Preparations

 It is now about three weeks before we enter the MTC.  We are doing all we can to prepare.  We have started having online training with our mentors, Elder and Sister Wells.  They served as office specialists in TaiChung, and she served a mission when she was young in Taipei.  She is training me to be the mission secretary, and Elder Wells is training Paul to be in charge of finances, housing etc.  When we get to Taiwan we will learn more about our duties.  

From what we can tell, there is only one office couple in Taipei.  Sister Croft served a mission in Taipei at the same time that I served my first mission.  She is from Taiwan.  They were initially called to be MLS missionaries, but were asked to transfer to the office last June.  They are scheduled to finish their mission the first of April, so we should have a few weeks to be trained by them.

Our youngest son is getting married April 7, so we actually got permission to come home for the wedding.  We will try to make it a quick trip.  It is very important that we attend the wedding and we are so happy that our son found such a great companion.

We have seen the Lord's hand in helping us prepare.  One of the first helps we received was with regard to my (Delores) immunization record.  I needed to give the church a record of all of my immunizations, including those I had when I was young.  I called our HMO in California and was able to get some of the dates, but didn't know what to do about the ones I had when I was young.  One morning when I was thinking about it, I suddenly had a memory of seeing an immunization record glued inside of a scrapbook.  I hadn't looked at that scrapbook in years.  I pulled it out and flipped through it, and there was the original record from when I served my first mission!  The scriptures say that the Holy Ghost can bring all things to our remembrance.  This surely happened with me!

The next help we received was with our drivers licenses.  We knew that they would expire this year on our birthdays, and we wanted to renew them and also get an International driver's license.  One afternoon we were talking about it and Paul said, "Why don't I look online and see if we can get an appointment?"  We weren't even sure how long it would take to get an appointment!  He pulled up the website and saw that they had two appointments that very day, in a half an hour!  He scheduled both and we zoomed down to the DMV.  We also read that you can only renew the license 6 months before your birthday unless you can prove that you won't be in the country at the time of renewal.   So we took copies of our mission call with us.  After getting there, we found out that it could take 6-8 weeks to get the licenses back!  We had just enough time to get them before leaving for Taiwan.  We provided our calls and there was no question that they would allow us to renew.  We felt we were prompted to renew them that day.  

One more help we received was in regard to our car.  Back in the summer the transmission to our van went out.  The dealer told us it was still under warranty and they would tow it and replace the transmission for free.  We felt that was a blessing that it happened right before our warranty expired.  But after having it fixed, the transmission still had a kind of whine and we wondered how long it would last.  We decided to try to sell it, but no one was buying.  Finally we decided to use it to trade in on a car for our son.  The dealer gave us full value for it!  We really felt helped in this.

We started having problems with our roof leaking, so decided to look in to having our roof replaced.  A company started working with us and contacted our insurance company.  They were only able to get the insurance company to pay for part of the roof.  But then they dropped the ball and we didn't hear from them for a couple of months.  We called them and they sent out a new guy to work with us and told us the previous guys had quit the company.  But the new guy dropped the ball too!  Another company reached out to us.  They were able to get the insurance company to pay much more!  We are now just waiting on the weather to get warm enough.  The glue won't stick if it is applied in too cold of weather.  

Overall, we have felt the Lord's hand in every step in our preparations.  We are so thankful for these tender mercies and look forward to being able to serve the Lord in Taiwan.