哈囉大家好！新年快樂！
Hello everyone!! Happy New Years!
我嘅爸爸俾咗我一個挑戰，就係寫多啲中文，所以我會努力慢慢進步！
This week and going forward this year, my dad has challenged me to write my emails using more Chinese characters, so I will try my best :)
This week was absolutely chaotic and I have loved the grind so so much. Although the work in Cantonese has been pretty slow in Yuen Long, the English work for the New Territories English Branch, which we also cover, has been absolutely popping off. Normally we start the day with personal study, but every single day this week has been out in our area to visit members, teach friends, or having our once-per-transfer Temple trip!
Needless to say I am as always so grateful to be so busy. There are so many things to do between double covering, the district, and social media responsibilities! We are also so blessed to have such amazing members who make fellowshipping and sharing this gospel so effective, and it is so cool to see the joy it brings to every soul who both shares and receives this gospel.
These past three weeks, we have averaged over 10 lessons with members participating in a week, which compared to my first area, is over three times as active!
This past week we also had some pretty crazy experiences, one of which I wanted to share.. and also the reason to why I named my email what I did haha. Just two days ago on Saturday, I had my first exchange with Elder Brenchley! That day, first of all, was absolutely crazy. We had six lessons scheduled in just that day, almost all in different locations, and we spent over $75 HKD on travel, over 3 hours total.
Anyways, we needed to take a bus to Tuen Mun from Yuen Long, which was about an hour away. We were running a little behind, so we quickly headed to the B9 bus where we saw that it was just arriving! So we quickly tapped in and sat down. About three minutes after sitting down, we were turning out of the freeway when Elder Brenchley checked his map and realized we had taken a turn waaay too early. When I checked my map and saw the route... We saw that we were taking a one trip bus straight to the border of Shenzhen, aka Mainland China, where religious prostylting is strictly prohibited and very heavily enforced. Golp.
Turns out we had the right bus but going the wrong direction, and it was a 40 minute bus straight from Yuen Long to the Hong Kong border.. not only did we have to cancel our lesson, we stressed over potential identification verification and mission safety procedures. Since my dad's ancestry is from Taishan China, I was about two hours away from where my ancestors used to reside. A little 'too close to home' .. Anyways, we ended up being safe, as no one at the border checked anything until you got to the patrol. We rode the bus straight back and nothing crazy happened, very very thankfully.
//
今個星期我想分享一節經文喺雅各(James) 第一書，二十二節，因為呢個喺今年嘅主日學主題。
係話，『你們要成為這話語的實行者, 不要只成為聽者而欺騙自己。』當我哋拜耶穌嘅時候，我哋唔可以淨係聽耶穌的話，但係需要做佢的話！呢個分別好重要。當我自己跟隨佢嘅榜樣, 我揾到快樂同埋目的！我知道神好愛我哋，都知道佢會幫所有人如果佢哋有渴望揾呢啲真理。我都知道佢可以幫我學廣東話 ;)
(From Google Translate:
This week I would like to share a verse in James (James) Book 1, verse 22, as this is on this year’s Sunday School theme.
It is saying, ‘Be the doers of this Word, and do not deceive yourselves by becoming only hearers. ’ When we worship Jesus, we can’t just listen to Jesus, but need to do His word! This distinction is important. When I follow his example myself, I find happiness and purpose! I know that God loves us and knows that He will help all people if they desire to find these truths. I know he can help me learn Cantonese ;) )
//
This spiritual thought came up during a dinner with a member recently and I thought it would be an awesome message to start the year with!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/qkaoEe965etiYQuj7
That's all for this week, thank you all for all of your wonderful examples and I hope you all have an amazing new year! I will see you all next weekk
Much love,
趙長老
Dad
