Thais at the Temple

Spending every day in the temple is an awesome experience. This past week the patron housing across from the temple was full as almost sixty Thai saints traveled from their native land to attend the temple. In order to accommodate the extra patrons, we did two extra sessions a day. In one session on Tuesday morning, eleven patrons received their own endowment. After the session, four families were sealed for time and eternity in a double sealing session.

Kiantanan and Nathea Kwanmuang

We were privileged to spend the week with these wonderful people. They came to the temple each day, filling the special sessions and doing other ordinances on behalf of their kindred dead. The six Thai youth faithfully attended every baptismal session available. They were incredible people. They know that the future of the Kingdom in Thailand belongs in their hands. Their testimonies of Christ are firm and they are standfast in the gospel, the light of the Spirit shining in their faces. I managed to get a photo of these two of the Thai sisters before they went back home to Thailand.

We had difficulty communicating with the Thai saints with the language barriers, but the language of love is universal, and by Saturday, we had made fast friends with many of them.

In addition to the Thai saints this week, our beautiful temple was visited by, Elder Steven Snow, the church historian, and the Asia Area Presidency, Elder Gerrit Wong, Elder, Sam Wong and Elder Randy Funk. Our temple sees a lot of history made and miracles occur on a weekly basis.

Elder Snow

Elder Gong

Elder Wong

Elder Funk

On Saturday, the Tolo Harbour Stake had a special stake temple day, followed by the annual High Priest Social held in the old chapel in the temple. They invited the temple missionaries to join them for the meeting and meal afterward. President Wong gave us more of the history of our unique temple. It was fascinating to learn about the miracles that occurred to bring the temple to Hong Kong.

The High Priest group of Tolo Harbor Stake and Hong Kong Temple Presidency

It’s been a tiring, but wonderful week for us, but we can’t imagine a better way of using our energy than in the service of our God.

Love and prayers from Hong Kong,
Elder and Sister Ball

Interesting adventures on the way to the toilet…

With the cooler, not-quite-as-sticky fall weather in Hong Kong, we are venturing out again into the city for sight-seeing and exploring. On Thursday this week we decided to go to the famous Walled City of Kowloon.

The Walled City is one of the oldest parts of Hong Kong and was originally built to manage the production of salt during the Song Dynasty about 1000 AD. (As checked out on Wikipedia.) It was used as a fortress against invading armies and for various other reasons. As late as 1987, the city was densely populated and was largely governed by the Triads and the home for drug lords, prostitutes, gambling rings and other unsavory activities and had deplorable living conditions for its residents. In 1992 the Walled City was evacuated and demolished and in 1995 the Walled City Park was opened. It contains remnants of the old walled city, but is now mostly a lovely garden setting.

We had heard that getting the the Walled City was somewhat complicated and involved bus and train transfers. But upon checking it out on my google map app, I discovered that we could ride on Bus 13 right to the park. Mystified about this elusive bus 13, we checked with a pleasant young woman who works in the lobby of our apartment building and she directed us to the back-side of the apartment courtyard. Sure enough, there was an obscure sign announcing the stop for mini-bus 13, which came whipping around the corner a few minutes later. We boarded the empty bus along with another young woman.

What followed was my favorite part of the day…the bus ride to the Walled City of Kowloon Park. We traveled a circuitous route through the Wampoa district, just north of where our apartment is located, and saw parts of our community we hadn’t visited before. The streets were teaming with shoppers and shop keepers, construction workers and barriers. Passengers got on and off the bus at regular intervals.

We had quickly learned that the bus driver spoke no English, so we asked the young woman we had boarded with how to say “Walled City” in Cantonese. She yelled our intended destination to the driver and the two of them yelled back and forth to each other in Chinese for several minutes, apparently about how to pronounce Walled City. These little buses hold 16 passengers and ours was soon full. Mysteriously, the news that the funny looking white people were going to the Walled City was passed onto all every other passenger that boarded the bus, and they all took personal responsibility to take care of us. As we neared our destination, our fellow travelers let us know with much pointing and pantomime how many stops until ours. When we finally did arrive at our designated stop, each passenger seemed invested in making sure we landed on the sidewalk safely.

