Badge of Honor

 Sister DeVictoria writing:

I started out this morning attempting to take a shower, but there was no hot water.  Elder DeVictoria found that the igniter battery on the water heater was dead, so he went to 7-11 to get a new battery.  But I have a schedule and knew that if I waited I wouldn't be ready on time so I just took a cold shower.  I'm glad that it was just a battery and that next time I will have hot water.  You really don't appreciate life's luxuries until they are gone, right?

This week we had transfers.  Most of the missionaries who are moving to a new area came to our church building across the street from the office to meet their new companions.  We also had about 8 missionaries going home this week, and we just got in 5 new missionaries, so everyone came to the mission office.  Not gonna lie, it was chaos at times.  lol  At one point Elder DeVictoria counted 32 people in our little tiny office space!  And that is about a third of our mission!  I took the opportunity to go down to the church and hand out residency cards and insurance cards to missionaries who hadn't been able to pick theirs up yet.  Elder DeVictoria kept busy giving out reimbursements from his desk.

I had to go to the immigration office this week to register new missionaries.  There is a website where I can see how many people are waiting in line, but I always forget to check it.  I think I waited about 45 minutes for my turn this time. 

One night we went over a few streets to get my favorite beef tomato noodle soup.  I saw this lantern as we walked and wanted to stop and get a picture of it.  

Here's another food pic for you.  This was my lunch today.  Stir fried green beans, stir fried cabbage, Sweet and Sour chicken, a fried radish cake (my favorite), purple rice and seaweed/daikon radish soup.  

 

Elder DeVictoria and I had to go prepare the spare mission apartment for some incoming missionaries.  When we got there, we found that the departing missionaries who stayed there previously had started a batch of laundry...sheets...but then never put them in the dryer.  So we decided to rewash them and wait til they were done to put them in the dryer.  While we were waiting, a HUGE thunderstorm hit!  I genuinely was terrified that if we walked back to the office right then we might get hit by lightening!  But after waiting another hour for it to stop, we finally decided we had too much to do back at the office to wait any longer.  We walked back quickly.  When we got to the temple grounds, a HUGE crack of lightening flashed not far away followed by a LONG and LOUD round of thunder!  Elder DeVictoria said, "We just need to walk faster."  I said, "Yes, we can out walk the lightening."  ;)  I was so glad to be back in the office!  The other day I was at the photo shop and I mentioned to the owner that it was supposed to rain that day.  He said, "Yes, it rains every afternoon, so get your errands done now!"  Boy was he right, it has rained every afternoon this week.  In Utah, if it says 40% chance of rain, I think to myself, "Well, it might sprinkle a little."  When it says 40% chance here, be ready for a downpour!

Our new mission president and his family arrived tonight.  Exciting changes!  We were supposed to teach the English Institute class tonight but only one student showed up and he said he would rather not stay if no one else came.  Also we were having trouble with our media equipment, so we just talked to him for awhile.  Afterwards we went back to the office to take care of some things, it was around 8:30pm by then.  Elder DeVictoria needed to reimburse Pres. Yang for his recent cash expenses before he leaves, and the receipts were just turned in at the last minute.  Just when everything was ready and we were about to leave, Pres. Yang stopped by the office on his way back from dropping off the Whiteley's at their hotel.  I said, "Hello Elder Yang".  He is an area seventy now, so is now called Elder.  He said, "Oh that's right!  I need to take off my name tag!"  It was a sad thing to watch.  I told him taking off my name tag at the end of my mission will be hard for me.  I think of it as a badge of honor.  He agreed with me.  But he does feel the load of stress is lifted off him! Caring for and worrying about each missionary 24-7-365 is a heavy burden.  He said he was going to take his name tag off earlier, when he was still with his assistants, but they begged him not to take it off because it was just too sad for them to watch too.  I will really miss the Yangs.

Elder DeVictoria and I were asked a few weeks ago to speak in Church this Sunday.  I have had a subject on my mind for a while now, and it just so happens that it fits with the topic I was given.  This also happened with our going away talk back in Utah.  For 4 months I had the basics of a talk running through my head.  Every morning when I woke up early, that topic was on my mind and I found myself thinking it through.  Every night as I was going to sleep I would once again be thinking about that topic.  It really weighed on my mind for four straight months.  Then when we were asked to give our farewell talk, I asked if I could choose the topic for my talk and they told me I could.  I gave the talk that had been on my mind all that time.  I don't think I was given this experience because I had some grand talk to give, but so that I could learn about receiving revelation.  Pres. Nelson asked us to learn how to receive revelation, so I have been praying for that.  I feel the Lord gave me these thoughts to teach me.  I actually loved the experience.

 

Elder DeVictoria writing:

It's so weird the dietary ideas nowadays in Taiwan.  I mean, it's still Chinese cuisine and they use all the classic standard Chinese cooking ingredients, but they use so little of it.  I think it's because of a modern idea of what is supposedly "healthy" like using reduced salt, reduced oil, not much garlic or ginger, not much soy sauce, very little hot peppers, etc.  I guess they've become used to it now and so the food here often seems to me to be a little bland.  I've been noticing this all over.  A few days ago I was at the cafeteria style place where we go a lot, serving up a meal for myself, and there was the boss lady looking over the food trays and actually picking out garlic with tongs from one of the freshly cooked vegetable dishes, and throwing it away in the trash bin.  I couldn't believe my eyes at first.  She should be adding garlic not removing it!  And who is she to decide how much garlic I get!  Anyway, a couple days later I decided to take a picture of the vegetables section for this blog, and there she was again, doing the same thing, picking out chunks of garlic from the food trays that others were about to go through and serve themselves!  One of the main reasons I go there in the first place is because their cook makes the food taste good!  What I'm saying is, among some people at least, there seems to be this weird fetish against strong flavors.  Seems to be especially important to Taiwanese women.  How do you like her rain boots?

 

 We hope you are all well and happy!