Dearest Family and Friends:

First: Tell Brock that there IS indeed a light show in Hong Kong! (Click to see the light show). It's made up of a whole bunch of different buildings and goes off every night at 8 pm. I've never actually seen it from the island, but one of the buildings is right outside our kitchen window. A couple weeks ago we used our dinner hour to run the 20 flights of stairs in our building twice, and from the top you can see three buildings at once going off!!! Apparently it's really amazing from the island because everything's synchronized with music that they play on the Pier. Hong Kong is so amazing!

Second: Yesterday we found (and MADE) a gluten free brownie mix! Kowloon Tong/Sha Tin/where I live and serve right now is really amazing for GF food. It's seems really expensive ($52???) but then I remember that food is so cheap here (divide by 8... oh. more like $7). We spend between 25 and 35 on a meal normally (between 3 and 5 USD) and a super expensive meal (KOREAN BARBEQUE SO DELICIOUS) is still only 10 USD.

Third: Speaking of food, I've now tried octopus balls (pretty good, no complaints), squid (which wriggles when you put it on the grill... that was a shocker), pig ear (whatever... just put that on my plate. Great. Thank you), pig stomach (pretty good) and cow tongue (actually really good). My favorite thing I ate this week was... probably... eel sushi (we're not allowed to eat raw/real sushi so it was cooked!).

We had a kickoff dinner/planning meeting on Sunday night for our English EFY camp and Sister Black and I volunteered to make the food---GF CREPES. We have developed a lovely recipe on our dinner hours of about 1 c glutinous rice flour, 2 c rice flour, 2 eggs, vanilla, soy milk and water. They're DELICIOUS with peanut butter, bananas, flax, berries, mango, flax, chocolate sprinkles, nutella, flax, flax, flax... basically they're just an excuse to eat more flax... anyway.

So we brought everything we needed to the church and started about 45 min before the thing was supposed to start. We even brought our own pan because the church in Sha Tin/Tai Wai is not very well equipped (it was renovated about a year ago) (and we found a gecko in it last night... long story: actually really short story: I saw a gecko, the end! --in the CHURCH, not in the PAN).

Anyway. We mixed up A TON of crepe mix (used 16 eggs!!!) oiled our pan and turned on the stove. Now, HK has these things called "smart stoves" which means that the stove can sense what is ON it and thus, will turn off by itself once the pan is taken off (so the church doesn't, for example, burn down). Unfortunately, the so called smart stove didn't RECOGNIZE our pan.

No amount of testifying ("I know this pan is a true pan. I myself have cooked with it many a time and it has brought me great happiness and delicious crepes. You too can have these blessings in your own life...") would change this stove's mind.

SO we got creative--and tried cooking a crepe in the soup pot there at the church. Sizzling, scorched failure. OK, let's get MORE creative... and put our pan on TOP of this aluminum PAN!~ Nope. Still doesn't recognize it... At this point, MY most creative thought was either "first, we'll turn this crepe mix into a flea. A harmless little flea. Then, I'll put that flea in a box. Then I'll put that box in another box and then I'LL MAIL that box to myself and use MY STOVE TO COOK IT.." or "hmmmm....what else in the church gets hot?" It's so lucky Sister Black was there or the church really might have burned down.

So we tried double boiling CREPES ("I'll put our pot in another pot, and then I'll fill that pot with water, and when it boils HA HA HA, I'll turn the crepe OVER! IT'S brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! I say, GENIUS!"), which actually worked in the end. We also made crepe muffins and crepe... sorta like german pancakes in the oven... yeah, whatever. We were TRIUMPHANT, and IT WAS DELICIOUS.

Anyway... missionary work... tee hee. This week we saw Angel, who teaches us more than we teach her. She's getting baptized this Sunday at absolutely no credit of ours. A rock could've taught her the discussions and she'd still get baptized. And the ROCK would probably have a better testimony at the end, too.

Oh, I witnessed a beautiful experience last Sunday during Relief Society. LJM in Tai Wai was teaching--her husband is not a member but comes with her and her 3 year old boy, Gee, to church. Gee is pretty much the cutest boy on the PLANET and he really withstands well, all the spoiling that the ward would LOVE to force him into. (Yeah, Sister Darcey, that sentence made so much sense...) (OK, what I meant is that he really should be quite annoying since the ward spoils him silly) (but he isn't, he's still hilarious and very down to earth) (for a three year old) (I'm gonna stop now with the parenthesis).

Anyway. Leung JM was teaching a hilarious--as far as I could sic ting {understand}--lesson about how to love other people. She was in the middle of a gut-splitting story about Gee learning to love the hideous 150-year old lady next door who always spit on their door mat, because that's just what old people above 60 DO here, they SPIT ALL THE TIME, when her big sister walked in to the meeting late.

Now, I happened to know that this big sister was really special to LJM because she'd fed us lunch on Saturday and told us how she was reactivated--her big sister got in some kind of accident (sorry, wish I knew more Chinese and I'd tell you what kind), had to go to the hospital and asked her lil sister, basically with her last breath, to pray. LJM prayed and her sister was miraculously healed (sorry, the story's much better in Chinese/if I could actually understand Chinese tee hee)--but I still was totally taken aback by what happened next in the meeting.

When LJM saw her come in, she immediately flew across the room and flung her arms around her neck. LJM is pretty animated (if you haven't already figured that out) so I thought at first that this was an object lesson about how to love others--but she kept holding on. And started crying. Everyone in the room felt a little awkward--I mean, we are Chinese people, we don't do this lovey-dovey stuff, this is even weird by American standards--and HJM (the RS Pres) then stood up and explained.

On a side note: I've learned that every time HJM talks I might as well just tune out because I've come to the conclusion that she's not even speaking Cantonese--she's speaking lightningHJMlanguage--so I have NO CLUE what she said. Another side note, this is most unfortunate since HJM fellowships with us all the time (tee hee).

Meanwhile, LJM just kept holding on. It was so amazing--every particle of thought was bent on loving her big sister, she had no, zero, nada thought for what it would look like to a room full of other people. I realized, watching that, what the parable meant when it says, "he fell on his neck" and I think I learned, I understood a little bit better, about what the Lord means when he says, "Love One Another," and how much God loves us and wants to welcome us back into his presence. WOW!~

So I leave you now with the reminder that I love you... all. Sister Dia Darcey

P.S. Tell Peruvian Cousin Derick that I loved his dear elder (#2! One more letter already than I was expecting!!!) Who said that?