August 28, 2016

Hey everyone!

Well, this week has been pretty funny! Between trying to teach Elder Chan how to say bleach without swearing, trying to help missionaries with crazy apartment problems, and a lot of different random stuff. We had a lot of things that were just crazy, Mandarin transfers added a LOT of people to the Mandarins this week, and I tried to just Speak Your Language Mandarin with them, my Mandarin's been improving like super fast this week and I feel pretty good about it haha! Looks like they're getting ready to hybrid me. :P

It's been a lot of good things, although all of our investigators fonged us this week (didn't come to the lessons) and so we are kinda bummed about that. Dang, super crazy!

Rainbow is looking like a super good potential, she's ready to be baptized except for she's trying to improve her relationship with her mom before she asks her. She'll be baptized in October! We are so happy!

Thanks for reading the weakly newsletter (Yes, that was a pun because this week is super weak. :D)

--Elder Chance Farr

And....

This week has seriously been awesome. We have been doing what we can, with crazy transfers we have just been pushing to get things done!  I've decided I am going to use Visual Basic in order to design an app that can take care of all the stocking for me. It's been necessary for a long time. Also, we have officially moved to Windows 10! For me it feels like night and day, Windows 10 works so much better for me!

So for the crazy situation in the apartments: This week is what we call the week of the broken toilets. 3 toilets broke this week and all started leaking profusely. And so of course we were called by scrambling missionaries attempting a futile effort at changing it themselves! So we had to have some plumbers go over to take care of them. Explosive toilets.

Spiritually I've had a lot of realizing how much of a gift this gospel is. As well as the gift of tongues. We get a lot of opportunities to speak to mainlanders, so I can speak quite a bit of Mandarin without any study of it.

One of the cool things I gleaned in personal study is this:

"Other than our will, there is no present we can give God that he hasn't given us first. But giving him our agency, something that is ours and something praised in the scriptures, is something that is a true gift to God." That's not direct, but I think it's close to the way Elder Anderson put it. Isn't that a cool concept? Sacrificing our will is truly the thing to be praised.

My past companion, Elder Wilcoxson, got a needle stuck in his foot. Through that experience I learned the word for Industrial Sewing Needle. I've learned these days that President Lam has the funniest dry humor. He told Elder Wilcoxson that now he has just a tiny inkling of what the Savior went through. Yeah, most people would think that comment was inappropriate, especially because of the laugh that came from it. Such a President Lam joke! President Lam (who is a doctor) doesn't actually have a license here, but often times he just takes care of that stuff. In this instance, he is in the hospital because they had to cut his shoe off (RIP Elder Wilcoxson's shoe, 2016) but I heard he should get discharged today.

Me with the branch president from Gwong Zhou 2nd Branch

(a branch from Mainland China that visited Hong Kong)

MASSIVE galleons in Tsuen Wan

A cute little girl that sent us a picture on her birthday!

(I asked, this is the same cutie that he taught to cross her eyes and sends him pictures all the time!)

This is with the Lee family, the bishop's brother who isn't a member. His other entire family are members, so we are trying to work with him. He finally prayed! It's exciting.

August 21, 2016

Hi Everyone!
Chance was super busy yesterday and wasn't even at a computer (he was just emailing through his phone) so he couldn't send out a mass email. Here's the info though, from my own letter :)
Happy P-Day Everyone!
Sheriece

Hey Mom!
It's super crazy, I can't believe everyone is going back to school and that Wade is FLIPPIN 10! Man. I just realized that by the time I'm home he'll be 11 and he'll just already be a stinker. I'm hoping he's still as cute as he is right now when I get home. I missed all the good parts and get all the bad parts ;) Haha, Just Kidding!

Everything is great over here, we are just wrecking online right now so that we can have referrals to pan out to the missionaries.

Of course we have funny stories. Yesterday Elder Chan and Elder George started play fighting and Elder George pinned his arms behind him. We have this thing about spanking each other in the temple and so Elder George started spanking Elder Chan repeatedly. Elder Chan, being the scrawny, scrappy guy he is forced Elder George over and started spanking him and accidentally ripped Elder George's pants. Aaaaand it's all on video. XD

Elder Chan's English is coming along really well, he's doing great! My characters are getting pretty good. They are pretty slow but I'm starting to read the Book of Mormon in Chinese. :D

A Ling is hard to get a hold of lately but Rainbow is ROCKING IT! Rainbow wants to be baptized so bad, she's so ready. She wants to develop her relationship with her mom first before she gets baptized, so we are working with her to help her build that relationship. It's so sweet! The field is white!

Also, we baptized someone on Friday. We had Mainland visitors and we got to teach! AAAH! I was so scared to do the baptism! And yes, there are pictures :D

The debate was SO MUCH FUN! It was about an old policy in Hong Kong, and I got named the MVP for speaking a language I didn't know and not being someone who knows about Hong Kong and still providing valid points on the subject. Our less active made the activity so it was awesome to support her and make it fun. I love this ward, we are just so funny, everyone teases everyone.

Love you!!
--Elder Farr

Awesome Debate Pictures!

This little girl crossing her eyes is Aimee. She's hilarious, I taught her how to cross her eyes and now she just sends us random pictures with her crossing her eyes in them.

These are some Mandarin kids. A whole Mainland branch came down for a conference. It was AWESOME. They love missionaries and they treated us so well. Man, I felt a little guilty because sometimes I feel just like a dumb kid. We do our best to be good.

This is Sister Choi, from Mainland China, who we helped get baptized on Friday.

August 14, 2016

Hey Everyone!

Alright, so there's not much time, and we have a lot to do.

