2nd week in Ngau Tau Kok

Hello!

This week has been super good! We met with a lot of investigators, and we were able to find a few more! One sad thing happened is that one investigator was supposed to be baptized yesterday but we met with him last Wednesday and he didn't seem to want God's help through baptism. He didn't want to be baptized but he agreed to keep meeting with us and to keep learning. All of our investigators here are super good and kind people so that makes me really happy to be serving them and to work my hardest for them.

I also got to meet the new mission President and his wife. The new mission president came to our ward this Sunday and bore his testimony in Chinese. He served in my area when he was a missionary here. He still remembers Chinese but it sounds like a white person is speaking. But pretty much every missionary sounds like that. His wife was born in Hong Kong and she gave her testimony and her Chinese sounded like a white person as well ha ha. She hasn't spoken it in so long so that kind of surprised me because Sister Lam and President Lam still sounded like Chinese people but Sister Phillips didn't so it surprised me but she will pick it up a lot faster and be fluent in no time. But they are super nice! After church they got lost trying to find their way back to mission head quarters in Kowloon tong so we helped them find their way to the MTR. We got to talk to them for a while and they are just super kind and loving! they are a little overwhelmed with all the duties of mission president but I know they will do amazing. They are super nice and I love them so much! President Phillips is decently old but last week he went out finding with some missionaries for 3 hours. And to go finding at this point in summer for 3 hours is not super fun. So i was really impressed. He is super cool and I like him so much!

I love Elder Delabahan so much! He is a super good singer and one of our investigators can sing so she sang in Japanese which was super weird that she knew how to sing in Japanese but it sounded super good and Elder Delabahan sang with her! It was pretty cool! Elder Delabahan is super amazing! Elder Delabahan is a teacher in his home country which is super cool! So i have really learned a lot from him!

The language is progressing! I love it. I can understand pretty much everything but there are still a lot of things that I don't understand. I have memorized 500 Chinese characters. So I know how to read a little bit. I can almost read from the book of Mormon in Chinese ha ha. I don't know how to write the 500 characters but I think I will learn how to write later. 

 

That is pretty much it, nothing too special this week.

Elder Gu

Pday Pics...

 The investigator who can sing in Japanese

 Our investigators Becky and Ken. They are brother and sister

 Views from my area.

Some grassy area above our apartment.

All the elders in our apartment. The other two are Brits and love soccer!

Ngau Tau Kok

Hello,

So this is the first email from my new area. It is kind of on the complete other side of Hong Kong. I was on the west side before in Yuen Long but now I am more on the East side. And the geography here is completely different. In Yuen Long it flat and here it has more hills. Also in Yuen Long the city wasn't as big because it is all the way out in the New Territories. But in Ngau Tau Kok the city is a lot bigger and a lot easier to get lost. So that has been pretty hard to get used to. I still don't know where I am going. 

It was pretty weird to be leaving my first area after 9 months. It felt like I was leaving on my mission again and leaving my family and friends. It is really interesting that that is what a mission can do. It can bring you close to so many people in a short amount of time. 

I like Ngau Tau Kok so far. I have met with a few investigators and potentials so that is good to get to know them. My companion has been a huge help. His name is Elder Delabahan and he is from the Philippians. He is 23 years old and he has been out on his mission for 3 months. So it has been cool to help him learn the language. He is the sweetest, most kind person you will ever meet. I love him already.  His conversion story is pretty cool. He was in the Philippians and he went to a music concert and David Archuleta was there and when he sang my companion felt something that he had never felt before and then he did some research on David Archuleta and found that he was a Mormon and so that is when he started in our church. my companion is also a really good singer.  I live in an apartment with one other companionship of Elders from England. This has been really fun because we play soccer every morning and we do a lot of soccer finding. It is also very fun to talk about the World Cup with them because they are both really passionate about England. 

Over all the new area is been good! Hard to get adjusted to but it will be ok.

That is pretty much all 

I love you all

Elder Gu

 Last time with President and Sister Lam.

 Last time with my Yuen Long investigators and LA.

 This member family and then the younger looking sisters just got back from their missions. The ones on the very right of the couch are deaf as well.

 Deaf member family that gave us dinner before we left.

 Cheung Jau for pday.

 Me and Elder Delabahan.

 Yan Yan my Yuen Long investigator who will get baptized on the July 22.

Transfers!!

