Hello

Hello everyone!!

I just realized yesterday that a week from today I will have already been in Tai Po/Tai Wo area for a full transfer. Time has FLOWN by. We have also been having a lot of success lately. 

Since I came here, we havent really had that much success finding new investigators because both my companion and I didnt know of very many good places to go finding. So I called every missionary in the mission who has ever served here and asked them where their best spots were and every single one of them said, "Miracle Path". 

Miracle Path is a pathway I had never gone to before that is in the middle of all of the antied schools. But we tried finding there and it quickly became obvious how it got its name. We got three new investigators and taught three lessons in about 45 minutes. We have also found a few other places that have been great for finding new investigators. I am just glad that there have been other missionaries in the past who have served here because they have already faced a lot of the challenges we have and have learned how to get around them.

Tai Po is technically a closed area because they havent had a baptism in over 2 years and really havent had any success at all. That is why we are sort of over both Tai Po and Tai Wo.

But Hopefully we will break the curse. Hugo (our investigator who had the faith problem) will probably have his baptismal interview tomorrow. There is a chance he will need more time, but I am just praying hard that he will know he is prepared for baptism and will pass his interview. 

There have been a lot of rumors around the mission that President Chan wants to reopen Tai Po sometime in the next little while before he ends his time as mission president. If Hugo gets baptized there and breaks the streak of no baptisms, then maybe that will be a sign that Tai Po is ready to be opened. 

It would be really sad if Tai Po was reopened while I am still here because that means I would only serve in one of those wards, but it would also be really good because we could have twice as much going on and we would probably move apartments. :)

I dont really mind either way, but it definitely would be nice to get a new apartment. I bought giant ziploc bags that I put all of my food into so that bugs dont get to it. Even after deep cleaning the apartment and killing tons of bugs, I still have to kill them every night before I go to bed though. But our apartment is better than nothing. I dont really care that much I guess.

One of the blessings that we have of being right up against mainland is that we hear a lot of stories about cool things happening up there. 

There is a lady and her mom who come to church every week from mainland, and their story is one of my favorites. 

Her mother was born and because of laws in mainland, her parents were not allowed to have her. So they had two options: Kill her, or figure out how to keep her safe. They left her on a random doorstep who happened to belong to a famous actress. This actress felt bad so she raised the girl. But then once the girl was about 8 years old, the actress kicked her out of the house, so the girl had nowhere to live. On gravestones in China, people will put fruit as a sacrifice to their ancestors. This girl would go around from graveyard to graveyard to try and steal this fruit and eat it. Then once, she had not eaten in a few days and she fell down to the ground and didnt have the energy to get up. Then she said she saw a glowing white person come out of the sky and give her a white flower to eat. She ate it and this angel told her that God wanted her to live, and that she needed to learn about Jesus Christ. So the girl spent the next few years trying to find a bible or learn anything she could. The Chinese government found out about this and for a while she had a warrant out for her arrest. 

Well this girl eventually had a daughter and grew old. The daughter met missionaries in Hong Kong who gave her the book of mormon. She took the book of mormon to mainland and showed her mom. Her mom was really skeptical at first, but once she started reading it, she just started crying and looked up and told her daughter, "This book has to be true. It is better than even the bible." 

there are so many crazy stories I have heard like that from mainland. That is actually the second one I have heard about an angel coming down and giving someone something. In another one, this lady was beaten and was about to die, but then an angel came down and gave her a glowing white pill and told her that she needed to learn what God had in plan for her.

Its pretty cool that there are 100 missionaries, only about 60 of them american, and only about 45 American Elders in our mission that covers all of China (although we are not allowed to go into mainland), and I happen to be one of them. Elder Holland came to talk to the mission in May and told them that he is not exaggerating at all or just saying it, but that only the missionaries with the highest potential are sent to the China Hong Kong Mission. So we need to reach our highest potential, because this mission is just that important to not only all of the Chinese people now, but also in the future. Because China sees what we do here, and will judge us according to that. 

