Pastors, Priests and Perambulation!

As promised in my last blog, here is a picture of me all robed up from last Sunday at All Saints Cathedral! Again, my thanks go to Revd Dr Peter Chan and the rest of the team for their warm welcome.

I woke on Wednesday to the news that after the overnight Thunder and lightning storm, the city recorded more than 6,100 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes! It was indeed an amazing and powerful sight!

The morning remained drizzly, but later in the afternoon, I managed to meet up with pastor Ken from Shine Baptist Church. This was Vidi’s church in Hong Kong, and she had kindly put me in touch with him.

We had such a great time of fellowship together. It was great to hear of his heart for mission and discipleship, and I took away some practical ideas to help our church reflect on how healthy we are as a community. It’s incredible that even though our churches are over 6,000 miles away from each other, we share similar joys and challenges in our churches' lives.

Ken also introduced me to the Hong Kong Pudding ‘Tofu Fa’. It was an acquired texture and taste! We also shared Hong Kong Milk Tea and Hong Kong-style French Toast, which was delicious! It was great to pray for each other, too, and I hope to meet up with him again when he returns from Holland!

In the evening, I headed down to Tsim Sha Tsui harborside to see the fireworks. This week is Labour Day Golden Week when many tourists come from China. The Harbourside was packed, and unfortunately, along with many others), we thought we were standing in the right place to view the fireworks; we didn’t see anything apart from a lot of smoke! :(

I was invited to the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Provincial Meeting for Clergy on Thursday. We met at St John’s Cathedral at 8:30 a.m. for Holy Communion and then headed into the church centre for breakfast. I was introduced and given such a warm welcome by both the Bishops and Clergy. The meeting was focused on The 12th World Anglican Chinese Clergy Fellowship (WACCF), which met in April in Taipei, Taiwan, with feedback from several delegates during their time there. It was incredibly helpful to have been provided with an earpiece where a translator provided an English translation in real-time.

After the meeting, I was kindly invited to have lunch with Revd Peter and several other clergy colleagues for some Dim Sum. On talking to one of the clergy, his first ever theological course he did was a long-distance course from St John’s College Nottingham, the place where I did my Ordination training!

There was lots of laughter, and it was nice to see their strong relationships and support for one another.

Later in the afternoon, I popped into a Christian bookshop to buy a card to send to someone, and I spotted my next Lego Project! 😂😂😂

I had a free day on Friday, so I decided to head off on my first Hike in Hong Kong! I started the climb at Quarry Bay, heading through the Tai Tam Country Park and reservoir before descending to Deep Water Beach for dinner. Then, I took a short walk to Ocean Park to get the MTR Home. The total distance walked was 13.02km! It was all well worth it, though, as the scenery was stunning, and It felt a million miles from the busyness of the city!

Today has been another wet day, and I’m a little achy after my walk yesterday. So it was more time for reading and a short trip to have a mooch around some shops!

Tomorrow (Sunday), weather permitting, I will be heading to Macao, where one of the Anglican Churches has an anniversary I’ve been invited to. I hope to post about that soon.

Sending all my love and prayers:)

Precipitation, Project, Preaching and Portside!

My latest update comes in the form of four words!

Precipitation

A blog written by an Englishman must include a weather report by now! Since arriving the weather hasn’t been great, the staff here blame me for bringing the weather from the UK! Last Friday was the worst day weather-wise, with torrential rain throughout the day accompanied by thunder and lightning! I decided not to go outside and brave it. Instead, I spent the day in the Mission Centre relaxing, praying for St John’s and reading a book I bought a while ago that I never got around to reading! It was also great to join some of the staff for lunch, where we ordered some food in!

Project

On Saturday the weather had cleared up enough to head into Tsim Sha Tsui to visit the large construction project the Mission to Seafarers in Hong Kong is undertaking.

The previous mariners centre building had stood there since 1967, giving the seafarers a place to stay, socialise and also provide a place of worship for St Peter’s Church)

Unfortunately, the building was showing its age and needed to be able to offer modern standards to seafarers.

And so, in 2018, the building was handed over to developers for a total rebuild.

The redevelopment will ensure the mission is self-sustaining in the future and provide modern facilities, including 75 en suite rooms for seafarers and their families.

The building is enormous, and being shown around was a real privilege.

The mission will occupy the first eight floors. This will include accommodation, a restaurant, a gym and swimming pool, meeting rooms, a garden, and church space with a capacity of around 200.

The 9th to the 42nd floor will be commercially operated by a hotel (not run by the mission) with 500 rooms!

The cost to the developer…. over 600 million pounds!

All being well, it will open sometime next year!