Since we had passed the park just before our stop, we turned to walk back the way we had come, when suddenly we heard a horn honk behind us. Turning around, we found that every passenger on the bus, and the driver, was frantically pointing forward! Apparently they knew we needed to walk another block before we could cross the busy road to go back to the park. It was like living in a comic strip and we laughed about it the rest of the day.

The Walled City Park was beautiful, but just as we accidentally found the entrance to the remnants of the actual Walled City, Gaylon announced that he needed to find a bathroom, so we began to search for one.

Here’s some of the sights we found on our way to a TOILET:

We finally found what we had been looking for at the end of the trail. See if you can spy Grandpa Ball in one of these photos.

After our Walled City adventure, we spent the afternoon at Gold Coast Beach, checking out the great Gold Coast Beach Hotel and yachts and walking along the water front.

The temple was more quiet this week, and we spent a lot of time preparing for a busy week coming up.

Thanks for your comments!
Love and prayers from Hong Kong,
Elder and Sister Ball

Hot, sticky coming to an end…

It’s almost the middle of October. In Boise, the highs are in the 70’s and there has already been a hard freeze in the gardens. And here in Hong Kong, we are barely starting to feel some relief from the hot, sticky summer climate. The highs are in the 80’s and the lows are in the 70’s with the humidity tolerable, averaging about 60%. We don’t need a mop cloth to wipe the sweat from our eyes when we walk for any length of time. It’s almost pleasant to be outside now.

Elder Ball and I were busy at the temple for most of the week, but we did get in a couple of days of adventure. For P-Day, we went shopping in the textiles district, Sham Shui Po and met a lady with a pet parrot that could sing Happy Birthday. It didn’t sing for us, but it did pose for a photo. (Can you spot Elder Ball in the fabric store?)

Grandpa, especially, enjoyed fabric shopping. He compared it to sitting in the dentist chair.

On Thursday we took a bus through the Aberdeen Tunnel to the village of Aberdeen, which is on the southern tip of Hong Kong Island. It is a maritime village with a lot of water traffic, a floating resturant, the Jumbo, a floating B & B, many small touring junks as well as larger ones, yachts and big industrial boats. We took a junk out to the Jumbo floating restaurant and had some great dim sum for lunch.

Later in the afternoon, Elder Ball and I took the ferry to Peng Chung Island, thinking we would have dinner in one of the seafood restaurants there. But, there were no resaurants, and also no cars. Just thousands of bikes everywhere and one little market located in a narrow alley. We walked around the park and promenade next to the harbour and then went back to TST for dinner in a great Italian place. (Elder Ball is waiting for you to spot him in the alley.)

On Friday, we met a lovely couple at the temple who came from Pakistan, Anwar and Sharish Sahib. This couple, who came from Pakistan was an historical event for the church. The church is definitely spreading throughout the world as we see ancient prophesies being fulfilled every day.

Last weekend was conference weekend for us. Elder Ball and I took some time on Sunday to go to Victoria Park and witness one of Hong Kong’s famous traditions; the gathering of the domestic workers and Muslim women that happens every Sunday in the park. It is a time-honored tradition, but was an unusual sight for us to view this unfamiliar cultural event.

Elder Ball and I certainly enjoyed watching general conference on YouTube and listening to the inspired messages of our prophet.

We hope that all our family and friends are doing well.
Love and Prayers from Hong Kong,
Elder and Sister Ball

Two weeks to catch up on!

And a busy, hectic two weeks it was. Elder Ball and I, along with Elder and Sister Wilson, another of the great Temple Missionary couples that we serve with, coordinated a double statutory holiday on October 1st and 2nd. This involved many hours of preparation on all of our parts. I, personally spent many days and nights in front of the computer, both at home and at the temple, working on schedules for both days and gathering materials we needed for these important days of temple service.