Well, I hope you all have a great week!!

Love you!!

Love, Jordan

Heloooo!

I really wish I had my camera cord with me right now because this week some really cool things happened and we got some good pictures.

 

First, my companion came across an address another missionary gave him a long time ago for a man in our area. He lives in Saam Muhn Jai which is a little tiny fishing village. The path through the village is right in the middle of everyones' houses because everyones' houses are two parts. the part closest to the water is connected to a little personal pier thing that goes out into the water. There are a lot of boats and stuff, and some people live on them.

Well we went to this guys house and knocked on his door. He is probably in his 50s and lives alone in this village. He has been having really bad back problems and has been in the hospital a lot lately. But whenever he is home and not in the hospital, we have visited him and taught him. He is super humble and just so receptive to everything. I am really excited to see him progress.

This has been good, but it has taken a lot of our time away because we have to take a little mini bus to the village which is pretty far away.

 

Now at this point in my mission I think I have recognized what I need to try and focus on and try to learn most. Time management. With two large areas and a lot of work to do, we have been really busy, but have not been able to do as much as I have wanted. But I have started to try planning more effectively and talking to people no matter where we are or what we are doing.

 

Today was a lot of fun. We woke up early and went to a place to rent bikes. We rode all morning up to the mountains and then hiked to a waterfall called Brides Pool. It is super cool and was really fun. But now I am exhausted.

 

Well I am sorry that I dont have very much time. We are at a place to email where we dont get as much time.

 

But thanks for all of your prayers!

I got your package with the chocolate cinnamon bears this week!! thanks a ton!!

 

Things are actually going really well here. We have been having a lot of success and I think that we are going to even be having more pretty soon.

 

Love you all!!

 

Love, Jordan

Not Too Much

Well, this week was relatively uneventful. Last week was a lot more exciting with Chinese New Year and all of that stuff. But a lot of the festivities did not stop after Chinese New Year.

Something that we have seen a lot which is pretty cool are the dragon costumes. They usually have 2 or more people inside and a few people following them and playing Chinese drum things. They go to random stores and do an acrobat act. Usually they will jump on each others shoulders and do different things, or dance or something. Then they will go inside the store or business and the dragon will throw up all of this lettuce and vegetables. I am not sure why or how they do it, but it is pretty interesting. Then the business owners sweep it all outside and one guy I saw was pretty annoyed, but they all just let the dragons do it. Some of the dragons will be on stilts and they will jump on and off of them. It is really cool.

Things have been going pretty well this week as far as missionary work goes. We have been able to find some new investigators and we are trying to help an investigator who comes to church every week, follows all the commandments, reads, etc... to be baptized. He says he feels the Holy Ghost, but he wants an answer that lets him know God exists, because he always hears everyone talk about how they KNOW these things are true and how they KNOW God is there. So I have just been talking to him a lot about faith. The more I have learned about faith through this, the more amazing it is to me. But I ran into a roadblock while trying to talk about Faith, Hope, and Works and how they are related. The reason why is because in Chinese the way you say hope is Hei Mohng. But it doesnt actually mean hope, it means to wish for something. For example, if I wanted to say God wishes to communicate with us, I would use it and say, "Sahn heimohng tuhng ngohdeih kautung." So he didnt really quite understand what I meant and how hope was related to faith. But I think that this week or next week we can resolve his concerns and get him interviewed for baptism. 

I have learned a lot this week about how important it is to show people how much we care about them. Part of that is really developing a care for the people, and doing the missionary work for them, not for personal recognition or gain of any kind. 

I realized the other day that we can knock on doors in the villages in our area (It is very rare for missionaries here to ever knock doors their entire mission). So my comp and I decided to try it. The first guy I talked to told us we dont want to look for people there because everyone in that village was Baisahn (the religion where they worship their ancestors, like in mulan.). I told him that I wasnt going to leave because Baisahn people are good too and they believe families are important just like us. Then I asked about his family and just talked to him for a while. I told him about how our message could bless him and his family so much, and even his ancestors who he Baisahns to. He let us share our message and then we exchanged phone numbers. 

