Last Few Days of Training

Sister DeVictoria writing:  

Our time with our trainers is running out.  They finish their mission in just a few days.  Sometimes we wonder if we will be able to remember everything.  I asked Sis. Croft if I could call her at 3:00 in the morning with questions.  :)  Actually, the secretary before her lives here in Taiwan, so I could always message her if I have problems.  Here in Taiwan they use the "Line" app for everything. It is a communications app similar to "What's App".  Sis. Croft joined me to all of the important groups on "Line" that I need to do my work, so I should be able to contact everyone okay.  I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but she and I served in this mission at the same time when we were young, although we were never companions.

Here is a picture of some orchids that I saw as we were walking one day, a picture of me standing by the door of the apartment I lived in 42 years ago, and a street by us with a view of a full moon.

Our current mission president and his wife finish their mission the end of June.  The new president, Pres. Whitely and his wife will start July 1.  They might have a different way of doing things, so we might still have some things to learn.  Currently the church is renovating the apartment they will live in.  It is on the top two floors of our office building.  It hadn't been renovated for over 40 years. They are also renovating our closets in the office.  They should be done today.  It has been kind of a mess this week while they worked.  All of the contents of the closet are stacked on tables and such.  It has also been a little noisy.  It will look nice when they are done.

We got in two new missionaries today.  We met them while we were still in the MTC.  We will be getting in a good number of missionaries this summer, but it should taper off because the church is trying to keep missions a little bit smaller.

We have been doing a little more cooking at home this week.  It's a temptation to eat out every meal because the food is so good, but there are times we need to eat from home, and it can be cheaper.  But once again, I can't help sharing pictures.  The picture below is from when we went to a nearby night market for dinner.  My dish was spicy potstickers and wontons, and his was chow mein.  He also got a few potstickers and cucumbers which we shared.  There was so much good food there at the night market!  We definitely need to go back some time soon.  Yesterday a member invited us to go out to eat Beef Noodle soup.  We are helping her by taking some things back to the states to give to her son who lives in Orem not far from our house.

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One thing we have started to do this week is study characters.  I took a few classes in college, but I only learned about 300 well, and have forgotten so much.  We have some cards to use to study, so we bought some little notebooks to practice writing in.  Only a couple thousand more to learn....  This first pic is my book.

We have been asked to teach an English Institute class.  They meet every Tuesday night.  I think there could be as many as 8 students, but last time when we attended, there were only 2 regulars and one visitor.  The Chinese Institute class is VERY well attended!  I'm so happy so many young single adults attend!

While I was in the MTC I developed some tendonitis in my knee.  It has been giving me a lot of trouble ever since.  I'm trying to be extra careful when I climb stairs so as not to exacerbate it.  I bought a knee brace, but it is a little bit small so I haven't used it much.  I do have an anti-steroid medicine that I was given by my doctor in the U.S., so I've been trying to use that regularly.  But boy this sure is getting tiresome!

We encourage you to either comment down below or on Facebook.  Sometimes we wonder if anyone is actually reading this blog. lol We don't really get emails from anyone and have only received one comment on this blog although we have seen a few comments on Facebook. So please comment if you are able to let us know someone is reading this!  lol 

 

Elder DeVictoria writing:

 

The picture above should be entitled, "Don't interrupt me while I'm eating."  But seriously, the schedule of living in Taipei is quite a bit different from our home life.  We don't have a car, so everywhere we go we have been walking.  This means we are exploring in each different direction to find what is available to us by foot.  One evening we went to a nearby park, Da An park, and walked one circuit around it.  Very nice, lots of flowers.  But we did see one rat run across the path in front of us, and there were a number of frogs.  The furthest north we walked was to the Dong Men market last Saturday.  The furthest south was to the Shi Da night market.  Our routine is that we wake up early, read scriptures individually, take showers, get dressed, then before leaving we have a study together using the "Preach My Gospel" manual which is really wonderful.  It's quite terse, or direct and to the point, with lots of wonderful scriptures to look up and discuss together.  

We've been going to the office around 9:30.  It's only a 3 minute walk.  We walk right past the church building that is next to the temple.  We take our trash to the dumpster that is in the basement of the church building. This alleviates us from having to carefully sort our trash in to categories like everyone else in Taipei has to do when the trash truck comes around.  A big sign on the door of the mission office has the hours of operation:  10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.  We usually take about a one hour lunch break.  We need to be staffing the office from Monday through Friday.  Saturday is our preparation day.  The young missionaries have their preparation day on Monday.  

The internet in our apartment is provided via our cell phones.  It has an unlimited data package.  It is provided by the church.  Before leaving home, I purchased a "travel router" that allows any source of internet (ethernet, cable, dsl, modem or tethered cell phone) and rebroadcast it as a local private wifi.  That's what we're doing with one of our cell phones tethered to it.  It's actually been working great.

It has rained a few days,usually for a short time, maybe thirty minutes or an hour.  The weather has been cool to medium warm.  Not too hot yet.  The heat is coming.  

Another thing that happened this week was that a young sister missionary came to the office early in the morning in tears asking for a Priesthood blessing. Pres. Yang asked me to give her a blessing, which I was glad to do.  This missionary has a sister back home whose baby just died.  This is a deeply sorrowful event

in any family's life.  In the blessing I told her that this is the very reason she is here, to testify and teach these very doctrines that we have that we know that babies who die before the age of accountability go on to eternal glory, and that families who qualify themselves through temple ordinances will be sealed together in the eternities, including babies who die.  This knowledge is the very reason she is here, to teach this to our fellow brothers and sisters in Taiwan.  Nobody else in the world knows this like our religion knows this. 

One of the Doctrinal subjects we studied this week is about baptism.  Baptism is essential in the process of conversion and salvation.  But baptism by water is only half of a baptism.  The second half of this crucial ordinance is the laying on of hands to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.  The reception of the Holy Ghost is the baptism of fire spoken of in the scriptures.  During this week a local elderly sister who has been a member for many years invited us to lunch.  She related a marvelous event that just occurred in her life.  Her non-member 86 year old husband got very sick and was in the hospital close to death.  He agreed to allow a Priesthood blessing, after which he got better.  This miraculous healing convinced him to become baptized.  His grandson who is currently serving as a missionary in the TaiChung mission was allowed to leave his mission boundaries to come up and baptize his grandfather.  Two of his other grandchildren stood behind him in the water to support him while he was being baptized because he was too feeble to stand up.  The sister showed us a picture of this on her phone.  After he was baptized and confirmed a member of the church, shortly thereafter he passed away, which was about a month ago.  The sister has a lot of faith, and she feels the Lord helped her husband to progress spiritually and now she is looking forward to having additional temple worked vicariously performed and have her family sealed to him. 

 

"The Prophet Joseph taught, 'Baptism by water is but half a baptism, and is good for nothing without the other half--that is, the baptism of the Holy Ghost."