Because, you see, the patrons in the Hong Kong China Temple district, often only have limited opportunity to attend the temple. The law requires that all employees get the statutory holidays off, so the HK Temple have special permission to be open for five sessions on these days. It is up to the temple missionaries to organize these holiday openings. We rely on the Area Senior Missionary couples to help us and whatever regular ordinances workers who volunteer to come on their holidays to serve. We greatly appreciate the willingness of these wonderful workers to help us out on their day off.

But God is in charge of His temple. This was made abundantly clear as we served both Wednesday and Thursday this week. We had sufficient help each day for the number of patrons who attended the sessions and participated in other sacred ordinances. On Wednesday, we had a good number of workers who could come to help. We also were inundated with an unusual number of patrons who flooded the temple. We were able to accommodate each of the patrons and they all left the temple spiritually uplifted and edified.

On Thursday, the number of workers was drastically reduced, but so were the patrons. Some of the patrons who came on Thursday came with special needs, which we were able to handle because we had more time to devote to those needs.

Myeth Ladderan was one of these patrons. A faithful member of the Isand 2 Branch of Filipino sisters, she had a desire to do the temple work for her deceased parents and be sealed to them. She spent the day in the temple doing her mother’s work. Sister Salmon had helped her with the family history work previously to her temple attendance, and Sister Castleton found that she had sufficient time on Thursday to make sure that all the paperwork was in place so that by the end of the day Myeth was able to take part in the sealing of her parents and then be sealed to them. She was also able to take part in the sealing of her grandparents to each other and her father to his parents, It was a touching and beautiful experience for all who were involved.

Myeth is the beautiful Filipina Sister in the center.

In addition to the statutory holiday opening, we had two Indian Families who traveled from India to take part in temple ordinances. The Millers and Santhanam families were humble and diligent in their temple service. The youth came to almost every baptismal session and the parents were in as many sessions as they could attend after they received their own ordinances on Tuesday, including the sacred sealing of their individual families for time and eternity.

Especially touching was Jennifer Santhanam’s bravery. When the Indian Families arrived on Tuesday. thirteen-year-old Jennifer was with them. Jennifer has been crippled from birth. A birth defect in her lower limbs has made it impossible for her to walk. On Tuesday, she was invited to participate in doing baptisms for the dead, but she has limited experience with water and shyly declined the offer. However, on Thursday, she expressed a desire to be part of the temple baptism and was baptized twice by her father, who immersed himself with her, his face next to hers as they entered the water. God knew what we needed on Thursday, and provided the subtle arrangements for this miracle to occur.

On Friday I was assigned to serve in the baptistry. Before I went to the baptistry, I was prompted to quickly print some of our family file cards of sisters who needed their baptisms and confirmations completed. To my delight and joy, little Jennefer performed the baptism for four of our family file sister’s cards. Her father carried her into the font and each time she was baptized, she whimpered a little then buried her face in her fathers neck before he immersed himself with her. When Jennifer’s father carried her out of the font, she had a radiant smile on her face. It was a spiritual experience I will always treasure as I felt the utter happiness of my sister ancestors whose work was done by this sweet child.

The Santhanam family with the temple missionaries.

Our testimonies of temples and the saving ordinances performed therein have grown exponentially as we spend our days in serving the Lord. We love what we do in the temple, even though there are many days when we arrive back to our apartment exhausted. There is so much unrest and chaos in the world. Even here in Hong Kong young people are protesting and violence threatens the city. But we are safe as we go to and from the temple and take care of our responsibilities. When we enter the temple, the concerns of the world fall away as we deal in the affairs of Heaven on behalf of our kindred dead. It’s a wonderful life we’re living.

Some of the beautiful sisters in the Pen 3 Branch.

God bless our family and friends!
Love and prayers from Hong Kong,
Elder and Sister Ball