Tacos, Trains, and Talent

 Sister DeVictoria writing:

This has been a crazy busy week.  It started last Saturday (our P-Day) with us going with Pres. and Sis. Yang to Costco to buy food for the mission zone conferences.  We decided to do soft tacos.  Taiwan's Costco is very similar to the U.S. Costco, although they replace most American foods with Taiwanese food.  They did have plenty of cheeses.  We were able to buy flour tortillas to use in the zone conferences lunches.  We also were able to buy salsa and sour cream.  There were so many Asian foods I would like to try, but couldn't do a big shopping because we were buying so much already for the mission.  I did grab some of those tortillas and some cheese.  On Monday we cooked up the meat so that we would only have to warm it up later.  

On Sunday we attended a musical concert put on by the young missionaries.  It was AWESOME!  It was surprising how much talent they have!  They sang and performed with their whole hearts.  I wish we could have recorded it, but the songs were under copyright, so we couldn't.  They have one last concert tomorrow night.

One of the young Elders did not sing in the concert so had to wait for his companion.  I think he used his time well. Young missionaries need all the sleep they can get. :)

 

Earlier in the day we also prepared dinner for them before the concert.  This is me with the mission president's wife, Sis. Yang

 

 

Tuesday morning we drove about 40 minutes to TaoYuan for the first zone conference.  We prepared all the food and ate with the young missionaries.  The American missionaries really liked the soft tacos.  I told someone I think it is an American comfort food.  As soon as all of the meat was gone, the young missionaries kept coming back and making rice and cheese tacos.  Some of those young missionaries have hollow legs I think, they ate a lot!  We planned for 70 people.  

Elder DeVictoria and I left after lunch and took a train and subway back to Taipei.  We both had pressing matters to take care of in the office so wanted to get back.  In the Subway we saw this blind accordionist.  Since I have been learning to play, we appreciated him earning money this way. 

On Wednesday morning we repeated the process of making the food for the Taipei zone conference.  This time we planned for 80 people.  Both times we also had pears, and in Taipei we also had watermelon.  I have to confess that we were exhausted at the end of the day.

On Thursday I had to send some government letters to Salt Lake to the church travel office so that they could apply for visas for the new president's family.  Their names hadn't shown up in the system, so both I and the person over travel had forgotten we needed them.  I quickly got them ready but then had a LOT of trouble trying to get them sent through Fedex.  The online forms were in Chinese, so I used my Google translate camera to go over each line, but still couldn't seem to get it right.  So finally someone suggested I go to the church offices across the street and ask their help.  The man who helped me ALSO had a hard time.  Right then a Fedex delivery man showed up and he tried to help, but even HE had a hard time!  Finally they got it figured out and the delivery man was able to take it right then.  After I got back to the office, I figured out that I could change the online page language to English, so I'm going to try it in English next time. I think a few of my gray hairs went white through this experience!

There is a church member here who seems to be mentally ill.  She is homeless, so hangs out at the chapel most of the time.  The church is usually open during the day because there are church offices there.  (Distribution center, the church's Taiwan country office etc)  She is a wonderful artist and tries to sell her art to make money.  She sold us this picture.

 Elder DeVictoria writing:

Yes it was an exhausting week with the zone conferences.  It was a lot of work for us to assist with preparing and serving all the food. We're not young and strong and agile anymore, we tire easily. The mission president explained that in this mission there are 8 zones and he decided to combine together the 8 zones in to only three larger "zone conferences" per transfer period. Then later each zone holds its own separate zone council meeting run by the zone leaders, once each transfer.  So, the zone conferences are larger than would perhaps be found in other missions.  A lunch is always provided, but it is usually a take-out style meal that is ordered and delivered, such as biandang (bento box), or pizza, etc.  But he tries to make a more enjoyable home-cooked deluxe meal (like the soft tacos) once in awhile, maybe two or three times a year.  The missionaries eat a lot of biandang bento boxes in their daily diet here, so they do get tired of them. They loved the soft tacos! 

Our Biandang bento box lunch today.

 

My regular mission office duties include reimbursing missionaries for various expenses, ordering replacement payment cards, doing the paperwork and computer processes for closing down apartments, etc.  It's not too difficult, the hard part is remembering each step.  These tasks are quite procedural, rule-based, accounting-ish. (Is that a word?)  These kinds of things aren't things I've loved doing in the past, but in retrospect I've done a lot of tasks like this in my old work life.  It is gratifying to serve the other missionaries.  

"And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."

Mosiah 2:17