The Hong Kong Experiences of September 2015

We had to leave Macua at the end of August due to visa issues.  We were moved to Hong Kong.  We will be back in Macau at the end of September.  We are experiencing wonderful people every place we go..it is a blessing to be a missionary.

Before we left Macau, the Missionaries all wrote Joy a short note.  She was thrilled they would be so considerate.  The Filipino members put on a surprise party the night of her birthday.  Many of the ward had come together since we had a baptism of a fine young man.  She was blown away.

Joy's Birthday Party 2015

Near our Apartment in Hung Hom 2015

We moved to a place the LDS Church houses missionaries that work in the Hong Kong Temple and other expat's that work in the Church Area Office or as serving missions in the Area.  It is a lovely apartment building close to the bay.

After the Fall and Repairs 9-2015

As we gathered things for our apartment and tried to carry them home, I took a bad fall.  I tripped on uneven pavement.  I was sprawled out on the pavement bleeding and a major dislocated finger.  We got an ambulance ride (my first) and 3 hours of repair in the ER.  It slowed us down for a few hours but we we out doing missionary work the next day--which was a Sunday.

Mission Home and Kowloon Stake Center 9-2015

They do construction and repair with bamboo scaffolding. It is amazing to watch them lash it together particularly on larger buildings.  This is cleaning and painting of the Kong Hong Mission Home and Kowloon Stake Center.

Victoria Park 9-2105

This is Victoria Park on Hong Kong island.  It is like Central Park in NYC.  It is a place of beauty, activity and overall enjoyment.  They are making large bubbles that bounce over the water.  It was fun to watch.

Kelsey/Scott, David/Sunnee, Tait and Joy in Kowloon 

We had our son Tait and his wife come to Hong Kong.  we got the better part of two days to enjoy there company.  It was fun and exciting.  We did some tourist things, but most important we just spend some time visiting..and sharing!!  What a blessing to be with 3 of our children as we seve a mission.

HK Temple 9-2015

We love the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We know it is true.  We are grateful for Atonement and the road map to get us back to Our Heavenly Father.  We appreciate the opportunity to serve others...it enriches our life.

Scott and Joy Holbrook

44th Wedding Anniversary of Scott and Joy Holbrook

On August 16, 1971, Joy Chamberlain and I, were married in the Salt Lake City Temple.  It was certainly the most important day of my life.  We were not nervous--we arrived at the Temple at the same time--I had a swollen lip and she had a swollen knee. It was a beautiful day.  It was bright and sunny.  We were surrounded by our loving families.  The Temple was glorious and majestic!  In the evening we had a beautiful reception in Centerville.  Joy looked marvelous!!

Joy 1971

Wedding 1971

We started our family.  Each child has blessed our life.  We begin to see a glimpse of beauty of eternal families.

Joy and Scott 1974

We have moved several times.  Each time Joy has made home a special place to be including: Portland, Oregon; North Salt Lake, Utah; Bountiful, Utah; Tucson, Arizona; Heber City, Utah

Family (Colby and Kelsey to come) 1984

Family (Kelsey to come) 1987

Family 2010

Family Picture July 2014

Our children, their wonderful spouses and grandchildren have brought great joy into our lifes. We are truly blessed and love them all!! We look forward to spending eternity with each of them.









Now, we are serving Our Heavenly Father in Macau and Hong Kong as missionaries.  We love these wonderful people.  We have also been involved with some wonder young missionaries that have become our children and extended family.

Joy and Scott 1995

On our mission we have learned to love each other even more. We work hand-in-hand teaching people about Our Heavenly Father and the Savior.  We testify of Jesus Christ who provides an atoneing sacrifice and an example of how to live our lifes. What a glorious expericence!!  I felt blessed 44 years ago, but over each year I love Joy more.  She has blessed my life beyond measure and discription.

Joy and Scott 2014

Macau August 4, 2015

Our mission will be a mix of Macau and Hong Kong for the time remaining.  With a change in the way Macau issues work visas, we have to exit the country periodically.  So, part of our assignment with be in Hong Kong and the other in Macau.  It certainly offers a variety...we will enjoy both!!

During the past month we had an old mission president (President and Sister Hawks) return home and a new one (President and Sister Lam) come.  We do not know where Our Heavely Father and the Church find these wonderful couples to come and direct 150 missionariies for 3 years.  It is hard work 7 days a week form 6:30AM to 11:00PM at night. (And sometimes they spend the night in the ER with a sick missionary, as the Lam's did the first few days they were here.) These men and their wives are a great blessing to these wonderful young people--the missionaries mature right before your eyes. The mission president's job goes far beyond the missionaries but they are his prime focus.