So to start off, I will be getting transferred to be companions with Elder Delabahan in Ngau Tau Kok. I am pretty excited because Elder Delabahan is a cool guy! But I am also super super sad because leaving Yuen Long has been really hard. I have really grown close to everyone in the ward and all of our investigators. Being here for almost 9 months and then leaving makes me feel like I am leaving my family all over again. I really have started to see these people as Christ would see them. And everyone has helped me so much here. I came here not knowing too much Chinese and everyone has been really good with helping me so it is pretty hard to leave people who have helped out so much.

Also in Hong Kong I didn't expect too many people here to watch the world cup but what i have found out is that literally everyone here watches it and likes it so that has been cool to find out because I love soccer so it has been really cool to talk to people about that!

This week we changed Yan Yan's baptism to July 22. I hope she can make it for that date! I will only get to teach her one last time before I move areas. We move on Thursday so I will get to teach her on Tuesday. So I am pretty happy about that.

Chi Lam knows that I love soccer and whenever we have had stake soccer activities Chi Lam loves going and playing with me and when he heard that I was leaving he was super sad because he wants someone to play soccer with him haha. he said he will save up a lot of money and then come to America and play soccer with me haha. I thought that was nice of him to say.

Other than that nothing too big really happened this week haha.

I would love to hear about the world cup form all of you.

 The Lau family and Au Yeung family took us out to a Thailand restaurant! The food was amazing!!

Hilary took us to a famous place to eat in Yuen Long.

These next ones are of the little girls we teach at English class.

I love this picture because it is some of the deaf members in our ward. I can't communicate with them very well but I have learned a little Chinese sign language to say somethings but they always make me super happy.
​

This is Toto. He was really sad to see me leave haha

Our bishop's wife and daughter

Our ward correlator and his other daughter.

Our ward correlator's daughter. She is adorable.

​This was at church. It is the classic Chinese poses that they taught us

 These are all pictures at sports night. Chi Lam got a new phone so Hilary took a lot of pictures with us to try it out.

Hello I don't have too much time today to email. But I just want to give a shout out to my dad for being the best out there! He has been my best friend and my biggest example. I constantly strive to be like him and I am thankful for all he does for me!! I love you so much dad!

And pictures:

 ​Last P day with the boys!! (Elder dud field and Elder Frey)

 ​Dinner with the Wongs.

 ​Cutting dragon eyes from these trees.

 ​3 most adorable girls. They attend our English class.

 Language study with Katherine Yu. She just returned from her mission in Canada.

Richest place in Hong Kong that i have been to ​and a classic fish dinner to eat.

 ​Some of the best members ever!

​Dinner with ng ching a member in our ward. 4 Cantonese elders and 2 Mandarin Elders.

Humidity is the Best!

Ha louh

This week has been really really good even though we had to do a lot of finding. And what I have noticed is in the humidity which is like 86% every day and when it is like 85 degrees it is impossible to stay dry haha. But it is really quite fun to go on the streets and just try to talk to people. At the beginning of my mission I didn't like it at all. But now I like going out and just talking to people about who they are. Some of the people are really cool and have really cool background stories and are really prepared to receive the message of Christ and others reject you.

This week the other most interesting thing that happened was that Hilary invited us over to her apartment for dinner! She cooked pretty much all the food so she was super happy and really excited to have us over. We made some brownies to take over as well. But that isn't the cool part. The cool part is that her mom is a less active and her dad is a nonmember and we were able to get to know them better. Previously Hilary's dad has had some bad experiences with missionaries and so he thought that they were never going to invite the missionaries back over to their house. However,  I think that we have helped Hilary so much that he has finally opened back up to missionaries and was okay with having us come over for dinner. We shared a lesson of prayer and it was a pretty cool lesson. Hilary's mom opened up and started crying at the end because she hadn't felt the spirit for such a long time which was super cool. So over all I am really happy. And not only that but Hilary also invited our investigator Chi Lam to eat with us as well. So Chi Lam was there with us as well!

Other than that we just did a lot of finding this week because some lessons had fallen through.

Love you all!

Elder Gu

 

 A park where we go finding.

 ​Just a classic picture waiting for the light rail train.

 Also waiting for the train.

 Found this world cup guy which got me super excited that I would be missing the world cup...

 ​More finding pictures...this one is in Ping Saan.

 ​This is Hilary and Chi Lam at the dinner!

 ​This is Hilary and her mom.