The bitter cold of an Asian winter met me with stark contrast to the balmy tropics of Hawaii. During the early ‘70’s, missionaries around the world all rode bicycles, stood on street corners to pass out leaflets and spent hours in city parks conducting surveys with passersby – no matter the weather or season of the year. What a wake up call to life’s realities this was for me!
The surveys we shared with folks were printed handouts that asked their opinions about different aspects of LDS doctrine. At the top of the form, participants would write their name and address and at the bottom they would check whether or not they were interested to know more. This was actually a very brief encounter with the person.
We missionaries then took the surveys home and wrote personal letters of testimony to each of the parties who had left an address on the form. We would explain our purpose as missionaries and set up appointments to come to their home and show a filmstrip about the church - the film of the Joseph Smith story and introduction to the Book of Mormon.
My Chinese companion, Sister Chang, and I had met with 4 of these appointments on a particular Saturday and all four of them had turned out to be common jokes being played on American missionaries. By 8:00 pm we had one last family to meet with before we were through for the day… (a portion of a letter to my family tells the rest of the story)
‘…We asked a man on the street where this particular address was and he said it was way out of town about 45 min. by bicycle. We were discouraged and afraid to go for fear we would get there and it may very well be a no-show or even another practical joke. But we felt strongly that it just might turn out right. So we started on our journey, and every few miles we would stop to have a prayer and ask a police officer or bus driver if we were still going the right direction. Soon, we were way out in the country and felt completely lost but felt we should just keep going.
Finally after 1 hour of riding, we were about ready to give up when a farmer along the road asked if we needed help. We showed him the name we were looking for and he told his little boy to take us there. Within about 2 minutes we were at the home of Br. Hwang and his darling family. They couldn’t believe we had ridden all the way out there – in the cold - on bikes and said we must be very determined.
Yes, we were! We knew there was some reason for driving out there and this was it! A young married couple with four little children - what more beautiful reason for giving them a plan of eternal joy, salvation, and blessings.
We showed them the filmstrip, challenged them to read 50 pages in the Book of Mormon; and taught them the prayer method from a missionary teaching card. Next weekend we will go out again to give them the first discussion.
When we were through Br. Hwang hopped on his motorbike and escorted us back into town because it was so late. What a beautiful day it had been. The Hwang family made the whole day worthwhile!
The next day, we had one survey appointment left. It was way out of town, too, so we started early. This one was on a main road but several miles out (we didn't know exactly how far). When we saw a street sign similar to what we wanted, it turned out to be another joke. It was a definite address; but no one had ever heard of that man. About this time, it started to rain real hard and it was just getting dark. About this time, too, we saw a road sign - 18 miles to Tai Chung. We had ridden 18 miles out of town for a practical joke!
Well, we couldn't get mad. No, we didn’t feel like getting mad - we just felt very sorry for these people. They don't realize they are playing jokes on themselves. All the way back into town Sister Chang and I talked about how wonderful the Hwang family was and how thankful we are for them. In fact, in just two days trying to keep 4 appointments, we had ridden 68 miles and taught only one discussion. Yet we believe we are sincerely more thankful for our precious Hwang family because of the great sacrifice we made finding them than if meeting them had been an easy encounter.’
Nine months later when I was transferred away from that area, I went out to visit Br & Sis Hwang one last time to say goodbye. We had the above photo taken together in their yard. Sister Hwang had become a counselor in the Branch RS presidency and Br. Hwang was the Elder’s Quorum President.
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