Hong Kong: WHAT MORE CAN HE SAY THAN TO YOU HE HATH SAID?

October 5, 2015

Family,

Dad - Wang DX is good. He came to church yesterday and is planning on attending conference with us, at least 1 session. Liu DX moved back to Mainland unexpectedly because he can't find work and doesn't know if he'll be back. He sent us a text saying how he was grateful for us teaching him and could tell how we loved the Lord, and he finished with his testimony. Hopefully he can keep reading the Book of Mormon over in Mainland. No new news with the others. Branch 2 is cool. It's really awesome to be able to understand what is being said in sacrament meeting, instead of just sitting there clueless for 3 hrs. They really don't have many piano players here, so I get to play the piano a lot, which is fun. I play about every meeting. We always sing very spirited hymns during Elder's quorum. The Elder's quorum president loves it and leads with enthusiasm. Our focus is on LA's and unordained bretheren, because we have very few priesthood holders in the branch. We haven't taught Gao JM.

I'll get a voice recorder hopefully today, so I can send you voice recordings next week. Thanks for the idea.

Good week this week. I had a hard time getting back to Macau though. As I was going through immigration, I got stopped and taken back into another room. They asked me why I keep coming back to Macau and then finally after 50 min they let me go, but required me to got to the immigration center in Macau the next day to explain the same thing. My comp goes through immigration a different way since he is a HK citizen, so he had to sit outside wondering whre I was for the whole time. Anyway, no prob though, i got my 10 more days.

One of the hilarious things here is all the exercise equipment they have in the parks. It's so funny. I'll send you a pic hopefully this week. One of the machines, you sit down and push to bars forward which lifts up your seat and then bring them back as your seat goes back. Then they have a bunch for flexibility, which are pretty funny. We have been eating a lot of moon cakes this past week. Delicious. Most of them, some are gross. There is a guy in the ward, Parker, who was wearing a Hala Madrid shirt the other day and I started singing it to him. He was laughing. Every time I see him now, I sing that to him. The other day he came over to me and started playing it on his phone for a few seconds.

Few quick thoughts. The third line of hymn #85 hit me real hard this week. "What more can he say, than to you he has said." As I am petitioning the Lord for help in seeing how I can improve, this struck me. I have already been given all that I need to know. I know what I need to do and need to make sure I am living with integrity and following the spirit. We are all given enough to press forward. It is easy to wait sometimes thinking that you will go and do after you know and understand, but that is not how it works. I also love the 5th verse of that hymn this week.

I also loved 1 Nephi 15:24 about the importance of the word of God and especially the reference to holding fast. It took me to Proverbs 4:13. "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go; keep her; for she is thy life." Let her not go. Whenever we read scriptures, we need to let her not go, we need to keep it, ponder it, study it again. We can't just read it and then let her go and forget about it. Whenever we receive instruction and counsel from our priesthood leaders and from prophets and apostles, we need to let it not go. It is very easy to let it go. Having the perspective that 'she is thy life' will help us let her not go. Later in v 26 it reminds us to ponder the path of thy feet. This can also give us precious perspective by pondering where we are taking ourselves vs maybe where we should be taking ourselves.

Thank you for your letters and your prayers.

Elder Stratford

Temple

BBQ with the Filipinos.

snack jack. I like snacking so much and ever since buying this snack, everybody in the apartment calls me snack jack.

Macau Tower. We went to Macau tower today and had the 360 buffet at the top. It was sweet. I definitely got my money's worth of food. Nobody could keep up. My comp was the last one standing and bowed out a few plates before me. The top spins around slowly while you eat, it's a sweet view of macau, taipa and mainland china. So close to each other.