with the rest of the Elders.

Speaking of Chris, I got a letter from him the other day. He sounded very happy - although I did notice that he didn't mention coming home. Like you said, he's probably dreading the adjustment just as much as I am. It's interesting that he needs a van to take home his stuff - considering that I have to pay to take my luggage back to Hong Kong when I leave Macau and then again when I come home, I think I'm going to cut down to the bare essentials like my toothbrush, my scriptures and my testimony.

This week we went on exchanges with the Assistants to the President. It was interesting - the current APs are Elder Gregory and Elder Weagel, both of whom were in the MTC with me. I went finding with Elder Weagel which was fun. It occured to me that I haven't spent much time with my own MTC group while in the field.

You can tell David Jones that I have met Elder Eagle Lau (that's the typical spelling of that name - it means "to kill" in Chinese which is interesting) but he probably won't remember me - it was just quick. His name has made it into my book of funny English names - everyone here in China as well as having a traditional Chinese name has an English name. Sometimes they are completely average English names like Jason or Henry, but other times they are pretty random. Some of my favourites have included Apple, Milk, Canyon and Zero. It makes me glad that somebody native picked my name for me because otherwise I'd probably be called Dragon or something - actually, that's a common name. Bruce Lee's real Chinese name means Little Dragon.

As far as my language legend award goes, I'm getting close. The goal is in sight, but not quite within reach. It turns out that there are a LOT of Chinese characters. Huh. There are also a lot which look almost the same, but not quite. When I last tried to pass off, Elder Carter (who is the only current male living Legend, and just happens to be here in Macau) failed me on reading the Book of Mormon, because I wasn't fluent enough. So I've been working on that and as a result, my reading speed has improved and I don't miss nearly as many characters when I read. I feel pretty fluent reading the Book of Mormon now, which is nice. Now it's just the characters and the brand new MVP book. There is a stack of about 400 character cards that desperately need reviewing, currently sitting on my desk. Once they are learnt, I'll be ready to pass all 3,000 off. The MVP book also needs reviewing pretty well - there are about 100 words I don't know that I need to pass off from that book - that is a slightly harder challenge because I find characters a lot easier than vocab words. Elder Carter has been kind and says he won't test me on anything a native won't know that's in the book - for example, the word for my father's older brother's wife, which is different to the word for my father's younger brother's wife. It's all very complex and apparently, the natives themselves don't know all of these complicated words.

Anyway, time is running out slowly. I'm sorry I haven't given any kind of important or relevant updates in this email - not much has happened this week. The most interesting news is that our recent convert's husband passed away last Saturday. Sister W was feeling rather poor spirited at first, but I ultimately think that this was the best thing for everyone, because Brother W was 70 years old and suffered a stroke a while ago, so his quality of life was seriously lacking. Now all three of the children can come to church together (whether they like it or not), because nobody has to stay at home to look after dad. Plus, Sister W is suddenly a lot more popular - the Relief Society have unceasingly served her, giving her food and emotional support, while the Young Women have arranged to visit her every day this week. It's great to see the branch really coming to the aid of a new member in need.

Anyway, time's up. Love,

Elder Loffhagen

23rd email from Macau

2009-03-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

This week has been rather uneventful. Nothing too exciting has happened.

I do need to ask you about my camera - when we bought it, did we pay for the Currys super insurance? I'm hoping so, because my camera is now not working. Whenever I turn it on, it whirs a bit, the shutter opens and closes a few times and then something pops up on the screen saying "Turn the camera off and on again". So for the moment, I'm currently camera-less. I'm probably going to have to buy a new one whether we have the insurance or not (as I won't exactly have an opportunity to take the camera to a local Currys), but we can worry about that later.

As far as universities go, I really have decided on Leeds. I'm still not quite sure what the course will entail (for a Communications course, they are ironically vague about such things), but I feel the hand of the Lord in things, and feel that I need to take a step into the dark and just give it a spin. We'll see where this takes me. I'm stuck for choosing between Bath Spa and Preston for my backup choice, but I'm not really concerned about things. After having looked at the prospectuses and thought about it a lot, I felt that I've actually got three pretty decent options.

This week has been a little uneventful, but it's also been good. We've seen a lot of little miracles lately - good contacts and street lessons - but they're not really generating into much yet. Last week two of our investigators actively chose not to progress - one, a seventeen year old call A, chose to go rowing every week instead of coming to church. Brother C, who is in his fourties, loves coming to church, but ultimately chose not to quit drinking coffee. So at the end of last week, things weren't looking too well. But both cases are looking better now, for which I must thank my companion. Elder Jackson figured we should try an intense one week no coffee plan with Brother C, including a chart and stickers. He was thrilled to accept this, and told us that he really did want to quit and that he was willing to do his bit to quit. I was more than a little surprised, and thankful for my wise companion. Then we also found out that A is regularly attending Seminary, which was wonderful news. We had suggested it to him a while ago, but it started at 7:00 and he has to be at school at 7:30. I don't think the Seminary teacher was very impressed by me asking if they could start an hour early. So we dropped the matter, and then this week found out that they all arranged it without us missionaries being involved - now it starts at 6:30 so that A can come. He's blending in nicely and all the Young Men and Young Women love him. He says that after May, which is the wonderful Dragonboat Festival here in China (which is a lot of fun!) he'll start coming to church, but in the meantime he can't let his team down. I imagine that by May, there'll be some other reason to not come to church, because generally that's how procrastination goes (I should know better than anyone alive) so I'm hoping that Seminary will fill him with a desire to change. I'm confident that if he's willing to come to Seminary, he will eventually get baptized, but it's a little way in the future at the moment.

My time on my first visa runs out at the end of April, and we're not sure what's going to happen. Macau seems to be making some interesting decisions regarding visa regulations. Only one Missionary has a visa right now, and even the Senior couple who are currently serving as the international branch President and wife are going to have to leave soon. Oh dear. Macau's also been refusing some Hong Kong people from entry into the country, which has caused a little upset between the two of them. So as I'm currently the only missionary in Macau with a stable amount of time left in the country, I'm intrigued to see what will happen next Moves. I've already been here now for four Moves, so I don't really have very much more time left - and in my last interview President Van Dam pointed out that I'm "not going to be in Macau forever". I'd like to stay, but I've categorically told the Assistants that I don't want to influence the decision one little bit. They can feel free to do with me as they please - I don't want to get in the way of the Lord's inspiration. I could, therefore, potentially (and very probably) only have one more Preparation Day in Macau after today. So I'd better enjoy the time I have left, one way or the other.

Whenever I do eventually leave Macau, I'll probably leave behind or throw away a lot of stuff. If you remember, when I came here, my brand new suitcase broke, which left me with the big one we bought and the little one I took with me as an afterthought (which has behaved superbly, especially for overnight trips to Hong Kong). So I'll probably sift through my stuff and lighten the load a fair amount - certainly I'll be throwing away a lot of shirts. My shirts are getting really disgusting. It doesn't help that our washing machine is really bad, but simply being in China for a long period of time turns your shirt grey or yellow or both. Plus most of my trousers are by this point worn out. I'm thinking that when I go back to Hong Kong, I'll invest in some new trousers and just survive on what I have for the moment, but currently, with the exception of my shoes, pretty much every piece of clothing I have is getting to the point where it needs replacing.

So now we can play a fun game - how long can I go before I absolutely need new clothes?

Anyway, I love you all. You're all in my prayers.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

It's here! The MVP! - 22nd email from Macau

2009-03-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

First of all, please do not accept Leeds just yet. On Tuesday we went into Hong Kong for Mission Conference, and I picked up the Bath Spa prospectus you sent me. The school looks very impressive, actually - more so than I had thought it would. I prayed that night that God would help slow you down in applying, because I want more time to think. Weighing up the options now, I'm still thinking that Leeds has a lot of benefits that other schools don't, but I'm going to think things through a lot first. We have until May, right?

On a completely unrelated note, I have bad news about the Language Legend test - I didn't pass. I had to do it a day earlier than I'd been planning, so I wasn't quite ready - and got a little under 90% of the 3,000 Chinese characters right, which we'd set as the pass rate. So after a long period of testing, and an even longer period of studying, I was told I'd have to try again in two weeks. This didn't seem too bad, but I also knew that I was racing the MVP. I'll explain what that is in a second.

Yesterday we had Mission Conference, which was a lot of fun. I'd been asked to translate for the morning session, so I got to sit up at the front at the sacrament table with Elder Hamon (who was in my MTC group and who was translating with me), and speak into a microphone that was connected to a broadcasting thingy which transmits to headsets that were being worn by aproximately three people in the audience. The translation services are there for any native who wants them, but all of the native missionaries in the mission right now have such good English that they don't need us. After the meeting the Assistants to the President thanked me for translating. I pointed out that nobody was listening to it, and Elder Gregory pointed out, "Elder Shupe was listening!". Elder Shupe was in my older group in the MTC and in my first District in West Point for three Moves - he hasn't spoken more than four words of English since he started his mission.

The conference was particularly special this time. They had told us that we weren't going to have one this Moves, because the Elder Nelson meeting counted as Mission Conference this Moves. There was also a rumour going around the mission that we weren't going to have mission conference anymore, which President Van Dam has told us is very, very false. Suddenly, Mission Conference appeared back on the schedual for no particular apparent reason, so I suspected that they had something big to do.

As President Van Dam got up the the pulpit to give a sharing on the Moves focus - working with ward and stake leaders, he got to the second frame of his slideshow presentation, and found that it was very badly spelled - it said "How to work Ward/Steak with Leadrs". Everyone chuckled and he tried to click to the next slide, but it didn't work. He got the APs to help, but as they tried to fix it, the microphone stopped working and the lights went out. Then that song from the beginning of Space 2001 started playing from the speakers and two missionaries wearing those Chinese pointy hats came in, carrying bamboo poles over their shoulders tied to big boxes that said "MVP" on the side. They started shouting "It's finally here! The MVP is here!" I knew what it was already, and was frustrated that it couldn't have waited just a little longer. As they got up to the stand, they pulled little brown books out of the boxes, and everyone gave them a standing inovation. Everyone in the Mission has been looking forward to the Missionary Vocabulary and Phrases book for a long time - they were working on it while I was in the MTC, and it had finally arrived. For the past year, the mission hasn't had a language learning book because we've been waiting for Provo to finish this one. Ultimately President Van Dam got them to email the unfinished book to us and we had it printed here in Hong Kong, because a flawed book is better than no book.

Unfortunately, with the new book came new language recognition awards - I knew this would happen, which is why I was racing to get legend before the book came. Now in addition to learning 3,000 character, being able to read the entire Book of Mormon and translating President Monson's conference talks, I also have to learn 30 pages of vocab from the book. It's more than a little frustrating, because it's slowed me down a little more. But I'm still determined to get it while I'm in Macau - which is potentially only another three weeks.

We also found out who the new Mission President is, replacing President Van Dam in July - it will be President Chan, a native to Hong Kong who is currently a sealer in the Temple, and who is a really nice guy. It should be good.

Anyway, time is running out. I hope you enjoyed my little essay on this new language resource we have.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen

A long week, but not much happened - 21st email from Macau

2009-03-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Leeds is fine. Don't worry; I feel the Lord's hands in things.

It's been a long, busy week. I'm sad to say that my journal writing has gone downhill recently because I've been using every available second to cram Chinese characters inside my head. They don't seem to all fit in there together though, so a lot keep leaking out of my ears while I'm asleep. On Saturday I have my final pass-off. I need to know 3,000 characters - which is too bad because I only know about 2,500 now and can bluff through another couple of hundred - but there are still a lot left to learn. It's frustrating, then, that the other Elders in the flat have chosen to play Risk, which gives me the difficult decision - play a huge, fun game of Risk (I currently hold South American and have a decent sized army while everyone else is struggling for control of a continent) or learn characters all day, which actually helps me in real life but is a lot less fun. Maybe I'll just kill myself out of the game to give myself a chance to learn.

I already did part one of the language legend pass off. Conveniently, the only language legend still serving his mission, Elder Carter, is here in Macau. So I'm doing the pass off with him. I had to translate a President Monson talk from English to Chinese and back again - we watched the conference talk on the TV and I translated as best I could at real time. The English to Chinese was pretty easy, but going back again was tough. There were long periods of silence as I tried to figure out what on earth President Monson's translater was saying. But Elder Carter was willing to pass me, so I got that bit out of the way. Now all that's left is those 3,000 characters - but I really need to study today. But I also want to play Risk. Unfortunate.

Anyway, C B, one of our investigators, is getting baptized this Sunday. Elder Jackson is pretty excited because it's his first baptism. Personally, I'm happy but not too bothered. Is that wrong? I'm kind of taking all of these wonderful Macau baptisms for granted. I remember the fight and struggle that it was to get Kelvin, our first recent convert, in the water. Now everyone just seems to be walking into the font, irrespective of anything we do. Which is nice. But I'm not going to be in Macau forever, as President Van Dam reminded me of last week. We had our interviews with him, and he pointed out that my six months is coming to a close soon. I was concerned because I like it here in Macau, but I didn't want to influence his decision in any way, because I want to go wherever the Lord sends me. So at that time I chose not to mention that I can extend for another six months - I'm pretty certain he's aware of that anyway. I've heard other missionaries say that leaving Macau was harder than leaving their family at the start of their mission. We'll have to wait and see if this is true for me.

I don't really know what else to say. This week has been long but not much has happened.

I know you only just sent me a package, but I have another request - a DearElder.com $15 package with some delicious cookies in. The cookies that come in those boxes are absolutely amazing.

Sorry, that's all I really have for this week. I have a request that you stop killing or maiming rodents while I'm away from home - please wait until I can enjoy it with you all first.

Anyway, I love you all lots. Talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Loffhagen

Decision Made - 20th email from Macau

2009-02-26T05:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

I'm going to Leeds. Decision made.

While I'm still a little hesitant about it because I'm still not quite sure exactly what the course entails or where I'm going to go after it, I've prayed long and hard and I feel that Leeds is the right choice. I guess that in the end, I've just got to take a leap of faith into the dark and trust that the Lord has my best interests at heart.

Now, as far as the most worrying part of your email, please kindly and lovingly tell Jess that I understand how she feels, I know a little of what she must be going through. I know from experience that if you don't feel like going to church, the best method of overcoming this is going to church every week until you DO feel like going to church. What's more, it says very plainly in the True to the Faith book, and in Preach My Gospel, that if you don't want to praying, you should pray until you do want to.

Also please tell Tim that he is my hero. Tell him to read the scriptures and pray (tell Jess to do that too) and that he needs to set a good example for Jess and for his other friends at church.

Anyway, now that those two problems are dealt with, let me tell you a little about our visit from Elder Nelson. We all arrived early at the Wan Chai chapel on Hong Kong island. This particular chapel is huge - a giant 11 floor red brick building in the middle of the busiest part of Hong Kong. We were all seated early, and I had a particularly nice seat about three rows back, right in the middle. When the speakers spoke from the pulpit, they were speaking right to me.

We all took a Mission picture with Elder Nelson, and then he shook each of our hands personally. I'll never forget the moment that Elder Nelson walked into the room where we were taking the picture - we were all standing, waiting for him. Some of us (including myself) were taking the chance to chat and joke with some missionaries we hadn't seen in a while. Then Elder Nelson entered the room. The entire place was silent immediately. I could feel the power Elder Nelson had - the only possible way to describe it is: electrifying. After the picture, he shook all of our hands. We also shook hands with the Asia Area Presidency, who live in the Wan Chai building, so we've seen all seen fair amount of them. Elder and Sister Watson asked me if I was still mad about him teasing me and calling me Elder Log Cabin last year. I told them I was over it.

Then we all went back to our seats and the meeting started. All of the Area Presidency and their wives addressed us first, then Sister Nelson, the Elder Nelson. It was like General Conference. And I assume that a prerequisite to marrying an apostle is being a good speaker, because Sister Nelson gave an amazing talk. Then Elder Nelson got up to speak. He said that he felt that some of us were fasting that day to recieve spiritual inspiration and answers to certain problems (at that point, I wished that I'd thought of fasting, because it seemed like a good idea) and so he was going to give us a little time for questions before he gave his talk. After Elder Rasband, I was ready with a question in mind. Another Elder beat me to the punch of asking the first question, but I was there with the second. I stood up and asked how I could find more focus as a missionary and avoid the distractions of the world. It occurs to me right now as I type this, that this question is actually mentioned in my Patriarchal Blessing. Elder Nelson smiled, and said "Great question." Then he said something that pretty much decided my university choice for me. He said, "What do you want more than anything else in life?" He wasn't expecting me to answer, but had I needed to, I would have said that I didn't know. But without any clear reason, the topic of universities jumped to my mind, and I felt that whatever it was that I wanted, the only place that could offer it to me was Leeds. Elder Nelson had answered the question in my heart and the question in my head both at the same time. He then went on to talk about something that had very little to do with my question - I'm sure the Spirit was prompting him to answer somebody else's personal question. I've come to understand that in these question and answer sessions, the General Authorities seem to use the questions asked to speak on more general points that teach to a wider audience. It's interesting to watch.

Elder Nelson's meeting was amazing - a real spiritual booster. He taught us so much that I don't have time to mention here, and I've found myself still, a week later, thinking back on the nuggets of wisdom I learned from him. It really was like General Conference had come to the Wan Chai building (that was something Elder Nelson pointed out as well).

My new companion, Elder Jackson, is really amazing. He and I are having a lot of fun together. Yesterday, because of his inspiration, we shared a conference talk called You Know Enough by Elder Neil L Anderson with one of our investigators, C B. As a result of the lesson, he committed to be baptized two weeks earlier than planned, because he realised that he didn't know everything, but he knew enough. Perhaps that's a good talk to review during FHE for Jess.

I love you all lots. Have fun looking for the cheapest possible option for housing in Leeds!

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Hot of the press university info - 19th email from Macau

2009-02-26T05:27:00.000-08:00

Another quick thought - when I started the Media Studies class at A Level (which I went to once because of a timetable clash), they said their first topic was going to be studying the difference between womens fashion magazines and pornography - which is why I chose to take English Literature instead. I was not very impressed by that course, and wonder if the Leeds course is just the same thing but at University level?

BYU's looking better and better, I'm afraid to say!

Love,

Elder Loffhagen

New Companion -18th email from Macau

2009-02-26T05:24:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

Oh dear. It's not looking good for universities. I'll need to think about it. In the meantime, would you mind looking into BYU?

The decision to at least have a look came from a long period of praying and pondering about my choices. I haven't quite felt all that comfortable about Leeds more than any other option, and BYU has always been on the back of my mind - not least because everyone around me keeps telling me to go there. I can take solace in the fact that the main culprits are leaving for new areas today.

Anyway, I really don't want to have to put up with any more Americans than are absolutely necessary, so I was trying to ignore BYU for a long time. But ultimately, I felt that I didn't want to ignore a prompting from the Lord that was coming so strong. In prayer, I promised God that I would at least look into BYU, and if that really was His plan for me, I would accept it. I felt good about that, but the thought came to me that perhaps this was simply an Abrahamic test of my faith - to see if I would do something that I really didn't want to do. That said, after reading your email about the course content at Leeds, I'm not feeling too confident. It's still awfully vague and I don't like the word "Theory" in there - is the "Theory of Communications" just studying films and TV? That sounds awfully boring and ultimately useless as a degree. So as much as I may not like it, can you give me some information on the BYU journalism programme? I don't know that I want to be away from home for that long, but I can't deny the promptings of the Spirit, and to be honest, it does look like the best choice as far as schools go. But for the moment, I'll leave Leeds as my first choice and UCLan as second. We'll take a "just looking" approach to BYU for the moment.

In other news, Elder Liu has left Macau and I'm now with my new companion Elder Jackson. Like almost all of my previous companions, he is from Utah, is tall, handsome and seems like a fun guy. I don't know him that well yet, but am looking forward to the chance.

Today has been a hectic day. We left Macau at 9:00 and due to a series of unfortunate events, barely made it into the Temple for our session at 1:00. The session was in Chinese (but I understood it fine), and was actually really good - very peaceful and calm. There weren't many people in the session, but one man who was there was Brother C, the Ward Mission Leader for my old area of Tai Po. It was great to see him again, and he seemed very happy to see me too. He is retired, so he spends most days in the Temple as an ordinance worker, although this is the first time I've seen him since I left for Macau.

Today, as well as being a nice day of change, is a little sad as I've seen my Sisters "die". Of the four Sister Missionaries in my MTC group, two of them - Sister Chan and Sister Esplin - chose their late date to come home. The also just happened to be serving together as companions in Macau for their last two moves, so I've had the chance to get to know them well. Their visas ran out last week so were switched out to finish their mission on Hong Kong Island, but we all met up for the Temple and MacDonalds today. They have absolutely nothing to do until Friday, when their parents come to pick them up. It's sad to see them go, especially because it makes me have to face the reality that I myself will one day be going home. Oh dear. Still, I have six months left to enjoy the relative simplicity of missionary life before having to come home and deal with my somewhat uncertain future.

Elder Nelson's meeting tomorrow is no doubt going to be very interesting. We've been given a big list of DOs and DON'Ts for his visit - DO have clean hands, DON'T ask for a special blessing. DON'T ask him questions, but DO answer questions if he asks you. It's a very interesting list. I wonder if it came from the Mission or from Church Headquarters. I'm sure every one of the DON'Ts have at some point occured, which is why they're on the list. I'm sure Elder Nelson doesn't want to have to give every single one of us a special blessing.

I have absolutely no idea when Ryan Smith would have been caught a glimpse of me while at church recently, because I've been in Macau for so long.

Everything is going well. I'm enjoying myself and working hard. I love you lots and pray for your safety and happiness.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Happy Birthday Dad! - 17th email from Macua

2009-02-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Last Monday, I looked at my watch and realised that it was Dad's Birthday. "Oh," I said to myself. That was all I really had time to say, because we were out finding. So happy birthday, Dad.

Too bad about Bournemouth and Sheffield. I guess then that Leeds will probably be where I go, which is fine. I remember what Dad said a long time ago now - I'll get into the university that God wants me to go to. This is probably for the best - especially since looking at the numbers, it doesn't quite add up - I was slightly below the Leeds grade requirements whereas I was comfortably within the Bournemouth point requirements. I remember a teacher at Herschel telling us that we needed to pay attention to whether schools are looking for grades rather than points - grades are generally less flexible than points, and they're more likely to require all relatively high grades, whereas with points, they're happy with an average. I wasn't expecting Sheffield to let me in; I figured it was a long shot worth trying out considering I have so many other options; but was fairly confident I'd get accepted to Bournemouth. So Leeds sounds good, but if Lancashire is so keen, it's at least worth exploring. I don't yet have any information from them, so yes, it'd be nice to have a look at something. In the meantime, I'm going to do a lot of praying and see where I feel is best.

BYU is still hovering on the table, but this week it doesn't seem all that appealing. Honestly, this week has been probably the first week in my mission that I've felt homesick. Don't worry - it's not really bad and I'm not desperate to come home or anything - I'm just letting you know because I want you to appreciate when I write positively, I really am genuinely positive and I'm not sugar-coating things. Right now, I miss my family - so I might as well tell you. This whole mission has been a huge adventure that has taken me very far from home, and for the most part I've been enjoying myself too much to think all that much about all of you. But there are a lot of Americans in the mission (with one exception, all of my companions have lived in Utah) and it makes me feel a little lonely at times. I can imagine that BYU would be similar, so while I'm not going to rule the option out yet, I'm thinking that there are a lot of better options.

A good piece of news as far as missing home goes, is that Elder Tau, an Elder from New Zealand, has to leave Macau on Saturday because of Visa problems. Taking his place for the foreseeable future is Elder Matthew Chan, the only other Brit in the Mission. I'm looking forward to living with someone who'll actually understand my jokes and being able to try and lose my new-found American twang - but I may now come home sounding a little more northerly than I did when I left - only slightly, because he's from Solihull.

And I don't want you to think for a second that I'm complaining or trunky or there's some terrible problem here - in fact, things are going really well. Sister W was confirmed last Sunday and her two boys will be baptized this coming Sunday. One of them asked me to baptize him and one asked Elder Liu - I'm going to see if we can convince them to both be baptized by Elder Liu because it'll be a lot more convenient with less wet clothes and less water everywhere - especially considering that the International Branch here in Macau also has two baptisms at the same time as ours. I'm not quite sure how it's going to work yet anyway, even with only six wet people running around, let alone seven.

The week after next, the 15th, will be Elder Liu's last Sunday in Macau, and we have another baptism on that day. His English name is now Bill, although I don't think anybody really calls him that. But either way, he'll be baptized in two weeks. He is originally from the Mainland, and is really golden - he's so happy to accept everything we tell him. We haven't taught him many of the commandments yet, so we need to do that, but soon he should be ready. I'm just crossing my fingers that he doesn't have any big problem we don't know about, because it'd crush Elder Liu if he doesn't get to see him baptized, because he's been working really hard with him. Elder Liu is such an excited and enthusiastic missionary - I'm sure that a lot of the success we've been having here is because of his faith and diligence. I'm slightly worried as to what will happen when he leaves and it's just me with a new companion - will we be able to keep track of everything? But I'm sure it'll all work out in the end. God is guiding all of us.

And I know that I am loved and accepted by you back home. You are all a source of strength to me. Thank you for your support.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen

Chinese New Year - 16th email from Macau

2009-01-29T00:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Happy Chinese New Year! I've had quite an eventful week - but first, it's good to know that I have an option for Universities. We'll hold off before making a final decision for the moment.