I have had so many experiences here where just listening to people and teaching to their interests has opened up doors for them. 

We have one investigator who is an older man that has met with missionaries every sunday night for 3 years just to learn English. Missionaries have had no success with him whatsoever and my companion said they wanted to drop him before I came. Everyone told me before I met him that I would need to cut him off otherwise he will go on and on and on about stories not related to our message at all.

But in the lesson when I met him I just let him talk until he tired himself out. Eventually he just talked and talked and then somehow started talking about how grateful he is for us and how he doesnt understand why we are nice enough to meet with him to help him with English. I told him its because we care about him and love the people here because they are God's children, and that we have an even better way to help him and that is through baptism. We were able to give him a baptismal date and hopefully he will start coming to church and progress towards that.

I went to the temple today and as always, it was fantastic. I am so grateful we have a temple here in Hong Kong. It is obviously my favorite temple in the world because I lived in it for 4 months, but no matter what temple you go to, the spirit felt inside is always the same. It just feels like home. Not meaning Alpine, UT, but even more so than that.

Well, I will try and send some pictures right now, but have a great week!! Cant wait to hear from you next week!

Love you all!

Love, Jordan

Gung Hei Faat Choi!!

Gung Hei Faat Choi!!

 

That actually means, "Congratulations, you're rich." Or something like that. But it is one of the most common things heard during Chinese New Year here in Hong Kong. Everyone says it to each other.

 

First of all, I want to thank you so much for your prayers. Last Friday we had a miracle day. We were out finding new investigators and we taught a bunch of kids on the street, then an older guy came up and wanted us to teach him. He also bought us food at McDonalds. Then a kid waited on the other side of the glass from where we were sitting in mcdonalds and after we were done, he wanted us to teach him.

 

The crazy part is that our "Anti" problem actually helped us with the older man. He has no religious background and doesnt know anything about God or Jesus. But he had heard that we were very evil people and he approached us wanting to know the truth and asking about what we really do because it didnt make sense to him. He was confused that we spend 2 years of our lives going on missions to help people. He said that if that is really what we are doing then we are the opposite of what everyone says about us. He was also amazed that we are able to learn Cantonese so fast. He was complaining that he has studied English his whole life but cant say anything more than introducing himself. It is amazing what different methods God uses to prepare people for us.

 

This week was so much fun. Proscelyting is ineffective on Chinese New Year so President Chan pretty much made all of Chinese New Year a long P-day. Monday we deep cleaned our apartment and it was GROSS. We took everything like the beds and stuff apart and cleaned everything. We killed hundreds and hundreds of bugs. And so far it has taken care of our bug problem... The only problem is that we are not completely done cleaning so the rest of today we will hopefully finish that up.

 

Monday we also got a call from someone in the Bishopric who I asked about Chan Baak. I dont know if you remember, but awhile ago I emailed you guys talking about a man who lives in a village in the mountains. he is 100 years old and invented his own car out of lawnmower pieces and stuff. Well I found out he was in Tai Wo ward but hasnt come to church for a few months. Brother Yeung told me that members go up and take care of him every week and I asked if he could show us how to hike up there so we could go every week and give him the sacrament. He was ecstatic and monday he took us up.

Chan Baak lives all alone in a deserted village. When he was younger he fought the Japanese in some war. Then he somehow ended up on Communist China's most wanted list and so he fled to Singapore. While he was there, his entire family was killed. His wife was tortured but there is no proof of her ever dying, so they cannot do the temple work for her yet. Then he moved back to Hong Kong into that village and everyone else there died but him. Then two years ago two missionaries in our area went exploring in the mountains and found him. He said he had been waiting for them and so they went up three times a week and taught him everything then baptized him. He says he is not sad about his family because the Holy Ghost tells him they can all live together someday because they have accepted the gospel in heaven.