In the afternoon, I decided to take my first venture onto Hong Kong Island! I took the metro to East Tsim Sha Tsui and walked along the harbour until I arrived at the Star Ferry Terminal. I boarded the ferry for a ten-minute trip across the harbour to Hong Kong Island, where I then just had a little wander. I plan to go up to the Sumit (a fantastic view across the city), but today was too cloudy!

Preaching

On Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching at All Saints Cathedral at the 9.30 a.m. English-speaking service.

I was made to feel very welcome, and they showed incredible grace as coming from a ‘low’ church background meant that I didn’t quite know what I was supposed to do and when. Those of you who like me robing would have been impressed as I wore an Alb, a kind gift that came in very handy from Fr James at Castle Vale a few years ago!

I preached on the Gospel Reading for the day from John 15:1- 8, ‘I am the vine’ and thought about what it means to be fruitful.

Afterwards, I stayed for coffee and met several Filipino Christians who had stayed behind to do further Bible study.

There is photographic evidence of me in an Alb. I’m just awaiting the photo to be sent to me. I will put it up when I receive it!

In the afternoon, I headed off to St Andrew’s Kowloon for their 5 pm Service. This was an English-speaking contemporary service. It was not too dissimilar to St John’s in terms of style, apart from the fact that the service contained even less liturgy than us! I bet you didn’t think that was possible! :)

Finally Portside

On Monday and this morning I had the first opportunity to head out to the nearby container port to do some Ship Visiting.

I visited several ships, and it was great talking to the seafarers, from the captain all the way through to the ship cadets. I always consider it an immense privilege to listen to their stories, their joys and sorrows and what life is like on board. It was great to have an opportunity to pray for some of them too:)

And so that gets me to this afternoon! Well, I had the absolute delight of meeting up with Rev Herbert Chan, Senior Pastor of Lai Shing Baptist Church. Catherine Chung had kindly put me in touch with her pastor in Hong Kong, and we had the most wonderful couple of hours eating some traditional food and having fellowship with one another. I wasn't too sure about trying the dish that he described as ‘beef innards’, but all the dishes ended up being really tasty! It was great to hear Herbert’s story and his faith and trust in Jesus. It really is a joy meeting Christians around the world!

Herbert also kindly showed me around the area, including where his church meets (A Baptist School Hall) and some of the other facilities the church uses. I also got to ride on my first Hong Kong Minibus! After saying farewell to Herbert I finished with a beautiful stroll along the harbourside back to the MTR station.

Will hopefully post again soon:)

Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Boats!

Over the past few days, I don’t think I have ever travelled on more different types of transportation in such a short space of time!

However, my first full day in Hong Kong (Wednesday) started behind my laptop screen as I had to complete the ‘Ship Welfare Visitor Course’ before I could enter the port and visit the seafarers. The course was split into 7 short modules covering things such as;

• Different types of ships and what hazards to be aware of.

• Understanding seafarers’ ranks, jobs and schedules.

• How to interact with seafarers, including dealing with sensitive information they might share.

• Understanding the laws that protect seafarers’ rights.

It was a highly informative course. There was a point in the short quiz at the end where you had to remember the names of the ships sides, front, and back. I don’t know if you ever played a game when you were a child where an adult would call out ‘Port’, ‘Starboard’, etc and you had to run to different sides of the hall. Well, that information really came in handy!

‘Climb the rigging’ was another command in that classic game. It would become a reality the following day!

Late afternoon on Wednesday I plucked up the courage to jump on the metro by myself and head into Kowloon. The metro map is not too dissimilar in style to that of the London Underground so it was fairly easy to find my way around!

I took some time to stroll along the waterfront taking in all the sights, sounds, smells and busyness! A few things stood out:

1. Even though I am a ‘Londoner,’ I have never experienced as many skyscrapers in such a small amount of space!

2. I have also never experienced the unbelievable number of shops! They have huge indoor malls often incorporated into their metro stations, but every building's ground floor (and often more than that) is filled with restaurants, supermarkets, clothes shops, etc! The smells of different food cooking as you walk along are enticing.

3. With that all being said, though its busy, it has a genuine warmness about it, and even in the midst of all the noise and lights it feels warm and welcoming. People are polite, respectful and it is incredibly clean. Strolling about in the dark, even taking some time to walk through Kowloon Park, I didn’t once feel apprehensive or in any danger that you might feel in another city around the world.

4. It’s humid! Although the weather hasn’t been great since I arrived, with overcast and rainy days, it is still hot and humid, for me at least. Humidity was 88%, and the temperature felt around 38c!