So last Sunday was Sister W's baptism. She was absolutely thrilled; she's been waiting for baptism for a long time now. I maintain that she was ready to jump into the fountain in the park where Elder Liu found her and be baptized right then and there when he first met her - that very day she told him how desperately she wanted to be baptized. As we went to their house to teach them the lessons, she was thrilled to discover that this was God's true church, with His Priesthood authority and the proper form of baptism. She loves the Book of Mormon, and reads it to her children. Two of the most exciting things for her on Sunday was that the Branch gave her a Triple combination as a present - she was so desperate for a copy of the Doctrine and Covenants - and she was also thrilled that her two boys, J Y and J G will be baptized in two weeks' time. She is so happy, and although they don't really understand everything - they're only 10 and 8 - in some ways I feel that they grasp the gospel better than their parents do. So we're all looking forward to their baptism in two weeks.

Monday was the first day of Chinese New Year, and the streets were dead. Nobody was in Macau - they've all gone to visit their ancestral villages. We took the day to have our flat's Deep Clean, which is a traditional Chinese annual clean of the house, making it clean and tidy, ready for the new year and washing away any pesky bad luck that might be hanging around in the apartment. In the evening we tried a little tracting, but it didn't go too well. Most people weren't home, and those who were home were busy having a huge family dinner.

Wednesday was the Mission's yearly trip to Big Buddha, the world's biggest outside bronze statue of a sitting Buddha. Early Tuesday morning we left for Hong Kong, hoping to beat the holiday rush by going across as soon as possible. We did so, and with nothing to do for the entire day (normally we would have had our Temple day, but the Temple was closed because of New Year) so we had some study and just spent the day at the Mission Home.

In the evening we went to Tsim Sha Tsui to watch the New Year fireworks in the Hong Kong harbour. So did most of the rest of Hong Kong. There were thousands of people there, and we foud ourselves complately surrounded by a sea of black hair on all sides. The fireworks were beautiful, even though our view wasn't the best, and it was a fun experience.

The next day we went up to Big Buddha. I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot more this year than last year. Last year I spilt soup down myself, was freezing cold and went down the mountain very soon. This year I was wearing far too much clothes and ended up taking off my coat, hoodie, jumper and extra T-shirt in favour of hiking up Lantau peak, the second highest peak in Hong Kong, wearing just a T-shirt. And I was still rather hot.

When we were almost at the top, we hit the clouds, and everything around us disappeared. It was really fun - we stayed up for a while and enjoyed the company of pretty much every other Missionary - the climb wasn't particularly strenuous so almost everybody made the climb. I was among the first to make it up, and was at the lead of my group. as I climbed up the last few steps to the top, I discovered Sister Kap, the Senior Sister here in Macau, casually resting after having made the climb incredibly fast. That's not much of a surprise, nor is it the first time it's happened - one time we were exercising in the morning by running a huge reserviour close to our flat when we spotted Sister Kap working out on some public exercise equipment by the side of the water. She then took off running and completely outstripped us.

After a little while enjoying the peak, myself, Elder Liu and a few others decided to take the long way home - walking several miles across the mountain range back to the train station. It was much better than the trip up Lantau Peak - miles of climbing up and down mountains with a beautiful view and some very steep stairs bridging across canyons and gorges - it was like a mini, wooden Great Wall of China. That I think was the best part of the day, and we got home tired, grimy and triumphant. I woke up this morning aching in several places, very fuzzy after having not shaved yesterday, and very thankful for preparation day. I took a two hour nap to try and regain some energy (one of very few naps that I've taken on my mission because I hate wasting time) and am now feeling better. Certainly it was good exercise yesterday!

And so with all that's happened in the past week, I haven't actually done any real finding since Saturday. I'm looking forward to getting back into it tonight, but for the moment we're going to relax and try to rebuild our strength a bit first.

Anyway, happy new year everyone.

Lots of love

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

Tired and fat right now - 15th email from Macau

2009-01-22T03:58:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

We all just had a huge MacDonalds party. I just ate six cheeseburgers, so I'm very uncomfortable and losing consciousness, so this email may not be the most fluent of all time.

I'm sure that you'll be receiving a letter soon from President Van Dam telling you of my date to come home. I picked it last week but it slipped my mind to tell you last Preparation Day. I'll be boarding the plane on the 7th of August, so I have a little over six months left. I'm looking forward to the next half a year of service, but honestly not really looking forward to returning home. Work and school and all the hassle of life and the distractions of TV and computer games - I'd really rather not ever come home. But Mum, I did promise you that I'd come back eventually, so I will keep that promise. I look forward to seeing you on around the 8th of August.

This past week has been good. We've enjoyed a lot of success and seeing a lot of our good investigators move closer to baptism. We've been working with the W family for some time now and are going to baptize Sister W this coming Sunday. She has asked me to perform the baptism, which caught me by surprise a little bit. But I'm happy to do so, so I'll be donning the whites for the second time this coming Sunday.

Chinese new year is upon us, and it's very interesting to see how they are preparing for it in Macau. Last year on Hong Kong Island, the busiest part of Hong Kong, there wasn't all that much of a difference. There were decorations up and on the first day of the holiday, the shops opened a few hours later than usual. Macau, however, is notorious for being absolutely useless for missionary work during the holiday, and we've seen a fair amount of that. A lot of investigators and members are going for extended holidays to their ancestral villages in the Mainland and a lot more Mandarin-speaking Mainlanders are coming down for the holiday period. It's an interesting switch, but it makes things a little slower for us. Good thing that next week we'll be in Hong Kong for most of the main celebration days, because we have Mission Conference. Instead of a Conference, though, we're going to have an activity where we go to Big Buddha, a giant metal statue on top of a mountain. We went last year, too, and the whole thing is just a tourist trap disguised as a monastery. So it should be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we won't have a Temple day this Moves because the Temple will be closed for New Year.

But we will have a Temple day right at the end of the Move, when we go back to Hong Kong for a special Missionary meeting with Russell M Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve. He's coming to rearrange a stake in the New Territories and has called a special Missionary meeting, so Macau will be attending again. This means, however, that there won't be a Mission Conference next Moves, which is unfortunate because it means I won't get the chance to receive my language recognition for a while - my goal is set that I will be a language legend before the end of the Moves. We'll see how this goes, but I'm confident that I can push for it.

The challenge involves learning 3,000 Chinese Characters, including a lot that natives don't even use, so in many ways I've been questioning the usefulness of the test, but I'm too far through now to quit. I know about 2,100. Another part of the test is being able to read the entire Book of Mormon. I was talking with Elder Liu yesterday and told him that I didn't know if I could do this very successfully. I opened up the book at a random place and started reading, to show him how much I didn't yet know. To my complete surprise, I read the entire verse fluently. I opened up the book again in a random place and read two more verses without missing a character. This is particularly surprising because a few months ago I tried reading my way through the Book of Mormon and found that I couldn't do it very well - I didn't know enough characters. Now it seems that I'm doing a lot better. I'm feeling fairly confident about my chances for language legend.

When President Van Dam interviewed me to give me my departure date, he asked me if I was starting to get an idea yet why I was sent to this mission. I'm not really sure still. Considering all of the missionaries that go from England to England, why did God send me to the other side of the world? It certainly is a wonderful experience, and one that I'm very thankful for, but I still wonder sometimes why I was chosen to come here. I expect that in the Spirit World, we'll get to ask about these things and I can find out - but for the moment I'll just be content to enjoy my time here.

Happy Birthday to Jessie - I hope it goes well. Also, please send Chris my love via his mum.

Lots of love to everyone,

Elder Matt Loffhagen

Good luck with Ofsted! - 14th email from Macau

2009-01-15T03:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Thank you so very much for applying for me and getting all of the university stuff sorted. Now the fear of missing the deadline has passed, but I'm now just going to have to wait patiently and hope for the best as far as responses come. Hoping and praying for acceptance!

By the way, please thank Mr Bourne profusely from the bottom of my heart. I'm amazed at how much he managed to think of to say in my support. I'm also amazed at how detailed the records at Herschel must be, as I could see him mentioning specific pieces of work in there. There are a few comments that won't help all that much (such as mentioning that my work wasn't always on time) but I can't really argue with the truth. I just hope that whomever is reading the applications doesn't feel like he's just trying to think up good things to say about a lazy student - in all the talking about "challenging opinions" and "creative views", it could be taken that I just argued with the teachers a lot. Again, not necessarily something I can deny.

Good luck with Ofsted - I'm sure it will go well. Mum, you are a superb teacher - I maintain that you are, in fact, the best teacher in the world.

The language is progressing steadily, but I've not really gotten anywhere with Mandarin. Unfortunate, because we're still without any Mandarin speakers here. I just have too much to do. The final language award, the Language Legend, has only been awarded to a handful of missionaries so far, because it is very difficult, and I'm wondering if it's even worth it, because a knowledge of three thousand characters won't help me much and I could do with working on my spoken Chinese instead. But for the moment I'm still pushing forward.

Good luck to Jess at the YSA dance this Friday - they are completely different to youth dances, Jess, so do your best to meet new friends and have fun :)

Last Sunday we baptised J, our investigator of a few months now. His friend Y performed the baptism, but it was a struggle for him because the font wasn't very full, and J's foot kept coming up. It took four tries but he finally did it and now J is baptised. J bore a solid testimony afterwards, which helped to calm my concerns, because I've always wondered where his testimony actually lies - is it really in God, or is it just in his friends at church and in the future prospect of BYU? But his testimony showed that he did indeed know the Book of Mormon to be true and he was thrilled to be a member of the church. Now the responsibility for him will fall on his friends here, but many of them are also recent converts, so we missionaries will keep a close eye on all of them just in case.

Tuesday and yesterday were adventures - we (the Zone Leaders, the other District leader here and I) went back to Hong Kong for a leadership meeting. It was a lot of fun - Patron Housing, across from the Temple where we usually stay, was packed full of a group from Mongolians. I am very impressed by them - despite being very, very poor, Mongolian Saints come all the way down to Hong Kong very regularly. The group who came featured a lot of missionaries, all of whom are natives to Mongolia and have never been to the Temple before. Part of their MTC experience is a solid week in the Temple as the get endowed and, in one young man's case, sealed to his dead parents. They were all thrilled to see us, and enjoyed speaking English with us as best they could (they spoke pretty good English actually). It was fun to see how great their desire was and how blessed they are by the Hong Kong Temple - it's not close, but it's closer than Taiwan! It's a great blessing to the Asia area, and I'm so thankful that it also happens to be my Mission Home.

Time's running out now. Again, good luck with Ofsted, and good luck to Dad with his counselling course. Very special good luck to Jess at the YSA dance and good luck to Tim in whatever he's up to.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen

Another email from me - 13th email from Macau

2009-01-15T03:54:00.000-08:00

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

Happy 2009! - 12th email from Macau

2009-01-15T03:53:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

I read and replied to the personal statement email before reading this one. I just read aloud your question about BYU, and the room (which currently has eight missionaries in it, most of which went to BYU) exploded with comments such as "Go to BYU!" and "It's the best place ever!" and "You'll find your eternal companion!" This is pretty standard pressure I'm feeling on all sides here from the Missionaries throughout the mission. Don't worry, though, I'd rather not go study in another country. If nothing else, I'd miss the Olympics. BYU can be a last resort if all else falls through, because I definitely want to start this year, and we wouldn't need to apply until after we hear back from all the British schools.

As far as a quote goes for my personal statement, I have no idea. How about "ACCEPT ME OR I'LL BURN THE UNIVERSITY DOWN!"? It'd certainly be eye-catching. Or how about my favourite Chinese proverb, "True gold does not fear the fire." Then we could explain, "This is a classic Chinese proverb, meaning that truth will always overcome opposition, and genuine integrity will shine through in the midst of challenges. Much like myself, because I am AMAZING!" Maybe leave off the bit about being amazing. But then Elder Liu points out that they won't know that I'm amazing...

The new year was fun for us - we ended up just talking in bed until midnight, and then very promptly fell asleep.

Time's up. This is officially my worst weekly email ever.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen

Merry Christmas - 11th email from Macau

2009-01-15T03:50:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

Hurray! It's Christmas! I hope you are all having a good day.

Thank you very much for the Christmas presents; lots of fun little silly things that made us all laugh. This morning we all went over to the house of the senior couple here in Macau, the Kaps, for a Christmas breakfast and a gift exchange. We all had a secret Santa - I'd drawn Elder Woo, a native from Hong Kong who hasn't exactly had the best Christmas experiences in the past (mostly because China doesn't really celebrate Christmas) and who doesn't haven't presents from his family to open (again, because China doesn't celebrate Christmas). I was determined to make this the best Christmas ever, and bought him a bunch of presents that slightly exceeded the money limit of $30 (about 3 pounds) we'd imposed upon ourselves - I'm sure everyone else will forgive me. I even threw in some of the sweets the Young Women sent me (thank you Jessica). He was absolutely thrilled by all of the gifts I'd bought for him, and said the exact words, "this is the best Christmas ever!" so I felt very pleased with myself.

For the rest of the day, we've planned to basically just wander around Macau. We're going to go ride a cable car which costs a thrifty $2 (20p) and maybe play some cards later. I'm looking forward to phoning you all later today, but I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to manage it yet. It's harder to get a cheap calling card here in Macau, but it'll work out.

Now for something very important - I was reading through the university stuff you got me and discovered that the deadline for applications on UCAS is the 15th of January. This means that we are currently completely OUT OF TIME. You need to apply right now - or as soon as possible. My first choice is Bournemouth University studying Multimedia Journalism, my second choice is Leeds University studying Communications. As I don't have any other information about other universities, so I can't really pick anything else. You can either submit my application with just those two options (I'm safe as far as the entry requirements for Bournemouth go, so I'm feeling confident about that) or you can pick a few other courses at random just to flesh out the list, it's your choice. Please get this done ASAP - I don't want to have to wait another year for university. If I don't get in to a university now, I'll just have to do the BYU thing (their entry deadline is a lot later) and I'd rather not do that, but I definitely want to start school in 2009 and if that's my last resort I'll take it over waiting a year.

I'm not exactly sure of what I need to say in my Personal Statement, but I'll email a rough draft in a separate email. You can fine tune it and feel free to add or delete anything you like to make it look shiny and impressive.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I just want to wish you all Merry Christmas. I know I'll be talking to you all later anyway, but I want you all to know that I love you. I prayed last night that you would all have a very merry Christmas, and I look forward to next year's Christmas that I'll be able to share with you all.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Feeling Christmassy - 10th email from Macau

2008-12-18T02:57:00.001-08:00

Dear all,

Today has been a very busy day. In fact, this week has been a very busy week.

On Tuesday we headed back to Hong Kong for Mission Conference. That was pretty much an entire day gone - we managed to get some planning for lessons done, but not much else. On Wednesday we had Mission Conference and came back to Macau. Then today I went with Elder Liu and his family here in Macau (his aunt, uncle and grandma) to some family graves, then all of the Missionaries were treated to a trip up to Macau Tower by the second counsellor in the Branch Presidency here. So now I'm very tired, but there's no time to rest because immediately after we finish emailing here, we're going back out for a meal with Elder Liu's family again. Busy!

On Tuesday, we had interviews with President Van Dam. I asked him a very special question - because here in Macau there are a lot of Mandarin speakers from the Mainland, but I have no way of communicating with them when we meet them on the street, I asked for permission to study some Mandarin while I'm here. He pointed out that they often try to have a Mandarin-speaking missionary in Macau, but it's been different recently. He then said that I could have permission, because of the unique circumstances here right now. I got very excited and went and bought two books - one is the Mandarin language learning book and the other is a special Book of Mormon with three columns on the page - one in English, one in Mandarin romanization and one in Chinese characters. Because I can pretty much read the entire book of mormon in characters anyway, it's really not going to do me very much good, but it's a fun new book. So I'm going to work on my Mandarin slowly - this week my goal is just to learn to bear my testimony in simple sentences. Next week I'll work on prayer. This is mimicking the pattern we used for learning Cantonese in the MTC.

Wednesday was a lot of fun. All of the Zone skits and all of the talents were, in my opinion, a lot more impressive than last year. Our Macau zone skit went well, but the best skit in my mind was the "Paw Paw Polka", where everyone in the Zone danced in unison, acting like old Chinese ladies ("Paw Paw" in Chinese means "grandma").

The Mission Slideshow was also really good. I'm in it a little more often than last year, but you might blink and miss me in a few places. Better than seeing myself was seeing places and people that I recognized, like members, investigators and old area. When I get home we can all watch it together and I can point out all of the inside jokes and interesting things that I had some connection to.

It was really good getting to see all of my missionary friends again for the first time in 2 months. Because Mission Conference was split up last time, I hadn't seen most of the missionaries since before I came to Macau! We also had a fun Secret Santa gift exchange, and Elder Rose got me a toy Hong Kong minibus.

It was sad to see three of the Sisters who were in the MTC with me give their "dying testimonies" as all Missionaries who go home get to bear their testimony in their last mission conference. That means that I'll be picking my date to go home next interview with President Van Dam. We all took a District picture, where all of the missionaries who were in our MTC District - all 15 of us who are here - took a picture together. Next Move the last two Sisters, who both picked their late date to go home, will be "dying". Conveniently, they are both serving as companions, here with me in Macau. All of my Sisters have served here, but I'm the only Elder from our group.

I'm really enjoying this time on my mission - more so than any other time so far - and I'm very glad that Elders get half a year more than Sisters, because a year and a half is just not long enough. I'm rather hesitant to come home, but I also know that I need to think about it. That said, I have looked through all of the University things you sent me. I got the package last Sunday and was very surprised. President Van Dam had come to Macau on church business, as he is the equivalent of the Stake President for Macau, and when he saw me, he put his arm around me and said, "You owe me a big favour." When I saw the size of the package, I agreed - it was huge! President Van Dam pointed out that he'd had to use a full size suitcase just to get it to Macau, and it had barely fitted. Thank you so much for all of the food - it's like a typical Loffhagen family Christmas away from home. Whatwith that and the Young Women's package (which you must thank them for from me) I think I'll be comfortably eating sweets for a long time to come! Also, I'm pretty certain that I now have more Marmite than I will need for the rest of my mission, because in addition to the little pot you sent me and the half-pot I already have (everyone in the apartment thinks I'm crazy for eating it, and were even more disgusted by Twiglets), my dear friend Elder Volk gave me an almost full pot that he had bought - I got everyone to try it in the MTC, and Elder Volk liked it, but decided that he liked Vegemite more. I've never tried it so I can't compare.

Anyway, after having read through all of the university courses, I feel that I like the Multimedia Journalism course at Bournemouth best. But if I'm right, I can apply to up to four universities? Not sure what more there is we could do to find other courses, though - although backup options would be good. To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with Leeds. The prospectus seemed to be trying to sell the community and surroundings a lot more than the actual courses, and honestly I don't know how much four years of studying Chinese could keep my interest, especially considering that Mandarin is just Cantonese with a different accent and different grammar.

Just a fun little side note - when I told other missionaries I was looking at a Journalism course, one of the Sisters said, "I hate to say it, but BYU has a really great journalism programme". Plus pretty much every other missionary is desperately trying to convince me to go to BYU - but don't worry, that ship has sailed. I'd rather stay where I belong, in a culture I understand.

That's why I'm contemplating Hong Kong University... :P

Anyway, talk to you next week.

Feeling Christmassy - 9th email from Macau

2008-12-11T04:18:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

Beth Aslett sent me an email this week. The next time you see her, tell her that I will reply, but because we're only supposed to email family, it'll be coming by snail mail some time probably in January.

It sounds like everything is going well at home. Lots of tests and examinations - and how interesting to hear that Mum's getting offered jobs at other schools! Yet more proof that you are the best teacher ever. :)

We helped decorate the chapel for Christmas yesterday. It was a lot of fun and really put me in the Christmas spirit - Elder Liu's not really feeling it as much as I am. Being from Utah, he's used to it being a lot colder and snowier at Christmas. Last Christmas I was actually a little warm outside in my short sleeve shirt, so I'm used to it by now. It's a little chillier this year, but I'm stubbornly sticking to short sleeves again. Otherwise I'll come home and be a wimp, too used to the warm winter weather and not able to cope in classic frosty winds.

Our investigators are all doing well. Sister W is determined to have her entire family baptized all at the same time next week. I'm doubting if she herself will even be ready, let alone her eight year old son who never pays attention to us. We'll see how things go - either way, they are thrilled to accept everything. We taught them Tithing yesterday, which Sister W was thrilled by. It was interesting - she'd started the lesson by showing us a bag of rice they'd got from somewhere that she said had been a real blessing to them. They are not very well off - in fact, as Sister Wong has to stay at home and take care of Brother W all day, they are supported entirely by Sister W's family. They are very poor, but Sister W had already asked us about any kind of donations that were necessary at church, so she'd already heard a little bit about Tithing and was really happy to get to pay it - even before we promised her the blessings that come with this commandment. Before we left, the kids were bashing each other with the bag of rice (which was vaccuum sealed and as such is just like a big flat brick of rice) and Sister W scolded them, saying that God gave them their food and they should respect it. I'm glad she understands that principle so well - it's probably a lot easier to see where blessings come from if they are in shorter supply.

If I call you at 10:30pm my time, it'll be 2:30 your time, right? Would that be okay? I just asked Elder Liu when would be best, because I don't want to interrupt Christmas dinner or Doctor Who. Elder Liu said that you'd probably be more interested in talking to me, and I said that I wasn't too sure if I'd win out over David Tenant in some people's minds...

I love you, Tim.

Anyway, the Mission Christmas Social is next week, and I'll also have my interview with President Van Dam. I'm going with a special request this time - I'm sick and tired of meeting people who only speak Mandarin, using up my three or four sentences of Mandarin, and then waving goodbye to them. On a good day I can just about understand what they're saying, but they never have a clue what I'm trying to say. So I'm going to ask President Van Dam for permission to learn a little Mandarin and see what he says.

Elder Liu calls me Mandarin Trunky, in that I'm a little too focused on the idea of learning Mandarin. I just want to be able to communicate with these people we meet from other parts of the world, like the Mainland or Vietnam or Taiwan or countless other places - Macau has such a huge mix of languages floating around. Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, English - it's a very diverse place here. As Visas have been hard to come by recently, pretty much every ethnicity in the mission is represented here at the moment - we have five Americans, a Briton, a Canadian, an Elder from Hong Kong, a Sister from the Phillipines and a Maori Elder from New Zealand. This means that collectively we speak English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Maori and four or five languages from the Phillipines. Plus there's some French floating around at times, just for fun (but not on my part - I can't even pretend to speak French anymore!)

Anyway, that's all from me for this week.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

It's been a good week - 8th email from Macau

2008-12-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

I've enjoyed myself and am in a particularly good mood right now. Honestly though, I'm not sure why - but for whatever reason, I'm thrilled to be here.

So, I've made a comprehensive list of every question you've asked me - rhetorical or otherwise. Here we go.

"Did you hand in your photos for this years DVD?"

Yes.

"I guess if we get your phone call Christmas day we won't get an email that day too."

Not sure.

"Will it still be your pday."

Yes.

"Have you had any thoughts about how we will do the phone call?"

No.

"We received an email today from someone in Macau, P E. She is asking us to be guardians for students coming over here to study. We are going to ask for a little more information but we might be able to get some of the other ward members involved. We just need to know what our commitment would be."

Let me explain a little from what I've heard on the subject - Brother Y, who is a really great member here in the Chinese branch (but whose English is above par) runs an organization finding placements for Macau students in international schools. The other day we were at the church when he phoned and asked to speak to me. He told me that he has a student that he's trying to send to Norwich, and asked (in English - perhaps he doesn't trust my Chinese) if you could be guardians. I asked for explanation of what that entailed, but didn't get a very clear response - something about signing papers. I pointed out that Norwich is rather far away from us, but he insisted that he'd looked on a map and we were quite close; which I'm sure is true - compared to, say, Glasgow. Certainly closer than Macau is to Norwich. I also stated that you are all pretty much always busy and probably wouldn't have time to help, but that he could try. I gave him the home phone number and Dad's email address, and I guess he got P (who attends the English branch but works for Brother Y) to email you. Perhaps there are some members who could also help - I know that between the two of you, Mum and Dad, you know pretty much every family in the church in Britain :)

Speaking of members in Britain, some fun news - one of our recent converts here in Macau, V, told us that he is moving to England in June. How convenient, as I'll get home in July or August - we can go to YSA stuff together.

Anyway, back to questions:

"So far as coming home, if you want you can be really busy - EFY will be on in late August / early Sept 2009 in the South of England and they will be after returned missionaries as chaperons :)"

Not sure I'm willing to commit to anything just yet. I do hope to get some time for work in before I go to University, and with constant holidays, It'd be hard to get any work. But we'll see how things go - August is still a long time away.

With Christmas well on the way, we're busy making preparations for various activities. One such activity is the Mission Christmas Social - all of the zones will perform skits, and we just practiced ours a little. We're doing A Christmas Carol with a missionary twist. Trunky old Sister Chan (this was all her idea) won't get out of bed to study or go finding, and is visited by the Ghosts of Mission Past, Present and Future to realise that she's got to go work hard for the rest of her mission. The practice could have been a little better - we don't really have a script yet; just a vague idea of what we're going to do. It'll be alright on the night.

Our investigators are progressing nicely - J and Sister W are stepping closer to baptism every day. J shows proof of just how effective a good fellowshipper can be - because he knows Recent Converts H and V, and goes to school with his friend Y, he has support in a lot of different directions. On Saturday, before we sat down to teach him, he told us that he probably couldn't come to church, because he had to study for exams (this is a common excuse - they have tests at school every two months, so they're always studying for tests) but when we got to the end of the lesson, he asked Y if he was going to be at church. Y replied; "of course" and J said, "Okay, I'll come too." He stayed for all three hours, and I was thrilled for him.

Yesterday we taught the Wong family about the Word of Wisdom - we chose to teach them this commandment first because it's pretty much the only one we expected them to have problems with - perhaps the Sabbath will present a problem too, but Sister W already knows about it as she has a great love for the Bible. In fact, when we told her that we were going to teach the commandments, she started listing some of the ones she knows, such as not stealing or killing - she was very sorry to tell us that occaisonally she lies, and we told her to work on that. So we talked about prayer and scripture reading, to point out that they're already keeping some commandments, as we carefully built up to the Word of Wisdom.

