Mid Autumn Festival in Hong Kong

Mid Autumn Festival also called the Moon Festival is for the Family and one of the two most important holidays in the whole of China. The holiday is a reunion for families. Wherever you are, you travel to be with your family on this holiday. And you eat mooncakes.

The above link has one of the best overviews of this Chinese holiday.

Hong Kong People I Love

These photos are courtesy of Dia's "Friends of Facebook" photo postings. Sister D's current companion is Sister C, the one on the far right in both of these photos.

I FORGOT MOM'S BIRTHDAY--BUT GOD DIDN'T!

And the Lord Will Send Her My Birthday Song That I Sang In My Prayers!

Dear Family, I am so, so, rushed that I have time for a short letter, but I am sending this note too. It is representative

of my life.

This was my letter to the President this week...

Dear President Chan,

WOW, what a week, what a work, what a month, what a move, what an experience! God truly is at the head of His work--and intimately concerned with the details of every single one of his children's lives. God be praised for his wisdom and patience with ME as I slowly learn the lessons he provides.

I am so grateful to have had this move's learning experiences, this area with Sister C., our summer missionaries, our investigators, our ward members, our leaders, our fellow missionaries and especially with the Holy Spirit. What an eternal blessing.

This week Sister C and I did some soul-searching as we evaluated our work with ward members and decided that we really need to develop our relationship with our Sha Tin ward. Several factors have kept us from really getting to know and helping this ward, and many ward members still don't know ME, much less Sister C. We have set goals and plans and fasted for Sha Tin on Sunday--and the blessings are being poured out!

We finally (after months of missing phone calls and going through the wrong people and etc) set an appointment and met with Bishop Lee, who was really helpful and hopeful in helping us resolve concerns and define the sister missionaries' role in his ward better.

We, through pure chance, I mean blessing, were able to serve Sha Tin through an opportunity to help clean the church (our investigator cancelled last minute) with members and attend a senior citizen home presentation the same day.

We really worked hard to find (tracting) at Fo Tan and New Town Plaza/ Lion's bridge--the longest, hottest, hardest finding I've ever done (Sister C. is AMAZING and so resilient! She is such a hard worker!). We're also planning on putting together ward sister-to-sister activities to help the sisters to advance in scripture know-how and testimony and visiting a family every week to help the ward meet the sister missionaries.

I'm so excited for ST's growth and progress.

{Note to home folks: this was a big deal to tell Pres Chan, because Sha Tin is HIS home ward and they really have not welcomed sister missionaries at all. We've been struggling with them for... months before I even came into the area. They don't invite sister missionaries to bear testimony in sacrament, they don't include sister missionaries number with the elders; they don't tell us about activities so of course we don't show UP to activities, they give the elders their female referrals... but it's CHANGING now! We're so excited}.

President Chan, we have also been blessed in our unity as a companionship. It's been a beautiful, really deep experience to become unified with SIster C. Real teaching with power, authority and love comes through the Spirit, and inviting the Spirit starts in a unified companionship--which is formed through real prayer, study and hard work, and obedience!

One of the best experiences this week was when I brought up that we should really try as a companionship to get to bed and get up exactly on time every day. I've been nervous for weeks to talk about it, which is really a manifestation of pride. We decided as a companionship to work on this area of obedience and made plans for how on earth we were going to do it (especially at night, and with showering at the end of the day taking so much time, etc). It gave us a great goal to work on together and negated previous prideful/guilty feelings as we acknowledged our common need to improve.

I am most excited to report that we met a new friend named Alice! I'm so excited for her--she's only 12 but her desire to learn and come to Christ is HUGE. We found her finding at Hin Keng Estate in Tai Wai--this experience is already really building my faith in finding {tracting} because I actually started talking with her (then Sister C. took over because a slightly-crazy man started talking to me...) and then she set up a time to meet with us again.

Almost ALL my investigators so far on my mission have been member referrals, investigator referrals or previous investigators. She's so ready to learn [and yesterday (wed)--our second meeting--set a baptismal date for September 25. Wow!!!].

I feel so happy and excited about this area and finally really open and unified in my companionship. I will be sad to move if I do, but I will leave with peace about Tolo Harbor in my heart.

{YAY--FAMILY! I DON'T HAVE TO MOVE!!! WE'RE GONNA TEAR THIS PLACE APART THIS MOVE I'M SO PSYCHED!!!!}

Thank you for your prayers and service on our behalf!

