It's beginning to look a lot (well, a little) like Christmas!

One of our member friends here tells us to "Watch out!" when warning us about cold weather. It /is/ cool - some days we even wear a sweater! We definitely won't be getting our wish for a white Christmas this year. But, we did get some wonderful Christmas cards from home. One fun one was in an envelope all by itself, and wasn't signed. We found out it was from Maxwell Darrington, Mia and Cody's 4 year old. His mom said he asked her for an envelope and stuck something in it and sealed it before she could examine the contents. He said it was for Nai-Nai, and would she send it? We loved this artwork!


We finally got to go to the temple! President Fields authorized a trip for the three senior couples to the Taipei Temple. The DeWitts drove all the way from Kaohsiung to join the Turners and us. We drove the President's Odyssey, which was very comfortable. We enjoyed the temple, and also visited the Distribution Center, the little "LDS goods"-type souvenir store (which is closing in February boo hoo!) across the street, as well as the Chang Kai-shek memorial. That, together with a nice lunch at the Dong Men Dumpling Restaurant.ade for a nice day.

Verifying that the stone in my tie-tac (a gift from Mary and Matthew)
was, indeed, the same as the Taipei Temple stone!

The crew from the Taipei Distribution Center, including Peggy and Sally

As always, we enjoyed teaching the Junior Primary. Here's Sister Wells, teaching the children about the godhead, as articulated in the First Article of Faith. Le Le, a cute 4-year old is able to recite it perfectly!



Here we are, "doing our thing." Sister Wells at the immigration office, and me adjusting a drawer in the office:
Plenty of plastic to keep those Covid germs away!


Not so glamorous after all, huh? Haha. I also order name tags for the missionaries. There was an error in this batch.

We said goodbye to 7 missionaries this week (only 5 really, since 2 elected to stay until after Christmas). 
Elder Huang Ming Huang, who was one of the Wuquan 3rd
Ward Elders when we first arrived on island. 

Sisters Yang and Lai spent the night at our apartment before they went home.
The obligatory "elevator shot" came out pretty fuzzy!

They left for the airport very early in the morning!


It is always wonderful to witness the baptism of a new convert. Sister Wells often plays the piano for the service. I even got to help by conducting the small congregation of about 15 souls. The young man bore a sweet testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Elder Pierson, Elder Fairbanks, Elder Chuang, Brother Chiu , Elder Blancaver,
Sister Chien,(a former Taichung missionary) and Elder Cai.


Our good friend, Torrey, suffered a miscarriage this week, and we sorrowed with her. Here is her daughter Ping An with a poinsettia plant we gave them. They are not too novel here, as they grow wild about 15 feet high!
And, yes, it is Christmas time! Our mission did a mission-wide caroling activity yesterday. Each stake's missionaries (with some members joining) caroled in various locations. We gave away pass-along cards with a candy cane attached to passers-by. Our event got moved at the last minutes, so we caroled next to the Wuquan meetinghouse. It's very close to the Chung Yo shopping mall, so we had lots of foot traffic. Sister Wells played the piano, and I helped keep the candy coming. We enjoyed about an hour of caroling as the darkness fell.



Finally, we had a great stake Christmas party last night. Sister Wells helped with the Wuquan 3rd ward table, where partiers could make a cute Christmas ornament, while I asked Santa for something special for Christmas!








 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lots of fun... and hard work!

Image
 The past two weeks have been just about typical for us, with long, tiring days, and some fun thrown in. Chinese New Years lasts two weeks, so we've been doing lots of celebrating and well-wishing lately. Last year, we enjoyed many meals together with members and missionaries, but the last few weeks have been a time of increased Covid fear, and our Church leaders have placed restrictions on missionaries which precluded visits to members homes, or regular Church meetings. We were sad to have to refuse the many kind offers we received. We were allowed to eat in restaurants, though, and we enjoyed a hot pot meal at Bulu Bulu with a couple from our Wuquan 3rd Ward! Interestingly, we have had an egg shortage in Taiwan recently, so we've had to buy eggs as we can. The last batch (10, not 12, here), included some mismatched sizes. Because we're not meeting in our churches, the missionary Elders are once again providing sacrament services to the Sister missionaries. Our neighbors, ...
Read more

"Settling In"

Image
The last month has brought us our "sea-legs," it seems. We're both more at ease with our roles and duties, meaning less panicked every day! We've done most things at least once (I think), although "you don't know what you don't know." Here's the sort of thing I'm up against every day: But, the work is exhausing! I'm probably repeating myself, but I'm working far harder here than I did when I was working for a living! I've learned how to convert Chinese street addresses to their English (Pinyin) equivalent, which is a big milestone for me. That's only about a half of one percent of what I need to know, but it's a start! We've been asked by our Ward Mission Leader to do a short video message each Sunday.Here is the second of three we've done so far: The love and kindness of the Taiwanese Church members towards us continues. Brother and Sister Yu invited us to dinner again, along with the office elders. Our good ...
Read more

We Have a President!

Image
At long last, President Karl Fields and Sister Melanie Fields have joined us here in Taichung! After being released from their quarantine in Taipei (and a visit to the Taipei "Temple Square" and a few other sites), the APs drove them here to Taichung. We enjoyed a small soirée with them, in the mission office.  Elder Robert and Sister Gloria DeWitt, from Spanish Fork, Utah, were also released from quarantine here in Taichung. We enjoyed hosting them for a meal and to do some laundry, and after a quick visit to the office, they set off for their new home in Kaohsiung. They will be helping with missionary needs in the south, as well as helping with missionary health concerns mission-wide. Now we have a full complement of senior missionaries. A far cry from our early days here, when we were the only seniors in sight! We also attended the baptism of Zhiyun and Vic, the two youngsters we've been helping prepare for baptism. Zhiyun's baptism wasn't correct, so it needed...
Read more