Newsletter (April 7, 2016)

Dear all, Greetings from Hong Kong. We have been here nearly two months now and have settled quite well. We are renting a small apartment on the 27th floor in one of the many high-rise residential buildings at the southern part of Hong Kong Island. It is not too far by bus from Zara’s parents. This place was originally a fishing village but has now been developed into a busy residential district, though there are still some fishing activities going on. So we can easily get fresh fish at a more reasonable price.

Hong Kong Island is very mountainous, with the main CBD and most residential areas on the northern part. Our district is on the southern part on the other side of the mountain ridges. You may not realise most of the island consists of country parks (somewhat like a national park) and there are lots of walking trails in the parks. Many of the trails are reachable from the residential areas so we are trying to walk an hour or two every day when the weather is good.

This February was a bit cold. It dropped to 9�C for several days. This time of the year is normally very humid in Hong Kong, so it feels much colder than a New Zealand 9�C. March was also quite cold and we have had the coldest Easter in nearly 50 years.

This is also the flu season in Hong Kong and both of us got it from early March. This flu is quite a serious one with a lingering cough. Zara has more or less fully recovered but Timothy is still having some coughing but it seems he has gotten another bout of flu yesterday. Because of that we mostly stay at home these weeks.

Zara’s mum is recovering slowly and we hope she will keep on getting better.

Before we got sick we managed to see a number of our former colleagues who we have not seen for many years, some more than 30 years! It was good to be able to catch up with them. One of Timothy’s aunts became 107 on 1 April and we went to her rest home to have a celebration with her. She is still in reasonably good health.

Hope to see you all very soon. Thanks for continuing to pray for us. With Christian love.