Now, here in China, EVERYBODY drinks tea. So EVERYBODY has a problem with the Word of Wisdom. It was funny watching Elder Liu carefully go through the elements of this commandment.
"Well," he said, "First off, we don't use harmful drugs."
"Of course!" said Sister W, "I'd never do that!"
"Okay," continued Elder Liu, "And we don't smoke."
Again, no problem.
"Alcohol?" No, she had nothing wrong there either.
"And then there's coffee - "
Here was the problem. "Oh dear!" said Sister Wong, "I have some coffee - over there!" She pointed, "But I never never drink it!"
We assured her that it was okay. Then Elder Liu steeled himself and said, "And...tea."
We waited, looking at her. There was a split second of nervousness between the two of us, but she wasn't phased, "Oh, no, I rarely drink tea. Only if I go out to a restaurant, but I can just drink water - that's fine."

We were absolutely blown away. Surely it couldn't possibly be THAT easy? But it was - and suddenly a lesson that we'd been expecting to take 45 minutes was done in twenty. Sister W was committed and one step closer to baptism. So that was a nice little miracle for today.

Christmas this year ought to be an interesting affair. Because it's Preparation Day, it's the perfect day for Elder Liu to visit his family. It's an interesting situation - his grandma, aunt and uncle live here. While he's still a missionary, They like to do things with him, as one can imagine, such as having us over for dinner, or, on Christmas, going to visit Grandad's grave. Grandma believes in Ancestor Worship, and culture is such that we will all take a trip to the graveyard on Christmas day to leave him some food, maybe burn some incense - I'm not entirely sure of the whole plan, but it ought to be a unique experience for me. I'm glad that Elder Liu will get to spend the day with his family, and excited that I'll get Christmas morning with my Mission family as well, as the zone will meet together for Christmas morning at the Kaps' home. Elder and Sister Kap are the senior couple assigned to Macau, but they're by no means what I would call the regular senior couple - one time we went out for a run in the morning and were overtaken by Sister Kap! They're not yet particularly senior, and we call them our "Mission Mum and Dad". So we'll go over to their house for Christmas morning before heading over to the graveyard. Yes, it certainly will be a fun day.

I love you all and hope that you are all doing well. I wish you all a very merry Christmas. I can buy a calling card here to call home with - you can tell me when would be most convenient for you and I can just call then; it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Happy happy - 7th email from Macau

2008-11-27T05:14:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

Everything is going well here. Not that much of any importance happened this week - sometimes the week goes by so fast that I barely notice it.

Last Sunday was the baptism. I was a little nervous but there weren't any problems. It was odd baptizing someone else's investigator - I was sitting on the front row of the chapel with her, but I didn't really feel like I belonged there. I was just there to do the actual baptizing.

Elder Liu and I are getting along well together. We had Moves Calls this week, and were told that we'll be together for another six weeks at least (not much of a surprise to be honest, as once you're in Macau you're normally here for at least four Moves) so we're happy to carry on serving together.

We've set some more baptismal dates with a few investigators. One of them is named J - he's friends with H and V who were baptized two weeks ago, and also friends with Y, who is one of the branch's Young Men, and who is very thrilled to see one of his schoolfriends making steps into the church. We're seeing the definate benefit of a solid fellowshipper to befriend the investigators. Jason has also, of his own initiative, shown quite a lot of interest in BYU. Apparently one of the members mentioned it to H and V, and J was listening. He keeps asking us about the price for various things and how easy it is to get in. He asked Y if he was going to go.

We also extended a baptismal commitment to Sister W. We've been teaching the W family for a few weeks now, very slowly, because they are a very interesting family. I'm not sure I've mentioned them or not yet - Brother W is seventy years old and after a stroke is almost completely paralyzed - he can barely stand up, and can't speak. Sister W is in her forties and is used to having somewhat one-sided conversations with her husband, and is thrilled to talk with us about all of her experiences over the past week that she can't really share with her Buddhist friends - she is defiantly Christian even though none of her neighbours or friends are.

Then there are the children - J Y, J G and J W. J W is a twelve year old girl, and rather quiet - happy to listen to our messages. The other two; boys aged 10 and 8; are very hard to calm down or even to get them to sit still - teaching them, I often think to myself "How on earth does Mum do it? Keeping kids under control seems pretty much impossible!"

So lessons with the family are short and simple. But from the moment Sister W met us, she has been desperate to be baptized, so that's not much of a problem. They are a very humble, happy family. They don't have very much of anything as far as possessions go, but they have each other and that's enough. So we'll keep teaching them slowly and helping them to understand the Gospel, bit by bit.

Both J and Sister W will be baptized in December. We're going to focus on baptizing the Wong family is parts because it'll take a long time to get the kids to understand what we're talking about.

Anyway, all is going well. I love you all.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

A Lot of Baptisms - 6th email from Macau

2008-11-20T05:23:00.000-08:00

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

It's been a busy week - 5th email from Macau

2008-11-15T05:21:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

It sounds like everything is going well for you all. Martin Black also sent me an email this week, and they're doing fine too. The next time they come for a visit, please tell them I love them all - especially little Michael, who apparently is a lot bigger now than the first time I saw him.

I have a few things that I need to say before I forget. Many of them were going to be said last week, or the week before, or the week before that, and so on and so forth. Here they are:

1. Christmas - the shop we buy our food in is stocking Christmas puddings. They cost 80 Patacas (the currency of Macau) which is somewhere around £4 or £5. That might be cheaper than a big heavy lump of pudding in the package. Also, a request for my companion - Elder Liu really loves Pokemon. He always likens it to finding - he's gotta catch 'em all. His favourite is Charizard, which in Missionary finding is a family - families are really hard to catch, but well worth it. He's told me several times that he really wants a Charizard keyring, and I think it'd be fun to get him a little something for Christmas. Maybe you could see what you can find?

2. Universities. I'm really leaning towards journalism, but would also like information on Computer Animation, Chinese courses or anything else really.

3. Can you get me Thomas Morrison's new address?

4. With 200MOP (that's the short version of Pataca) for the Macau Tower, I'm worried a little about finances. Last month I thought I had a cavity and so Sister Van Dam arranged for me to take a trip to the dentist for a checkup and a clean. Thankfully, my teeth were fine, and it only cost another 200MOP. But that's 400MOP already, and for Thanksgiving in a few weeks everybody is going to a hotel for another buffet lunch which will be another 100MOP. I tell you this just to keep you up to date; I don't think I need any more money right now. But just so you know, I'll be spending a little more soon.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm probably forgetting some things, but I'll remember them later.

Anyway, this week saw a very exciting event as the Mission released the long-awaited 3000 character card set. I've been trying desperately for a long time to memorize characters from a list. I've tried a lot of things, including trying to make 2000 flash cards myself. I've not gotten very far, but this week I got about 120 sheets of cardboard, each with 25 characters on. We have to cut them out ourselves, so I've also spent every lunchtime at the church using their guillotine. It's a slow but steady process, sped up by Sister Au, a native of Hong Kong who is serving in my District and who for some reason, really likes cutting things with a guillotine. So she's happy to cut out my cards when she has the chance. These cards mean that I ought to learn a lot quicker and am aiming to have gone through all of them by the end of the year, and to pass them all off before April.

Speaking of April - does Chris have a specific returning home date yet? You would have heard more about him than me. He was telling me that he was hoping to extend for a month at the end of his mission and go home in July, meaning that we'd get back at the same time. Little does he know, I'm going to pick my late date going home and come back in August...

And then speaking of August, when I get home, one thing I'm going to want to do is spend time with you all, and if you're going on holiday, I'll definitely be coming with you.

I will be in Hong Kong for the Mission Christmas social around about the second week in December. After that, I won't be back until February.

Ben was finally confirmed last week. He was thrilled, as were the other missionaries and I. Not much else of any significance has happenened this week though - it's been very busy, with a lot of teaching and not much finding time, but every night I've been trying to think of specific things of importance to write in my journal and I've been really struggling. I'm sure you've felt before the feeling of doing a lot without really getting much done. We've been teaching a lot of investigators (we currently have a LOT of investigators) and have two who will baptized this coming Sunday, but I don't really feel like we're doing all that much to help anybody progress. It's clear to see that the spiritual progression of others does not depend very much on what a missionary says or does - it's all down to that person's desire to learn and their faith to come closer to God. It's good to know - I should neither beat myself up when the work moves slowly, nor lift myself up unto pride when things are going well. It has very little to do with me - so long as I'm doing the best I can, I'm doing all that I'm supposed to do, and the rest is down to each investigator and what they're willing to do.

There was one particularly moving experience this week. An investigator called J met with us - we'd planned to review the Restoration lesson with him by watching the film. But when J got there, I asked him how he'd been doing recently and he told us it had been hard - a close friend of his had died recently. We expressed our sympathies, and the words of another film, Finding Faith in Christ began ringing in my ears. I'm not sure if you've seen it - it's a kind of Family Home Evening for a family in Jerusalem who have the apostle Thomas as a guest for dinner. There's a man who had recently lost his wife there who refuses to believe in anything he can't see. Thomas retells stories of the Saviour, His teachings and recounts the miracles and the Atonement, Crucifixion and Resurrection. He tells this man that because of Christ, we can overcome our trials, and each and every one of us will be resurrected. I felt prompted to switch our lesson and show Jason this film. As we watched it, the Spirit was strong. I knew that the film was answering a lot of Jason's personal questions, and I felt the meaning behind the message of the film more than I ever have before while watching it. I know it was the right message that day for Jason, and also for me.

I love you all. I know that what I'm doing right now is the best possible thing I could be doing with my time. I'm so thankful, Mum and Dad, for the two of you; for your commitment to each other and to us your children. I never really realised growing up just how special it is that you are both sealed together and active in the church - a blessing that many of the other Young Men who grew up with me don't have. Thank you so much for all you've done for me and for Beth, Jess and Tim. You've done a really good job as parents - we don't turn around and tell you that often enough.

I love you all and pray for your happiness,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

A Trip To Macau Tower - 4th email from Macau

2008-11-06T07:48:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

A lot of different cities in this world have a different feel. London has a feeling of ancient meets cutting edge, Hong Kong feels like a desperate desire to be new and tall. Macau has absolutely no desire to be up to date - it's just interested in taking people's money in the very many giant casinos and tourist attractions that can be found here.

Today we all went to visit one of the tallest tourist attractions in Macau - the Macau Tower. One of the Elders here, Elder Robinson (also named Elder 羅) has to leave on Saturday due to visa restrictions, so we all went up to do something he'd never done before. It was expensive - 200 or so Patacas (the currency of Macau which is pretty much exactly the same as the Hong Kong dollar), but it was a fun time. We went to eat at the 360 Cafe, which is a big circular cafe on one of the top floors of the tower. The floor rotates very slowly, meaning that sitting at the table, you very slowly get a 360 birdseye view of Macau. It was a very good meal; a buffet lunch with foods from all over the world. I had some African chicken, some Chinese fried rice, a slice of a roast with a little English mustard - very good. We had a wonderful time, but probably not as good of a time as the bungee jumpers one floor above us, who we could see out the window. That would cost several thousand patacas, and Missionaries are forbidden from bungee jumping, so you don't have to worry - I'm not going to try it.

This has been a tiring week. Things are very busy here at the moment, as we currently have a lot of investigators, all with different concerns, and it's hard to keep track of them all. For example, on Sunday we helped the Wong family to come to church. They have three very energetic children, a very talkative mother, and the father suffered from a stroke a while ago which left him mostly paralyzed. So we went early to their house with their fellowshipper, L C, and helped them attend church by wheeling Brother W's wheelchair and making sure none of the kids went missing along the way. We finally got them to church, only to discover too late that B, who was baptized last week and was supposed to get confirmed this past Sunday, hadn't shown up. Oh dear.

We saw him the next day at our regularly scheduled time. He was so sorry for missing church - I tried to console him, telling him, "It doesn't matter," but he replied, "No, it does matter!" He works very hard as a volunteer for a charity, and as such was just too tired and fell asleep as he prepared for church. But I feel that he was sincerely sorry for missing his confirmation, so I have to fear about him turning up this coming Sunday - maybe we'll give him a call before we head over to the W family though...

Anyway, a little about Buddha - here in China he's always portrayed as a fat, jolly man. I've been told that his weight represents him being full of happiness and joy - a rather nice little message. But last Friday, I mentioned to someone how odd it was that such a large man spent much of his life fasting to the point of death yet was such a fat man. L, who is an investigator who used to live in the Mainland and is being taught by the other Chinese Elders here, who perhaps is rather new to the concept of religion, replied - "He doesn't need to eat because he has special powers." I thought that was an interesting insight into what is generally thought of regarding the Buddha in this part of the world.

A sad experience this week - while finding, we bumped into a BBC (British Born Chinese) from Manchester. I asked is he knew where I was from, and he guessed, "The US?" "No!" I said, "I'm from Berkshire!" He sized me up tentatively, not really certain what to think. I'm don't think he believed me. "Has my accent got that bad?" I asked. Apparently so. So when we have a chat at Christmas, be ready to expect the worst.

Being involved in translating for the Olympics sounds like it'd be a lot of fun, but I don't expect they'll want my Chinese - better to get someone Chinese to do it, as it seems to be a lot easier to learn English when you already speak Chinese, rather than the other way around. Still, there may be something for me to do - not sure what though...

A little about Christmas wishes. I've been thinking about stuff I'd like, and the following comes to mind:
1. a Christmas pudding. If you ask me there is nothing more Christmasy.
2. Fudge. Nice, tasty fudge from home. That'd be good.

I have no idea as far as anything else goes. You can just surprise me - but I'm not too fussed. I'd rather have money waiting for me rather than things here with me now. That said, I do have to ask about the state of my DS Lite and Gameboy Micro - am I going to get them back, or are they now solidly the possessions of other members of the family (such as Mum and Tim...) Because if replacements were needed to keep everybody happier, buying them in Hong Kong would be the better option. Not that I'm trunky for my old toys or anything - it's just that hearing about how much you all seem to be enjoying the XBox made me wonder if I should maybe just leave it with you all when I go off to University. But a handheld would be easily replaced.

Love you all,

羅長老

Two Baptisms and a Teasing from a General Authority - 3rd email from Macau

2008-11-03T02:09:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

I'll explain the teasing bit a little later. In the meantime, let me say don't worry, Dad, I understand why you'd want to know a little more about Buddhism. But I hate to tell you that anything you're reading in books about passive, simple lives, the eightfold path to enlightenment, etc; is not how Buddhism works over here. Here in China, Buddhism has been combined with ancestor worship, so that while we meet a lot of people who tell us that they "seun faht" ("seun" means believe. "Faht" means "Buddha", which made it easy to remember in the MTC - I just have to remember that Buddha statues are fat), what they really mean is that they burn incense and cardboard objects to their ancestors. It's an interesting religion, and I do find it fascinating how at the same time, the religion is revered and slightly made fun of. For example, the 10,000 Buddhas that I sent you pictures of - built in 2003 or thereabouts, they are clearly not to be taken seriously, but still people go to the temple daily to burn incense. Except, in order to keep the temple clean, you can't burn the incense. So they leave it there, unburnt, instead. At the end of the day, the temple owners gather up the unburnt incense sticks and sell them again the next day. There's also a gift shop inside the temple. Very interestingly different from our Temples. So for the most part, nobody here is really on the path to enlightenment and Nirvana, it's just background information in their mind as they go about life. Not all that different from many Westerners' background concept of God, really.

Anyway, a lot of big things happened this week. On Saturday, we got the chance to do something I've been wanting to do my entire mission - teach and baptize a visitor from Mainland China. These are occasional and wonderful opportunities for Missionaries in this mission - while most of our visitors speak Mandarin and are therefore taught by our Mandarin Missionaries, here in Macau we are very close to the border, so it's very convenient for Mainlanders to come here if they live a little more west than Hong Kong. These wonderfully prepared people have normally heard very little about the church - our friend, brother G, had never heard of the Book of Mormon, or of the Restoration, but they are willing to keep the commandments even before coming here and accept everything on massive amounts of faith. We teach them every lesson in a day, then baptize them and they go home, afterwards being allowed to attend church and learn the more details of the Gospel in the Mainland.

Brother G was a wonderful example of these real miracles. His fiancee is a member who came down a few years ago, and they planned to get married the week after his baptism. She'd shared a little about the church with him, and they'd prayed both together and separately, and he had a very strong testimony of prayer. He'd felt the promptings of the Spirit in very real ways that had blessed his life and led to his decision that, even though he didn't understand much about his future wife's church, she said he had to get baptized and that was good enough for him.

We taught them all day, every lesson, and then Elder Liu baptized him and we stood in the circle as one of the members of the ward confirmed him. It was an amazing day, the Spirit was strong and all were touched.

The next day was Sunday, and we ended up with twelve or thirteen investigators at church. Many of them already have baptismal dates, or are preparing for one. A new family called the W was there (the mother and two children, as the father has suffered from a stroke and can barely move), as were the L brothers and the Y brothers (two sets of twins), each set of twins also brought a friend. We had B, who was baptized that day, then we had a few others as well.

B's baptism was also very good. He's been investigating for a few months now, and was ready before I even got here. A lot of the investigators stayed to see it, and his mother came too. She was very happy for her son (she brought him flowers!) and was given a chance to speak after his baptism. The Relief Society made instant friends with her after the service, and the Sister Missionaries schedualed to teach her with Ben. It was an amazing day. Macau truly is a place of miracles, and the work is blossoming here.

So after two baptisms in two days, what else could I have of importance to talk about this week? Mission Conference, with a visit from a General Authority. Elder Watson of the Seventy was called in April, and is currently serving in the Asia Area Presidency. He and his wife see the Hong Kong Island and International Missionaries finding outside of the Wan Chai building (the Area Office, as well as a huge chapel that's over ten stories high), and Sister Watson made clear that she felt a strong love for them, as they go out and find people in such a busy area, right in the middle of the richest part of Hong Kong. The tour was split into two days; we were on the second day with the International and HK Island zones, having gone to the Temple the day before (which was also magnificent) and stayed in Patron Housing overnight. The "Macau Boys" as our Zone Leader, Elder Burk, calls us, had been asked to give a musical number, and I had been asked to give the opening prayer, so I was very much involved in the program to begin with.

But I made what could be called the mistake of standing near to President Watson before the meeting started with my daily planner out. He asked to see it - what I didn't know at the time was that he was checking several missionaries' planners to see how well kept they were. He was impressed that I'd written a few simple Chinese characters in place of English for names. I didn't think much of it at the time, and the meeting started peacefully. I gave the opening prayer, and after a few bits of business, Elder Watson called on some missionaries to give talks. We'd all prepared 3 minute talks on a Christlike attribute, and he chose on people at random. After the first batch of five or six, he asked if there was anybody who specifically wanted to give their talk. I could not lie and keep my hand down - I really did want to give my talk. I'd received a bolt of revelation in the Celestial Room the day before - while praying and apologizing that I wasn't qualified to do the work of a missionary, the Spirit suddenly reminded me of D&C 4 - "And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work." And so I was chosen, along with three other Elders who had chosen to give their talks. A little later, President Watson drew my name from the hat at random. I was now sitting on the front row, in the queue to speak, and when he found out that it was me again, he said "It's a good thing I didn't say, 'Elder Log Cabin'!"

That was the start of my nickname from President Watson. After the talks were done, he spoke to us on a few subjects - one was our daily planners and our goal planning. He used me as an example, having seen "Elder Log Cabin"'s planner before the meeting started. He complimented me, which I wasn't sure I deserved, as that day's plan was more or less empty because most of the day was to be spent at Conference and on the ferry, and because our goals were rather low as we have lost two days this week again due to Conference.

Then he used good old Elder Log Cabin as an example of keeping learning the language and not "plateuing" as he called it, because I was learning Chinese characters. At lunch, President Van Dam put his arm around me and said, "well, he definitely knows you!" In response I thanked President Van Dam that his sense of humour is such that he never makes fun of my name. Later at lunch Sister Watson came up to me and said, "For years, I've been going behind my husband's back and apologizing for him!" I said it was quite alright and not too big of a deal - we Loffhagens are used to people getting our name wrong.

So, that is that. I've written a lot this week, because I have a lot to say. I didn't even scratch the surface of how Missionary Work is here in Macau. Let me just tell you that things are going well, I'm happy, healthy and enjoying myself.

Also, yes, I am still District Leader, and as far as Disney films go, President Van Dam's fine just letting us watch them on a Preparation Day for fun, so long as we get permission first. Personally, I'd rather not, as it's been a week now and I still can't get the catchy Prince of Egypt music out of my head. At least it's all about God blessing people, so it'd be better than, say, 'A Whole New World'...

I love you all. I'll look into getting a little Buddha statue.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

2nd email from Macau

2008-10-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

We just watched Prince of Egypt as a Zone. It was a lot of fun. Prince of Egypt is the only cartoon I'll allow myself to watch - while President Van Dam is happy to allow us to watch other films such as Mulan, Aladdin, The Lion King etc, I myself feel I'd rather avoid such films - even though there's nothing wrong to them, I can't help but feel that such films would distract me. Prince of Egypt is okay by my standards because it's still church-related. It actually gave me a lot of insight into prophets and how God leads and teaches His people, as I thought about the imagery and symbolism He used in calling Moses, his preparation and the miracles that were performed. It's been a long time since I watched the film, and one thing I really noticed about watching it this time is just how much the filmmakers didn't understand about the full story; truths we only have through the Restored Gospel.

The Zone here in Macau is rather small. There are 12 of us, split into two Districts; the Zone Leaders and a Sister companionship are in my District, with my companion Elder Liu, which is a Chinese-speaking District. The other District is International, which contains the District Leader and his companion, a Sister companionship and a Senior couple, the Kaps, who are really amazing. Elder Kap is the International Branch President, and they proseltye as well!

Elder Liu, my current companion, is ABC (American Born Chinese) from Sandy, Utah. He's been out on his mission for almost a year and his Chinese is really good (as is the case with most ABCs in the Mission, as they normally heard it growing up to some extent). He is a really hard working missionary, and I'm glad to be serving with him. He's taught me a lot about hard work, and I can see the success he's been having as he serves here. This is only his second area - his first area, which he was in for 6 months, was West Point, which was also my first area. We have a lot of fun together, and have been seeing a lot of miracles as we help prepare investigators for baptism - we currently have five with dates, and one will be baptized this Sunday (in fact, we'll be having his baptismal interview in a few hours).

You can tell the Elders that actually, dinner appointments (or "cheng outs" as we call them in Chenglish) here are rather rare. Members are normally no less busy than non-Members, and certainly here in Macau the branch is not strong enough to support a meal for every day. Tell the Elders that they should count themselves lucky and enjoy the experience.

You can also tell people who ask that I've varied my eating a lot now. I now eat instant noodles very rarely if ever (it's been a long time since I last ate any). Back in Tai Po, I would cook a range of things - making my own curries was fun and rather easy; or perhaps frying up some Chicken breasts with a Chinese stir-fry mix. A while ago Sister Van Dam told us all to eat more healthily and to get more vegetables into our diet. I wasn't all that sure how, so I requested a Mission cookbook, and so now we all have a variety of recipes to choose from when cooking. All of the missionaries submitted their favourite easy recipes that can be cooked in Missionary apartments (as we don't have things like ovens). I submitted the old classic; Beans on Toast.

Elder Ng didn't serve in Macau. President Van Dam only found out recently that Europeans get such priviliges. The Zone has four nationalities at the moment; most are from America, but there is also Sister Au and Elder Woo from Hong Kong and Sister Mansader, from the Philippines. Plus myself, we add up to probably one of the most varied Zones in the Mission, as well as the smallest.

On Tuesday we got on the boat to go back to Hong Kong for a leadership meeting with all of the District Leaders and Zone Leaders. It was fun; staying in Patron Housing opposite the Temple and seeing all of my friends who are in leadership positions in the Mission. We'll be going back across again next week for Mission Tour, when Elder Watson of the Seventy will come and speak to us. Then I won't be back in Hong Kong for over a month, until next Mission Conference.

I'm pretty certain that you can get a cheaper Millennium Falcon than £345. Knowing how Lego's done things before, that would be the super-duper amazing model that will take weeks to build. If you search around the internet, you might be able to find the old, cheaper model from back a while ago. You can find anything on the internet. Just don't buy second hand - that doesn't sound very safe to me when it comes to hundreds of little tiny bricks when even just one missing ruins the whole thing.

It turns out that I can actually be in Macau for an entire year without any problems, but President Van Dam didn't seem to be expecting to keep me here for the rest of my mission. We had a nice interview after the leadership meeting - because of travel costs and for convenience, President Van Dam has our interviews on the few days every Moves that we are in Hong Kong. We talked a little about Christlike Attributes, which is our Mission focus this move. He asked me which attribute I'm working on this Move and I told him Charity and Love, because I don't feel that I give enough of myself. He told me just how amazing it was that here I am, only 20 years old, and we were having such an adult, grown up conversation about how to serve.

I will find out what the Macau English Class is like later today, as we will teach it. Back in West Point, we had several rowdy kids who wouldn't sit still at all. I gained a lot of respect for you, Mum, and how you manage to keep thirty of them under control at once, when we could barely manage a handful.

Cornwall sounds like fun - please take a lot of pictures and send them to me! I'll do the same in return, although I've been kid of stingy with my camera recently so I haven't taken very many since the CD I sent you via Elder Ng.

I love you all and I hope you're all happy, despite workloads. You're all in my prayers.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Not in Hong Kong anymore - 1st email from Macau

2008-10-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I'm emailing right now from a little email place down a side-street in Macau, which will be my new home for the next six months. Macau is a nice little Portuguese colony a fair way from Hong Kong, and because of the difficulties in obtaining Visas for a lot of the missionaries, the usual stay period is six months. Being a European Union citizen, however, I have a little bit of an advantage over the American Elders and Sisters; as I entered Macau the immigrations official stamped my passport for a six month stay, as Europeans are allowed to stay quite a bit longer than Americans.

