Busy-ness as Usual

 

Time slips by so quickly here - I see it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted. Here was our travel day yesterday (which was supposed to be our P-Day):


That includes 65km by car and 2km by bike. We rode to work, then drove President and Sister Fields to the High Speed Rail Station for a quick trip to Kaohsiung. Then we stopped at Costco to buy some items and pick up the Turners, who had bussed there. We took them home and then returned to the office. There, we found that the dryer we took to the Wufeng Elders on Friday was already not working. So, we headed out again. We first went to the Wufeng storage to get a working dryer and took that on to the Wufeng Elder's apartment.

On the way home, we stopped at Panasonic (the shop that fixes our appliances) and dropped off the non-working dryer to be fixed again. While there, Sister Wells used her excellent Mandarin Chinese language skills to verify something I had unearthed in the office paperwork. It turns out that our shop can network with other shops in the mission, so I can have a "one stop" shop to fix all appliances in the mission. Neat!

After an hour's rest at home, we went to the Wufeng chapel to help with the Beitun Ward's Thankgiving Day party. We sang "I Feel My Savior's Love" with the Beitun Sisters and the Turners. The pot luck dinner was good - someone brought a whole Butterball turkey, so we got a bit of that as well as an assortment of Chinese food, including my first taste of "Stinky Tofu!" It wasn't too bad, actually.

As the party ended, we got back in the car and drove the HSR to pick up the Fields as they returned to the mission home. Yes, we were tired as we rode our bikes back to our apartment!

I'll describe some of the other recent events in pictures:
 
Picture two thankful senior missionaries.

We brought Costco cookies to the pot luck. They were not as good as the US version!

Sisters Lin (on ukulele) and Huang Li

Our Junior Primary class - so cute learning the "Sunbeam" song for the first time.

My angel!

My angel can open large doors!

A Buddhist tent shrine and puppet show magically appeared next to our chapel, for one night only!


Here's our van leaving the parking lot, as it often does with me at the wheel.

A group of elders on transfer day.

Stake primary activity day. We showed up, but weren't needed.

Nai Nai buying Christmas gifts for the kids.

Taiwanese children attend small commercial schools. They all take off their shoes, of course!

I met this cow eating a steak. That's kinda weird, if you think about it.

We had a welcome dinner for the DeWitts, at Nara, a high-end Thai restaurant in the Chung Yo mall.

We returned to Immigration after a long time away, since the Fields and DeWitts need to get visas changed. We were first in the door, so we got Number 0001. (She's always my number one!)

Enroute to the Dongying chapel, we stopped at a red light and saw this next to us. It was accompanied by loud fireworks going off (very) nearby. Yes, that's a whole pig on a spit!

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