Unforgettable Taiwan

 Teaching our Junior Primary class brings us happiness each week. Yes, it's stressful to get a lesson ready and keep the little ones engaged, but they are so cute, and so willing to learn! Here, they are learning that "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" as enthusiastically as any Sunbeam class in Utah.    

Marshall, Le Le (pronounced Luh Luh), Vivian, ?, and Ping An

 Our weekly English Conversation Group is fun, but even more tiring. After a long day, we stick around for the 7:00 pm class. But, it's worth it to spend time with these nice people:

Me, with Sisters Huang Li, Wells, and Lin, and class members Boyd, Anthony, Jessica, Ming, and Hugo

I also love the interesting sights, sounds, smells, and people of Taiwan. We were out doing some "last minute" Christmas shopping on Yizhong street when I spotted this gentleman working on a third story remodeling job. As is typical here, there were no safety harnesses, or such, just men getting the work done.

And, suddenly it was Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for - a wonderful family with 7 terrific adult children and their spouses, and the 23 beautiful grandchildren, all living good lives, our health, great friends, the chance to be full-time missionaries (again), and, most of all, the gospel of Jesus Christ. We love Him and serving His children!

We were able to enjoy a delightful Thanksgiving dinner out (even though I led the group slightly astray trying to find the restaurant) with President and Sister Fields, and Elder and Sister Turner, at the Uptowner.


Next, we attended the Wuquan San (3rd) ward Thanksgiving pot luck dinner. We brought a fruit salad, which proved to be pretty popular. There were many delicious dishes, including (surprisingly) Dominos, KFC, and McDonalds, in addition to lots of Taiwanese food!





I enjoy watching the workers who maintain the landscaping for our office, the mission home, and the Wuquan chapel. I came upon this scene of tree trimming. They use "weed wackers" for lots of things here (I've only seen one lawn mower):


We enjoyed a very pleasant Sunday dinner with our Bishop and his family, including little Le Le, who is a precocious four year old. She enjoyed flying paper airplanes, showing us her dance steps, and being awfully cute!



Monday and Tuesday, we did a work trip to Kaohsiung, with stops in Douliu, Chiayi, Tainan, Pintung, and Chouzhou on the way down on Monday. We dropped off desk chairs to replace broken ones, installed software, assessed housing needs, delivered packages, etc. That evening, Elder and Sister DeWitt treated us to a nice dinner at the Arkansas Diner restaurant, which is operated by a (lapsed) Church member. A native Arkansan, he very kindly to let us park the van in front of the store (as usual, there was no other parking to be found!) and fed us delicious food (I got the pulled pork on biscuit with cole slaw topping, Sister Wells got a chicken burger), and shared interesting stories. With all the other neat American-style decorations, he has a large mural. Here we are, visiting the sacred grove in Kaohsiung, Taiwan!!



After sleeping on a (comfortable) fold-out bed at the DeWitt's apartment, we headed out to help the Xiaogong Elders move to a new apartment. Like most new apartments, it is very modern and beautiful, but very small. We threw away the worst of their furniture, and packed up the rest for storage. Some of it went to our Lingya apartment (which has extra room) and we took the rest back to the Wufeng storage shed in Taichung. It was a 5 or 6 hour job, and then we headed back to Chouzhou to help the Sisters get the apartment in better order. I spent my two hours there cleaning bird poop off a balcony (accessible only by a window!) and putting up netting to keep the birds out. I also connected the washing machine drain and relocated the dryer to the outside laundry area, and moved mattresses into their extra room. Then, made the 3 hour trip home (detoured due to a road closure), and arrived dead tired at 9:30 pm. The trip was 609km (378 miles), and we had narrowly avoided accidents at least twice and gotten lost more times then I can count. Google maps isn't so good in Taiwan! 

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