It's an interesting place; I haven't seen very much of it yet, but it seems to me to be a cross between Portugal and Hong Kong. It's mostly known for its casinos and leisure facilities, so the whole place has a real sea-side feel to it. It should be a lot of fun.

It was kind of hard saying goodbye to a lot of the members back in Tai Po. I'd been there for seven and a half months, so I'd certainly gotten to know them rather well. Brother S seemed to be after coming to visit me out here, which I told him it was best not to do. Hopefully he'll listen - the last thing I want is a former gambling addict strolling around in the Casinos... Nothing to worry about though, he's a good man.

In order to make the trek across the sea, I decided that it was time I invested in a slightly larger suitcase; The big one is fine, but the tiny little one was just too small to hold all of my stuff. So I went and bought a new one for 175 Hong Kong Dollars. I was somewhat apprehensive about buying it, because the wheels looked rather flimsy, but one the same size with sturdier wheels was $210. I made the wrong choice; on the way from the ferry to the flat here in Macau, both wheels snapped off and I had to drag it the last leg of the journey. So well done, Elder Loffhagen - I bought a useless suitcase. At least I won't need it again for a long time.

I wouldn't be so sure that a mission would be rest - bedtimes are subject to sudden change. Here in the Hong Kong mission, for example, instead of following the normal schedule of 6:30am to 10:30pm, we get up at 7:00am and go to bed at 11:00pm. This, I've felt, has been a lot easier than getting up at 6:30, as I'm certainly not a morning person. But apparently, in Macau, we're a half an hour later still, getting up at 7:30 and going to bed at 11:30. This should be nice too, but today we went to Seminary in the morning. So I got up at 6:00 and will go to bed at 11:30. So I'm not sure if a mission will be any more relaxing than a screaming group of children all day.

Especially when we teach English Class...

Anyway, thank you for loving Steve. I'm sure it means a lot to him that he has you all. We all need friends, especially church friends.

You guessed pretty much accurately as to my reason for being kind of quiet with Sister Dawson. Girls are so terrifying to me now (not that they weren't before, but it's a different kind of terror) and I kind of like to keep my distance. I will say something of Sister Dawson though - her Chinese is amazingly good. And why not? Apparently she learned Mandarin before her mission, used to live in Hong Kong and - best of all - her boyfriend also served here in Hong Kong. That's an interesting twist. So yes, I haven't yet served around her (nor will I for the moment - Macau only has 4 sister missionaries, and all are going to be here for a while longer yet) nor do I go out of my way to talk to her at mission events, but she's around and doing very well.

General Conference was amazing; I really enjoyed it. When I go home, I do look forward to going to the church all weekend and watching it with all the members. It's a much better experience than just sitting on the couch at home looking at the tiny computer monitor. I really learned a lot and was glad to have the chance to watch it. Apparently, here in Macau they have General Conference two weeks later than the rest of the world, so they'll be watching it this coming Saturday and Sunday. We probably won't be watching much of it with them, though. The Elders and Sisters who were here already got the chance to watch it this past week.

Keep up the hard work, Mum and Dad. It sounds like both of you are doing really well. I love you for it. I hope that school gets quieter and that counselling goes without too many hitches. You two are both my heroes.

Good to hear that things are good financially for the family, if not the world. When I heard about the huge problems that are going on, I was somewhat worried for any savings that may be floating on the stock market, but I'm sure you're all on top of things, and that God will provide.

I've been thinking about Christmas and a few things I would like. As it stands at the moment, presents will need to be sent early on if I have any hope of actually getting them in time for Christmas, as they'll go to the mission home, and because the ferry between Hong Kong and Macau is around $150 a time, we don't go back there very often. I've been thinking I'd like to get some contact lenses, because my glasses are becoming more and more of an annoyance, and I don't think they'd be too badly priced if I bought them here - pretty much all Chinese people have poor eyesight, so they have some good, cheap options. I'll find out more about that and let you know later. As far as other little things go, I'd really like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: Called to Serve CD and refills for my coloured scripture marking pencil, both of which can probably be found at the LDS bookshop near the Temple. A Portuguese to English dictionary might be nice too, but I'll see what I can do about that myself first.

I love you all. You are always in my prayers. Keep working hard.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Mainlander Barbecue et al - 52nd email from Hong Kong

2008-10-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Certainly the most eventful thing this week was a ward activity we had on Tuesday. Normally on Tuesday we have a ward Family Home Evening which is organized by our ward mission correllator and his family as an excellent activity for our investigators, recent converts and less-active members. But this Tuesday was a national holiday - it was the Ghost Festival here in Asia. I have seen two of these holidays now and have as of yet to see a single ghost, or anything remotely like a decoration or celebration. Supposedly all of the celebrations happen at graveyards, so we haven't seen much of them.

Anyway, our ward's Seminary teacher, Sister L W, is an amazing Sister, and an amazing member missionary. She's teaching at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and she has been teaching Cantonese to a bunch of Mainlanders who only speak Mandarin. She decided that it would be fun to have a nice fun activity all together; the ward and the students, and invite the missionaries to come and, well, teach preach and baptize. With a lot of people from the Mainland, it really is that easy. As I've said before, they come down in droves to hear the Gospel without even much of anything about the church.

We invited the Mandarin Missionaries as well - a good idea, as the students have only been learning Cantonese for a month or so. Still, some of their Cantonese was pretty much spot on already. Others struggled and sounded a little MTCish. It was very strange being on the other side of a conversation I normally have regularly; "Your Cantonese is so good! How long have you been learning for? Wow! You've learned to fast! Amazing!" The more Chinese I learn, the more surprised people seem to get that I've been learning for only a little more than a year. On Tuesday, roles were reversed and I found myself having better Chinese than most people there. Most of them could at least Sik Teng (understand) pretty well, even if they couldn't quite Sik Gong (speak) yet. It's an interesting principle of language learning I've discovered - if two languages are similar enough, you can speak back and forth in the two of them without knowing the other person's language very well, but still understanding what he says.

Most Mandarin is still a mystery to me, but every now and then I Sik Teng'ed a word or two. If I got really stuck, I got them to write down the word they were saying, because characters are the same in both languages (well, mostly - there is that pesky simplified that makes things harder) and I could read enough characters to figure it out.

It was a really scary experience, though - a little step outside of missionary work. I wore jeans for the first time in almost a year, and could been me slipping back into pre-mission mode just a little simply from wearing more rough and tumble clothes that would afford to be torn a little. In fact, all of the members also thought that it was really weird to see me in jeans. But the bunch of Mainlanders didn't have any idea what Missionaries did or what we normally look like, so we were just cool white people to them. Therein lied the biggest problem - it would have been very easy to forget that I was a missionary and we weren't just a bunch of YSA out on an activity.

I can see how the adjustment to life at home might be tricky. But I'll worry about that when I get that far.

I shall have to write Elder Crowther and ask him what on earth they were thinking having him drive? Did they get him his full license or was he still on his Provisional? I'm rather glad I don't have to worry about that here, as only the Office Staff get to drive. The thing is that they all have to drive big huge vans, because they're normally only used for carting around luggage and furniture.

Anyway, I love you all lots. Talk to you soon.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Monkey Mountain and other adventures - 51st email from Hong Kong

2008-10-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Thank you for a wonderful email this week. I got a lot of messages this week - one from an Elder from our MTC group who went home early, one from Tim and one from the bank, telling me how much money I had this time last week. Good good.

So we just got back from Monkey Mountain. It does exactly what it says on the tin - there are monkeys, on a mountain. It was a Zone activity, we all went up there and played some games together and saw some wild monkeys. That was fun. They get pretty close, but you have to be careful because some are really mean, and judging from how much they were all scratching, they all probably had fleas. But either way, it was a real "Wish Tim Were Here" moment.

This week has been a good one. We've had a lot of exchanges. One of the responsibilities of a District Leader is to go on exchanges with the members of his district and give a little training, so I've been off with Elder Forney and Elder Chugg this week. Next week is Elder Nelson and Elder Hedin.

There's a great range of missionaries in our District. Elder Nelson is brand new, being trained by Elder Forney who is a little younger than I am (younger in a missionary sense - he's actually a convert, and currently 22). Elder Chugg has been in the field for about 6 months now but spent almost all of it in Macau, which is, from what I've heard, nothing like Hong Kong. Elder Hedin used to be the Assistant to the President and goes home in two weeks. Plus we have two Sisters; Sister Oler is in her second Move and Sister Opie was in my younger group at the MTC. Oler and Opie are far too easy to get mixed up, so I'll normally try and call them by their Chinese names of Lau and Dang. I had a pretty hard time last Moves living with Elder Bagley and Elder Forney; they were far too close for me to remember one from the other.

Sister Turney's story is very moving. I can imagine how hard Sister Missionaries on Temple Square with only a short period of proselyting must have it. If you don't have something amazing happen in that short period of time, you may not get to see the effects of your service. But I think that they're amazing, and their hard work really does help people. A sister who served in the Oakland California Temple Visitors Centre came home from her mission a few months ago and she and her boyfriend (who as a Hong Kong native who was called here speaking Mandarin, and then was Assistant to the President, is somewhat legendary) had us over for dinner. You could tell that she was really mission trunky (as in she wanted to pack her trunk again and go back) and was so thrilled to have serve. She told us stories of how her proselyting area was a very rich, built up area and it was very hard to find investigators, so the ward organized a lot of activities, like plays, to generate interest and get people to the church.

Last Monday, I went to Seminary here in Tai Po. When I was on exchanges with Elder Forney, we felt impressed to invite two less actives we were teaching to come to Seminary. So we promised we'd go too, and it had a good old familiar Seminary feel. Early morning, tiredness, lights out so as not to wake up the others who were still sleeping. The thing that made it nice was that it wasn't really, really cold. That was the hardest thing about Seminary back home.

Typhoons here are not that big of a deal. Tai Po is really sheltered, so if it's really bad on Hong Kong Island, it doesn't really affect us very much. We live on the first floor of a big giant cement building, so we're not in danger at all. the frustrating thing is when a typhoon hits and we have to stay inside for the day, but that's all it comes down to; nothing too worrying here. Hong Kong is very safe in many ways; good protection against the violent weather, almost no crime and a very well worked out pedestrian system. I'm not sure about England (I never really thought about it) but here it's illegal to cross the road at a zebra crossing if the little man is red (Is that a zebra crossing? I can't remember). So while most Chinese people break the rules and cross with reckless abandon, we stick to only crossing when it's green.

The problem is, nearly every crossing in Hong Kong is a Zebra crossing, so you always have to wait for the light.

Anyway, time's almost up. I love you all lots and lots and will continue to pray for you all.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Feeling more awake - 50th email from Hong Kong

2008-09-30T00:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

I got a very good night's sleep last night, so I'm very awake right now. Normally I have the Air Conditioner blowing in my face all night, but last night it was turned down significantly, so I was very comfortable.

This week has been a very interesting one. We've had another typhoon, Mission Conference, and many other fun things. Plus today is Temple day.

So last Monday, as we came home, we saw a sign on our apartment building's door that told us that there was a level one typhoon warning. I'm not sure whether or not I've explained the warning system, but with a level one warning, it means the storm is still a way off. We're allowed to proselyte as usual. When it gets to level three, as it was the next day, we're not allowed to go further than 15 minutes from home (unless President Van Dam gives the go ahead). So on Tuesday we had to cancel our meeting with J because he lives quite a way away. That night, it kicked up to a level eight. Very frustrating. I very much dislike being trapped inside, as a level eight means not being able to leave the house. It was particularly frustrating because we were supposed to have Mission Conference the next day.

President Van Dam told us he was also very worried about Mission Conference - that he was up in the early hours of the morning checking the weather, when it finally calmed down to a level three. So the next morning everyone was phoned, being told that we were to ignore the weather warning and come to the conference anyway.

Conference was a lot of fun. We all learned and laughed together. President Van Dam and the office staff have come up with a new referral scheme with coloured balls - every ward now has a plastic jar. When a member gives the missionaries a referral, they get to put a ball in the jar. The idea is to give the ward members a physical encouragement to share the gospel.

After being taught about a lot of different things, I left Conference with the feeling that although I've been working hard recently, I haven't been working smart. I'm falling into the same pitfalls I saw older missionaries in when I was new in the mission; just finding all the time and not working with the ward enough. So I need to do better and change.

Don't worry too much about what I do or where I live when I get home; I can guarantee that when I come home, I will be happy to live at home a little longer before moving on. Truth be told, without being trunky or homesick, I really miss Berkshire. I miss Princess Square, Bentalls and WHSmiths. I miss Reading, Broad Street Mall, the Oracle, the cinema. I miss the church buildings.

I don't miss Slough very much though.

Honestly, while Hong Kong is a big adventure and a lot of fun, I know where my home is. So don't get me wrong - I'm not homesick by any stretch of the imagination, but when I come home, I will be happy to just enjoy myself there for a while. Such thoughts, by the way, have left me somewhat less interested in BYU than I was before.

I'm not in need of anything special for Christmas - money in the ISA would do me a lot better. The last thing I need is more random stuff to fill up my suitcases. I'll leave it to you to think up things.

Anyway, I've got to be off. Love you all lots and lots.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Still very tired - 49th email from Hong Kong

2008-09-30T00:52:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Yesterday I decided to use a little extra study time to lie down a little - I'd already had over an hour of personal study, but due to some exchanges yesterday, Elder Clark hadn't yet. While he studied, I went into the bedroom to lie down...on the floor. We have bunkbeds, and the top bunk was just a little too high for me. I didn't have the strength.

So I'm still worn out from having worked very hard. I think I may have been pushing Elder Clark a little further than he can manage, but a second spent not doing what we're supposed to is a second wasted, in my opinion. Before I've taken regular breaks to rest for about 5 minutes every few hours, but not so far this moves. That's been putting strain on Elder Clark too. Perhaps I need to cool down a little. But the theme of the Moves is, after all, being a fireball missionary. We'll see.

Sorry, just thinking out loud (sort of) a little. In summary, this week has also been really good. We've seen a lot of miracles; a lot of prepared people finding us, rather than the other way around, and the first serious member referral of my mission.

A few days ago we were talking to a boy on the street who was kind of busy and needed to go somewhere. As I wrote out a flyer to give to him, writing down our name and phone number, a woman came up and asked if she could have a flyer too. We turned our attention to her and invited her to church, telling her that the Sister Missionaries would love to meet with her. She also asked how much a Bible would cost. I told her, "There's a Christian bookshop around the corner, but we have this book which we give away for free!" We then taught her about the Book of Mormon and scheduled her for church this Sunday. It is truly a miracle that we were in the right place at the right time to find such a prepared soul.

Then that night we were almost at home, with very little time to spare - we had to be home in five minutes. As we waited at the crossing opposite our high rise flat, a man was looking at us and smiling. We struck up a conversation, which wasn't hard as he really wanted to talk. He invited us up to his house right then. I explained that we really couldn't go right then, so he scheduled himself for Sunday at 9:30 at the church. We convinced him that 9:00 would be better as that is when the church meetings start. He obliged.

It's too bad that the road we were crossing was our area boundary. As he lives in the block of flats next to us, he lives just barely on the wrong side of the line. We're going to turn him over to the Tai Wo Elders, the other area in the District. This kind of thing happens a lot in Hong Kong, with such small area boundaries.

Hurray for Jessica - great job at camp! I hope this helping attitude transfers over to home as well; as she is the oldest at home now, she's going to need to take on those responsibilities.

Also hurray for Tim; actually figuring out how to get XBox Live running. I'm sure that he and Jacob will enjoy being able to play just as easily while on different continents. When the M's move, could you send me their new address? Just to be on the safe side, I won't write Tom a letter until he's safely on the other side of the world.

Some Elders in my MTC District were dreaming in Chinese while in the MTC. I was not one of them. I am still not one of them. My dreams are solidly in English, but I'm sure that if someone were to speak Chinese in one of my dreams, I'd probably understand them.

Yes, Tai Po does indeed have the Lam Tsuen river running through it. It stinks. A bunch of companies dump all of their chemical waste into it, so it's always a different colour and never smells very good. It is very beautiful though; but only when the water is a pleasant blue or green; never when it's brown. And certainly at night, it's stunning, with all of the shining lights reflected in the river. You'll get to see it when I next send some pictures home. I've been taking less photos, though, so I'm holding off until I have a bigger collection.

No, my English has not suffered because of Chinese. That was a simple mistake because my brain works 40 times faster than my fingers. There may be a lot of spelling mistakes today, as well, because for some reason today I can't type very accurately. I'll need more practice if I ever want to go back and do some more data entry work to get through university. In fact, the thing that is most detrimental to my English is all of the American missionaries around. Their grammar is usually terrible and I've picked up a lot of words and expressions they use, so apologies if I sound more American than ever at Christmas. Also, I've picked up a lot of Missionary Chenglish, like saying "That's laahp! Such a faahn!" or "Let's jau!" (respectively meaning "That's rubbish! Such an inconvenience" and "Let's go"). Chenglish is a lot of fun. I don't think I'll ever give it up when I go home, and everyone will be very confused as to what I'm saying all the time.

Glad to hear that Seminary is such a big hit. Tim and Jess should count themselves lucky, though, because here in Hong Kong, Seminary is 6 days a week - Monday to Friday at 6:00am and Saturday at 8:00. It's a great sacrifice for the kids who otherwise would be studying all night. After school study classes are considered essential to success here in Hong Kong, and unless you take them it's considered that you don't stand much of a chance in the competitive school system. Early morning Seminary means no late night studying, so the kids who attend sacrifice something worthwhile (if somewhat overdemanding in my opinion) for something even better; a solid testimony and a knowledge of the scriptures. What's more, they're not behind any other kids. Studying all day and all night, as is the lifestyle of many kids in Hong Kong, doesn't get them any further than the kids who take an hour in the morning to read their scriptures. I know which one I'd rather do.

Bournemouth sounds like an interesting choice for university. If I remember rightly, a fair amount of Chinese people go there to study, which might give me a chance to keep my Cantonese and learn some Mandarin just on the side. If I can find someone to speak Mandarin to when I come home, it's really going to be a piece of cake - it's all so similar, just a different pronounciation and simpler grammar. One of the things that makes Cantonese so hard is the lack of a written form (written grammar is identical to Mandarin grammar) and so there are no set rules for how to speak the language. Anything is good - or bad, if you're trying to learn how to speak it. Anyway, hopefully I can see some prospectuses soon and can narrow things down as to which university to go to and what to study. Thank you again for researching all of this for me.

I love you all very much, and pray for you regularly. I also love Hong Kong very much, and so at least for right now, I'm completely happy. The work is hard but well worth it, and I'm thrilled to be doing it. Yesterday I reflected a little and realised just how much I've changed and grown in this year. I'm not the same person I was when I left home.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Perhaps the most tiring week of my mission so far - 48th email from Hong Kong

2008-09-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

I am wiped out. This morning I had a two hour nap to try and regain strength, but it didn't help much. I've pushed myself so hard this week, and now I'm very tired, but also very happy with the work we've done.

Last Thursday was the start of it all - moving things into the new flat, I got pretty worn out. But I decided that it was a good way to start the Moves, so I determined to keep on working similarly hard every day. Every spare second I've had has been spent making flash cards, to help me learn the 3,000 characters for the final language recognition. I've just kept pushing and pushing myself, and I'm now worn out. But I told God very often in my prayers that if He could give me strength to make it to Preparation Day when I could rest a bit, I'd do everything I could to serve.

Let me clarify, though - I'm not saying that normally I'm really lazy and this week I actually worked hard. I normally work really hard, but this week I stepped it up a bit more and really pushed to see what I was capable of. Perhaps I tried running a little faster than I had strength, but I feel satisfied with doing so and the success we've had this week.

Time with Elder Clark is fun. He is a really diligent missionary with a lot of good ideas as to how to get the members more involved with the work.

The calling of Stake Media representative certainly does sound interesting - what are your responsibilities? Money is fine for now, not a problem. I'm living quite comfortably on the amount the mission gives us every month, and don't really need anything else. Back when I first got here, my budgeting skills weren't the best in the world so I'd needed to rely on personal funds a little, but now that I'm in the swing of things, I cope without a problem every month.

Thank you very much to Dad for looking into university courses. Very clever to ask the good people at the BBC about journalism - if anyone would know, it'd be them.

Don't worry about Beth not calling; she's just enjoying the freedom of living away from home. I was the same way when I first came out - in fact, I need to make a confession. When I first got to the MTC, the Senior Elder in charge of the International office there told me I was allowed to phone you and tell you I arrived safely. I resisted, but he dialled the number anyway. The phone rang, but nobody answered - I looked at my watch and a quick calculation told me that as it was Tuesday night, everyone was probably out at Mutual. The Elder told me I could come back the next day to try again, but I never did - I didn't really want to. I was fine with emailing.

Then when everyone was in the Salt Lake City airport on the way to Hong Kong, everyone bought phone cards and called home to tell them they were safe. Again, though, this was the last thing on my mind - I was a missionary, out and about. I had to contact and teach people!

So when I was in the MTC, there were two chances to phone, and I didn't take either. So Beth not phoning for a while is just because she's enjoying independent, but soon she'll realise how much she misses you all.

The new flat is very comfortable now. There was a while where it was empty of all but the barest minimum, but we've spent a lot of money this week buying a lot of the essential items that we were missing (the money will be reimbursed by the mission) and so now it's very comfortable. It's also a lot more convenient, because before we had to catch a bus to get to our area. Now we just walk across the street and we're in the heart of Tai Po (that's what it's called; the Tai Po Jung Sam - Tai Po middle heart. It means Tai Po Centre).

The only real problem with the apartment is the water heater. Whoever wired it up was, to quote the Housing Co-ordinator, Elder Wong, "very lazy". When he was wiring up the heater, he apparently couldn't be bothered to wire in a new electric cable for the heater, so he just attached it to the hallway light. Now, whenever the shower's on, the hallway light flickers. What's more, there's not enough power to ignite the heater, so the heater doesn't even work. Every now and then, someone is lucky and gets a warm shower (I had my first one in a week this morning) but for the most part, I get woken up in the morning by a nice, refreshing, cold shower. A man's coming to look at the heater in a few days and sort it out.

So it's been a fun week. I am indeed still District Leader, despite logic or reason; there certainly are other Elders in the District more competent than myself. We have Elder Hedin, who was Assistant to the President until last week. He came out of the mission office because he goes home at the end of this moves, and certainly he would be a far more experienced and successful District Leader than myself, but then God does make these callings according to who will learn and grow the most from the calling, as well as simply who will do the best at it. Last week, we had a District Meeting, and I made the district focus for the moves "Becoming a Fireball Missionary" - which comes from a talk by Elder Ballard. It was a very spiritual meeting, with a lot of the Elders and Sisters in the District sharing very powerful lessons on improving and doing that little bit better to be the best we can be. I don't know if anybody else learned anything from it, but it certainly inspired me and was part of the reason I practically worked myself to death this week.

Anyway, time's almost up. I love you all very much.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

New Companion, New Flat, Same Area - 47th email from Hong Kong

2008-09-05T05:31:00.001-07:00

Dear all,

Yes, Elder Bagley is gone already. It was a very fast six weeks, and I was somewhat disappointed to have to say goodbye to him. He's going to Chai Wan which is on Hong Kong Island, and he's maybe a little apprehensive about it, but willing and looking forward to it.

My new companion is Elder Clark, who is from Salt Lake City. I am therefore continuing my Utah companion trend - only Elder Sharp and Elder Kwok were from elsewhere, but Elder Sharp's parents moved from Arizona to Utah while he was my companion!

Elder Clark is going into his fourth Moves now, making him (relatively) the oldest companion I've had since I became senior companion - my other 3 have been in either their first or second Moves period. So I'm looking forward to a companion that's pretty much at the stage where he doesn't need an older companion. This should be a learning period for him and for me.

I therefore enter my fifth Moves in Tai Po, and, rather unexpectedly, I've moved house. The flat my companionship was living in is in the middle of the neighbouring area of Tai Wo, and as such was rather inconvenient for us - but it was a nice apartment. A second companionship has been opened in Tai Wo by Elder Hedin and Elder Chugg - Elder Hedin was the Assistant to the President for the past two Moves. So they'll be living in the old apartment with the other Tai Wo companionship, which features another trainee. Meanwhile, in our new flat we have the Mandarin speaking companionship for the Zone (every Zone has a Mandarin companionship), which features Elder Sikahema, who was my travelling companion from the MTC to Hong Kong, and with whom I served when I was in West Point.

Normally here in Tai Po, because church is in the afternoon, after Tai Wo ward, baptisms are held before church and then converts are confirmed in the Sacrament Meeting immediately after their baptism. So Brother S was confirmed last week, and this week he received the Aaronic Priesthood. This ward is really good at following the three things that every new member needs - responsibility, friendship and nourishment. He is very excited and happy to be learning more and growing in the church.

This last week we found a great new investigator called E L. He is probably in his 40s, with two teenage children. When we met him on the street, he asked us when the church meetings were, and we were later able to schedule him for last Saturday. When we met with him on Saturday, I asked, "So do you have any religious beliefs".

He said, "Well, I've been a baptist for about a year and a half. But I feel like when I pray, I don't really get anything in return. I know a little about your church; about Joseph Smith [he said his name in English] and about how he translated an ancient record, and I want to know more."

As I asked him about what he'd heard, he went on to tell me about the First Vision in clear detail. He said he'd been to the church's website and read all of this. He was really interested to learn more, and to read the Book of Mormon - while it was on the website, he felt that a book would be better because he could mark it. We were, of course, happy to give him a copy and invited him to church. He had been planning on coming at 9:00 when Tai Wo have their services, but after finding out that Tai Po members meet at 2:00, he decided he wanted to come and see the Tai Po services.