So, most importantly, we have had a baptism. Brother Ng was baptized yesterday, and I'm so happy about that! He has done so well and we sang for them yesterday :):) His baptism was really spirit feeling (the boy can't speak English anymore, ha!). There was so much going on, and I'm very impressed with his ability to truly believe. Man, it's strong! He's so awesome :)

We also had a bunch of stuff going on because as house elders we are in charge of other people's housing, and working on those. Life has been literally crazy, we worked super hard pushing the place out. So much fun, and it ended up we needed to move a couch. We couldn't move it out (the elders aren't supposed to take the doors off the apartments but someone apparently had done it to get the couch inside!), so we we cut it in half! With a saw! Yeah, Sister Lam was terrified we were going to get injured, but no such :D:D So yeah, that's it!

--Elder Farr :)

August 7, 2016

Hey Everyone!

Hey everyone I'm so sorry, I have to go really soon and do not have time to send my mass email. Sorry! :(

I'll just give a quick spiritual message: God knows what he's doing and although we never really understand why the tempest rages on, we must know that God knows why. Fung sam (Relax.) God has it taken care of. Love you all.

Hope everything's good!

--Elder Chance Farr

Just a few more tidbits from Mom's letter:

This wee has been alright, lots of stress and pressure but it's not anything I can't handle. It's fun to wake up every morning determined to destroy your challenges. :) I've decided if you wqake up confident and willing to just bust through the wall, that's when the miracles happen. Of course, we as missionaries always remember that God is the only reason we can burst through each individual challenge, but we are "Entitled to the help and power of the Holy Ghost." Therefore, we can be confident in our ability to succeed.

I got a haircut! Let's just say HKers don't know how to cut white people's hair.

I've been eating grapefruits like crazy here. I have no idea why but they are so delicious these days.

It's interesting because I've been looking at how the mission really magnifies your weaknesses and allows you to clearly see them and know if their presence. There are a lot of times when we are blinded of our weaknesses by pride, and I have a lot. I found this week that one of my main weaknesses is wanting everything to be perfect, and I get harsh when something's important to me. I definitely have a lot to work on! Ya'll know, ya'll probably remember :P (I reminded him that he gets this trait from his DAD! :D)

Monday night to Tuesday afternoon was a level 10 typhoon, so we couldn't go outside for that period of time. That was crazy!

Elder Hui left, wow. :( So hard. He's so awesome!

We got to eat with the Au family! Man, it was awesome. Elder Hui was leaving, so we ate like kings, and A Ling our investigator came. Oh my, was that a blast. There was a honeydew melon that was literally sweeter than the popsicles we ate. How awesome is that?? (I asked if they grew the fruit there, he said that most of the fruit is imported so he doesn't know why it's so amazing.)

We have been teaching a less active member and her little girl, and her little girl is HILARIOUS. Obviously I know how to get along with kids but we are seriously like best friends now. It becomes hard because of the fact that we have to consistently take care of her and make sure we are still teaching stuff, not just playing :)

Brother Chu has a baptismal date (in October) AND came to church! I can't wait to share the Plan of Salvation with him because I know he'll benefit from it so much.

All I can share today is that God calls those who are willing, and we have to be obedient to be chosen. :)

So I forgot to tell you, I totally got to watch them put a new statue of Moroni on the temple. That place where I live. I'm so blessed !! :D:D I'm loving the temple! So here's pictures of that, of the massive amounts of food, and last Monday's surprise cheng out with Yoshi. Also a random shot out of an apartment.

In the picture of us eating it has A Ling (our investigator)! She's in the pink.

July 31, 2016

Hey Everyone! The Orientor's here!
(the Orientor is the monthly mission newsletter that Elder Farr is in charge of producing!)

Hey Everyone! I don't have a ton of time, but I'd like to just work on talking about investigators.

So we have been meeting with A ling, and she has been doing really well. She has a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon, and Priesthood power. She's really interesting, and I'm feeling that we might be able to help her progress. It's been a bit slow but slow is good for understanding.

We also taught Brother Chu, and he's accepted a baptismal date! He said this week he can come to church and every week after that! We had to wait on Brother Ng's baptism, just because of the fact that he's in mainland right now. Oh well :P Start of August, he will be baptized :)

Rainbow's doing awesome! She wants to know which church is true and she's been working hard to find out. She's so awesome!

So yeah, no new investigators this week, although we are excited to continue teaching.

Life has been awesome out here, and we have been working hard to keep moving. :)

Thanks for reading everyone! Sorry for the short email!

--Elder Chance Farr

P.S. -- I forgot!

So I forgot to tell everyone about the best thing that happened. So we were coming back from the temple and we had Elder Shukis ask us if we had received a picture yet. We hadn't so we were confused, and then President Lam showed us a picture someone took from the chapel of the temple. It became apparent to us that there were a pair of conspicuous pants in one of the windows. Yeah, Elder Chan's pants. So crazy! So we can't hang stuff in the window anymore :D

Everything's going good. The spiritual thing that I want to tell you is just the fact that the Lord looks after all of our trials, not just the big ones. Also Moroni 7 is awesome, and I'm memorizing Helaman 5:12 :D

Love you all!

I know two of these guys! Who's that third guy on the left??

These two are pictures he has worked on for the newsletter.

The picture that says "The Orientor" is a picture he took in Ma On Shan.

Getting our crazy party goods

 These are pictures of a party we had for our children's' English class, which is the best thing in the whole world. So many investigators. :D

The Hong Kong temple got a new Moroni statue this week!

The following pictures are from Yoshi, who takes care of the Ma On Shan missionaries. He bumped into Elder Farr and Elder Chan today, after eating lunch with Elders Stone, Wilcoxson and Chu, but still took these two out to eat anyway.

Thank you Yoshi!!

The Hong Kong Temple out the restaurant window!

Mmmmm... this Vietnamese food looks delicious!