Covid Strikes Taiwan

 Unfortunately, it seems that it's Taiwan's turn to endure the disruptions caused by Covid outbreaks. The country has seen increases in cases which, although small in number, have resulted in a pretty severe response, including moving to "Level 3" where schools and most businesses are closed, church meetings are discontinued, etc. They hope to have the crisis pass in a couple of weeks, but given the experience in other countries, I expect it to last much longer. Because Sacrament Meeting has been canceled, we invited the nearby Sisters to receive the Sacrament at our home. Last week, we hosted Sisters Lai and Ting, and this week we had two services (no more than 5 can gather indoors) with Sisters Luo and Chung joining as well. It is a pleasure to spend time with these wonderful young missionaries!

Because of Covid, Taiwan has halted visas, but a handful of missionaries were able to travel just as the new lockdown took place, and they are currently quarantining here in Taiwan. Much of what we've been doing this week has been helping get these missionaries settled. We traveled to three apartments in Taichung being used for quarantine, stocking them with food and adding an air conditioning unit to one of the apartments. We also setup beds in another apartment where Elders are doubling up to free up their apartment for quarantine.

Sister Wells and I also traveled to Tainan, about 2 1/2 hours by car, to setup beds for the same purpose there. Going between apartments, we took a wrong turn (darn GPS!) and ended up on some narrow paths in the farmer's fields. We took a picture of the fruit trees with individual bags on each of the fruits, presumably to keep the birds from devouring them before they are ripe.


After we finished our work, we were able to enjoy a brief visit to Tainan's "Anping Old Street". A highlight was this interesting fountain:


We visited the Immigration Office again, to apply for ARC cards for the incoming missionaries. Here's what the looks like, with Sister Wells doing her thing:


Elder Turner and I made a trip to the Wufeng storage shed to get the air conditioner needed for a missionary apartment. Here he is, having a look at the rice growing in the adjacent paddy (It's not close to ripe yet):


As I'm moving to "Operations" (Elder Turner is taking over "Finance"), I'm responsible for missionary bicycles and nametags. The bikes are custom made by Solu bikes, a member-owned business here in Taichung. The supply new bikes (the one with the cardboard, for example), as well as refurbishing used bikes left behind by missionaries who have returned home. A great company! Here is the first batch of bicycles I ordered and received:


We are also training the Turners for their new assignments.  And, we took them to Costco to buy some "familiar" foods and other needed items. I think they are enjoying Taichung, as are we!


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