5. I can confirm that McDonalds tastes exactly the same as in the UK!

Today (Thursday), I did my first bit of volunteering with the Mission. I headed down to the Harbourside at Tsim Sha Tsui, where the tender that the Mission owns was waiting for me.

Since 1891, the mission has operated a launch for the use of visiting ships and their crews in the anchorages of Hong Kong. The name of the Mission’s first ever launch in Hong Kong was Dayspring, a name taken directly from St. Luke’s Gospel Chapter 1 verse 78: “through the tender mercy of our God, the Dayspring will dawn upon us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace”.

This name has been on every tender since then. As well as being able to visit the ships in Anchorage, dropping off magazines, newspapers, snack food items and the Misisions newsletters. Dayspring also has the capacity to bring seafarers back to the harbour if they have any leave time.

I think I mentioned earlier that the weather hasn’t been too good, so it was a little bit choppy as we headed out into the bay. Luckily, I don’t struggle with sea sickness, so no brown paper bags were needed!

We were blessed to be able to go on board two ships; both were incredibly welcoming, giving us coffee and cake, and we had some wonderful conversations with seafarers about what life was like on their ships. Most of the crew were from the Philippines, but there were also some Germans on board one of the ships. On one of the ships, we were able to board off the dockside, but on the other one, I did have to ‘climb the rigging’. Luckily, there is no photographic evidence!

For some of the other ships in the anchorage, we pulled up alongside, greeted them and then sent the paper information/supplies up via rope!

Whenever I board ships (I did it a number of years ago in Japan), I am always staggered by their size and in awe of the commitment of the crews that transport the goods we need, often facing 7-9 months away from their families. Around 90% of traded goods are carried over the waves. So most of the things that you eat or drink, or other goods that you own, have been transported this way.

Perhaps you want to take a moment to pray and thank God for Seafarers today. You can use the prayer below if it is helpful:

Father God

We give you thanks for Seafarers, for the important role they take to help provide for our needs.

We lift our hearts in prayer for those who brave the vast and unpredictable waters. Grant them strength to navigate through storms and calm alike. Protect them from dangers seen and unseen, and guide them safely to their destinations.

Watch over their journeys and keep them in your care. Comfort their hearts when they are far from home and reassure their loved ones of your constant presence.

In your mercy, grant them safety, courage, and peace as they sail the oceans. Amen."

I will hopefully blog again soon:) Love and prayers with you all.

Hello Hong Kong!

This morning I finally made it to Hong Kong!

The journey didn’t quite go as planned. On Sunday afternoon, my flight out of Birmingham Airport to Zurich was delayed, which meant I missed my connecting flight onto Hong Kong!

Alas, there were no more flights that evening. However, Swiss Air kindly put me up in a hotel for the night and fed and watered me, so I can’t really complain. They also rebooked me onto a Cathy Pacific flight for the next day.

My journey took 33 hours in total, which was pretty exhausting. It also meant I arrived at Hong Kong International at 7 a.m. this morning, a day late.

Many of you will know that flying is not something I particularly enjoy (understatement of the year!), but I was thankful for God’s peace. I even managed not to grip the armrest the whole journey!

The Revd Canon Stephen Miller, Regional Director East Asian - Mission to the Seafarers) kindly picked me up and brought me back to the ‘Mariners Club’ where I will be spending the next four weeks before Emma and the children come across.

I am staying in a very homely one-bedroom apartment just across the road from the container port. It really is a great location, and I am so thankful for the mission's kindness in accommodating me. I was amazed to be greeted with some produce from the local M&S supermarket, including British Eggs!

After dropping my bags off, I went straight down to join the team for morning prayer. There are a number of Chaplaincy organisations represented here: Anglican, Roman Catholic, Danish Seamen's Mission, and German Seamen's Mission. It was great to chat with them all over tea afterwards about some of the challenges and opportunities that the different missions, both here in Hong Kong and around the world, face going forward.

It was then onto some practicalities: installing a much-needed HK SIM card and purchasing an Octopus Card (similar to Swift/oyster for public transport) before heading out to the market to buy some safety boots for when I start Ship Visiting. I was very grateful for Port Chaplain Rev'd Kim Kee Lee, who helped me get all these things sorted out so quickly!

I’m afraid the lack of sleep (I can never sleep on planes!) and jet lag caught up with me this afternoon, so I had a quick power nap before heading out to the local supermarket for some much-needed supplies. Thank you, HK Language Group, for the recommendation!

Tomorrow, I plan to explore Hong Kong a little, and on Thursday, I will head out with The Mission on their' Dayspring' boat to visit ships in anchorage. Hopefully, some more pics soon!

Thank you for your continued prayers:)