Ted and Audrey have been married for almost 28 years. We have four children: Justin, Ada, Alicia & Brenda. Justin is married to Jessica Wu and living in Wiscousin, Ada just graduated from BYU with degree in Exercise Science and Alicia will soon follow next year. Brenda is our Senior and is heading to BYU this fall.
Monday, January 16, 2017
What we did to celebrate Chinese New Year and our Sixth is here
We are in line at 5:00 a.m. to get a spot to purchase tickets to the Chinese New Year parade!
We bought small stools with us because it will be 8 a.m. before they open the door! Our number were 39-44; we got tickets! They were sold out in an hour!
The back of the clock tower in TST; getting ready for the New Year celebration., Can you guess what year this is? If you guess Rooster, you are correct.
Welcome our Sixth grands - Courtney Mae Greenhalgh (夏佳微), daughter to Ada and Andrew Greenhalgh.
She looks more Chinese with almond shaped eyes!
This one looks more like Andrew!
Daddy daughter time, wish I could hold her too!
Such a cute little one! We already love her so much!!
Stats: 6 lbs 11 oz, 19 inches long, our biggest grand baby so far!
One of our assignment is working with both Hong Kong and Taiwan to get them ready for For the Strength of Youth Conference this year. We are assigned as the In Area Couple to oversee the FSY. Hong Kong is on target with their calling of In Session couple, coordinators and assistant coordinators. We have have meeting to get the schedule of FSY going and are looking for ysa counselors to work with the youth. Taiwan on the other hand has been slowly catching up. You would remember I mentioned that Taiwan has been busy with their 60th celebration of the year last year so they have been to busy to work on FSY. No sooner did we enter 2017, we have been getting messages and email from Taiwan about getting their program going. They started application for YSA to apply to be coordinators and assistant coordinators and counselors. With 800 youth anticipated, they would need about 100 ysa leaders. The deadline for the ysa leader application ends 12/31/16. They had to extend it to 1/14 because they only have 30 plus applied. As of 1/14, they have 50 applied, which is half of what they needed!! In the meantime, they called an online registration administrator and I have been emailing Salt Lake to add his name so that he can get access to start the online page going. We have time difference of 15 hours so everything I sent, take 3 days to get a reply!! I ended up calling Salt Lake at 8 in the morning our time and luckily, I was able to talk with someone (6 pm salt lake time). I love technology, but hated it when I cannot control it!
In the meantime, I find out that the website is not loading correctly. It was supposed to have everything loaded with translated manuals and handbook, but somehow nothing Chinese is loaded correctly, Now they (Salt Lake) with need to get the bug fixed. I hope they get it done soon as we need to get registration going for both leaders and participants done soon!!!
I think the biggest thing I learned so far on our mission is PATIENT! Sometime we have to be patient with ourselves and sometimes we have to be patient with the process. I am so glad that Heavenly Father in on my team because, in the end, I know everything will work out.
We have Area devotional last week where Elder Sam Wong informed us he and his wife has been called on a 2 year mission as mission president. We waited till yesterday to find out in the Church news that he has been called to serve in the Vancouver Canada mission. This would be his first mission because he did not have an opportunity to serve as a young man. I know he will be good and needed to strengthen the missionary work in Vancouver. With that said, there is going to be changes in the Area Presidency in July. Rumors has it that they might reorganize the Area Presidency... We are anxious to see what will happen, our assignment might even change with all these changes but we are ready and willing to do whatever it is asked off us.
So far we spend about 50% of our time with FSY, 10% in communication and about 25% in helping with the mission home in inspecting missionary apartment, especially those that is coming up to have their lease renewed. It seems we are getting our wishes to be busy and productive! It feels good to feel tired! Some days we don't even get home until 9 p.m. We are hoping we will get to work with the missionary in getting a mandarin group going in New Territory but so far, we have not heard from President Lam on when he would like that to start.
