Mission Backup

 Today was one of my most enjoyable days so far. It began with a video call from son Paul and his wonderful wife Melissa, announcing that they had just given birth to a new baby boy! They named him Jacob Andrew Wells. He is beautiful and perfect, and we are so happy to welcome our 23rd grandbaby! Screen capture of Marco Polo message showing Jacob Andrew Wells Then, this morning we joined our district, consisting of the APs - Elder Traven England and Elder Mason Fairbanks, and the Turners, on a District Activity. We all piled into the President's van and drove to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which is just down the road from the mission office. We enjoyed the exhibits, and were surprised to recognize one of the subjects! You may remember my earlier post from our trip to Lukang, where we met a basket maker - here he is, in fine art: I enjoyed the exhibit more than I expected to. There was a wide variety of art. Here are a few more of the artworks I liked: And, here are a f...

It's hard to believe that we reached our one year mark this week. We began service on Sept. 7, 2020, which means we have just six months left to serve here in Taiwan. It brings to mind the hymn "Come Let Us Anew" which includes this lyric: Our life as a dream, our time as a stream Glide swiftly away, And the fugitive moment refuses to stay; For the arrow is flown and the moments are gone. In this "dream" we had zone conferences this week. With President and Sister Fields still in Guam awaiting their visas, we and the Turners were required to attend the zone conferences, to be the "adults in the room."  On Tuesday, we all helped out with the North Zone conference, as it was held next to the office in the Wuquan Chapel. This was so that we could learn together what needed to be done to make the conference go smoothly, attending to the details of the audio/visual needs, lunch, etc. Then, on Wednesday, the Turners handled the Central Zone, held in nearby C...

 Our wonderful young missionaries have been unable to attend the MTC due to Covid restrictions, and so they are doing their MTC mission at home. This is not as fulfilling or satisfactory as an in-person MTC experience, so we (following the lead of the Taipei mission, and under the last-minute direction of the area presidency) have begun hosting the MTC missionaries. We place them with a pair of excellent missionaries who guide them for the three weeks of their MTC time. These are all "local" missionaries, not those from the states. Accommodating these Elders and Sisters has been a huge effort, especially for Sister Wells! Essentially, instead of transfers every six weeks, we now have them every three weeks. On the first one of these, the mission leaders placed one of the MTC sisters in an apartment with only two beds, so Sister Wells and I had to make an "emergency run" to Kaohsiung on a Sunday to get the needed furniture in place for the missionary's arrival th...