Christmas in Hong Kong

Hey there!
It was so amazing talking to you all! You sound so great! You're all just progressing and moving forward! I'm so impressed with all your lives haha. Enjoy this last week together before school starts! That will be fun. Any fun New Year's plans? Have a glass of martinelli's for me :) I'm excited to finish my quilt with you, mom! that will be fun. And I love that idea of you and Abs hanging out before she takes off. Weird! I just can't wait to come home and see how changed everyone is. I got all teary eyed when I talked to Danny! But I love it. Time keeps ticking.

Well, China was as great as ever this holiday season. Actually, Christmas is super not a big deal here. The malls get decked out, but nobody really does anything or celebrates it.  But we brought the Christmas spirit with us out to the streets!  And it was fun. We would say Merry Christmas to people and ask them if they had any plans for the day. 9 out of 10 would look at us like we were idiots and say faan gung....go to work. or jyu yeh...cook food.  But we would get some of them to crack a smile on the way, so I would call it a success! And we had a Christmas miracle and got a new investigator - so that was exciting!  Got to love finding people to teach :) I told you on the phone a little bit about her...named Fiona. She's a phd studnet at City University studying linguistics. So truth be told, it's kind of been my goal to find a phd student to teach since I got to this area...so I'm super excited. She's awesome. But most of the people we are working with are travelling to mainland for a little while, so we're back to finding. which is still fun.

The other night, probably around 9, we walked back to the church, and this old 96 year man was lying on this couch in the foyer. We walked in and he reaches up his hand to us starts calling, not calling...whispering, "help."  So of course we rush over, and think he's in some serious trouble of some sort. And then he asks us where he can check in. And now I'm just totally confused. He was looking for a hotel and heard that our church building was a hotel (because of the patron housing stuff upstairs). So we're trying to figure the situation out with him, and find him a hotel and a taxi. And the entire time he is trying to defend himself, tryng to give us identification to prove that he isn't a thief or a robber haha. He was so concerned that we knew he was a gentleman haha. And we're speaking the entire time in cantonese, and then at the end, he starts getting really confused and realizes that these two English girls aren't speaking english. But he doesn't believe us, so he starts speaking the only english he knows..."I dont know english" haha. It was hilarious. All the while another new investigator we just found - who only speaks mandarin - is also asking us about our church choir because she wants to play her acordian in a choir...she majors in acordian at university. Is that really an entire major? It was a really confusing night. But pretty fun. The best part was when we help the man outside into the taxi. He has this little shuffle bent over walk...just shuffling each foot a few inches at a time. We finaly make it to this 4 inch step down, which he makes clear to us that it scares him. And then out of nowhere, he becomes super limber and jumps. Noo - jump doesn't do it...he does this full spread leap off the step. Dad's "like a cat" quote came to my mind as he did it. and then he continues his shuffle. I couldn't get over it. It was hilarious.

Sorry, not much news this week. Just lots of finding. It's been fun. I should do better at writing down in my journal the fun stories we have, so when I email about them, they're more interesting. But seriously, I loved hearing you all. Danny, thank you for that Nevada calendar.  It's hanging above my bed. The pictures are beautiful. Lam Jimuih is shocked that I came from such a place haha.

love you all!
hannah