‘Tis the Season: For Birthdays and other Fun!

My family growing up always had many birthdays in the summer, and in Vivian and I’s family the tradition has continued. She and I are just four weeks apart, and our twins are just a week before me. All five of our grandchildren fall in about a four-month window from the June to October, and no one in our family of fifteen was born in a five-month period early in the year. All this to say that we are right in prime birthday party time right now and this week Vivian was the star. As you will see in this week’s entry there was no shortage of partying either!

Hong Kong. In my career I had a couple of times where I worked daily with people over the course of several years that I never met in person. That has been even more the case on our mission, notably with the mission leaders in Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Pakistan. We had recently hoped to be able to meet the new ones that started their service in July - and this week we had the opportunity! Our Area Presidency very graciously assigned us to come to Hong Kong to attend part of the mission leader seminar. It is a long journey (4+ hour flight) and we only had one night there, but we were extremely grateful. During our stay we attended inspiring meetings and introduced ourselves to the leaders. We had lunch together, with time to visit informally before and afterwards. We had a nice Italian dinner with our Area Medical Advisor and his wife. A highlight was worshipping in the Hong Kong temple which I had seen from a distance many years ago but never been to. With our limited time and busy schedule we certainly didn’t get to see much of the city, but we were very happy with what we got to do and are already seeing benefits in our work with these leaders.

Exemplary Mother Award. As part of our increasing work in the Singapore interfaith community, we were invited to attend Jamiyah’s 31st annual award ceremony for and Exemplary Mother in the Singapore community. It was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Singapore Hilton and was quite the affair with hundreds in attendance. As Jamiyah always does, it was very well produced in production and food. But more than the production values, we were very touched by the stories of all the finalists for both the main award and the Young Mother category. It was beautiful to see those of other faiths, primarily Muslim and Hindu, honor the sacred calling of motherhood. It was very special to us to participate.

DelHoyo visit. Sandwiched between those other two was a fantastic though all-too-short visit with my sister Heather and brother-in-law Miles. They were returning to California from a well-deserved week in Bali and stopped in Singapore! We missed their first day while in Hong Kong, but two of our great sister missionaries met them at the airport, went to dinner with them, and got them on the train to our apartment. We returned the next evening, but they didn’t miss a beat while we were gone exploring the island. They navigated the trains, hiked Mount Faber, took the cable car to Sentosa, and spent a full evening at the Singapore Zoo’s Night Safari.

Then after we returned, we had a couple nights and one full day to cram in a lot of visiting and fun. We went swimming, showed them where the missionary magic happens in our office and church, went to Little India for lunch and viewing, rode a double-decker bus through town, visited our temple site, the Merlion, and Marina Bay. We wound up at Gardens by the Bay where we toured both the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest and saw the evening light show from a distance. All of it was fun, but the best part was just visiting with them and sharing some of our experience with them. Look for a very special guest blog post from Heather, a master photographer and blogger, in the near future!

As I type this, we are off to Kuala Lumpur for a week at Zone Conference and Senior Conference and the week after we return we’ll have Emily and Whitney visiting. The next few weeks are busy ones indeed. Now that we are on the “back nine” of our mission I have felt that time is moving much faster. I’m working very hard to cherish every person and every moment. Our mission president likes to share what was already one of my favorite talks from then-President Uchtdorf, “Of Regrets and Resolutions”. In it he says,

“I think of our Lord and Exemplar, Jesus Christ, and His short life among the people of Galilee and Jerusalem. I have tried to imagine Him bustling between meetings or multi-tasking to get a list of urgent things accomplished. I can’t see it. Instead, I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day. When He interacted with those around Him, they felt important and loved.”

I’m so very far from where He is, but that is my goal as well!