I'm a Dancing Lion!

Feb 22, 2015 
Yes! It was Chinese New Year this past week and what a fun experience it was!  There was fireworks, food, red, hong bao's, money, gold, laughter, food, firecrackers, lion dances, greetings, food, music, dancing, explosions, food, gatherings, no stores to buy anything, food(are you seeing a pattern here?) and many other reasons to celebrate! 

Awesome Miri Chinese District!

The Chinese New Year is all about prosperity and good luck. The Chinese people often give oranges out because they are a symbol of good luck and fortune. Other traditions of Chinese New Year is the hong bao(red envelope). In order to help you get a good start to a new year the seniors in the Chinese culture give the youngsters all of these red envelopes with money in it. We have received quite a bit of Hong Bao's so far in the first 4 days; there are 10 more days to go- this is going to be a fun week! Chinese traditions are great! 

(I had to bring a lion head to church, but didn't know how to carry it. So I rode this to the church. We got a lot of attention from everyone. They all loved it.)

There is such a great feeling of being welcomed into homes by so many people over Chinese New Year! Once you are in a home,  other people come in and it's just like being in a house full of all of these potential investigators-  which is exactly what it is! I am grateful for Chinese New year. It's been a great experience for us missionaries to branch out to those around us. 

So this upcoming week we are going to be in Singapore for our zone conference. I am excited for this zone conference because we are going to be able to watch "Meet the Mormons" and I have been looking forward to watching this movie for so long! I hope I will learn something great from this zone conference and my spirit will be lifted by inspiring talks and being with all the other great missionaries! 

We were in a home of a Buddhist friend so I spoke to one of her relatives who was there and who has seen us before. She knew we taught free English class and wished to attend, but was under the impression that we only teach English from the Bible and nothing else. I told her more about what we do in English class and what we as missionaries do. This helped her open up and she said she would be willing to come to English class now! With that concern out of the way she continued on and shared with me that she had a secret interest to read a little from the Bible to learn what it was teaching.  This was a great window for us to share with her about teaching opportunities and how we love sharing what we believe with others. She really appreciated that and I then had to leave. It was a great chance to share with someone our beliefs in a way that she could greatly benefit from.

It has been a great week of Chinese New Year and I look forward to more luck and prosperity.

Elder Hanks