When we saw him the next day, he said that he'd read the first 25 pages of the Book of Mormon and prayed, but no answer yet. He left church about five minutes before the end of joint Priesthood/Relief Society (which is last here), so we didn't get to ask him what he thought of church. But he must have liked it, because when Elder Bagley phoned him up to schedual him, he said he was pretty busy all week, but that he was going to come to church again this Sunday.

Another amazing miracle for this week - we schedualed a man in his early 20s named D at the church. He lives in Tai Wo, so we're going to turn him over to the new companionship tomorrow. He came looking to learn about the church and our beliefs, possibly I think for the purpose of just learning more about religion. He learned about Catholicism in school, but didn't really know much more than that. We taught about prayer, and taught the Restoration. After we taught the First Vision, he said "So I guess that other churches probably persecuted him a lot, huh? I imagine they'd even try to kill him." Rather insightful comment, if you ask me.

We closed in prayer, the first true communication with God he'd ever heard, where Elder Bagley thanked Him for the chance to share this message, and asked that D would learn the truth for himself. After the prayer, I asked D, "How do you feel?"

He replied, "I think...I know it's true."

That's a pretty good note to end on. I Love you all,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Brother S Baptized -46th email from Hong Kong

2008-08-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Yes, Brother S's baptism went without a hitch. It was a very different experience for me than K's. At K's, with the dozen or so friends he brought to church, I found myself trying desperately to keep everything from collapsing into chaos, and it was a rather stressful experience. With Brother S, we arrived to see him already dressed in white and ready to go; the Ward Mission Leader, Brother C, had already got everything sorted. I didn't have to wait for a companion to change, and everything else was sorted because two people were being baptized at once (Brother N of the Tai Wo ward, which also meets in our building, was baptized in the same service) so I didn't need to worry about giving a talk or anything. I was able to sit back and enjoy the service, which went without a hitch.

Brother S had requested an opportunity to bear his testimony, and so he shared about the trials of his life before he met us - a gambling addiction, his family problems and various other things. Then he shared about how Elder Sharp and I had found him and helped him to overcome his trials. Most of all, he shared about how through the peace in his life that he has now, he knows that God lives and loves him, and wants to bless him, and he knows that this truly is God's true church. While it's clear to me that he hasn't yet had a confirming, huge spiritual experience, it is clear that the Holy Ghost has subtly whispered to him the truth of the Book of Mormon and the message of the Restoration.

We met with him again on Tuesday and shared a little about Family History work, because I want to give him something really productive to do with all of his free time; and afterwards we asked him to stick around while we taught an investigator called A. A has a lot of family problems and wants to change his life, but I don't think he really wants to change himself. Plus, he's pretty certain, like most Hong Kong people, that money is the most important thing in life. Here Brother S performed brilliantly - he was clear and direct in explaining that before he started investigating the church, he also thought that money was most important, but now he understands that his family is the most important in his life. It was wonderful to hear his testimony again.

We're a little concerned about one thing with him, though - on Sunday he came to church in a white short sleeve shirt and tie, instead of the blue shirt without a tie he had been wearing. He wore exactly the same thing when we saw him on Tuesday. Elder Bagley and I are a little worried that because he's only ever seen members of the church in Sunday best, save a few instances when he's come to ward activities, and because he always meets with us - and of course, we always wear a shirt and tie, he may perhaps think that members of the church always have to wear a shirt and tie. We'll make sure to straighten this up when we see him on Sunday.

So Beth left without the Chinchillas? I'm sure Tim is thrilled, even if Jess isn't. The house does still sound awfully full, I'm not sure if there will be a place for me when I get back. I'm fine in a tent in the back garden if necessary. Let me tell you about the dream I had last night; it was rather strange. I dreamt that I was home from my mission, having finished (honourably, I might add - I don't have worthiness nightmares like Mum). I got home, and Mum said, "Well, you'd better get to work. Your room's still in a mess just like you left it two years ago." Sure enough, I was back in my old room, and it was a pigsty. I guess I shouldn't have worried; I don't have a bedroom. I have the space under the stairs, just like Harry Potter.

Give my love to Grandma and also to Auntie Katie. I'm sure everything will be fine for both of them. Also, whether or not you go to Uncle James' and Olivia's birthday party, please tell them happy birthday from me and send my love.

Isn't it amazing that we can send love via the internet these days? Back in olden times people had to use hugging or, if far away, letters on boats. Back when President Van Dam was a missionary, he's told me, the only way to get from Hong Kong island to the Mainland was by a big ferry called the Star Ferry. I mention this because yesterday, as we had some business back on the Island (in my old area, I might add) we took the ferry on the way home. It was Elder Bagley's first time, so I took a picture of him. The white guy in front of us asked if I could take his picture too, which I did. He told us he'd seen the missionaries before, back in his home town of... Reading! Isn't it a small world! He lives in Caversham, actually, right opposite the Monitoring Station where Dad works.

I think that John Willis would be an amazing missionary in Nauvoo. I had known that senior missionaries are allowed to choose where they serve to a degree, but it seems from all of the senior couples I've seen here that it was as much of a surprise for them as it was for us, the young missionaries. Mum and Dad, have you two ever thought about serving a mission once everyone's out of the house? Granted that's a long way away right now. One of the Elders in Elder Bagley's group was in the MTC at the same time as his parents - apparently their departure date was about 6 weeks before his, so they contacted the MTC and he came out earlier than he was planning, because otherwise there wouldn't have been anyone else in his house for the last few months at home!

Last Friday, Brother F, our summer missionary, was supposed to go home. Too bad for him that there was a level 9 typhoon; the worst since 1999. He had to stay in the apartment with us all day, and he was very bored. I was too; most of the time it didn't even look bad outside, so I got rather frustrated that we weren't allowed to leave. After having updated all of our records, we cleaned the entire apartment, and then played a board game that I had made up for a District Meeting a few weeks ago. You take your investigator to baptism, resolving concerns and sharing scriptures to help his situation as you go. Everybody seemed to like it in District Meeting, so we had it stored for an emergency in case of typhoon, and it turns out it came in handy after all.

Finally, on Saturday we took Brother F to the Mission Home. President Van Dam was there, and as we looked at the Missionary board he has in his office, he explained what various things on it meant. It's a big board of our pictures and names, and are printed on three colours of cardboard - yellow, blue and green. He explained that yellow is for the oldest missionaries, green is the missionaries in the middle and blue is the new missionaries. It worried me that there were so few yellow missionaries left, and mine was one of the first groups displayed in green. Perhaps reading my mind, President Van Dam, sitting next to me, clapped his hand on my shoulder and said, "You're getting to be an old missionary now!"

"That doesn't make me feel very good," I said in return.

Time's almost up, so I'll be going. Keep up the good work, and I'm hoping for university stuff to be finished before school starts again, because there's no way you'll have time once you're back at school.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Another Summer Missionary - 45th email from Hong Kong

2008-08-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Yes, the package from Grandma, complete with everything, has arrived safe and sound. And yes, I'm going to go glasses shopping later today. I've spent the past week with broken glasses, as both my pairs are well and truly worn out and in several pieces. One pair snapped in half (the nose bridge had been weakening for a long time) and the frame in the other pair is broken so that only one lense is in place. So it's been a fun week. Hopefully I should have a nice, new pair soon that'll last to the end of the mission.

Please tell Steve that I enjoyed his email he sent me, and that a reply is on the way via post, as I'm not allowed to email anyone else other that family members - if there's another instance of email misuse, President Van Dam is threatening to take away our email privileges.

Good job Dad on picking the cheaper option. There's no real need for an iPhone anyway; a very expensive piece of kit. After having spent a year away from any new electronic equiptment, I've realised just how unnessescary the latest gadget is. I'm going to do things a lot differently when I go home - one important rule I've set for myself is that I can only buy a new computer game when I finish an old one, to prevent me from just buying tonnes of games and never really playing them to the end. I've also seriously re-evaluated my plans for getting an expensive, shiny laptop for school when I get back - so long as it does what it needs to do, there's no point in spending extra.

The iPhone does look good, though. K's the webmaster for a group of kids who've made their own little company making applications for it. He's been test driving the iPod Touch this week, and showed us a little of the things you can do with it. Nice and all, but I think the little iPod Nano you sent me for Christmas does everything I need it to.

Well done on handling things well with Beth recently. I'm sure it's been an emotional experience for everyone. I guess the house is getting awfully empty, what with just you two, Tim, Jess, Biscuit, Robbie and the Ferrets there. Not to worry though - with house prices as they are, I'll be living at home until I'm 35! :P

Tell Beth Happy Birthday from me, and that I hope all goes well in her new flat.

I did happen to notice a chart of the best few countries for the Olympics in the newspaper of the man next to me on the train this morning. How fun for Britain to be doing so well. All of the Americans in the mission have been laughing about the success of their nation, and we've also been happy to see China doing very well. But right down the bottom of the chart I saw, it listed Hong Kong: 0 medals. Too bad Hong Kong, but it's kind of like having London vs the rest of the world in something; the odds are somewhat against this little Special Administrative Region.

So as I mentioned in the email subject, yes, we have another Summer Missionary. His name is A F, and he's from West Point, my old area. Hurray! It's been a really fun week. He works really hard, more so than any Summer Missionary I've seen so far, and he really knows his stuff. While a little shy, he puts it all aside and contacts people and teaches lessons very well. The other day we met a man who was terrified of Elder Bagley and I, so we stayed out of sight as Brother F ran after him and talked with him. He got his phone number and rescheduled him! But considering that he tried to run away from us "white ghosts", it wasn't all that surprising when he didn't turn up.

So Mr S's baptism is all set for this Sunday. He passed his interview with no problem, so he's ready. The best part is who we're getting to baptize him. We were talking with the Bishop last Thursday to organize it in Priesthood Executive Commitee, and he told us to ask him. If he wanted one of us missionaries to baptize him, fair enough, but if he didn't mind, the Bishop thought it'd be great if Kelvin could do it. So as Brother Sou didn't mind and Kelvin's willing, my recent convert is going to baptize me other recent convert. Yay!

Serving here in Tai Po really has been a wonderful experience for me. I've been able to see so many miracles, and helped people come unto Christ through baptism. The moves in over half way done, and as I've been here so long, there's a chance I may move - but because I'm training Elder Bagley, there's also a chance I'll stay here. I'm not really bothered either way; I'd kind of like to stay, I guess, but I'm also ready to move on if it's nessescary and what the Lord wants me to do. Tomorrow I'm heading back to West Point for a little while, though, because Elder Bagley has a doctor's appointment. Nothing to worry about, just something run of the mill, but it'll be a lot of fun to go back to my old area. We're going to take the famous Star Ferry, which is on a list that President and Sister Van Dam have given us of recommended things to do while on our missions here.

How's Tim doing? I haven't heard much about him in a while. Is he keeping up with his scripture reading? If so, tell him well done from me. If not, tell him give it another try. Same goes to Jess - tell her I say that reading the scriptures is essential to developing and maintaining a testimony. It's interesting how those so called "Primary answers" to questions asked in church (pray, read the scriptures, come to church) are so essential. As a missionary, I've seen that the only investigators who really progress are the ones who do these three things. The first time we met Mr S, we invited him back to the church right then and there (Elder Sharp and I both agreed afterwards that this was kind of strange as we were kind of far away from it, but it felt right as I said it) and when we got there, he wanted to know when the services are. It was decided the first time we met him that he was going to come to church, and honestly, it was also pretty much decided that he was going to get baptized. He'd made that choice before he even knew it was a choice. K was the same. He described it as an addiction to church; he just can't get enough. And both of them just loved the Book of Mormon. They soaked it up. When K was quitting tea, he said that the hardest times were when he'd just woken up in the morning, and so that was the time he'd read his scriptures. Brother Sou had nothing to do all day, and so out of boredom he'd turned to gambling. With the Book of Mormon, he had something to do every day. I remember the shock on the face of the first councillor in the Bishopric when we reported that Mr S had finished 2nd Nephi. "Woah - he made it through the Isaiah chapters," he said. And as for prayer, Mr Sou found it a struggle at first because it was not a way of praying he was used to - his only knowledge of prayer was the ancestor worship everyone does here, reciting the same wish for a healthy life. As first he'd just pray very simply for help to quit gambling and have a happy family, but after attending church, he heard the prayers of faithful members with strong testimonies, and began progressing and really started talking with Heavenly Father.

So pray, read the scriptures and come to church - the steps to a lasting testimony. It's amazing how simple the Gospel is; God doesn't ask for much, so it's not really all that hard to do it.

So Tim, Jess, read those scriptures. You too, Mum and Dad.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Olympics and other things - 44th email from Hong Kong

2008-08-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Before I say anything, I'll say this before I forget - both packages turned up this week. So we're all good.

Also let me say - don't worry about university financing, but please do something soon as far as sending me information goes. I am not decided upon BYU, and would really like to look at prospectuses from British universities. Courses of interest to me are computer animation, journalism (print), English Literature and Chinese. We've been talking about these things for a really long time now, and I'd like to actually get it all moving. So please actually send me some information soon. :)

And now other things: the Mission Olympics were last Tuesday, and they were a lot of fun. I ran the 100 metres, and represented Great Britain by wearing the Union Flag you sent me as a cape. Despite all logic to the contrary, I did not come last - I came second to last, and was very happy to do so. I wasn't intending to win, just to have fun, look cool and not come last, so mission accomplished.

We also got to watch the opening ceremonies of the real Olympics, which was amazing. I was really impressed by the huge show that they put on to begin the games; my favourite part was when they lit the flame. Did you see it? The torch was passed to the man who had the honour of lighting the flame, and then he flew up in the air, ran all the way around the stadium wall and lit the flame. Very Chinese.

Everyone is currently Olympics mad here. Every television is tuned into the games - and there are a lot of televisions here. So we'll be walking down the street, finding, and see a television display in the window of a shop showing Hong Kong vs Poland in Table Tennis or China vs Hong Kong in badminton. I guess every nation has different sports that they actually compete well in here.

Mission Conference ran late, so we had to cancel our weekly correlation meeting with the ward mission leader, and barely got back in time for the Family Home Evening we have at the church every week for our investigators and recent converts. So we were sticky and grimy with sweat, in shorts and t-shirts, and we hadn't planned the lesson that we were supposed to teach, as we'd had no time to go home, shower, change and plan. I decided to turn our unusual appearance into a lesson, and we talked about the Olympics, about having strength to overcome our trials and relying on the Lord. We shared Alma 26:12, where Ammon says that as to his strength he is weak, but he will boast in God, who has the strength to help him to anything.

I think it went well, but it was slightly spoiled when the Sister missionaries in our ward turned up about 15 minutes after us in regular proselyting clothes. They live on top of the train station, right next to the church, so they had time to go home and change, whereas we would have had to take a bus to get home from the train station which would have taken half an hour, and then would have had to take it back to the church again.

The glasses prescription didn't come a moment too soon - I snapped my pair in half the next day. They'd been wearing out for a while and weakening on the bridge of the nose, and they finally snapped in half. I wore the other pair for the rest of the day, but the screw is broken on one side so one of the lenses keeps popping out. It should do for the moment, but because we're so short on time today I don't think we'll have a chance to go new glasses shopping until next week, which means it'll be about 2 weeks until I can pick them up. In the meantime I'll try some superglue to hold my glasses together.

We have no time today because today is also our Temple day. It was a very good session - I was worried that I'd end up falling asleep as I'm still pretty tired from mission conference (even though I didn't really do much), but I stayed completely awake the whole time.

Brother S will be baptized on the 24th, and he is very excited for it. It seems that the rest of his family might take a while longer though; they're not really investigators yet, and due to bizzare schedules, it's pretty much impossible for us to teach them all at once. His wife has to work on Sunday and his daughter goes to another Christian church, but I'm sure that they'll gain more interest as time goes by. They seem to be happy enough going to activities at church and hopefully we can invite them to Brother S's baptism next week.

So all in all, it's been a really good week. I'm going to keep working hard, and praying for you all.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Storms are rumbling here too - 43rd email from Hong Kong

2008-08-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Yesterday, Hong Kong got a little battered by an annoyingly slow moving storm which refused to clear up for the entire day. When the storms are bad enough here, we're not allowed to go outside or leave the flat. This was particularly frustrating when the rain almost completely stopped, but as the storm was still nearby (although it had passed) and as such, we still were not allowed to leave.

Finally, President Van Dam decided that although the weather station had not given the all-clear, it was calm enough to let everyone leave. We rushed with all our might to the Temple, because yesterday morning we were supposed to have the Trainer-Trainee meeting, where everyone gathers together for a while for a little MTC reunion of sorts. As we waited ever impatiently for the storm to pass, the starting time of the meeting slowly changed from 8:30am to 6:30pm. Finally, 10 hours late, the meeting began and was a fun time together.

I've had a wonderful experience teaching Brother S this week. On Sunday, he brought his wife to church, and she is a simply wonderful woman who both Elder Bagley and I mistook for a member at first. Then on Tuesday, we had a ward Family Home Evening, with a lot of ward members there, and Brother S unexpectedly turned up (we had thought he was going to be at work) with his wife and teenage daughter. The ward YW did an excellent job of making friends with his daughter, and several members of the Relief Society happily fellowshipped his wife as well. I feel very good about the whole family.

When we taught Brother S this week, he came in very excited and shared a few scriptures with us that had meant a lot to him in his reading this week. He'd really liked the story of Enos, and had marked a few verses, which he offered to us to read, the same way we offer him scriptures to read when we teach. We, of course, have him read every scripture because he actually CAN read in Chinese, and while I struggled through the verse he gave me to read, when he offered the book to Elder Bagley to read the next verse, he stood no chance at reading it! Brother Sou has a really strong testimony of the power of prayer now, as thanks to Elder Bagley, we gave him several options to overcome his problem with the Sabbath day, and let him pray about which one was best for him. Because he works as a night-time security guard and can only have one day off, he always works part of Sunday. He told us that he had decided to keep his work schedule as it was - having Saturday night/Sunday morning off, but he begins his Sabbath at 7pm Saturday night. He seemed to really be thrilled at this, and also the answer to his other prayer. He told us that before we'd moved up his baptismal date, he'd been praying that he could get baptized sooner. Hearing this really confirmed to me the truth that we are indeed guided by the Spirit in our decisions.

Please say hi to Thomas for me. When is the family emigrating? I sent him a postcard a while ago, but wasn't sure if it got to him. I also have some comics I want to send him which I may burn to CD and post to him, so that he can put them up on my website. They're ones I never got around to posting online before.

Anyway, time's up. Love you all - see you later!

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

The thrills and spills of leadership - 42nd email from Hong Kong

2008-08-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum (and Dad when you get home from YM camp),

Yes, I decided to be sneaky and let President Van Dam tell you that I was training. I'm wondering if he also let you know that I'm now a District Leader?

It has, therefore, been a rather busy week. I immediately discovered that being District Leader means a lot less time in the evenings; I get a far larger number of phone calls over various things that need organizing. Plus, yesterday I went to the Temple for a DL/ZL meeting, where I felt rather out of place and like I didn't belong, as I came to grips with the idea of being a mission leader. I felt like I was still a new little missionary, in a meeting full of the actual mission leaders - except a substantial number of the Elders in the room were also from my MTC group. I guess I'm just going to have to get used to the responsibility.

It sounds like the ferrets are a lot of fun. Do they spend their time in a cage, or just run around the house all day every day? I assume they work out like Bubbles, except they have more fun on their trips outside because they can play with each other and they're not quite so afraid of every single human being.

Post certainly has slowed down a lot recently. I guess I'm in the big middle period of a mission where I'm too far out of sight and mind. Perhaps it'll pick up again in another six months when I'm on the home stretch. Some important news regarding packages - Grandma's package arrived last week, sans money. Just two shirts - it looks like someone cut it open and then taped it back together. Unfortunate, but it was still nice to get the two shirts.

You can tell Steve that I miss him too, and am sorry for never writing after Christmas to thank him for the last present. I shall try and write him today, but I have various others to write to - Grandma and Grandad, and another Elder who sent me an unsual postcard this week. It was one of the Elders in our Zone in the MTC, who went somewhere in America, English speaking. A lot of groups cycled through every 3 weeks while we were there, and so many of them blur into one, but I do remember this Elder. He seemed like he needed a helping hand and someone to talk to, so we'd talk together while we used the exercise bikes in the gym. I guess he remembered me enough to drop me a line, so I'd better be courteous and do the same.

It's very strange to think that the MTC was a full year ago now. Being a leader and remembering my experience when I first arrived in the mission as I've chatted with Elder Bagley makes me feel very old.

All in all, the Summer holidays sound like they're going well for you all. I think one of the nice things about Hong Kong is that you don't even notice the typical seasons and holidays that you're missing out on - even now that schools have broken up, we still see kids in uniforms all the time, as when they have an activity at school, they still wear their uniforms to it. I still think that, even though I've been in Hong Kong for almost a year, I've still not experienced all of the culture. I don't think anyone could as a missionary, as there are so many things we just don't do, like watch TV, films, play computer games, read comics - all things I used to really enjoy that are so very much a part of the HK experience. But it is very nice to just relax and not worry about such things.

Well, the Mission Olympics are on the way, and everyone's getting excited. We've all signed up for our events now - I decided to take a different approach to the way I used to view sports days at school and church. I've signed up for a lot of things, and figure I'll just give it a go. I don't need to win, but I'll just run as fast as I can and hope I don't come last. Even if I come last, no big deal really.

So I've signed up for the 100m sprint, football, darts and various other things. Not sure how many I'll actually participate in, because the Zone Leaders have to balance out what everyone wants to do with how many people can compete in every event. It should be a fun day though, so I'm looking forward to it.

Elder Bagley is a little downhearted right now. He's a really big football fan. He even went to Manchester for a month to some kind of football camp. He's a little down at the moment because he'd been looking forward to playing football with the Zone all week, and when we got there this morning, there was nobody there except for a group of little kids having some kind of lesson.

He is a really amazing companion, though - I know that the adjustment to Hong Kong is a little tough for him, but he just works so hard. I've been inclined to throw him in the deep end rather often, like leaving him on his own to make phone calls on Sunday night when I had to collaborate and collect numbers from the other companionships in the District. Then on Tuesday, we needed to teach two investigators at once, so we went on exchanges and he taught a lesson three for the first time, alone except for K, who was his companion for the exchange. He did amazingly well, though, and when I came in towards the end of the lesson, he was doing amazing as he taught the principle of Enduring to the End. He gave a great commitment for baptism, and so now as a result we have three investigators with baptismal dates. It's a good number as the Mission Focus for this Moves is on preparing people for baptism and confirmation, but all the dates are for some time in the future, so I'm not sure if I'll actually be here or not.

That reminds me - one last thing. At the DL/ZL meeting, the Zone Leaders all reported on the number of baptisms in their Zones that Moves. I was amazed to learn how many people got baptized this moves - it was a lot. Somewhere between 30 and 40 in total, probably. I remember when I was back in my first Moves, Elder Alspaugh was complaining that this was a low baptizing mission, and I told him that it was amazingly high, from what I'd heard so far. I think it comes down to the fact that you choose your own mission experience, whether you choose to see miracles every day, or you choose to be downtrodden and discouraged.

Anyway, time's almost up. I love you all lots and lots.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

New companion - 41st email from Hong Kong

2008-08-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Yes, Elder Sharp is gone. I'm sad to lose him because I really enjoyed serving with him, and we had a lot of success together, but I'm now thrilled for my chance to serve with my new companion, Elder Bagley. He seems to be ready to do anything asked of him, and is happy to learn. He's my fourth Utah companion, and seems like a really nice guy. He has actually been to England before; to Manchester. He's a very big fan of football, so he went for a month for some kind of "camp" up there. My morning exercise may get a lot more exciting from now on, as he seems excited to go playing every day for the half an hour we have to exercise.

He's rather new on the mission, but is a little older than most new missionaries, as he's already 20. Before his mission he worked as a sound recorder, and apparently made the choice to serve after a lot of thought and prayers. I can see a lot of maturity in him, and feel that we will do well together.

This moves makes for some interesting changes to the district. One of our Sisters is leaving, and the other one, Sister Corbridge, who was in my MTC group, is training. Plus, our district leader has moved and so Elder Bowen, who came in with Elder Sharp, has his second companion in the field, Elder Forney. Elder Forney is two moves younger than me, so the district is very young right now, Sister Corbridge and I being the oldest missionaries. I'm fairly certain even we haven't been here that long yet...

Another surprising change has come with two new unexpected roomates in our flat. Elder Sardoni and Elder Cabrinha, two Mandarin speaking Elders, have been moved in with us. It will be rather cramped, as our flat is just about the right size for the four of us, but it should be fun and I'm sure I'll learn from the two of them. I haven't seen them much today as they're up at the Temple with a "Mainland baptism" - someone from the Mainland who came down just to get baptized. Elder Sardoni seems pretty thrilled to be living with us, as their last flat was way outside of their area. The Mandarin Elders get the entire zone as their area, so living outside of the zone was a rather big frustration for them.

I hope Tim heals quickly and I will pray for him - I certainly don't want him to miss camp! But I'm sure by the time you read this, he'll be healed up fine. I haven't seen anything like a YM Camp here; they have youth conferences and different things every now and then though. And of course, the Summer Missionary program. Speaking of which, Brother M is indeed now back home.

Elder Volk, having overheard me mentioning my looking into universities at last mission conference, told me there was a random 2005-2006 BYU prospectus lying around in his apartment, which he gave me when we dropped of Brother Mok on Monday. I've looked through it a little bit, and I must say this much at least - every single person I've spoken to keeps telling me that BYU's animation program is amazing. I sat down to chat with Elder Bagley about ourselves and the moment I showed him the prospectus and told him I'd looked at the animation program, he started singing its praises. From what I've heard, it has a 100% hiring rate in big name animation companies, like Pixar.