 

Tuesday we went to BIG BUDDHA. The giant buddha statue on Lantau Island. The entire mission including President Chan went. It was soo cool. Except it was too foggy for us to even see the top of the buddha while standing right in front of it, so I wasnt able to get any pictures. hopefully next year I can. But the fog definitely gave the whole village and buddha a cool/creepy feel.

 

Yesterday we went with the Tai Po ward to a beach and had a barbecue and bonfires where we roasted fish balls and octopus tentacles and stuff. It was really fun and pretty, but when I went to eat something off of my metal stick, my lip touched a red hot part so now I have a burn scar from it. I did get some really good pictures from that, but I will have to send them another time because the place we went to email doesnt have USB ports....

 

Things are definitely getting better. We are starting to have a lot of success and we are having a lot of fun doing it. I have started learning how to read Chinese characters, so i can kind of read a lot of those, which is helpful for reading menus in restaurants and stuff (not to mention the Book of Mormon in Chinese. But I am not that good yet).

 

I just love being here. The people here are the best, the food (not all of it) is the best, the language and culture is incredibly interesting, everyday is an adventure. The best part of it is that while I am enjoying all of that, I am being a missionary and helping people everyday not just in ways that will influence the happiness of their lives here, but also that will help them in eternity.

 

Thanks for all of your prayers and for everything you do!!

 

I love you all!!

 

Love, Jordan

Ups and Downs (From Jan 18th)

The subject line may be a little misleading. What I mean by Ups and Downs is that this whole week has been one big up, but there have been a few unfortunate things that have happened.

I guess I can start by telling a little about the areas. The chapel is in Tai Po. It is a little city that is smaller than anywhere in my last area. Then the rest of the places in our area are out in the middle of nowhere up on mountains. I was reading a real estate sign that said there are more than 60 villages in just one of our areas. The other one has even more.

We have been doing a lot of finding lately. But neither my companion or I have any idea where anything is in our area. We have two of the biggest areas in the mission. His last companion didnt ever really leave the main city area and so we have just been exploring a ton lately. 

It has been good, except for we have run into a HUGE problem. EVERYONE in our area things we are some evil cult who was sent to China to do horrible things to the people here. There are rumors about us everywhere, and it does not help that in every school here they have had assemblies about the "mou muhn gaau" and how evil we are. Our latest task has been the APs asked us to find out the names of the schools so president chan can come visit them.

When we are walking around finding, people will literally duck their heads and run as fast as they can past us, then we can hear them talk about how scary that was. Luckily, we have been able to still find a few new investigators and have been able to help the few investigators they have. But it is only a matter of time until they face anti. Hopefully they come talk to us about it instead of just disappearing once they hear it.

Well anyways, we have had some fun exploring for villages. This morning at 3 in the morning we woke up and went to a mountain and hiked it to try and find a village that we could go finding in for our P-day morning.

At about 6 in the morning we found one. I took some pictures. It was half deserted, but there were still some old people living there. It literally was in the middle of nowhere, and I have no idea how the people got there or their houses. Then, we had an extremely traumatic experience.

While walking through the village, we walked by a box. out of the box popped two little kittens. They were meowing and walked up to us purring and pushing against our legs. I took some pictures of them because they werer really cute. Then we were trying to find some sign of human life and the cats followed us. The Sheung Shui missionaries came with us that morning and Elder Mariano really liked the cats but was worried about them getting lost because they were following us. We finally lost them and kept walking. We found a road and walked across it and heard a noise coming towards us. We saw a makeshift car/tractor thing booking it down the road. Right before it came, one of the kittens ran across the road and CRACK! It went right under the wheel. It made us all want to throw up it was so sad and gross. We decided we were all too exhausted from hiking and so we hiked to the closest main road abuot an hour and a half away and took a taxi back home. I have been scarred for life.

I have been eating weirder food than normal. We live right up against mainland, I have pictures from the roof of our apartment looking into Shenzhen. I have heard that up here there is some weird food. I heard right.

