We reach our one-year mark

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 Changhua. Thursday and Friday, Sister Wells and I traveled south to do first the "Jianan" (a combination of Chiayi and Tainan areas) in Tainan on Thursday, and Kaohsiung, on Friday, zone conferences.

Ours went pretty smoothly, once the sound system problems were resolved. The setup was:
Our laptop used for Zoom, connected to
A projector to show President and Sister Fields on a big screen, with
A camera (we started with a webcam, but had to switch to a cell phone) showing the podium, and
Another camera (again we had to switch to a cell phone), showing the missionaries, and
Another cell phone to pickup the sound, connected to
A portable speaker so the missionaries could hear President and Sister Fields speaking.

We used one of the visual cell phones as a roving camera to show the activity during the break-out sessions and small group work. Of course, things did not work at first. I kept getting reverb from the speaker. It was difficult to figure out where the reverb was coming from, as I had the microphones turned off in all but one cell phone. I just kept trying things until, magically (or miraculously) it started working perfectly. On Thursday, this happened at 20 minutes after the hour, and on Friday, it was only 5 minutes after the hour. During this time, I was "sweating bullets." Even though it was difficult to get working right, the final outcome was very clear sound and excellent visuals for everyone in Taiwan and Guam.

We decided to get pizzas from Pizza Hut for both days, and this worked out really well. We just slipped away and drove to the closest Pizza Hut and picked up the pizzas, which everyone enjoyed. On Friday, some of the young sisters bought 2 birthday cakes for all the September birthdays, including (it turned out!), us!

Thursday night, we stayed at the unoccupied senior apartment in Kaohsiung. It worked pretty well, except that the bed is pretty firm. We were longing for "our" bed in Taichung which, when we're in it, makes us long for "our" bed in Springville. Haha.

Here are some pictures of the zone conferences:

North Zone
Central Zone

Jainan Zone

South Zone

The luncheons were fun. This is the Jainan Zone:





And, the Kaohsiung Zone:





Happy Birthday!









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