There's also the Chinese program, which is also good, and I could study Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) as a "minor" at the same time as studying animation. But having explored the prospectus, animation is really the only thing that appeals to me that they have to offer. I wouldn't want to go there for anything else.

As far as other options go, English in some way, for example, journalism (more print-journalism than film-journalism) appeals to me. I'd like to be a journalist, perhaps using my chinese in that way. That's really all I've been thinking about for now. English Literature would be fun, but I don't see that providing a very profitable job.

Anyway, all things are still going well here. We met with Mr S to teach him about the Sabbath day yesterday, but having already had a lesson about it in church, he had already decided to keep this law. He said something interesting that I really liked - "If God is with me, I'll willingly do anything He asks." That is certainly the attitude I enjoy to see people have.

In Hong Kong, there's a lot of negative feelings towards the Church from other religions. Many other ministers don't treat us particularly nicely. Mr S's daughter is 18 and goes to a Protestant church, and her minister told her some not very nice things, after which she worried for her dad. He told her that he'd been to the Church, he'd met the members, and he knew the things she'd heard weren't true. This week, she took him to her church to meet her minister, who then told him a lot of false things. He left from that meeting in their church with a greater testimony that ours is the true church, and told us how interesting he thought it was that other churches would attack other faiths like that, while we did no such thing, and bear testimony that ours is the truth, rather than others are false.

So all things are going well here, and I'm looking forward to serving here with Elder Bagley. It should be a very exciting moves, as we help Mr Sou prepare for baptism (I just wish we could interest him family as well!) and help our other investigators grow as well.

Love you all lots and lots,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

So, yep. Year mark - 40th email from Hong Kong

2008-07-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

It's not really that big of a deal, though. Just another day. Brother M's been throwing film references at me all week, and I realised a few days ago how very blessed I've been - God knows my passions, and blesses me in bridling them. For example, despite everyone around me knowing the ending to a certain book series about a teenage wizard, I've been mercifully protected from spoilers. The same goes for everything else. Brother M is reading a series of Star Wars books I was reading before I came out, and randomly spurted out the end of one of the books the other day - but it was the last one I read before I came out, so no harm done, even though another 3 have been released by this point. God is protecting me in my desire to avoid things I just want to put on hold for two years.

I'm sure that there are other uses for skills in a language that don't involve studying it at university. I do not think that I will enjoy that, and I saw too many of my friends at Herschel apply for university courses based on the prospect of a high paying job only to find they didn't like it and drop out. I want to enjoy what I do, even if it's not the most financially rewarding. Money's never been any of an incentive to me. I trust the Lord to be able to bless me in my endeavours to earn a living for my family, knowing that He can provide for me. And I'll find some way to keep my Chinese fresh without studying Mandarin. I've prayed long and hard about this, and feel that choosing a vocation I don't thoroughly enjoy is the wrong way to go.

It'd be great to perhaps recieve some "prospecti" for universities soon, so I can start narrowing down my options a little more.

Good news from our gambling addict, Mr S - he hasn't gambled at all since we met him, and he now has a baptismal date for mid-September. He has absolutely no issues with the Word of Wisdom, and has been reading avidly in the Book of Mormon every day. His daughter heard some bad things about our church from some friends and phoned him on Sunday, telling him she was worried he was going to an evil church, but he didn't seem too phased; he'd been to church, he'd seen that it was good, he recognized the fruits, so he had no problem. I'm not sure how solid his testimony is yet, but he certainly has faith and has changed even physically in the few weeks we've been meeting with him. So he figures the reports about our church are untrue, and is willing to keep learning and growing. This week he's going to come to a baptismal service for one of the Primary children, which should be good for him. It's unbelievably easy for him; he doesn't drink tea (which pretty much every HK person has a problem with), he works nights so he can come to church without a problem, and as his one day off a week is on Saturday night/Sunday Morning, having checked with President Van Dam, we have determined that he shouldn't have any problems with the Sabbath either. So basically, he just needs a strong testimony and a friend and he's ready to go.

He does need a friend, though. Last week at church, he sat in Investigator class with Brother M on one side, who just kept talking to Elder Sharp in English the whole time, even with encouragement to help Mr Sou, and with a 20 year old Ward Missionary on the other side, who wouldn't leave me alone even as I also encouraged him to help Mr S find scriptures and just be friendly with him.

I think the hardest times of a mission are spent trying to negotiate all of the investigators, recent converts and ward missionaries in our little group. Someone wants to go to the toilet, but someone else needs to go to class, and I'm trying desperately to get Brother M to stay still and not run off on us - plus trying to make sure the investigators are all comfortable and know what's going on.

At least the investigators are actually at church, though.

Well, everyone's waiting for me now. I'd better finish up. I love you all lots.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Summer Missionary - 39th email from Hong Kong

2008-07-10T00:55:00.001-07:00

Dear all,

In Hong Kong, they have a wonderful program where young men and young women become full time missionaries for a week or two, going around with the missionaries and doing everything they do. On Saturday, one of the Assistants to the President phoned to invite us to have one of these Summer Missionaries. On Monday morning, we picked up Brother M, who will be with us for two weeks. He is always full of energy and excitement (sometimes too much) and generally reminds me a lot of Tim. The past few days, as such, as well as being a lot of fun, have probably been the most stressful of my mission so far. Keeping him focused for planning and in teaching lessons can be a real challenge - he either can't sit still or is incredibly bored. But he is doing his best, which I can't fault him on, and he does do really well when he tries; he likes sharing scriptures with anyone - whether it's a lesson or we're just walking down the street. He's trying really hard, and it's good to have him with us.

加油 means exactly what that article said - "Add oil". It just means, keep going, carry on, etc. That was a pretty accurate article; most of the time, Hong Kong people don't speak Chinese, they speak Chenglish. It makes things easy for Elder Sharp and I - if we don't know how to say a word, we'll just say it in English and then try and explain what it means, without it being too big of a deal.

K is now confirmed and has the Priesthood and a calling, which he will be sustained in on Sunday. He is still growing and still happy, but says that now that he's achieved his baptismal goal, he kind of feels like he's got nothing to work towards. So we want to help him get ready for the Temple; first to do baptisms for the dead, and then in a year to take out his endowments. He's such an amazing person, I'm so happy we've been able to teach him and watch him grow.

I've been pondering and praying about universities this week, and the July Ensign had an answer to my question, at least in part. There is an article about Henry B Eyring, where it talks about how he has been led by the Spirit throughout his life. The bit that caught me was talking about a conversation he'd had with his father when he was in university. Henry B was studying physics, as his father Henry Sr was a physics professor. They were discussing an equation when Henry Sr pointed out that they'd been working on a similar problem last week and wanted to know why Henry B was improving. He admitted that maths just wasn't something he thought about all the time. Then Henry Sr paused and said, "You should find something that when you don't have anything to think about, that's what you think about." This really spoke to me. While I might well enjoy teaching, and studying Mandarin would be very profitable, I can't do something that I don't really have a passion for. I've improved both in teaching skills and in speaking foreign languages while on my mission, but I've done so because I'm on the Lord's errand and they are skills I definitely need to improve in order to serve as best I can. So whatever I study and make my career, it has to be something I enjoy and think about. So I think I'm looking more down the road of computer animation, or writing. Two very vague subjects, I know, but drawing and writing are my two biggest passions, so I now feel I have to do something with my life that I will really enjoy. I'm more leaning towards computer animation, as it's the more practice of the two, and something I could only really do if I studied it at university (I can write without any additional formal training whatsoever). So while I'll probably change my mind again soon, for now that's what I'd like to look into.

It sounds great that Tim is going to strive for 100% reading - 加油! :P

I hope all continues to be so good for all of you. Now we're off to the Temple - it's the long awaited Temple Day! Yay! When I go home, I'm going to have to visit the Temple at least once a month - or as often as possible. So I guess I'll have to pass my driver's test!

很多很多的愛 (Lots and lots of love),

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅耀樂長老

PS still no package from Grandma.

PPS Brother M has helped us jazz up our emails with a little extra Chinese characters this week.

Happy 4th of July - 38th email from Hong Kong

2008-07-03T00:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Mission Conference, and in the monthly newsletter that we all picked up, I read in the announcements for important dates over the next week: "July 4: 4th of July". I personally thought this was rather obvious, but I guess it didn't occur to whoever typed up the announcements to write "July 4: American Independence Day" or something more sensible.

My district at the moment, like many on my mission, features mostly Americans. So we just had a big district American breakfast. I was adamant about eating with brown sauce, baked beans, and that bacon and sausages were meant to be eaten separately from the pancakes, but such is life. I get a little stick from time to time for being "weird and different" because I'm English. Interesting when you consider that every single American missionary in Hong Kong is a foreigner in another country, they still find cultural differences between two English speaking nations peculiar.

To let you know: Grandma's package still hasn't arrived.

Mission Conference was a kind of casual goal of mine to pass off the level of Language Master - you have to be able to read a selected chapter in the Book of Mormon and learn 1,000 basic characters. The suggested learning goal for completing this is before your year mark in Hong Kong, but I was fairly certain I could learn it faster than that. Last week, I looked at what I had to do, how long I had, and decided that my goal was indeed within reach. So I studied hard and passed on Tuesday, the day before Mission Conference. This meant that in the Conference, I received my certificate from President Van Dam and a few cookies from Sister Van Dam. The names of all Elders and Sisters who achieve these goals are read out in conference, and then we go up in front of everyone and receive our awards. I'm certainly not normally a shy person when it comes to standing in front of a crowd - but I felt somewhat embarrassed as I went up, because I was achieving it before most of the rest of my group, and my older group.

At the close of Conference, we were all told to stay in our chairs after the prayer for a minute. We sat there for a second, and one of the APs slid a CD into the computer and it started playing some kind of fanfare. Then in strode one of the office Elders, dressed as some kind of Grecian herald, with a parade of "flags" behind him. Many of the senior missionaries were carrying these flags, which were actually bamboo poles with Converse shoes attached on the end in various colours. They paraded into the room, and the herald read from a scroll he was carrying, announcing that next Mission Conference will be the China Hong Kong Mission Olympic games - made to tie into the Beijing games, of course. We're all now very much looking forward to it.

But the absolute best moment of the Conference was at the end, when everyone was talking amongst themselves, and President Van Dam came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said, "I'm so proud of you for getting your Master." I felt very appreciated and vindicated, and certainly felt President Van Dam's love in such a simple gesture.

Please congratulate JJ and Becky for me. But don't worry - I'm expecting to be home longer than 9 months before I get married.

At the moment we're blessed with a great many people to teach. One man we found just last Monday - he has a bad gambling addiction (he's been to the hospital over it) and has been significantly humbled by the experience. We're meeting with him regularly to help him overcome this problem, and he wants to come to church with his whole family on Sunday. He's also been reading excitedly from the Book of Mormon, which is really good for him because it gives him something useful to do when he wants to gamble. When we phoned him yesterday, the day after giving him the Book of Mormon, he'd read several chapters already.

It's been a while since we saw our Mainland friend J Hi D - because he has no phone number, and has stopped turning up, we're not certain how to get hold of him. We tried phoning his Mainland phone number last week with no success (but it did cost a lot of money). But this week, we randomly bumped into him on a park bench. We talked a lot about prayer and the importance of seeking a testimony, two things that he struggles with. Hopefully now we can continue to meet with him again.

Anyway, time is precious this week. The breakfast took a long time, so we're somewhat behind schedule.

Love you lots, and I pray for you often,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Baptism! - 37th email from Hong kong

2008-06-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Today's headlines:

Hurray! K was baptized!

Interviews with President Van Dam, and a question about the Book of Mormon.

A new Bishopric for the Tai Po Ward.

The June Liahona and the very accurate account of Hong Kong within.

So, yes, K was baptized. It was a really wonderful service. Normally Hong Kong baptisms are a little chaotic, but this was very peaceful and special - although I felt somewhat run ragged. K, being an amazing not-yet-member missionary, had invited 12 or 13 friends to his baptism, including his little sister, his aunt and his cousin. So I tried desperately to keep them entertained as we arranged everything, at the same time as helping Elder Sharp and K change into white clothes and trying to negotiate with the Ward Mission leader and member of the Bishopric over DVDs to watch while they got changed afterwards, where everyone was and what the plan for the service was. But things worked out just fine, and the room was full to overflowing by the time we began. I gave the first talk, without actually having prepared anything - I knew I wanted to share 2 Nephi 31:20, but didn't have any other real plans. The Lord filled my mouth with words, and I told K and others in attendance of the importance of baptism and returning to God's presence, of the commitment he was making and how the Lord promised to keep and protect him, and about how after baptism he must endure to the end to receive these blessings.

Then it was time for the baptism. Elder Sharp helped K into the font and baptised him. It was that simple.

After some words from the member of the Bishopric presiding, K shared his testimony - he was a little nervous, so had made some notes! Ever the well prepared member. He shared a few scriptures about happiness and talked of how he wanted his family to have these same blessings - it was a wonderful testimony, full of the missionary spirit we've seen so much from him.

From pretty much the first moment we met him, I felt that he was a special soul. I could almost see his life unfolding before him, as he grows in the church. He's made his first few steps towards eternity.

Interviews with President Van Dam were on Tuesday, and we were asked to prepare to talk about a Book of Mormon character who has influenced us. I picked one of my favourite characters - Zeezrom. I love reading the story of how such a hardened, "knowledgeable" lawyer is confounded by the Spirit and brought to repentance. He may not be a particularly famous character, but Alma takes him with them to preach to the Zoramites in his team of big hitters, like Ammon and Aaron, and Amulek - I imagine he was a very persuasive teacher of the truth after his conversion.

The interview was actually the best I think I've ever had with President Van Dam. I really enjoyed it. He did confirm what I had expected though, I talked a little about the upcoming need to choose a University, and he told me he'd rather you all arrange things as best you can, and I only get involved if necessary - he's even not too thrilled at the idea of a phone call to talk to Leeds if it's necessary.

He said something very interesting by way of explanation - he told me, as I already knew, that he himself is a businessman. He owns his own company, but for the time he serves now, he's put these things as far out of his mind as possible and trusts others to take care of things, so that he can focus on serving the Lord. I know President Van Dam would never expect us to do anything that he himself would not do, and I agree that these two years should belong to God, with as few distractions as possible.

It's good to hear that things seem to be coming together at your end in that respect - thank you so much for doing all of this for me. And it's good to know that there are some good places to study things like Animation in England too. I shall have to look at prospectuses before I can make my mind up, though, of course. Thank you again for all of this.

The June Liahona is certainly a wonderful issue. I really enjoyed the article on finding time in Hong Kong - I actually know one of the people in the article, Dick. He's really good friends with Elder Walgren, so I saw him a fair bit when we served together. I like a quote in there that we wish we could stress to people here more - if you can find time to watch TV, you can find time to read your scriptures. Very, very true. The more time I spend out here away from such home comforts as televisions, the more I suspect that Dad may have been right all along after all - televisions are not all that necessary, and kind of get in the way.

My future wife's going to LOVE that... :P

The new bishopric in Tai Po is pretty astounding - we now have Bishop Kuen Tony Ling - if you relisten to the first session of General Conference, you will hear his name as one of the Elders recently released as an Area Seventy. It's amazing how well everything fits together - the Stake President here, Elder Wong, took his place as a Seventy, we got a new Stake President, and now the old Tai Po Bishop is moving to America, so Bishop Ling has been called in his place. It all fits perfectly.

A little random story for you - once in a Seminary Super Saturday, Murray asked a question of Mark Price - he asked "How many generations does the book of Matthew list of Christ's genealogy?" I was at that time in the habit of saying "42" for every question I didn't know the answer to. Imagine my surprise then, to discover I was right this time! So I already knew about that little piece of trivia - but considering Adam's strong atheist view point, any reference to Jesus was completely subconscious, and I just think it's a coincidence.

I'm sure it will be good for Beth to move on. I'd been expecting that for a while now, so it's not too big of a shock - the Celcius place is pretty nice, isn't it? I'm sure it'll be good for the two of them and the family in general - and I guess that means there will be a place for me to sleep when I come home - you could, though, consider moving to a smaller house now, though. Especially if you need to watch the food bill as it rises up and up... :P

I love you all and hope Jessica gets better and Tim keeps growing spiritually as well as vertically (and possibly horizontally...).

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

PS Jess, please tell the Laurels thank you for the wonderful package I just got. It was very nice :)

Elder Rasband, Chinese Opera, and Progressing Investigators - 36th email from Hong Kong

2008-06-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Some big things happened this week - but before I get to all of them, I must let you know that I've not received any shirts. So hopefully they'll come soon, but I haven't seen anything yet.

Yesterday was an exceptional day. We went to Wan Chai, the huge chapel on Hong Kong island, which is also the Asia Area Office, to a meeting with Elder Ronald A Rasband of the Presidency of the Seventy. I've still not figured out if his correct title is "Elder" or "President", but everyone else was calling him "Elder".

I was there somewhat early, because of the choir - we practised a little, but not all that much because Elder Volk decided that we all sounded pretty much perfect anyway. I guess he couldn't hear me very clearly.

I therefore had time to go up a few floors to where all of the missionaries were eating lunch - including the new missionaries who had just got off the plane. They're going to have an interesting experience as trainees - all of the trainers this moves are either from my group or my older group: Elder Volk, Elder West, Elder Weagel and Elder Williams are all from my group, and Elder Hardy and Elder Pittman are my older group - I was thrilled for all of my friends having the big responsibility of training, and several of them are District Leaders as well. It's wonderful to see them grow and take on new responsibilities.

The meeting started, and Elder Rasband entered the room alongside our entire Area Presidency; Elder Garns, Elder Hallstrom and Elder Perkins, all of whom are members of the First and Second Quorum of the Seventy. As Elder Rasband began the meeting, he said that because of the large number of General Authorities in the room, he wanted to be able to get everyone involved, and had decided that we were going to have a Question and Answer session, and would give the Area Presidency there opportunities to answer questions as well.

Several other Elders pointed out to me afterwards that they were in no way surprised that I was the first Elder with his hand up to ask a question; before Elder Rasband had even finished speaking. :)

I stood and asked a question I'd been wondering about the night before, about K. He'd told me that a lot of his friends and family oppose him joining the Church - they tell him such typical misconceptions as "They're not Christian", bla bla bla. Kelvin told me he was a little confused, and that he didn't want to have to choose between his friends and family, and the Church. While I did the best I could to explain how we need to be strong and stand up to peer pressure, I wanted a General Authority's spin on the subject.

Elder Rasband spoke about how Missionaries are to find the elect, and to cut through layers of "blindness", quoting D&C 123:12 - many are kept from the truth "only because they know not where to find it" and are "blinded by the subtle craftiness of men". As missionaries, we need to "waste and wear out our lives" in bringing prepared souls unto Christ. He then had Elder Sharp and I stand up. He looked us both straight in the eyes and told us that there was a reason that we are Kelvin's missionaries. We are responsible to teach him and help him overcome his trials. It was an incredible experience that I don't think I'll easily forget.

He spoke on many other subjects as he and the others answered other Missionaries' questions, and finally in closing, he told us that he wanted to shake all of our hands. He told us that this showed just how close we were to the President of the Church - Elder Rasband had just shaken President Monson's hand a week ago, when he had told him specifically to give the people of Asia his love. Elders Rasband, Garns, Hallstrom and Perkins with their wives lined up in a row and we all, one by one, shook each of their hands. Elder Hallstrom said something interesting to me: "Good to see you again, Elder." I have no specific recollection of talking with him before, but considering my 6 months in West Point, going to Wan Chai pretty much every week, it's not surprising to assume that I had seen him there before and perhaps even briefly said "hello". Interesting.

There was a huge crowd of missionaries out in the hall, milling and talking. While I'd have liked to stay, President Van Dam's last words in the meeting rang in my ears; "visit for a while, but hurry back to your areas." Elder Sharp was feeling sick at this point anyway, and so I figured we'd better get back to Tai Po. So off we went back home.

Speaking of which - just to let you know, Tai Po is still home for the next 6 weeks. Neither Elder Sharp nor I are moving; and neither are Elder Gerrard and Bowen, the other Elders in the District. Our Sister companionship is dropping down from a threesome to two Sisters, so also not much change there either.

Just before emailing, we went to see a bit of a Chinese opera. It was a very interesting experience. This week has been Duen Ng Jit - or Dragonboat Festival in English. As such, they've created a huge theatre out of bamboo in an open square here, and had a free opera inside. It was a lot of fun; a lot of squeaking, shrieking women and thick red and white makeup and shining, jeweled dresses, a load of fake beards on the men, and various other traditional Chinese elements too. Between the four of us Elders there, we had very little to no idea what was going on. It was fun to watch, though, and between that and the traditional Chinese wedding that they had just outside our house this morning (a lot of drums and pretending to row boats, also in colourful costumes), I feel I've enjoyed a lot of the Chinese culture today.

Finally, a note on K. After a talk with him on the phone yesterday, I feel very certain that he's going to be fine. He's also been reading the blog recently, so hello K. I hope you're doing fine right now.

K's asked for a copy of the Articles of Faith on a card in English - he has one in Chinese, but as he's currently working as a volunteer with a large collection of people from all over the world who speak English together, he wants to be able to share the Articles with them. A Strength of Youth pamphlet that we gave him has already helped - someone asked why he doesn't ever drink tea or coffee, and out came the pamphlet, clearly explaining his standards.

K's great, and I'm thrilled to be able to stay here this Moves to see his baptism.

I love you all lots, and am very thankful for your prayers. I've really felt them.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Temple Day again - 35th email from Hong Kong

2008-06-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Yes, just got back from the Temple. The contrast between the quiet there and the noise here in a gaming center is unbelievable - I can barely hear myself think in here, as everybody is playing games with the sound cranked all the way up - and for some reason, somewhere behind me, someone is playing a game where you clap in time to "Uptown Girl". Very peculiar.

Some big news this week - first off, K's baptism has been postponed a little bit. He's progressed really fast, and after accidentally drinking some tea on Monday, just after his baptismal interview, we felt it best to just give him a little more time. It was a horrible phone conversation as I talked to him for 45 minutes trying to persuade him why waiting will help him. He's okay now though - he understands that this will help him develop patience, and has really turned to the Book of Mormon for guidance and comfort. His only request is that we don't baptise him on the 29th of June, because his friends won't be able to come to the baptism, so it's going to be in 2 weeks on the 22nd.

Brother T made a move this week that ought to make things easier for you all - he asked us to give him an English name. Naming Chinese people is a fun occurrence that comes up every now and then. Elder Sharp named him "Ammon" and he was very excited to go and read about the amazing missionary adventures of Ammon in the Book of Mormon. Considering his continental (continual) desire to serve as a missionary himself, I think it's a fitting name. So in English he is now to be known as Ammon T.

This week was interviews, and I asked President Van Dam about how you would go about picking me up at the end of my mission. He said it's very simple - when I choose my finishing date (which I will do about 6 months before I come home), you will be sent a letter which should contain the details of how to go about everything. He said that the Church will pay for my flight home, and that you can coordinate with the woman in Salt Lake who arranges missionary travel so that they book the flight correctly so that we're together.

That said, considering what I'm expecting the weather to be like in the heat of Summer, you might find it more comfortable to come in Winter. I guarantee that the heat and humidity will be somewhat uncomfortable. It might be better to arrange to come back the following Christmas or Easter holidays.

I've been thinking more about Universities. While I know it's awkward to throw yet another option on the plate (and one that is somewhat protested by Mum), I'm still considering BYU. It would certainly give me the opportunity to study Mandarin at the same time as something else, and I've heard some very good things about their Computer Animation courses - supposedly there's a 100% hiring rate coming out of BYU. I know that's yet another random option to throw out which has nothing to do with anything else we've been thinking about, but I think I'd really enjoy a career in animation.

Between ferrets, a hamster, a snake, 2 chinchillas and Timothy, I'm wondering if there'll be any room for me in the house when I come home anyway! It all sounds like Tim's practising well though for a wonderful future career - taking over for Hagrid at Hogwarts!

Congratulations on Bethany with her new job, it sounds like it'll be good.

Next Thursday is the end of yet another Moves, and I'm very much hoping to stay where I am, but also fully ready to move if it's required of me. I'm looking forward to whatever happens either way. In the meantime, next Thursday, Ronald A Rasband of the Presidency of the Seventy is coming to visit Hong Kong and has requested to meet with the missionaries. So we're having a special meeting with him next Wednesday. Elder Volk was asked to put together a choir and I guess I've faked musical competency enough times for him to ask me to sing tenor. Rather awkward as my voice doesn't tend to go that high any more, but we had a practice this morning and sounded rather good apparently.

Well, the noise in here is so loud that I can barely hear myself think, and my companion's waiting for me to finish as we're pressed for time this week, so with that I'll sign off.

Love you all,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Just finished ice skating... - 34th email from Hong Kong

2008-05-29T01:25:00.001-07:00

Dear all,

Last week, the Zone Leaders asked us for our input on what we should do for our Zone Activity. The suggestions we had: rent out a football pitch and play a big game (one of the Zone Leaders is 6ft and a pretty big football fan), or hire someone to teach us Tai Chi or Kung Fu. Both of these were quickly thrown out, and we ended up going ice skating. All of the wonders of China are right at our feet, and we do something that we could easily do back home.

Oh well. Maybe I'm just a little bitter because I spent most of my time wobbling and a slight amount of time falling down, whereas some of the other missionaries (mostly the ones from Utah) were significantly more graceful than me. But I have come up with a good new idiom to describe my feelings on the matter: it doesn't matter how good you are at something, so long as you are better than little Chinese girls at it.

The native Sister Missionaries hadn't been ice skating before (it's not really a tropical sport) and as such spent a little of their time wobbling, and most of their time falling down.

