Hong Kong #4 - Churchy stuff

I kept that Lo home from church yesterday. The doctor had said something about possibility of atypical chicken pox (though Lo has no fever nor itching, but the spots are just varicella-esque in appearance) so I didn't want to risk him exposing more people than we already had. He's had one dose of the vaccine and people are generally considered immune only after the second dose.

Anyway, about this churchy stuff in Hong Kong. The LDS church actually has a strong presence in this Chinese city. While we took our open-air "rickshaw" bus tour (see photo below), we came across a skyscraper that looked a little different than all the rest. Isn't it cool how "churchy" this building looks, even though it is right in the middle of this business district. Sure enough, there on the base is the logo: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." Our church uses this facility for regular sacrament meetings, residence of some church leaders, and I'm not sure what else.

And what would a trip to Hong Kong be without visiting its LDS temple. This LDS temple is totally unique, having twice as many floors as a typical temple. The mission office is located in this structure, as is a parking garage, residence of mission president, and so forth. Real estate in Hong Kong is so precious, the church makes best use of its resources by doubling the functions of its buildings there.

There we are so tiny at the base of the temple. This is a tricky shot to get, because the street is nearly right up against the temple wall. Henry had to cross a couple lanes of traffic to get far enough away to get the temple top in photo view. The spire is up there on the roof somewhere...just not visible in this photo.

While Jerry and Brandon did temple work inside, I stayed outside with Henry, Jerry's Dad (Ye Ye), and that Lo of course. I intended to do a session myself, but had accidentally forgotten my temple recommend. =(

Climbing temple stairs--that Lo was tired as usual but kept us busy with all his running around.

We couldn't get Lo to look at the camera for this shot with his Ye Ye. Babies just love water fountains!

Families can be together forever, through Heavenly Father's plan. In the temple, we focus on families, both the parents, siblings, spouses, and children we know and enjoy at present, and also our ancestral family members who have already passed on.

I love my sweetheart! We always feel closer to each other after going to the temple.

More cute family pictures on the temple grounds...though I just noticed that Lo is looking tired in this photo as well. As usual.

Note the blue polo instead of the white shirt and tie he wore inside the temple...Jerry had already changed into his street clothes after his temple session. One funny memory of this trip is when my brother Brandon changed out of his white shirt/tie from the temple as we drove away in a taxi. He kept modest while doing so, as he put a polo on over his white shirt, then unbuttoned the dress shirt underneath and extracted it through the sleeves of the polo. Only he forgot that his seatbelt was also on underneath the polo--but over top of the dress shirt. Or something like that. Guess you had to be there to visualize/get a laugh out of it. At one point he was a bit stuck and I'm just glad we didn't have to exit the taxi with him half-dressed.

We went on to have a full day of fun after our time in the temple, but I'll have to share more from that later. And I guess while I am talking about church parts of our trip, I'll just mention that we got to attend two different sacrament meetings in Hong Kong since we were there two Sundays. Both services were in Cantonese, so I did not get much out of the speakers, but really did feel the spirit of love and joy that is present among the Saints. I am so grateful to belong to this church.