{This goes doubly for folks at home!}

With Respect, Sister Diondra Darcey

______END OF President's Letter_______________

I love you people so much! Mom, if you could send cranberry and vitamin b pills in the next package it'd just be fabuloous. Love you!!

Dia Awesome Darcey Baaaahk Jan Hei Ji Muih

Moles with hair growing out of them = prosperity and long life here.

So, Yes, I'm sure you can just imagine the ponytails erupting from cheeks everywhere.... it's pretty ...hilarious.

Well, I used up a lot of time emailing cousins today (Yyaaaay) so I only have a few minutes.

Mid Autumn Festival is coming up! This is A BIG DRAGON DEAL!

I'm pretty sure in Chinese, whenever they want to say that something is Jumbo or Extra or Especially Awesome they put the word luhng in front of it. Luhng= dragon.

For instance, last night, our summer missionary's mom took us to the nicest place to eat I've ever been--probably in my entire life--and they told me they were going to order luhng hah. I couldn't figure out what luhng hah was for the longest time--I knew hah was "shrimp" and luhng was "dragon"... then it came, and the shrimp was as long as my forearm from elbow to wrist, and by that I mean huge! And then I understoood. Ahhh, dragon shrimp.

Anyway, Mid Autumn festival is a HUGE deal here-- the festival focuses on (from what I can sic ting) (I love that sic ting sounds kinda like ascertain and has the same meaning for me) (how do you spell assertain... ascertain...?)

...anyway, the festival focuses on the circle, the moon, and an old legend about a pair of lovers. The legend is that one of them is in the moon now or something and thusly, we eat

MOONCAKES.

...anyway, It's like Christmas here--literally, there are Christmas lights in all the major areas after dark. Mooncakes are basically the most prized food.. it's a little bit ridiculous and by a little bit I mean a LOT. There are entire 30 second commercials on the MTR (bus) of people biting into mooncakes and then having seizures from how delicious they are. It's insane.

I can't eat mooncakes (phew for the waist,) but I can eat ping pei moon cakes--which are ice cream and rice skin and frozen and DELICIOUS. I tried one for the first time a couple days ago! (boo for the waist!)

At 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday, I decided to start a week-long English fast, as we were walking back to the MTR from the mission home from a special missionary meeting with Osgulthorpe and Ochoa from the Sunday School and YM presidencies (It was amazing!!!).

At 1:31 a South American man dragging a suitcase walked up and asked for directions to the temple... in English.

At 1:35 on the MTR a worker from Indonesia asked if she could take my picture so I contacted her ... in English (our discussion went great; I knew it was Ramadan because of Brian/Ali! Yay, thanks Sabeys! Her name is Umi and she was wonderful).

It was a hilarious way to start my "English fast"-- by using more English than I have in weeks! Ha!

We're so excited for September. Move calls are this Tuesday (yikes!!) and I hope our companionship doesn't change. We're finally working as one, and it feels amazing. I finally am really loving Sister C.--not sortof loving her--or haveto loving her. And that blessing is seriously the most amazing feeling, especiallly in a lesson when she's testifying and the Spirit is one of such love. It's... glorious.

Since we've just barely jaahp gwaan (gotten used to) each other and to our area and are super pumped for this next month, it only follows that I'll probably move this Tuesday :(

or get a new companion :(

Because God isn't interested in perfection--he's interested in progression!

So as soon as we get used to something, he changes it (companion, area, idea, calling, children, whatever!). I had this thought this week (as I failed... again...yay!) :(

In PROVING myself, I will always fail.

But IMprovement, I can do!

Lately, I do Luhng Improvement! DRAGON!

Only compare yourself against yourself, and do so with the eternal and loving perspective that God has for you. For this is hope and faith and charity.

LOVe forever and ever and ever,

Sister Darcey (DIA!)

PS in other news, I've started referring to myself as Sister Darcey when I talk of myself. A roomie brought it up and

laughed really hard at me this week....so Ian, you are not alone.

PICTURES! The photo disk came!!!!!

NOTE FROM THE MOM--BLOG ADMINISTRATOR:

[I am going back and inserting photographs onto the previous posts, so if you are interested, you might want to skim back over to see her actual photographs of Hong Kong.

I recommend clicking the one that shows her eating chicken feet.

There are 600 or so to sort through, so it will take me a while. I in the future, I will try to note at the end of posts when I have added more photos. ]

These are the first photographs that came to the family in a big bundle, not one at a time over e-mail or off someone else's internet posts.

The disk arrived just in time for Mom's birthday! YAY. Here are some of the 600 picts of Sis. Dia Darcey in Hong Kong.