So we met with K yesterday, and it was easy to tell that he had some important news. We had explained that, as his baptismal date is next moves, we might not both be there. He then, yesterday told us, that he'd been thinking about his baptism and how he wanted both of us there, and had been praying to know what to do. He then found a pamphlet we had given him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ; about Faith in Jesus Christ, Repentance, Baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. He had forgotten about it, but when he read it, he noticed some paragraphs that talked about not delaying baptism, and felt strongly that he should be baptised sooner. He told us he wants to be sure he is safe, because he never knows when he might "crash" and suddenly die, and he wants Eternal Life.

As such, his baptismal date has been moved forward to 8th June. He pointed out that the first time he came to the church for a lesson was the 9th of May, making it exactly a month since he first started learning about the church. That's pretty fast, but he's certainly ready.

A lot of times on my mission, I've looked back on the notes that Tim Dick wrote for me at my setting apart and pondered the things that President Howes said. One thing that's always worried me was that he said "No matter how talented you are, you will never convert anyone." Previously, in times when no matter how hard I work, we haven't seemed to be able to find any investigators, I've wondered if this simply means that on my mission I won't have the chance to see anyone I teach get baptised. But this week, I realised that actually it's a blessing - I have been blessed with a knowledge that no investigators will ever get converted to me - they will be converted to the Gospel.

This is certainly the case with K. I read his Progress Record, and Elder Sharp had basically written for his first lesson, "nothing special - likes learning English". He later told us that he actually really didn't like learning English before meeting us. It was his worst subject - he came in the hopes of learning about the truth of our message. While he may like us a lot - enough to want us to attend his baptism and eat lunch with us, his conversion is not to the missionaries, nor to any church members, but to the Gospel itself. In a month he has developed a genuine testimony of God, strong enough to withstand pressure from his closest family members and friends - he is thrilled to invite them to meet with us and discuss the change he's making in his life.

Tuesday was another fun opportunity to teach several investigators at once; We had K, J H D (If it makes it easier, his name in English is Brother T - Hing Daih means brother) and another man, Mr W. Because we weren't sure if either Brother T or K could be there, we had planned to teach whomever would attend, and then suddenly we had three investigators instead of one. So again we resorted to the DVD trick - we had planned to show Brother T parts of Special Witnesses of Christ, which features testimonies from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve. As we had pretty much a class to teach, we watched it with all of them and then bore testimony at the end. It was certainly an interesting experience, as K acted pretty much as a fellowshipper, telling Brother T about his own experience quitting tea. K is a fairly typical Chinese person, and told us that at home, he wouldn't ever drink water, but instead would always just drink tea, so it was a bit of an adjustment for him, but not too big of a deal - the hardest time now is just when he gets up in the morning (me too - I'm sure a cup of tea would help me wake up quickly too, but I'll avoid such substance abuse anyway).

I love you all - I hope Mum had a fun time at the Osmond concert. It's always fun telling other missionaries how you two joined the church. I tell them that my dad found the church while hitchhiking in Canada, and my Mum found it through the Osmonds. Then I have to explain the gangs of middle-aged Sisters we have in the church over here, and they're always amazed at the impact the Osmonds have had over in England.

Have a fun time at work, school, play, music lessons, TV and whatever other things you'll all do this week,

Lots of Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Hello all again - 33rd email from Hong Kong

2008-05-22T01:14:00.000-07:00

And thank you for all of the wonderful Birthday presents. I really enjoyed some of the chocolate yesterday and am looking forward to eating a lot more today :) Plus the colour by numbers will be fun, as will playing with all of those new drawing pens, and attempting to make food based on the recipes from Bethany.

I just picked up the package yesterday at Mission Conference - and yesterday was a busy day! Mission Conference in the morning, then we met with Kelvin and committed him to baptism on the 29th of June; we then met with J H D, our Mainlander, who is still really struggling with not drinking tea, and with not really understanding the Restoration. We were teaching him on Tuesday, before another new investigator showed up - but it went on longer and we suddenly had two investigators there at the same time! What to do? I decided that if we watched the Restoration DVD and taught about prophets and the Book of Mormon, it should keep them both occupied - and the lesson seemed perfect for both the new investigator and J H D, who I don't think really understood the idea of a modern prophet before, and is still a little apprehensive about praying, thinking that only really holy people can pray.

Finally last night, we went to see a really good Less-Active family called the L family. Their teenage daughter is completely active, but nobody else is - she's a really great example, though, and so we meet with the family every week. We taught a simple lesson about the Atonement and Adam and Eve, and shared a scripture in 1 Corinthians; "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ, all are made alive." It went really well.

Last week in Priesthood Executive Council, the Bishop talked over the three key things they had to do in order to get things going - 1. Pray for the victims, 2. Telephone family members to make sure they are okay and 3. Begin preparing for the packages. This is the first time I've been near a natural disaster like this, and it was interesting to see the way the church leadership got going immediately. Unfortunately, the packages are being assembled by the ward members in Shenzen, which is just on the other side of the border between Hong Kong and the Mainland, so Missionaries can't really help - we're not allowed to be there!

Interesting to hear that Reading offers Chinese - that's something good to look into. As far as any specific university goes, I don't really mind. Royal Holloway would be nice, but I expect my grades are far too low to get in there, even possibly as a mature student.

The period of time that I've spent here in Tai Po this Moves with Elder Sharp has been the most amazing time of my mission so far - investigators that are really progressing and growing, and a constant wave of new people willing to hear the Gospel. It's wonderful; I certainly hope I get to stay here with Elder Sharp next moves, as we've had just so many miracles together - and, of course, Kelvin is getting baptised next Moves, which is as good a reason as any to want to stay. But I've noticed that generally the thing we want the most isn't necessarily the best thing for us, so I'm ready to go anywhere else I'm needed. I look forward to the future, and know that things can only get better from this point on. I remember D&C90:24 - "Search diligently, pray always and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good..." A wonderful scripture, which has been a great comfort to me throughout my mission and which I am seeing the blessings of now.

I love you all and pray for you often,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

My Last Day as a Teenager - 32nd email from Hong Kong

2008-05-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

Well, that's that. I'm done with being a teenager. Now on to bigger and better things.

It was indeed lovely to speak with you on Sunday; what a treat. Everyone seemed really happy and Tim's voice sounded so deep I wasn't sure if it was him at first! He must have grown a lot! I have not, though, of course - nor have I put on any weight. But my diet is now a little more balanced than noodles for every meal; why, there are all kinds of things Missionaries can make that are cheap and easy, like canned soup, or rice, or sandwiches! Yesterday my lunch was tuna fish rice - mostly because it was the day before Preparation Day and the only food I had left was a can of tuna fish, some rice and Marmite. It was still okay though.

I'm not too bothered about picking up my birthday package tomorrow - next week is Mission Conference, so I'll pick it up then. Right now we haven't got permission to go to the Temple, and we're currently in shorts and T-shirts after having played football this morning again, so we're not really in the right atire to wander into the Mission Home, pick up a package and wander out again.

Good to know that Julian is back home - if not safe, at least sound. He's been writing me pretty solidly so far, which is really nice. A lot of people who said they'd write never seem to get around to it, but I guess I'm out of sight, out of mind. Never mind - Julian's letters always make me smile, and stories like his conversion help me to remember that people are out there who haven't heard of the Gospel yet, but really are ready for it.

One investigator we've been meeting with for about two weeks now, K, is really good - we met him on the street, and he seemed excited to meet with us and learn some English, so we invited him to English class. Beforehand, though, Elder Sharp and a ward member, Brother T, taught him the Restoration (we were on exchanges with the ward because we had too many people to teach!) and he seemed excited to come to church.

He came, and beforehand we sat him down and taught him a little about prayer. Out of the blue, he said something really unexpected; "I don't know if I believe in God, but I have a really good feeling when I meet with you." I was so happy that the Spirit was working with him, and explained that this was the feelings of the Spirit. In church, to my great surprise, he sang all of the hymns as if he'd heard them all his life; it turns out that he's a real fan of music, particularly classical music, and because he plays the classical guitar, he can sight sing. His favourite contemporary artist is none other than James Blunt!

After church, he asked a wonderful question; "When can I see you again?" We set up a time on Tuesday and asked him to read a booklet on the Plan of Salvation - he seemed particularly interested to learn about the purpose of life.

When we met with him, he said he'd read and prayed. I was thrilled. We went through the lesson with him, and he understood the Three Kingdoms and really seemed to understand the Plan.

That night, I determined to be prepared in case of a sad phenomenon that occurs with rapidly progressing investigators that I like to call Burn Out - where someone learns and keeps commitments very quickly and then as suddenly as they started learning, stop progressing and eventually stop answering their phone. I got him to write down his address (so that if he stops answering his phone, we can drop by his house) and asked about one of the big concerns a lot of younger investigators have - their families. He said that his family is Buddhist, but he's discussed the things he's learnt with them, and they have no problem. This was a great relief to me; a negative or anti-Christian family can kill investigators quicker than just about anything else. But he seems to have a really good, close relationship with his family (he and his mother went out on a "date" on Mother's day) and they seem not to mind about him meeting with us and learning these things.

Last night I phoned him, and was thrilled when he said he'd read, prayed, and had a good feeling; even if it was a little small. But he was going to pray again that night. I gave him Alma 32, a chapter on growing in faith, to read.

He really is amazing; I'm excited by him more than I am by our Mainland investigator. Of course J H D will get baptised; but K's something else; he's really developing testimony right in front of our eyes!

J H D, meanwhile, went through some pretty nasty withdrawals from tea this past week, but is now over the worst of them. On Tuesday, we set a baptismal date of May 30th or there abouts, and showed him the baptismal font. I gave him a demonstration, by having us walk down into the font, showing how I would hold him when he got baptised, confirming that this had to be done by the right authority (I've already shown him my line of authority, so he understands that) and saying the Baptismal prayer, then explaining that I would lower him into the water and he would come out again, clean and pure. I think it really solidified in his mind the process that he'll go through as he is baptised into the true church.

The major courses I'm trying to decide between at University would be something in, of course, Mandarin, or Journalism, or Teaching - and we can throw English Literature in there too. Any of those are most appealing to me at the moment; I think the order of interest right now would go Mandarin, Teaching, English Lit, Journalism. See what you can find - anything that looks like it's along these basic ideas.

Lots of love, everyone. I hope you all have a fun week, and that such things as SATs, Ofsted visits, job interviews, essays, babies and school will not be too stressful. You're all in my prayers.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Yet more fun from Hong Kong - 31st email from Hong Kong

2008-05-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

In relation to Americans and the Chinese attitude over here at the moment, let me tell a little story about a man we bumped into last Sunday.

We were talking away, and he wanted to know where we were from - a lot of people wonder this, as it's not particularly normal for two white people (or gwaai louhs, as they call us, which means "white ghost") to speak Cantonese. Generally when I tell people I'm from England, it's met with something between interest and excitement, as England is a rather popular country here - everyone wears Union Flag T-Shirts and and just loves absorbing our culture. I guess it's something to do with the fact that it's had so much of our culture for so long. A real Englishman who is polite and speaks the language is a treat.

So I tell this man I'm from England, and he's rather excited. Then Elder Sharp tells him he's from America. He gets rather scared and tries to run away. We stop him before he gets too far, and ask him what the matter is. He asks Elder Sharp, "Did you know your country's evil?" It was rather hard to convince him otherwise, but we eventually managed to explain that every country has good and bad people. Then he starts asking about "King George Bush" and his problems. I think that his biggest problem is that he watches too much TV, and believes the media in their every little sway of opinion.

Our dear golden Mainland investigator has met with us twice this week already, each time for two or so hours, and last night committed himself to baptism. We gave him a Chinese Preach My Gospel and asked him to read through the baptismal interview questions. It was like a checklist - "Do you believe God is our Heavenly Father?" "Believe!" "Do you believe Joseph Smith Restored God's true church?" "Believe!" His only problems with the questions were he wasn't sure what it meant when it said "Do you believe that [current Church President] is a prophet of God?" and we quickly explained that this is talking about Thomas S Monson. Then he hadn't heard of Tithing yet, so we explained it to him, and he asked how to pay it. The rule is actually that Mainlanders can't pay Tithing so as not to give the government the wrong idea, but some Mainland Saints save up their Tithing, anticipating the time that they can pay it. This satisfied him.

We have basically taught him everything, and he reads any and all literature we give him avidly. His largest concerns are not being able to buy food on a Sunday, not drinking tea, and wanting to preach the Gospel in the Mainland. So, basically, no real problems, because we've explained obeying and sustaining the law, so he understands he just has to wait for now, and will keep the other commandments anyway because he has the faith to change.

Basically, it's he's a real miracle.

I did actually see a poster up on a wall for Iron Man, and it suddenly reminded me that the world hasn't stopped spinning. I remember reading on the internet about that film and seeing concept designs for Iron Man, so it's interesting to see how things move more quickly than I expect - I saw a box of cereal with a free Indiana Jones 4 toy inside last week! It's also been getting harder to avoid the final Harry Potter; all the new missionaries have either read it or know the ending, and the Chinese translation is really catching on; I've seen a lot around. Maybe I'll buy it before I come home and read it in Chinese!

As the weather is in the process of heating up, I can categorically say that I do not need a sweatshirt. Right now, as we're still in Spring, it's unbearably hot one day and rainy the next (I prefer the rain) but soon temperatures are going to heat up somewhat more, and at that point I think I may melt.

Today we all went to play football as a Zone. I surprised myself by not being a complete waste of space, but the T-shirt I've been wearing for exercise is just too thick and I got so hot and sweaty that I ran out of steam after about 15 minutes! I'm thinking I'll buy a football shirt, which will, with its light material, be much better for exercise - conveniently, everyone in Hong Kong loves English football, so I even have my choice of English teams. Other missionaries tend to buy the shirts mostly based on what looks funky or if it's Manchester Utd, the only team they've heard of, but I'm planning on buying Reading, as I can tell people it's my home team.

I think that's the only time in my life I've spent an entire paragraph of writing talking about football. This mission is doing strange things to my brain - I'd better balance it out with something spiritual.

As I come closer to my year mark out here, I can't help but look back and see how things have changed so much so quickly. This time last year I had barely got my call and was thrilled to be going to Hong Kong, but was still trying to enjoy a little last bit of my life as it was - around about this time, Chris, Tom and I were spending time at sleepovers playing Mario and Star Wars games and getting ready to leave. The weekend before I came out on my mission Tim and I were running off with Tom and Jacob to that Star Wars convention - I think my priorities were lacking a lot of clarity.

Now, I feel I'm a lot more oriented in the right direction. I've seen first hand the damaging effects of playing computer games all day (for example, I'm currently emailing from a very rowdy Games Cafe, and there are kids all around who've been here all day and aren't leaving any time soon) and I've seen the healing effects of the Gospel upon the lives of people like our miracle Mainland Investigator, and many other people who need this message. I feel that next year, when I return home, I'll be more ready than ever to make the important decisions in my life, based on the principles of the Gospel. I've grown so much in just one year, and the journey's not over yet.

Love you all,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Another change in companion - 30th email from Hong Kong

2008-05-01T01:24:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

My time with Elder Kwok, was somewhat limited it seems. At the end of a very fast moves, things have been shuffled around again.

Here in Tai Po, we previously had two companionships here - myself and Elder Kwok, plus Elder Gould and Elder Sharp. Now Elder Gould is off to be a Zone Leader in the New Territories and Elder Kwok is going to West Point, where I've just left! So my new companion is Elder Sharp; the two companionships are being stuck together into one, which is really good because between the two of us we have a very large number of investigators and other people to work with.

Elder Sharp is rather new to Hong Kong; he's only been here for one moves; so I'm a "Step-Dad" again, although this time my companion doesn't speak as much Chinese. He's really diligent though, and is progressing very fast. I just hope that I can master the art of balancing the companionship when speaking with others so that I don't do all the talking and leave him out.

An interesting piece of news I must mention before I forget is that the American Mother's Day is a week earlier than I thought - it's the 11th of May, the week after next. I'm thinking I'll phone at 10pm my time again, as that worked rather well at Christmas, which will be - I'm not quite sure what time for you. Probably 3pm or 4pm? I'm having trouble factoring in the Daylight Savings Time, as Hong Kong doesn't have any. As a matter of fact, supposedly all of China is in the same time zone. Interesting...

Last week seeing the Mongolian missionaries was really cool. It seemed that the group we met were all Mongolian natives, and I guess for many of them it must have been their first time going to the Temple, as they had taken out their Endowments that day. It just reminds me how lucky we are in this mission to have the Temple only half an hour away, instead of having to cross several country borders and travel all the way through China to get there. Charlie Fisher, being in Taiwan, has several Temples in close proximity, so she won't come here.

There are a lot of Olympics things going on at the moment, but most of what I've heard has been fairly garbled, what with our avoidance of the media. Supposedly Elder Gould had someone come up to him and tell him he didn't like George Bush, then asked if Elder Gould supported the Olympics. We're not really sure why.

So, my Birthday - there's not really anything I want, to be honest. I'd rather just have you save up money so that I can buy something bigger when I come home. One thing I would like, though, is some more of my colouring pens from the art shop in Maidenhead; not the boxes, but just individual pens. I need a new Cool Grey 4 and am missing a dark green, a deep yellow and a light purple colour, plus some random other colours would be nice too. I don't get much time for drawing, but when I do it's a nice relaxing activity on Preparation Days.

So besides the clothes and drawing pens, it'd best if you maybe just set some money aside for when I come back, that I can either use to buy something here in Hong Kong or to buy a laptop when I get back - I'm willing to give up on a MacBook, knowing how expensive they are, but I'd still like a laptop of some kind for University and such. Something that would be really good, though, would be some Walkers Salt and Vinegar Squares - also not very expensive, but very missed. I can get hold of Salt and Vinegar crisps here, but they're from America, so they don't taste quite right. I don't really have anything else I want, I'm afraid - sorry to be so boring.

So last Monday, we were at the church waiting for a new investigator, who unfortunately never showed up, there was a ring at the doorbell. I go to see who it is, and it's a random man who starts speaking to me in Mandarin. I explain that I only speak Cantonese, and that's fine - his mother tongue is Cantonese; he just thought that the only Chinese language white people speak is Mandarin, which makes sense, as he's from the Mainland.

It is currently his plan to learn all about Jesus Christ and then go back the the Mainland and teach other people. We've been trying to explain that God wants us to follow the laws of the land, but in the meantime we're meeting with him every evening to teach him. He came to Hong Kong for the sole purpose of learning about Christ, and apparently wandered around all day Monday without success in finding a church (which is odd as there are a lot in this area) before finding ours. He is a really accepting man who instantly believes everything we teach him; although he's currently struggling a little bit with prayer (it's a completely new concept to him) and with the Word of Wisdom (I felt impressed to share it with him, and it turns out he has the typical Chinese problem of drinking tea). But he's really amazing; we're slightly worried as to whether or not he's going to go back to the Mainland and preach anyway, but we're going to talk to the church leaders and arrange something for him so that he can meet the Mainland Saints.

Meeting with this guy is on top of scheduling and meeting all of our other investigators, less-actives and other ward Members, which is a long list as our companionships were combined. So things are really busy here in Tai Po right now!

Everybody carry on being amazing, I love you all.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

My First Typhoon - 29th email from Hong Kong

2008-04-24T00:40:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Fun things happened this week. Last Saturday we awoke to rather thick rain outside - it had also been raining for most of the night. We phoned up the weather station on the telephone, which has an automated system for informing people of the weather conditions, and were told there was currently a level 3 storm warning.

The system seems fairly simple - there are three levels; level 1 (no real danger), level 3 (there's a storm a little way away, but still not too dangerous - stay fifteen minutes from home by bus or train or whatever) and level 8 (get inside and stay inside - there's a storm close by). So a level 3 this morning was nothing really worth worrying about. We took our umbrellas and went to it.

Rain is excellent tracting weather - provided you can keep a smile on your face. We are encouraged to remember that it's always good weather, whether it's sleeting or raining or unbearably hot; but I like to differentiate what type of missionary work a specific weather is good for. So as we went out into our pak muhn (literally "knock door") weather, I was eager to do a little tracting for a while; it had been a while since I'd done any.

I remember a story that either Ali Millar or Matt Conway told when they had just got back from their mission - as they were serving as companions at the time, it could have been either one of them. They were door knocking on a particularly cold and wet day, and someone came to one of the doors. They told the man that they had a message about happiness, and he looked the two of them over, and asked "Then why aren't you happy?"

I was determined to be happy, even in the middle of a typhoon. As we were out, the rain got thicker and thicker and thicker, and the streets began to flood. Soon our tattered umbrellas were only a nuisance, because the wind kept grabbing and tearing them in sudden bursts, and we were completely drenched from head to foot. Yet we kept laughing and joking about it, having a good time in the torrent.

We finally headed home from our labours to find out that in the last hour we'd been out, the storm warning had changed from level 3 to level 8. After changing our clothes and making phone calls and planning, we headed into bed and the storm passed overnight. Since then we've had a few tiny showers but nothing too huge.

Too bad about Beth and her car - how awkward that there are going to be a load of car payments that she can't pay for - but I'm sure she'll get another job soon; she's a hard worker. In institute last year we were taught a little about sensible finance methods - we were told that the best strategy is to do whatever you have to do to buy your first car in cash, and then immediately begin saving for the next one; just as if you were paying off the first. That way, you'll always be ahead of the large payment, instead of behind it. I guess it's all fair and well me saying that now, as I'm not yet in the situation where I need a car (and when I am, I'll have absolutely no money because I'll be in university) so never mind.

I did indeed remember Chris's birthday coming up; but with the two days I have until his birthday I can't really get anything to him in time. I'll find some other way of dealing with things - see if I can send him a late birthday card or something.

As for my own birthday, there are some nice things from home I'd like that I can't really get here - a new pair of Tesco jeans (30in) and some nice clean white shirts (15in collar). Don't worry about anything like money; you already gave me £50 for the watch. I didn't end up buying it anyway because I found a fine Casio for $200HK, about £12 or £15, which was all I had left in my account the week before you put money in. I decided against an Octopus watch because it's an unnecessary extra expense; my normal Octopus card works fine as it is, I just keep it in my wallet so unless I lose that I'll be fine.

One thing I'd like, which you all might find fun to put together in some Family Home Evenings, would be a Loffhagen family cookbook. Bear in mind that I have absolutely no idea how to cook something as simple as a pancake without burning it - a recipe for such things as fairy cakes, scrambled egg, chocolate cake, toast, ice cubes, water, and such, would be a really nice way of spicing up my diet. I have a great variety of meals at the moment, but most of them come from a tin can or the rice cooker...

I've been balancing my Chinese study a lot better this week; spending more time on vocabulary and less on the character cards. It was my goal to be able to read the entire 2nd Nephi 31 by the end of this moves - next week - and since I'm only about half way through at the moment, I adjusted my goal a little to allow me to work on other things. I've been solidifying the first 200 cards in my mind be reviewing them, and have started on the third hundred. The cards are easier than reading the scriptures because when reading scriptures, it takes me about 10 minutes to look up every character I don't know. I also realised that the majority of characters I don't know are all in the basic 1000 characters anyway, so I can save time in the long run by learning the cards first and the scriptures will be easy by that point.

My English fast went a lot better this week - I got most of the way through before giving up again. The problem is that I keep trying to speak Chinese but my companion and other missionaries are all speaking English. I've decided to wait and try again next moves, but if I end up with another young companion who, unlike Elder Kwok, doesn't have the advantage of already speaking Chinese - I'll be out of luck. The English fasts seem to be the the hardest part of the next language goal.

So yesterday, we went tracting in a little village in our area that is completely isolated. Around about this time last year, when I was thinking about where I wanted to serve my mission, I imagined serving in China to be walking along old, rural roads, surrounded by green mountains as far as the eye could see, with very few people in sight, until you reached the village and began to preach. That was basically what it was like yesterday - it was honestly as rural as could be imagined. It was a far cry from my last area where you couldn't escape the noise of the city for even three seconds, even at 3:00am. It really was an unique experience; there's so much variety in this mission. Who knows where I'll end up next?

Today is Temple day, which should be good as always - our ward mission leader here is also a Temple worker (as are most of the older Saints in the area) and has told us that a group is going to be there from Mongolia - missionaries there get Temple days a bit less often than us. It makes me so thankful for the blessings of the Hong Kong Temple; it serves such a large area of the Orient out here. Saints come from all over the world to receive the blessings here - one of my first Temple days was shared with a group from Singapore. It's true what's said of Hong Kong - it really is the gateway to the Orient.

So now I'm off to buy some food for the next week and to prepare for the Temple. Talk to you next week.

Lots of Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

28th email from Hong Kong

2008-04-17T02:08:00.000-07:00

Another week over before I realised. It seems like it's always Preparation Day, sometimes, the rest of the week flying by so quickly.

This past week was, of course, General Conference, here in Hong Kong. I'd been looking forward to it for a long time, and was thrilled to get to see it at last. We'd been building up to it for a long time, inviting people to it for pretty much all of the moves. We were expecting to have somewhere in the region of 6 or 7 investigators attending, but somehow they all fell through, one by one, until there was only one person who came for one of the sessions. This was not always their fault - for example, one man called Johnny is a Scottish Born Chinese who doesn't really speak Cantonese but is looking to move here permanently. We invited him and he was really thrilled to go, but somehow he got lost and ended up going to a Baptist church instead! He was surprised when a meeting he thought was going to be in English was in Chinese, and when it finished at 12:30 instead of 2:00. But he was really good about it and once we have the DVDs of Conference we're going to show a session to him. We really don't have any responsibility over him anyway, as he's best left to the International missionaries - but they're always so busy baptising all day every day that they don't have time to meet with people who aren't ready right then and there for a baptismal interview!

I exaggerate, but it's basically how it works.