I was running kind of low on money for the month so I spent the rest of it on groceries so I wouldnt have to eat out because its cheaper to cook our food. Well that was a bad idea. 

We walked into our apartment the other day and it was INFESTED with cockroaches. They were everywhere. They were in the couch, on the counters, in the cabinets, and even frozen ones somehow in the freezer and fridge in our food. I have no idea what happened but we have spent the last few days killing them left adn right. Every night before I go to sleep I kill tons of bugs and spiders and stuff on the wall and ceiling above my bed because it creeps me out sleeping with them right above and next to me.

So now I have no food adn barely any money. I feel really bad, and the other kids in our apartment are doing the same thing, but could you maybe put some money in my account so I can eat food that has not been infested by bugs? :/ I am really sorry and next time I will not buy all my groceries at once now that I know what can happen outside of the temple apartment.

So with the little money I have I have been eating at really cheap street vendors. I have been getting some type of chopped up sea creature dumplings in soup with snake and cow skin floating around. Its really not too bad so I cant complain. But I only have enough to buy about three more days of food. Today I am going to try and buy some groceries with it and hope that it doesnt get infested like the food i bought last week....

Luckily we will be deep cleaning our apartment next week. So hopefully we will kill allof the bugs....

I have been exhausted with everythign going on lately. Elder Mariano said it is extremely rare for President Chan to have a missionary go senior before he is on his 7 to 12 move. So sometimes I wonder why I am on my 4th and in an area like the one I am in. But I am very very grateful because of how much I am learning, and how much I am needing to rely on the Lord for our success. Because we try to do all we can, but we couldnt have any of the success we are already having without His help.

I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week! 

Love, Jordan :)

Dai po, tai wo, and senior (From Jan 11, 2012)

Wow! Well this week will change my mission.

We had moves calls on Tuesday night to find out where we are going.
They made us try and guess until we got it right... I never guessed
right.

I am going to Tai Wo and Dai Po with Elder Marrott, the kid in one of
the first pictures I sent from hong kong up on the peak overlooking
hong kong. I am also going senior companion after just 3 transfers as
junior... Tai Wo and Dai Po both meet in the same building, but there
is only our companionship in charge of both of them because both areas
are really struggling..

The APs talked to me last night and told me that this area really
needs help and so they were trying to figure out who to put up there.
They were originally thinking an older missionary who is pretty fluent
in Cantonese and who could help things up there, but they said they
have really seen my leadership skills and skills as a missionary this
transfer, so they are moving me up there because they think I can help
it.

Needless to say, I feel pretty nervous, and I definitely think there
are missionaries who have been here longer and are more capable. But
hopefully we can have a lot of success up there and make it so its not
considered an area that needs help.

So we will live up in Fanling which is the farthest North apartment in
the mission. It is the closest to mainland, and you can actually see
mainland from our area. We kind of will be up in the boonies, except
for there are some areas with big markets and a lot of people. But
most of our area is all old villages and things like that. A lot of
the villages in our area are up the mountains so when the missionaries
go up to them, they arent required to wear their white shirts and
ties, because it is quite a hike.

I am going to miss my old area SO MUCH. But I am excited to go to Dai
Po/Tai Wo. The last few days we met with our investigators for my last
time. Some of them are progressing so well. The one who is in the
Triad was one of my favorite lessons ever because he really has
progressed so far and so fast, and it was really cool to listen to him
talk about how much his life is changing..

I am pretty shocked still about all the changes, so I am not sure what
else to say. But next week I will have gone to church and explored the
area a little bit, so hopefully I will have more.

My companion and I have the youngest companionship in the mission by
far. The next youngest companionship has someone in our group and
someone who has been here almost a year. Everyone in the mission that
I have talked to about it is shocked, and I am sure all eyes are on us
right now. We could either kill the "struggling" area or we could have
tons of success and bring it back. And I am not going to let these
areas go more downhill.

Well, hopefully next week I will have some interesting stuff to write
about. Have a fantastic week!