Holbrook's, Pack's, Lam's and Hawks

President Lam is a 20 year covert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Prior to coming on his mission he was a physcian in southern California.  He has had 2 of his sons serve in this same mission.  Both he and Sister Lam lived in Hong Kong before they went off to university in the USA and stayed.

First Day with President and Sister Lam

We have great young men and young women in Macau as missionaries.  We are the furtherest distance from the Mission Office.  Macau is a different part of China and acts as independent country Our zone has Mandarin speaking missionaries (mainly for the mainlander investigators), Cantonese speaking missionaries (for the Chinese in Macau), and Tagalog speaking missionaries (for the Philippino people). All speak or are learning English. Zone meetings are in English. Many of our missionaries are from Great Britain, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada since their visas let them stay longer in Macau. We also have a good share of American Born Chinese who also can stay longer. We love to see the missionaries learning a new language, and wish that our language skills were growing as fast as theirs. These young men and women are mature far beyond their years.  It is a pleasure working with them. We get quite attached to them and miss them when they are transferred. So we celebrate with ice cream at Dairy Queen. Yes, there is a Dairy Queen in Macau, complete with upside-down Blizzards, banana splits and Dilly Bars.

Macau Zone August 2015

This beautiful lady in the center (Sister Mui) is the person who has been a member the longest in Macau.  She was baptized in 1978.  The church seriously opened Macau in the 1976 timeframe for missionary work. She's a stalwart for the branch.

Sister Mui --a Church member longer than anyone in Macau--1978,

We have been blessed to have this mission experience.  It is hard to believe that we have been married for 44 years this month.  Nevertheless, Joy and I have learned new things about each other as we spend 24X7 together.  I love her more each day.  It is heart-warming to serve others and share our love for Our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ.  We have met some truly amazing people.

Each day we recognize the great bounties we have been blessed with.  May I testify to you that I know God lives and He loves us.  I am so grateful for the Atonement and the sacrifice of Jesus Chirst on my behalf.  I feel unworthy of his the blessings I have recieved.

Hong Kong Temple at Night

Hong Kong / June 2015

We have been in Hong Kong for a month, while we work to get new visas to return to Macau.  The visas has not been granted yet and may continue to take some time.  Nevertheless, we are having a very special experience in Hong Kong.

We have been assigned to work in Discovery Bay.  It is a beautiful part of Hong Kong.  It is a community of mostly expatriates or wealthy Chinese.  We just moved here on the weekend. The other day a Chinese man was explaining why Chinese people are generally well off financially.  He said, "If a Chinese man earns $5, then he tries to live on $1.5-2.  If an American earns $5, then he spends $7."  If a Chinese man gets a raise, he still tries to live on $2, but if an American gets a raise they spend $10.  It was interesting to begin to understand how Chinese accumulate wealth.

View from our apartment in Discovery Bay

We have had the great opportunity to mingle with the Filipino Sisters in the area.  They are sweet and wonderful people.

DB Filipino Sisters 2015

Two weeks ago there was a rally at Victoria Park.  It gathered 100,000 people from all over Hong Kong.  Our apartment was close to the park.  We could hear the people chanting.  It was the commemoration of the instant in Tienanmen Quarter in 1989, when students cried out for their human rights and it was put down with much violence.  Around the boarder of the Park, there was a Police Officer about every 5 feet.  Roads we blocked and the Police carefully directed traffic...it was so orderly.  The chanting went on for about 2 hours.  When the people left the park they picked up there trash and cleaned up around them.  They orderly went home on foot, bus or subway.  We were able to go observe part of it and people were going home.


We had a chance to see a good friend, Brent and Cathy Dover, and the little girl they adopted from China.  It was a special experience.  They have a beautiful little girl and she has a wonderful set of parents.  This was a blessing to both.

Brent and Cathy Dover Family in China for Adoption of Mia 2015

We pleased to be representatives of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  It is a blessing in our life.

DB Investigators and Missionaries 2015

Macau Update 5/7/2015

It is a beautiful time of year in the Far East.  The day time temperature is in the 80's.  The night time temperature is hot too.  We are already using the air conditioning.  We have moved to short sleeved white shirts, except for Sunday when we still wear suits.

