Young Mens Great Wall Hike

This video is curtesy of the Young Mens President

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Elder Gong

Many of you know and many of you don't know that our Prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, passed away early this year.  The previous October one of the Twelve Apostles also passed away, leaving two holes to be filled.  Every six months, our Prophet, Apostles and other general leaders speak to us giving us counsel, advice, commandments and announcements.  This is called General Conference.  During the last General Conference in April, two new Apostles were called, Elder Gerritt W. Gong and Elder Ulisses Soares, and we sustained our new Prophet, President Russell M. Nelson. 

Elder Gong and Elder Funk (from the Seventy), came to Beijing and spoke in a devotional to our Beijing International District.  Amazing!  How wonderful for the boys to see an Apostle of the Lord in person, hear his words for us and shake his hand!  I hope they remember this in the years to come.

When You Hit A Wall. . .

Hike it!!!

Young Mens activity of hiking the Great Wall of China (for seven hours)!!  Oh and getting Burger King.

Started on an unrestored section and ended on a restored section. 

It's A Birthday!

Grahm celebrated his 9th birthday!! Wow they grow up fast!  This boy is amazing!  He is energetic, loving, creative, totally into sports, acting and asks questions about everything!  He likes to know the plan before he starts on it and has the nicest handwriting of all the boys.  He looks forward to the day he will serve his mission.  I can't wait to see what an amazing young man he will be!

This is what your cake looks like after running out of frosting and a little brother helps himself before cake is served.  Grahm was a good sport to take it all in stride.

Go Go Go

Duncan is our Rubiks Cube champ.  He likes to time himself on the subway and try to solve the cube in between stations.  The older men are amazed by him.

Hopefully this video works.  He is solving the  2X2 and then the 3X3.  The boys are slowly starting to experiment with video.  Time lapse with Grahm as cameraman.

Youth Conference

Guy went to his very first Youth Conference.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints puts on conferences for youth ages 14 to 18.  Depending on how many participates are attending it can be put together on the ward (branch), stake (district) or district (area) level.  (Size of the congregations from small to large.) As international members are relatively few in China all of China plus, were invited, bringing the youth up to 40 in number. 

Not only did Guy get to participate but he was asked to be on the planning committee, helping to give his input, ideas and be a full fledged participant.  There was no getting out of going!

This year's four day conference was a couple of hours outside of Beijing.  The youth were able to rock climb, dance and attend workshops based on the theme, "Finding Peace in Christ".

Guy on the left getting ready to go "up" the water fall.

Here is another angle looking down.  See the water and boats below?

"Awesome!" in Guy's words.

Proof that he played hard!

According to Guy snack time was a bit better than meal time, go figure!  He is on the left facing the camera.