LDS
life in the Shanghai International District of China is surprisingly
fun, exciting, and vibrant. It is not at all what I expected when I
made the initially frightening decision to come live in China, an
officially atheist nation where religious freedom is a little
different than what I'm used to in the States.
We
can't proselyte among the national Chinese, nor pass out religions
literature, but we are treated remarkably well and allowed to rent
beautiful facilities and meet and worship freely (though our meetings
are for foreign passport holders only — we don't worship with
national Chinese Latter-day Saints).
We
have three branches in Shanghai with lots of interesting activities.
This weekend is District Conference. One part of that is important to
me is the program for Young Single Adults.
We
have around 100 YSAs in our district, many of whom are English
teachers who come here for a few months to work in some local
schools. Another big portion are students from BYU who come primarily
to Nanjing University for study. My wife and I have been privileged
to work with the YSAs while here in China and love their energy and
faith.
This
weekend we have organized tours of Shanghai and also of a neighboring
ancient water town, Qibao, to provide some fun things for YSAs to do
while in town for District Conference. After the adult session of
conference in the late afternoon, we'll also have a dance at the LDS
meeting place.
Then
on Sunday, after the main session of District Conference, members in
Shanghai will provide hot food for the YSAs before a special single
adult devotional. Then they will disperse, most taking trains back
home in places like Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou,
and Ningbo.
To
make coming to Shanghai for the weekend affordable for these young
people, the members in the Shanghai area open up their homes to the
YSAs from out of town and provide a place on Friday and Saturday
nights.
Having
YSAs stay with us frequently has been one of the really fun parts of
our life in Shanghai. We love it when we can show them around town a
bit, take them to dinner or cook a meal for them and listen to their
stories.
In
addition to District Conference events, we recently had a lot of fun
being chaperones and helpers at Youth Conference, working directly
with the young men and women of the District at an outing on Sun
Island in the middle of the Huangpu River, a beautiful resort area.
Lots of fun.
I
feel my main contribution there was running around with sunblock to
keep people coated because we had unusually good weather with
unusually strong sun. Between the clouds and the particulates that
tend to be in the air in China, it's hard to get a tan, much less a
sunburn, but this was genuine sunburn weather.
One
or two YSAs applied too little sunblock and there was one case of
pretty bad sunburn, I'm sad to report. But she recovered quickly —
my olive oil home remedy seems to help people heal faster than
average.
One
of my favorite aspects of life in Shanghai is the Christmas musical
we have had every year that I've been here. It's a marvelous work of
collaboration between multiple faiths and local groups, with numerous
choirs and musical groups coming to share songs of Christmas. Love
it!
We
hear so many inspiring conversion stories here and so many great
talks from the local members. There's a wealth of experience and
wisdom, coupled with the excitement of many recent converts and
highly diverse membership. It's such an exciting time and place to be
a Latter-day Saint. If you visit China, be sure to come visit us!
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.