Tap Sac Park Near our Apartment

St Paul's Church Ruins; first Christian Church
in China.  It was build between 1602-1640.  

I did not showed you our official missionary badges.  We have them on everywhere we go.  It is another reminder we are representatives of Jesus Christ.  We see people braking their neck to read the name badges as we pass by.

Elder and Sister Holbrook Missionary Badges

9 year old who plays for Church Services
 and Branch Choir

In the humility note, this 9 year old plays the piano for all the of the church services at one of the branches.  He is fantastic!  I can hardly play the radio.

Sometime we revert back to being a Nerd

In life we tell ourselves we will never do certain things.  For me me it was never wear, tennis shoes with your suit or dress pants.  Well, I sprained my ankle and got Planters Factitious.  You got it!  Below is the result!  Soon I will probably be wearing plastic pocket protectors!


We continue to work with these marvelous Chinese and Filipino people.  They are amazing!!  The Chinese government published that their are 18 million members.  It is expected to grow by upto 5% a year for the next 15 years.  Some project by 2050 China could be the largest Christian nation.  It is amazing.

When I was a missionary in the Southern Far East mission in 1966-1967, we had missionaries in the Philippines we had only a few thousand members and not 48 years later there are 680,000 members in the Philippines.  Christianity is growing in the Far East!!

On May 17th Macau will become a District and hopefully grow to a Stake in a few years!!  We are all excited.  It is wonderful to see the church growing.

 Elder and Sister Holbrook (from Macau)

Sending off a couple as they return to the USA to live

Back to Macau from Hong Kong

Looking over Macau 2015

Due to visa issues, we had to leave Macau for Hong Kong.  The change in requirements made us apply for a new type of Visa.  It required several iteration of applying to get the documents submitted correclty.  We had many helpers assistance from from Hong Kong and Macau.  We were in Hong Kong for a period of 4 weeks will the papers were finalized. It will be great when we get the formal documents.




While in Hong Kong we were able to spend a week working in the Temple.  It is a beautiful building and we had a great experience.

Elder Holbrook at Hong Kong Temple 2015

We did a special study for the China Hong Kong Mission that allowed us to spend time with 1/3 of the missionaries and gather information.  We went to the end of the mission boundaries to visit missionaries and see is our places of worship (chapels).

Kelsey, Scott, Maverick and Grandpa on a Ferry 2015

Joy, Kelsey and Sunnee at the LDS Asia Women's Conference 2015

Dog-on!!  There was no place to stay for use to stay in Hong Kong, so we had to spend most of the month with our daughters (Sunnee and Kelsey) and their families.  It is fantastic getting to spend time with these grandkids that are so far away from us in Utah.  Joy attended an all LDS Asia Women's Conference with her daughters and had a great time.  I got the ultimate treat and got to watch the little grand kids.

The 2015 Chinese New Year is Here

 Chinese New Year has some amazing things to see:  

1. A busy robust town comes to a stop.  Nearly, all the businesses are closed.
2. People go visit family...similar to what we do in Thanksgiving.  It is family oriented holiday.
3. We did not buy much bread and it has taken us 3 days to find bread.
4. It is hard to find medicines.  We walked the streets for over an hour to find one yesterday with no success to help a missionary.  Today, we heard where a pharmacy was open and passed dozens that were closed.
5.  The parks are not full.  People are home with family.
6. Yes.  Missionary work is slow too.  We have been invited to a number of parties and special events.

7. Lots of festivals and colorful decorations.
8. Dragon Dancing...
9. Colorful prades...
10. Do it yourself fireworks--you buy a huge fireworks and a team of people help you set it off.  The fireworks are non-stop from 8PM to 2AM--for 10 days.
 11. It is the time business pay a bonus and they can be sizable.
12.  We even had our two daughter's and their families come and join the festivities from Hong Kong.

We are enjoying the fun and build up of the Chinese New Year.  It certainly is a time to cherish the blessing in life you have been give.  No question families are apart of that great blessing.



We have had some wonderful members help us celebrate the year.  They help us all the time and make us feel of value.  Each has greatly blessed our life.




We have a very special group of missionaries here in Macau that watchover us.



It was a long time ago (48 years), I remember, celebrating the Chinese New Year by eating watermelon seeds, being cold, without our housekeeper/cook and watching a few colorful prades.  This year we are more refined and progress in a beautiful and growing country.  We wish you Good Health and Prosperity for 2015.