Elder Mak Is Back!

   When we arrived in Hong Kong to serve for three years in late June, 2000, we immediately linked to our special office elders.  Elder Johnson Mak was one of those.  He was very soft spoken and kind, but determined to do his best and work hard.  He helped us acclimate and take care of all the little details we needed to do as a family to get us legal to be in the country–like get our driver’s licenses and our bank situation set up.  He almost always was smiling.

    After a while, he was reassigned to another area to do his missionary work.  Imagine our sorrow when in October, President Hinton received a call saying that Elder Mak’s mother had died.  That was one of his hardest chores of our service there.  She was the only other member of the Church in his family and the only one who wrote him letters so we knew it would be a blow.  Of course it was hard, but he took it well and stayed to finish his mission in spite of much criticism from his relatives.  His dad was okay with it because he knew it was the mother’s wish that he serve for the whole two years, but other relatives really gave him a hard time.  To top it all off, Elder Mak suffered with extreme headaches most of his mission.  We sent him to various doctors, but nothing seemed to help.  He refused to give up and just dealt with the pain while he continued to work hard.  
    Elder Mak’s quality was very apparent-- even as a child. Elder Mak’s family moved from Kiribati to Hong Kong for a while when he was very young.  His mother’s health wasn’t very good then and they were very poor–eating oatmeal everyday. Johnson tells about running away to school when he was five and then telling his teacher to call his mom and tell her that he was safely there.  He was so afraid that if she continued to walk him to school and then back up the huge stairs to home that she would die.  When she realized that he knew the way and could get to school safely on his own, she let him walk by himself and Johnson was relieved.
Elder Mak went to BYU-Hawaii after he was released as a missionary. He met a choice girl from Taiwan and they got married and now have three children.  Recently we had the wonderful experience of renewing our friendship in Logan where they reside as he works full-time and goes to school for an advanced degree.  Cute family!  We love seeing our missionaries as they grow and live the lives of a committed member of the Church!  And we thoroughly enjoyed re-connecting with this quality young man and his family.

Alma 17:2
. . .Alma did rejoice exceedingly to see his brethren; and what added more to his joy, they were still his brethren in the Lord; yea, and they had waxed strong in the knowledge of the truth; for they were men of a sound understanding and they had searched the scriptures diligently, that they might know the word of God.