As it happened, Conference was a really good experience for Lobo - the only investigator who attended. He said he'd have to leave after an hour, but ended up staying for the whole session and then running quickly out afterwards. He still has a really strong desire to develop a testimony - he's been losing sleep over it - but doesn't quite understand the way the Spirit will talk to him. We were supposed to meet with him yesterday, and he even moved his work appointments around to meet with us, but at the last minute something came up and he couldn't make it - he was really sincerely sorry, leaving 3 messages on our answering machine at home. Too bad we were at the church.

It was also unfortunate that we'd scheduled an Area Seventy to fellowship.

He understood, though, and gave us an interesting new insight into the way the Spirit works - he said that generally, the only people who get huge visions, like Joseph Smith, Paul, Lehi, Alma the Younger and so forth, are always required to do something specific. A heavenly vision is a call to action, whether it be restoring the church or a call to missionary work or to travel across the ocean to a promised land. Generally for the rest of us who aren't prophets, the promptings are a lot smaller so as to allow us to exercise faith and agency.

This past Monday and Tuesday was the Zone 24 hour exchanges. This time I was with a brand new missionary, Elder MacAllister, who is really cool. As we walked out of the chapel, I turned to him and asked, "What did you like to do before your mission?" He responded, "I was really into making movies."

I could tell I was in for an interesting 24 hours.

While I forbade us from talking about specific films or anything that would distract from the work, I did learn that he's pretty much thrilled to be in Hong Kong. He really loves Chinese films - Jackie Chan is his hero, and he's been buying and watching films made in Hong Kong for most of his life. Before his mission, he was working professionally on films in lighting, sound, camera operation and various other fun things, and even has a scholarship waiting for him when he goes home. He made a big sacrifice choosing to put his budding career on hold to come on a mission, and was astounded when he got the very mission call he'd always wanted.

Of course, that provides a lot of temptations as well, as Hong Kong is full of things he loves that he can't touch, like films and filming stuff. The Hong Kong film industry is the second biggest in the world (next to Hollywood) and as such, it's hard to avoid his greatest love.

We had a really good time together, teaching and street contacting and "Pak Muhn"ing (literally "knock door") and, he only having been here for 3 weeks, we did a lot of things he'd not done before. On the other hand, I learned a lot from his about being enthusiastic and happy to work, as he has a great fire and a love of sharing with people.

My English fasts have as of yet to succeed. I'm planning on starting one a little later today, but am still having a lot of problems talking to someone in Chinese when all of the other missionaries keep speaking English. But my goal is to have one completed by the end of the moves, so I'm determined to complete my goal. I'm starting it later today because we have a Zone Activity in a little while and I know it'll be too much of a tempation to speak English and I'll have broken my fast before I've started.

My other goals for the moves are going well, though - I've learned the first 200 character cards, from the thousand, and have been picking out character cards from the set that are featured in 2 Nephi 31, as my goal is to be able to read it before May. The cards I've picked out add up to about another hundred, so I've learnt a fair few. I need to spend more time on my spoken, though, as I'm still far from fluent, but I want to get my reading goal out of the way first. The biggest frustration is simply that the characters, being little pictures, stick in my head a lot better than words. I was learning 10 character cards at the same time as 10 words in my language study for a while, before I discovered that I could actually learn 50 characters in the time it took me to learn 10 words! Since then I've kind of been slacking on my spoken.

Anyway, so we're off in a minute for a Zone barbecue - on Monkey Mountain! I've heard legends of the excitement of this place, and all the funny monkeys everywhere, but have as of yet to actually go there. Supposedly some of the monkeys can be pretty vicious at times in their desire for tourists' bananas, but we'll see.

And with that, I'm off. Talk to you next week.

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

27th email from Hong Kong

2008-04-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

Dear everyone,

It sounds like everyone is having fun on holiday - I vaguely remember Goonhilly from when we went before - but as that was about ten years ago, I expect it's a lot more advanced and impressive now!

An interesting thought about Nephi beheading Laban - and very interesting to think that the story of the people of Ammon and their determination not to take the lives of others - perhaps we will think about sharing that story with him.

I'm so thrilled that you got to meet the now released Tim Ng. He honestly was my mission hero, and I find myself sharing with Elder Kwok many of the pearls of wisdom he taught me. It doesn't surprise me that he's having trouble adjusting to non-mission life; I remember when we were at the Temple for Moves - and he was going to have to wait around all day - and he was bored, so he went and found someone to go finding with while he waited! Then, I'm not sure if I told you this, but he randomly turned up at our first District Meeting this moves - his parents were visiting the area, meeting people, and he had come to check out the chapel. "Let's just forget the District Meeting," he said, "and go on a District find!" He really was a dedicated, hard working missionary, so I'm not surprised he's taking a little while to get used to not being busy every second of the day.

Yesterday was Mission Conference, and another huge load of old missionaries bore their "dying" testimonies. Included among them were Elder Alspaugh, and a load of other Elders I've served around before. Pretty much every missionary older than me is going home - Sister Van Dam had a bit of a cry when she thought about how the Elders going home were the group of missionaries that they'd met in the MTC when they started their missions.

Mission Conference was really good. The Assistants to the President had a fun little video they showed us of the difference between a missionary with teaching skills and a missionary without. It was cute and funny and taught us all the big difference that comes from having the ability to teach with clarity, using the scriptures and asking questions.

At lunch I went to check the post, as you'd expect, and had a postcard from Julian off in France, who seems to be doing really well there and enjoying himself. There was a big package on the table, but it was from America and said "Missionary Supplies" on the customs form in an unfamiliar handwriting, so I didn't even bother checking who it was for. Later as I was eating, Elder Kwok came up to me and said, "Elder Loffhagen - you're loved," and handed me the package. What a surprise to get a big Dear Elder package full of sweets and cookies! Thank you so much! I'm not sure if I'd really call them "Missionary Supplies", but whatever - I guess Dear Elder was being rather liberal in their interpretation of what "supplies" missionaries need!

I also got my certificate for achieving the level of Language Giant, and my cookie, which I'd been waiting for. I'm also pleased to say that I'm working my way through the character cards and learning to read 2nd Nephi chapter 31 - I can read two whole verses! Yay! Plus I've learnt the first 100 character cards. My goals for the end of the moves are to learn the first 200 and to be able to read chapter 31, plus to do my week-long English fast, which I failed at rather badly last time. But today half the District started an English Fast all together, so it should be easier to do one myself without other people always speaking English to me.

A little note about money - this is the first time I've had to request some, but it's rather necessary. I don't really want to have to ask, because I know you all have more of a need for it than me, but as I have temporarily misplaced my emergency fund and had to sustain myself with personal funds, I'm a lot lower than I would like - and my watch is about to die. I press the light button and instead of illuminating, the entire display goes blank for a few seconds. The battery's nearly gone. I'd use the pocket watch I bought - except it doesn't actually keep accurate time, and is a pretty big inconvenience to have to carry around. But another Elder, Elder Kinghorn, has a very special watch called an Octopus watch. In Hong Kong Octopus cards are kind of like the oyster card in London; you can ride the MTR by storing money on your card and beeping it on the ticket gates, and it quickly withdraws the money from your electronic account, saving a lot of time and hassle - but it also goes further than that; the buses also take the card, as do taxis, supermarkets, newsagents, bakeries and even McDonalds - some shops will only take Octopus cards and not real money! So Elder Kinghorn's watch is pretty special. Instead of fishing out his wallet and dropping coins all over the floor in order to get on the bus (like I do), he just beeps his watch. As my watch is dying anyway, I'm considering buying an Octopus watch, to simplify things. Except I have no money.

I'm not sure how much the watch will be - but it shouldn't be too much. Could I ask for maybe £30?

Anyway, that'll be it for this week. Sorry to end on a begging note! I wish you all well and hope you have fun doing stuff.

Lots of love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Time Really Flies! - 26th email from Hong Kong

2008-04-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

It's hard to believe that it's Preparation Day again already! I guess that's a sign of having lots to do and actually doing it!

This week has been an interesting week. There has been a lot more fun finding with Elder Gwok, some teaching, and, a few hours ago, a fun trip back to the 1,000 Buddhas. We went as a district to go see it all, and I figured I had to take advantage of the little gift shop they have inside the temple (which is kind of unsual if you ask me, but perfectly in line with typical Chinese religious and business practice) and bought a little trinket to ship home for Christmas.

I had my interview with President Van Dam this past week. It went pretty well - President Van Dam asked me how I was doing with my new responsibility as senior companion, and asked me what new things I'd learned. We then both shared some scriptures about the Saviour from the Bible, and he told me about how much he felt I had improved, about how he could see in me how much I'd grown.

I guess I must be doing something right.

There are, in total, many, many thousands of characters in the Chinese language. Not sure how many exactly, but basically, a lot. The 1000 character cards I'm working on at the moment constitute a lot of the most basic characters, and there's an additional 3000 to learn after them for the next level of language pass-off. Also, the Book of Mormon contains a lot of strange and obscure characters that even natives struggle to read - unlike in English when we can sound out a work, they can only do that to a degree with characters, so it's very confusing.

It sounds like Jess's doing really well at the moment. Grandma sent me a letter this week (and $200, which got me through my last little bit of rough time before my new money came) and said that Jess seems a lot more grown up now - and pointed out how big Timmy is now! Keep up the good work everyone!

I hope everything goes well for Grandad and Grandma and they have safe operations. I'll put their names on the prayer roll when I go to the Temple.

It's funny Dad should mention hairdressers - I'm going for a haircut myself after email. Hopefully I won't find my future wife in there! :P

Just to let you know, the American Mother's Day, as far as I've been told, is the second or third Sunday in May - the Sunday after my birthday, I think. So I'll be calling sometime around then. I'll find out more as I get closer to the time. It's still quite a while away, but will probably come soon, and remind me again how long I've been here.

We had a zone conference last Friday, and it really confused me to discover that I was one of the oldest missionaries in the zone! There were all of these missionaries that I didn't know, who were younger than me! The count in the zone at the moment is 13 missionaries older than age as me, and 14 younger than me. Plus Elder Weagel, who came here with me. Interesting to realise I'm in the older half of the zone - but then I guess I should expect that, being senior companion and all.

I realised the other day that, now being General Conference, it was exactly a year ago that we were sitting in a caravan in Cornwall, and Chris texted me to tell me he was going to Manchester. I was pretty concerned that I'd end up staying in England too; I wonder what I'd say to myself if I could go back in time one year and tell me all the things that have happened this year? I'd probably tell myself not to worry, but to spend some more time memorizing scripture references, to make it easier to navigate Chinese scriptures where you don't have the luxury of reading the verse to check if it's the right one!

Then on the other hand, I wonder what I would say if I met the 2009 version of me - one more year ahead in time? Probably something very similar, like focus more on reading the scriptures in Chinese and be sure to keep moving forward and progressing in knowledge and teaching skills.

And then I dread to think what 2018 me would say. Probably "Stop wasting time! Soon you'll be 30!"

Unfortunately, this past week, we haven't been able to schedule Chan Jai. I'm worried that his interest in the church may have only come from really liking the Elder who was here before me, Elder Chan, who has since gone home, and he now has very little interest in hearing the Gospel. He won't pick up his phone anymore, so we can't get hold of him at all.

On the other hand, Lobo is really growing - we gave him a copy of Our Search for Happiness, which he has fallen in love with. He says the book touches on every question he had in his mind, and now he really wants to do what M Russell Ballard says to do at the end of the book - pray and develop a testimony. He really has a strong desire to develop his testimony, and is really diligent in keeping his commitments. He's read in the Book of Mormon (even though he finds it difficult because he wants to read in English and there are a lot of big words in it) up until Nephi cut off Laban's head, which he didn't like too much. He said he understood the importance of doing what God asks us to do, but thought it was cruel. I tried to explain that it was necessary for the Nephites to have the records, but he still seems a little hesitant about that. He currently has a much stronger testimony of Our Search for Happiness, but is still working on the Book of Mormon. He's off to the Mainland this next week for a holiday the people here have called the Ching Ming festival; a big Ancestor Worship thing, and is taking his mother to see their ancestral village.

Next week should be good; Mission Conference on Wednesday and General Conference on the Saturday after that - they have it a week later here because otherwise it would mean going to conference at 3 in the morning - and I thought 11pm was too much of a stretch!

I hope that you all enjoy General Conference very much; it'll be a great opportunity to hear President Thomas S Monson speaking to us in General Conference for the first time since becoming President of the Church. It'll also be good for a lot of our investigators next week - we actually have a lot of people we've been telling about it, who seem really interested to hear what a prophet has to say, including one Scottish man called Johnny we ran into a while ago - we gave him a little tour of the church, and taught him a lesson. He was so nice - really wanted to let us know he wasn't sure if he wasn't sure if he believed any of it, but was really interested to know more. We invited him to come to General Conference, as it'll be in English, and he can see a Prophet in action, so to speak, and he seemed really interested. That was about 2 weeks ago, but I ran into him on the street again recently and he said "I'm still up for that thing on the 13th - give me a call." So that should be really good. He's of Chinese origin, so his Cantonese is alright (when he lived in Scotland, his family ran a takeaway) but his English is his native tongue. That said, he has a job here now and is doing pretty well with things. It should be good to watch a session of General Conference with him next week.

Anyway, time's running out. I love you all and hope that you're all doing well. Keep up the good work everyone!

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

You really worried me for a second there! - 25th email from Hong Kong

2008-03-27T01:57:00.000-07:00

So let me explain a little -

We're currently emailing in one of the gamer places that Hong Kong is full of - pay $8 for an hour of email, games, or whatever. It's certainly not as nice as a library or the convention center I used to email in when I was on Hong Kong Island, but it's the best that we have.

So I was reading your email, and had just read this:

"My assembly was great ... "

When all of a sudden, the computer died! Apparently they'd decided to switch me to a new computer and hadn't bothered to tell me. I was feeling really bad for you, Mum, because I know that you're seriously the best teacher at that school by far (whether or not you believe it!) and was thinking, "Who else could have stood out above the rest? There's no way Mum's a third-place teacher!"

Then I logged into my email again and kept reading, and saw that all was right with the universe after all. Congratulations, Mum - I know you'll do great, as always!

So, yes, speaking of tests, interviews and progression, I have now passed off. I taught Elder Hedin, one of the Zone Leaders here, and even though I forgot to do some of the basics such as start with an opening prayer and close similarly, he had absolutely no problem with passing me off. I'm pretty thrilled for many reasons - one, I've finally achieved something I've been working towards for the past 8 months, two, I get to start learning characters, meaning that I can read scriptures with investigators, which is really crucial (at the moment I always have to get them to read!) and three (possibly most important): I get a cookie from Sister Van Dam next Mission Conference. President Van Dam was giving out awards last conference and said "You know, we've noticed that the recognition and certificate aren't nearly as important to you as the cookie!"

Just to let you know, my card expires in August 2009, when I come home. There shouldn't be a problem - so perhaps they sent me a card for a different account? I haven't had any problems accessing my money. I've been living off of personal funds recently because the mission has been focusing on having a $400 emergency fund, which I took out of my bank at the beginning of the month - and misplaced it during moving to my new apartment! I'm sure it'll turn up somewhere, but in the meantime I've been surviving off of personal money. Thankfully, my new area isn't all that expensive for travel and Elder Kwok doesn't really like eating out, so I've managed to get by on $100 last week for food, so until the new month I shouldn't have too much of a problem.

Grandad's condition sounds a little worrying, but I'm sure things will work out. It seems my grandparents have a habit of being to stubborn to stay sick for too long! :P

There are some really amazing people we're working with in this area. One, called Chan Jai (Boy Chan - we don't call him his real name for some reason) has a real desire to keep God's commandments and develop a testimony. He has a baptismal date for 11th May. The last time we saw him (last Friday), we taught him Sabbath Day observance, which he had no problem with at the time, and fully committed to it. Unfortunately, last week his relatives all came from Mainland China to see the family, so he couldn't come to church! And now this coming week, his family's going to the Mainland, so he can't come to church again! I'm a little worried for him at the moment, but I'm sure he'll do fine. It would be nice for you to remember him in your prayers.

Another man, somewhat older, that we've been working with, called Lobo Lau, is truly incredible. He's so very honest - we met him yesterday and asked him how he'd been doing with the Word of Wisdom, his past commitment. He told us that he'd really tried his best, but once he accidentally had a drink of tea in a social gathering before even thinking about it, and felt pretty bad about that. But he said that he only drank a little, and then realised and stopped drinking at once. He also confessed that he'd been given a chocolate and had eaten it before thinking, only to discover that it had coffee in it! He was genuinely sorry, and we explained that it was fine, he was trying his best. We then taught him about Sabbath Day observence (a lot of people have a problem with this in a fast-paced place like Hong Kong) and again, he was very honest. He said that he really understood it, but was a bit worried about what might happen if some emergency occurred at work on a Sunday. But he said he would stop working on a Sunday and do his best to keep this commandment, but it might take a while to elliminate all Sunday work.

We then read 2 Nephi 31 with him, and committed him to baptism. Again, he was completely honest - he didn't feel ready. He wanted to keep progressing, but is very afraid of making a commitment and then falling back into his old ways. He wants to be sure that he's ready. So we're going to keep helping him to understand that he doesn't need to be perfect, and will help him at his own pace to reach the point where he feels ready. In the meantime, we can help him to keep the commandments, which he has no problem with, and help him to keep coming to church. Eventually, he will feel ready - after all, it took Brigham Young two years to get baptised!

Tai Po area is completely different from West Point. While West Point was like Reading/London, Tai Po reminds me more of a little seaside community - except no sea and a lot of high-rise flats. Basically, I guess that everybody lives in Tai Po but works elsewhere. We've toured around the area and there's only one place where there are actually any people - but it's the one place that the Missionaries always go, so the people are used to seeing us there every day!

I kind of miss the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Island, but it is a lot calmer out here. I can actually sleep at night because cars aren't whizzing past all hours of the night.

I'm sorry I didn't hear about the China Olympics project when I was on the Island - everyone there is ready for it! There are decorations everywhere, and a huge stadium is set up where I guess people can gather and watch the games on a big screen, once things get underway. There are also huge statues everywhere of the little Panda mascots they've worked out, a big countdown clock in MTR stations, and a lot of things about the horseraces - Hong Kong's a big place for gambling on horseraces, so they're staging the Olympic Equestrian events here in Hong Kong.

But all of the stuff was on the Island. Here, there's nothing of the sort. This isn't exactly a tourist spot anyway, so I guess they don't need to worry. There should be a few pictures that I took of some of the decorations on the CD I'm sending with the NGs. They have a huge picture DVD with over 2.5 gig of pictures I've taken, plus the 2007 Mission Slideshow to give you.

Thank you for all of the chocolate, by the way - it's gone now, of course, but at the time, it was great.

Elder Kwok is such an amazing companion - so diligent and hard working. He doesn't want to waste a second; literally! He has the Chinese, and he has the motivation - all he's really missing is knowing how to work smart as well as working hard. For example, I guess his trainer wasn't too bothered with getting to know the ward, so he doesn't understand the importance of helping them to become Preach My Gospel member missionaries, and how working with Less-Active and part member families is more effective than street contacting. These are things that are learned in time, I guess - and I have to remind myself that my style of Missionary work isn't perfect either. There are things we can both learn from each other about sharing and spreading the Gospel.

There was a really good lesson in Priesthood last week, though, all about how members should be using Preach My Gospel - afterwards one of the brethren came up to us and wanted to schedule some time for us to teach him and his family how to use Preach My Gospel better; which is exactly the attitude members should have! He's a member of the Asia Area Seventy, so he's pretty hard working in his calling anyway, so it'll be great to help him understand more how to help the missionaries.

Just as a sidenote, I'd suggest you get the missionaries to teach you more about Preach My Gospel too - I keep remembering what the England London South Mission President said to us when we were having our Mission Prep classes - a member of the Quorum of the Twelve (I forget who) had said to him when he was called, "When the members start inviting the missionaries into their homes to teach them Preach My Gospel, the harvest will begin again in Britain". Both Elder Ng and I have noticed the dramatic increase in baptisms in Britain since Preach My Gospel was introduced, so be sure to keep up the good work in getting to know the missionaries!

Love you all,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老

Just about everything has changed - 24th email from Hong Kong

2008-03-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Mum and Dad,

Yeah - just about everything has changed. New area, new companion, all amazing.

First things first - last Sunday was the Why I Believe Fireside, which comes every moves and is an opportunity for departing missionaries to bear their testimonies. Elder Ng's parents were there, so I got the iPod from them with no worries. Thank you so much for it, it is really amazing. You did a great job of loading it full of music.

Second things second - my pass-off that I was supposed to have with Elder Ng was postponed due to time constraints, and he gave me a hard challenge (possibly because he wanted to slow me down as he didn't think I was ready) - writing down the entire pingyum Romanization for Finding Happiness, a five-minute DVD we show people. He gave me the challenge on Friday, telling me it might take a few weeks. I felt great delight in showing the completed thing to him on Sunday night.

Then Monday came, with moves calls. I was moved to a place called Tai Po, where I am currently writing from. It's just about the opposite of West Point, my last area, as it is very quiet and the lifestyle is a lot more laid back, so the people seem more friendly.

I also get a new companion - Elder Kwok. He has been on his mission now for only 12 weeks; he is a CBC (Canadian Born Chinese) and so already speaks Chinese fairly well, so he had only half the time in the MTC. I am his second companion in the field - and also senior companion. Interesting - especially as his Chinese is a lot better than mine. But we've talked a little bit and he's told me that his trainer taught him to always rely on his senior companion as the leader of the companionship, so he's willing to trust me and follow my lead. I, in turn, told him that we were going to be working together as a team, and that neither of us is any more important than the other. Things should go well this moves.

A little while after the telephone call for moves calls came, Elder Ng phoned up to schedule my pass-off; which was unexpected as I'd figured I would have to push him to give me one; but I guess that even if he figured I wasn't ready, he decided that as senior companion, I'd need to pass-off, so he phoned to schedule it. I had it on Wednesday - yesterday. I sat down and taught an amazing lesson, and he was really impressed - I taught about the Priesthood, about Missionary work and about fasting, and we stopped to evaluate between each principle. He told me afterwards that if I'd only taught the first principle; Priesthood, he'd have passed me off. But he my commitments were not strong enough, so even though he really wanted to pass me off, he felt I needed to improve my commitments and then teach one again with one of my new Zone Leaders.

Well after thinking about it for a while, I decided that I was still going to accomplish my goal, one way or the other. So I tried to schedual a pass-off for today at the Temple with one of my new Zone Leaders, but both were busy at the time.

So I phoned up Elder Alspaugh, who is currently a Zone Leader in another zone. He was absolutely giddy at the prospect of passing off his trainee, and we schedualed it.

Then came the hiccup that made me decide it was best to postpone - we got to the Temple a little late after having dragged huge bags around half of Hong Kong. By the time Elder Alspaugh was ready to pass me off, it was 9:00; the time I'd arranged to meet Elder Kwok. I figured it wouldn't be right to miss my meeting with him, so proposed that we wait to see whether or not Elder Kwok would be okay with me taking an extra hour at the temple.

Then Elder Kwok was late too. By the time I'd finally met up with him, he was fine with me taking time for the pass-off, but I couldn't find Elder Alspaugh, who needed to leave with his new Zone Leader companion. Plus, Elder Kwok and I needed to get home quickly so that we could help two new Elders who are in my District this moves. I acknowledged that if I were to press doing my pass-off right then and there, I would inconvenience another seven missionaries doing so - at least. I decided that the ends didn't justify my means, so we left and came to my new area. But I now intend to pass-off within the next week - before I email you again, I will have passed off. It's really just a formality anyway; I know I'm good enough. I even bought 1000 character cards in the Mission Home for use next week once I pass-off.

So please pray for me this next week, that I will succeed in my final pass-off.

And now for something completely different - there is a guy back in West Point called Andy, who we've been meeting with, who is really amazing. He's twenty, comes to English class every week, and came to church one week - he is interested in learning about the church, but has a load of exams for school, so doesn't want really to do so until May. In the meantime, we've been sharing things every week after English class, just a little here and a little there. He's ridiculously cool - and was really sad to hear that I was leaving. He was telling me yesterday that he's thinking about a trip to England some time soon, and I suggested that he could stay with you - he was interested, but was insistent on paying money if he did so. Sorry for volunteering the house, but I didn't think it'd be too much of a problem (plus it'd give him a chance to see the Gospel in action in the home). I did get his email address and can give it to...next week. I forgot it this week. But even if you can't help him with a place to stay, you can at least email him and chat with him about things. He has my gmail address, so he may write to you through that, and if he does, please write him back! :D

The speakers Elder Walgren sold me aren't that great - they're more for on-the-go use rather than sitting at a desk. They don't have a plug for the wall, but are simply battery operated. I'm going to look into buying one of the speaker/dock charger things for the iPod instead, but it may be a bit trickier to find one in my new area, which has far less electronics stores - well, far less of everything.

Tai Po is basically empty compared to West Point. In some ways, the hustle and bustle will be missed, but in other ways, it'll be a nice change. I'm looking forward to sleeping at night without hearing loads of cars speeding past all day every day - and all night for that matter - and (although it may just be green grass syndrome) the people here seem to be a lot less busy, and a lot more friendly and willing to talk.

So as I mentioned, there are two new trainee missionaries in my apartment. One is in my area and the other is in the neighbouring area - the apartment is actually in their area and we have to take a bus to get to our area. There are six of us all in one apartment; but it's far bigger than my last apartment, so it should be no problem. I have currently organised my desk perfectly and neatly. We'll see how long that lasts for! The biggest hassle for keeping it tidy is all of my post - particularly, I hate to say it, all of the DearElders you've sent. While I don't want them to stop coming (certainly not!), would you be offended if I threw some of the old ones away, for organization purposes? :)

Anyway, time's almost up. I love you all. Keep fighting the good fight, and pray for me in my pass off this coming week.

Love,

Elder Matthew Loffhagen

羅長老