Hello family and friends,
It's been a busy week like always. The weather has been stormy and we were just missed by a typhoon, so I've been drenched head-to-toe a few times out finding. There's nothing like getting soaked in dress clothes to make you feel like you worked hard.
We were blessed to teach a family this week. We ran into the Ng family about a month ago by the pier in Siu Sai Wan, and the husband mentioned he'd always wanted to become more involved in religion but his work schedule didn't allow it. He works like a horse in a kitchen, which seems to be one of the busiest jobs in Hong Kong. Last week we called him in the middle of the day and discovered that he was in the hospital because he spilled a ton of hot water on his feet and suffered severe burns. We offered to bring him a Book of Mormon, and he accepted. We taught him a couple times in the hospital, where he expressed that he felt happy he got burned so bad, because he had an opportunity to rest and learn about God. He went home from the hospital and invited us to his home, where we taught him and his wife. His wife isn't very religious and is a native Mandarin speaker, so her Cantonese was difficult to understand. I hope that this family will begin to progress as we help them have more of a common goal. It's been often expressed to me by several different natives of Hong Kong that in Chinese culture people never say the words "I love you" to their family members, and very seldom if they do. Those words have always been so common and comforting to me growing up, and often taken for granted. The society here sometimes seems so loveless and the family values that chinese culture so often prides themselves in is being very steadily and quickly drowned by money and material.
I often feel like one of the ancient prophets or apostles in the church, endeavoring to teach about God to people who get so puffed up in the things of the world. So many people say, "So what if God exists. Even if he does and I know it, what does that matter?" Then I say, "What's the difference between being an orphan and having parents?" We learn from our parents. We are loved by our parents. We learn how to avoid bad things, how to make good things happen, to be effective, to have success, to overcome pitfalls and shortcomings. Since when have we, fortunate and blessed sons and daughters of loving parents, ultimately ever done absolutely everything ourselves? Did our parents hold our hands to help us learn to walk, our brothers comfort us when we make mistakes, our teachers teach us skills to enable us to bless the world with our talents, and our wives and our children to help us love all simply because life means nothing more than a bowl of rice and a pillow? Of course not. We are not spiritual orphans. We have a Father in Heaven who gives us all these things that we can gain experience, and grow, and be changed.
The watch on your wrist is about as likely to have exploded into existence as your brain, your heart, your thoughts, your ability to love, this earth, and this universe. Why is it so easy for the layman to admit that obviously something as complicated as a watch must be planned, organized, and carefully put together, and yet so difficult to admit that beings such as us, infinitely more complicated than the watch, have a Creator and Organizer? Somebody tell me. I say this to people on the street and they can never answer me. They just snort and run away because they don't want truth to be true. The problem with most philosophers and supposed learned men of today is they claim to invent everything they discover. But I say that though much credit goes to the watchmaker, he must first thank the man who invented the sundial. And the sundial maker must thank the Man who invented the Sun. I testify that all things denote there is a God (Alma 30:44), a divine designer, and the Book of Mormon is proof that He has yet again reached out to His children.
Love, Elder Hazen
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