Our trip to Taiwan to help with FSY is schedule for February 3, we will be staying in Taipei for a day to go to the temple, then onto Tai Chung for training and to visit the camp site for FSY. Elder Funk wants us to go as often as it is needed so we will see how the first training goes to decided when we will go again.
January2: Beckstead and us went to this fundraiser music program. We were so impressed, This is a harps performance, the little boy is probably 4-5 years old!
This little girl is 7 years old!!
This is right across the harbour from where we live, can you see the Church building?
The church building is the little brown building in between the tall building!
You don't see little boat like this very much any more, but we see them on the harbour every now and then.
Visited Ngau Tau Kok ward today and saw a member I recognize when I served in Kwun Tong 30 years ago. This is Sister Lee Oi Ling, she was one of the ward missionary.
We saw this McDonald in TaiPo, Ted was very impressed at how environmental friendly they did, a live flower/grass wall!
2016 goes out on a high note!! This week we were able to help the mission office out by visiting a few apartments and looked at a few new one to relocate the sister on their expiring lease this coming January. It was nice to be among peoples instead of just looking at the computer all day! We got to travel to Kowloon Bay, Sai Wan and Yuen Long. We will also be doing some minor fixing up of the Elder's apartment. I wish there is a Home depot here we could do a one stop shopping but there isn't, We need to replace a washer on a leaking shower head, we thought the washer is a universal size but the shop told us it is not, now we have to figure out what brand the shower head is before we could get a little washer to fix the leak!!! I love the American system where parts usually are interchangeable!!!
We attended two wards' church meeting today. Elder Mark White is going home this coming Friday so we attended the Victoria 1 ward to listen to his talk. He did a wonderful job at sharing his experience as a missionary and is looking forward to start the next chapter of his life. It is amazing to see what a mission does to young man: the maturity they gained as they lose themselves in the service of other and God. The experience he gained is priceless and will help him in whatever he wants to pursue in his life!
We had a wonderful Cafe Rio dinner at the office on New Year's Eve. We played some games; I don' usually like playing games because I am too competitive but the games were fun last night. The first one was "Finishing the proverb". We were given a card with part of the proverb, such as A Nigerian proverb said Joy is ..., The reader will read this part of the proverb and write down the correct answer on a sheet, the rest of the team will write down what they think the proverb should say on their sheet, then pass the sheet to the reader. The reader will read the answer while an opposite team will guess what the correct answer to the proverb is. The team would have three chances to guess: correct answer on first guess worth 3 points, second worth 2 points and third 1 point. I think some of the wrong answers were better proverb than the correct ones! The answer to this proverb on Joy is: Joy has a small body. I think my answer was better: Joy is priceless!
We finished the dinner and clean up around 9:30 pm, we would have love to take the ferry across the harbour and walked home as we usually do but elected to take the bus instead. We were lucky we decided to take the bus because the pier along the promenade was already filled with people waiting for the midnight firework.
We did stayed up to watch the firework on the television. We could feel the firework on our glass windows and see the reflection on the windows across from us!
We were able to facetime Brenda and Jessica around midnight Wiscousin time after we came home from church. I was informed the Hong Kong fireworks was the best they had seen! It is on youtube if anyone interested to see it.
We took a walk on the promenade after church today and noticed there were lots of people fishing. One gentlemen got a big founder that is at least 3 feet wide but he lets it go because he doesn't like the fish!!!
This is the HungHom Club, they do this light show every night around p.m.
This Thai lady was taking picture on the Promenade, Elder Beckstead and Ted just has to take a picture with her!
Saw someone writing on the tile using a foam brush and water. He was kind enough to write something for us when he saw our name tags. "Elder Yan"
God loves the people on this earth.
"Elder Beckstead love Hong Kong:
One way to prevent people to climb over the railing is to put rocks on the outside of the rail
"Thankful to God"
Made Chinese beef stew for the first time with a two person vacuum cooker. Put this in the morning and has stew at night when we come back. It was delicious!
