2012 May 4

Our stay in the Hong Kong Mission Home was short, hectic, memorable, and is all in a muddle in my mind because of jet lag and overall weariness.  My first impression was, "Where's the mission home?" Forty or so years ago the mission home was just that - the place where the mission president and his family lived, where missionaries were greeted in a lovely living room, and where visiting guests would stay and meet the local elders.  Today the mission home is a three-story office area with an apartment facility for visiting temple patrons on the top floor (Floor 2), classrooms on the second (Floor 1), and the chapel and office on the ground floor (called "0" Floor here).  It is also located across the street from the old mission home.  The 6-story Hong Kong Temple now occupies the location at #2 Cornwall Street.  The next impression is that everyone is unbelievably friendly and seemingly anxious to make us feel welcome.  The greetings almost made us feel like celebrities - but we know better.  There is a lot of learning and work to do just figuring out what our role is.  Getting here, hard as it was, is going to look like the easy part in retrospect.

Wednesday morning (I think it was: the days got all muddled up in there somewhere.  It took me almost a week to figure out what day we were actually on), we went over to Hong Kong Island to the immigration bureau and applied for our Hong Kong Identification cards - a simple, almost formulaeic procedure that takes a lot of time.  Hong Kong doesn't look the same as I remember it either.  In the first place, instead of riding the Star Ferry over, we went on the subway.  The Star Ferry was the Chinese version of the old American railroad boxcar / passenger car you see in old movies.  It got you where you were going and that's about the best you could say for it.  Comfort was not an issue.  Now they have built a subway tunnel between the mainland and the island.  Trains run every few minutes, and you don't even know you're under water.  Clean.  Efficient.  Often crowded, but not like the old double-decker buses we used to pack ourselves into.  Amazing.  There are also at least three beautiful freeways crossing the harbor for the adventurous land travelers.  We did take the old Star Ferry back to Kowloon just for nostalgia's sake, and to get a couple of pictures of the Hong Kong Harbor as it is today.

Hong Kong Island from Kowloon

Looking at Kowloon from Hong Kong Island.

On the left center you can see the old Star Ferry, still in use as a tourist attraction.  On the right we are on the "Walk of the Stars" on Kowloon.  It is located next to the Hong Kong Cultural Center.

Hong Kong Ferry Terminal

Thursday afternoon we met four young elders who had been to a conference in Hong Kong and who were returning to Macau where they work.  They helped us with finding our way, and with our luggage.  The Hong Kong Ferry Terminal was another surprise.  I expected it to be the same old crowded, dirty place I remember the Tiu King Ling and Star ferry Terminals to be.  Instead I found a modern, clean and shiny facility with convenient shopping areas, restaurants, stools for waiting passengers to sit on, and modern ticket counters in which to buy tickets.   These are Elders Smith, Li, Li, and Tyauh.

The Macau/HongKong Ferry

Interor of the Macau Ferry

The boat itself is is a turbojet-powered boat with air conditioning and bucket seating for probably a couple hundred people in the economy class.  Cost of the trip from Hong Kong to Macau is about $25 US, depending on when you travel.  Seniors get a discount, usually.  The trip to Macau is about 40 miles long and takes almost exactly one hour on a normal day.  The ride is sort of like being on a slow-motion Merry-go-round, except you're moving forward very fast, and unless the sea is choppy.  You're actually going across the mouth of the Pearl River, but it very much affected by the ocean tides, waves, and currents.

Home Sweet Apartment

Once in Macau the elders told us that our apartment really isn't very far from the terminal, but nobody really wanted to carry the luggage that far, so we took a bus home.  I think it is a good thing that the bus run starts at the terminal.  Imagine 4 missionaries, 2 senior missionaries, and at least 10 large pieces of luggage getting onto a rather small bus.  We filled it pretty good all by ourselves.  By the time we reached our destination the thing was packed.  A rather lengthy, circuitous drive through narrow, crowded streets took us to within about a block of our new home.  We are on the 16th floor of this building.

As we entered the living room of our new apartment, we were greeted with shouts of "Surprise".  All the young missionaries and a couple of members were here to greet us.  They had spent at least one entire day scrubbing down the apartment to make it liveable for us.  Pictures of them working were posted in the various rooms.  They had also purchased some basic food stuffs and eating and cooking utensils, which must have taken no little part of their preparation day.  What a beautiful, great bunch of people.  I've said this before, I know, but I really think I'm going to like it here.  I hope we will prove to be worth all the trouble people have gone to for us.