Causeway Bay - My Fourth Area

After serving the first ten months of my time in Hong Kong in arguably the three most rural areas of the mission I joked with my mission that he was afraid to send a farm boy to the city. He chuckled and then the joke was on me. When the next moves came out I was assigned to the Causeway Bay Ward on Hong Kong Island, probably one of the busiest, most crowded places in the world. I served here 18 weeks and ended up enjoying it a lot. The ward was solid, even if a little less friendly than ones I had served in the past. The area was full of tall buildings and Hong Kong landmarks. We often would street contact at Sogo’s (busiest intersection in the world), Victoria Park, along King’s Road, and at the waterfront. The area also had the Happy Valley horse race track (Hong Kong loves to gamble on horses), the HK Convention Center, the HK Central Library, and some other cool spots.
Here’s a run-down of my time in Causeway Bay (May-Sept 2002):
Companions = Elder Leyman Vang from Sacramento. His parents were Hmong immigrants fleeing the aftermath of the Vietnam War and they eventually made their way to the US after some crazy times in Asia. His family sounded like great people who had overcome very hard trials in their lives. He was my last Senior Companion and also an excellent drawer.
Elder Krueger was from some town outside Chicago. A quiet guy in some ways, but we got along real well as he liked to talk politics and we’d do that all day as we contacted. He was a very hard worker and took his mission seriously. After some difficult companionships since my trainer Elder Krueger was a breath of fresh air and we really put our shoulder to the wheel.
Although they weren’t companions, the four other Elders I lived with in Causeway Bay were some of my favorite missionaries in Hong Kong. Elders Devin Nelson, Spencer Hull, J.D. Masero (also lived with in Yeun Long), and Jason Fuller made our time in the apartment really enjoyable. These guys were hilarious and really fun to go on exchanges.
Members / Ward = Causeway Bay is kind of the Paradise Valley of Hong Kong. It is a very affluent area with lots of accomplished people. Our ward represented the demographics fairly well and I met many remarkable people during my time in CWB. Our ward mission leader (Bro. Sehk) was a great guy and a pleasure to work with. There were also some exciting new members in the ward, notably Annie Wong and Billy Lee. Both would go on to serve mission and remain faithful in the gospel. I even got to meeting Billy last year on his mission when I came through Hong Kong during my Asia trip. He is very humble and obedient. The other member who we interacted with a lot was Millie Lai, the Gospel Essentials and Seminary teacher.
Missionary Work: We taught and baptized Mui Jan Sing (Janson) and had a few other investigators get far in the discussions. We kept a descent teaching pool and I’d have to say Causeway Bay was a pretty good area for me on this front.
Memorable Experiences: I played a lot of tennis with a Filipino member while here (Benji Bolibol, amazing guy!). The Filipina Branch would often invite us to join them for Sunday dinner and the sisters were so kind. Benji would then have the missionaries join him around the piano and would play/sing while we all joined in for hymns and other Church songs. Those were some of the most peaceful, happy hours on my mission. It was also here that a crazy anti-Mormon white guy tried to cast the devil out of me, I’ll try to tell the story later. We had a couple typhoons days while in this area too. On typhoon days you can’t go outside so we would call every former investigator in the area book, every referral we had got for months, and any other thing we could come up with to be productive. Finally, after about eight hours of being locked inside during normal proselyting time I broke down and made a game of Risk on a piece of card board and we played that for a few hours. We had to pull pieces of paper out of a bowl for dice but it worked pretty well.
Most common meal = McDonalds and ParknShop deli. We would rotate between the two for lunch every day. Both were cheap and tasty, even if the first will probably give me a heart attack by 50.
Songs = EFY songs that I listened to a lot in this area are “Growing Young” and “I’ll Be.” Growing Young is still one of my all-time faves. We also listened to a Michael McLean CD that Elder Masero had a bunch.

Pictures are of Victoria Park, the Hong Kong Central Library, Sogos, Risk Game, and the Causeway Bay church building (the three floors towards the bottom). It has been sold since they built the new Wan Chai building. I either lost a roll of film of my time in CWB or just didn't take any pictures. I've got less than 10 from my time there and don't even have a baptismal picture for Janson. Kind of a a bummer.