Love you all!

Love, Jordan

Cheung Chau (From Jan 5th)

Wow, what a week/day. The problem is that I cant really remember much from this week because today so much happened. So I will just start with today. 

 

Our zone decided to do a zone activity on Cheung Chau, a little island you have to take a ferry to get to. It is the COOLEST place I have ever been to here. It is pretty small so in about an hour you can probably walk from one side to the other. There are lots of trails, caves, jungles, and other stuff; but there are also some villages that are really cool. They consist of buildings, apartments and stuff with narrow little streets in between. Everyone there rides bikes to get around because there is no room for cars on any street on the island. The police, firefighters, ambulances, etc... are little motorcycle/tractor things that are small enough to go on the roads. Then on the outskirts of these villages are tons of shanty houses made out of tin roofs and things like that. You can look right into the peoples houses and watch them eat or do whatever theyre doing.

Cheung Chau is really well known for being one of the most haunted places in Hong Kong. I guess it started a long time ago when there was some pirate that had a huge fleet and about 50,000 other pirates working for him. he used to hide all of his treasure inside of a cave we went through on the island. There are many legends stemming from that alone. On top of that, besides Tin Shui Wai (they made a movie about it called "city of sorrows", and it is the smallest mission area in hong kong), it has had the most amount of suicides. But most of them have happened since 2000. They also have an annual festival where thousands of people come to the island to watch people do crazy acrobatics and different balancing things.

If mom and dad are able to come to Hong Kong to pick me up, this little island is somewhere we will HAVE TO go to. It honestly is the coolest place I have ever been to in my life.

 

I got the Ward Christmas CD yesterday! It was so great to hear Sam, Kylie, and Madi's voices! The girls did a great job on the song! It was also cool to hear at the beginning when it announces the missionaries and where they are serving. It was so cool to hear the names of all the kids in our ward who are right by my side doing the same work all over the world! I am proud of all of them and hope that the ones who are turning 19 soon will go on missions too. What could possibly be better than devoting all of your energy and time into one thing: Helping other people improve their lives through the gospel!

 

I actually havent put too much thought into my new area, because I am still focusing on the one I'm in. But I had a dream I was going to somewhere on Hong Kong island or in the zone at least.

 

I was talking to the APs last night asking them how to even more effectively help the people we meet with understand the importance of the things we want to teach them. Because we have gotten about 50 new investigators these last 6 weeks, and most of them are doing well, but I just want them all to progress. They told me that I just need to keep doing what I am doing, and not to change at all, especially when I go to my new area. I am a little concerned because there are a few areas that are really slow right now and the older missionaries in those areas would be difficult to work with because for whatever reason they just dont have the reputation for being very motivated. With all of the succuss Elder Palfreyman and I have been having, we have been under the spotlight a lot lately, and I am afraid they are going to send me with a companion who doesnt have the motivation to go out and work. It is difficult while Junior Companion because if your senior comp doesnt want to work, sometimes no matter how much you try and motivate them, it doesnt work. I have been so lucky to be paired up with a companion this move who is willing to work and who has definitely treated me just as much as senior as him. That is how it should be I think. But I will just have to remember that someday when I go senior.

 

Eh whatever, it isnt important to dwell on that. This week we were walking around and found ourselves in a really cool chinese graveyard where we met some really cool kids. But the craziest thing right now is that we have an investigator who is a part of the Triad. He wants to really change his life, but he has not been living the best life up til this point. It is pretty crazy. I hope he gets baptized because he is a really good guy.

 

Well, I dont have much time and I feel really bad because there is a native missionary sitting right next to me. (him and I are really really good friends) and he is a convert so his parents arent very supportive. Well he was only on emailing for about 5 minutes because he didnt have any from anyone. He is now trying to listen to videos on lds.org and write in his journal. But he doesnt speak any english so he really doesnt understand what the videos are saying.

 

Talk to you all next week!!

 

Love, Elder Jordan roe bingham