Alumna Annie Wong, who is now the area director of communication for the Church for all of Asia, said learning about people and how their cultures influence who they are can be credited to her conversion to the Church and attending BYU–Hawaii. She said her experience of meeting different people would have been very different if she had stayed in Hong Kong for school.
“The BYUH environment, the demographic itself, was an extremely eye-opening experience,” she said. “When I walked into the cafeteria, I basically saw the world. The small classroom sizes there gave me the opportunity to interact more closely with the professors. Having classmates you know from literally all over the world gave me the perspective I have a Heavenly Father who loves all of his children.”
Before leaving Hong Kong to attend BYUH, she said she remembers speaking with her stake president. “He said that if he could live his life again, he would have chosen to go to BYU–Hawaii because it is so culturally diverse,” said Annie. “Over there, he said, you learn so much more about people. And it’s so true. I saw the world on that campus. I learned so much more about people and culture. . . . It was an amazing experience to be friends and rub shoulders with people from all over the world.”
Meeting the missionaries
Malinda Larson, a missionary who served in the Hong Kong Mission starting in October 1999, said she met Wong when Wong was a teenager attending a prestigious Catholic school in Hong Kong.
Larson expressed during the beginning stages of her mission, her Cantonese was not very strong, but she still had a great desire to meet new people, teach them the gospel and connect with them on a personal level.
While contacting people at a train station in Hong Kong, Larson said she remembered seeing a young girl wearing a scarf that caught her attention. That girl was Annie Wong.
In her broken Cantonese, Larson explained she began to say she liked her scarf but did not know the word for scarf, so she just said it in English. “Once I said something in English, Annie started talking to me. I thought to myself that I had picked the right girl to speak to that day.”
Continually converting
Wong explained in an interview for the Latter-day Saint Women’s Podcast it was the sister missionaries and their commitment to serve full-time missions that really impressed her.
While recounting her experience, she said the missionaries invited her to go to church and she started to investigate from there. “I still was very much attracted to their sincerity and how genuine they were when they spoke with me.”
Despite her interest, Wong said she could not get baptized right away. “I was a minor and I wasn’t able to get permission during those two and a half years to get baptized, so I just kept studying with them until my mom signed the paper to let me get baptized.”
Larson beamed while describing her fondness of Wong and the time she had to meet with her during those few months of teaching her the gospel. “I would say she’s a sponge. She loves to learn, and she loves people, but she also loves learning about her divine nature as a daughter of God. To teach a person about their divine worth and their divine nature is such a great blessing.” Larson described the experience of meeting with Wong as a way for her to see God’s hand and the plan he has for all of his children.
She added Wong had a lot of questions when she was investigating the Church. “[God] wants us to have questions, and he doesn’t want us to just accept it because people tell us to. He wants us to ask our questions and come to find the answers first, so I was grateful the process gave her time to have questions and to seek to know.”
Larson said they have stayed friends since they met in 1999 and continue to share their lives with one another. She described Wong as having an “energy that carries over to people she loves you can feel just by being in the same room as her. … She’s just a spark of light that can make you smile and feel so comfortable that you just want to give her a hug.”
An appetite for learning
Wong shared learning has always been a part of her life. On the Latter-day Saint Women’s Podcast, she explained how her high school was very competitive, with students on track to attend Ivy League colleges in the United States.
As Wong prepared for her journey to BYUH, she said many of her classmates did not take her pursuit seriously because since the school is in Hawaii, they did not think it would be a focused endeavor. “In reality, I’m a very studious person and I’m very academically driven. So, I had this dilemma of going to BYUH when I first started. But over time, I learned a lot from the school and I would say I had some very life changing experiences,” she explained.
Overseeing the people of the Church
As the current area director of Communication for the Church for all of Asia, Wong said she oversees different issues and the needs of the people in those areas. Wong explained her role allows her to use persuasion for good change within the regions she oversees.
Tom Crockett, from Tucson Arizona and former director of public affairs, which is what Wong’s position used to be called, said the position requires maintaining relationships with government officials and other organizations within the countries of that region.
“Government relations, all the way down to the local communities doing local service and so on, had to do with news, news information, managing news and managing the relationships we have in the local communities,” explained Crockett about Wong’s role as area director.
"...[I felt] like I saw the world on that campus."
Before Wong went into her profession, she explained she had the opportunity to intern in the public affairs department of the Church’s Asia Area Office after she transferred to BYU in Provo. Although she was paid little, she said she thought the opportunity would be a great learning experience. This led to her later getting hired as a secretary, and ultimately assisting the public affairs director.
Wong recommended BYUH students to “always perform, always deliver and always do well in all circumstances” because people notice when they do or don’t do well, and students can never know where their experiences will take them in the future.
Wong credited the help she received with her writing, reading and public speaking skills to the BYUH Reading and Writing Center, where she frequently went to practice her English speaking, writing and communications skills. •