Sister DeVictoria writing:
On our last Pday we decided to go to Taipei 101 for lunch. As per the name, there are 101 floors. It's the tallest building in Taiwan. It takes 4 stops by subway to get there from where we live. They have a big food court downstairs. We didn't actually go up to the top, we have been up there before (in years past). And if you want to go to the very tip top you have to pay a fee. But we did snap a pic from below. You can't really see the top in this picture, only our double chins.
We got some lunch there. We were surprised that it was very affordable. I really thought being in a tourist attraction it would be more expensive. Elder DeVictoria got Tofu, braised pork, rice, fish ball soup, and stir fried vegetables. He really liked the fish ball soup.
I found some more orchids. I was surprised at how many blooms were on this plant! People just leave them outside and they thrive in this climate!
In the evening we went to the ShiDa night market and had 13 Burger again! I am not exaggerating, this burger is delicious! I have a hard time thinking of an American burger that I like more. I told the owner that he needs to open another restaurant closer to my house! :) Here is a picture of Elder DeVictoria at the night market.
I was asked to play the organ in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. As I sat down to the organ, I realized it has been 10 years since I played an organ! In my home ward, there are so many organists, and also I haven't learned to play with my feet, so they don't want me to play. Many organs have a "Great/Bass coupler" that takes the sound you play with your fingers and makes it sound like you are playing with your feet. But our home ward chapel organ doesn't have that feature. Maybe some day I will learn to play with my feet.
One thing I wanted to mention is that in Taiwan they have such high humidity that they have to handle some things differently. For example, postage stamps do not have glue on the back. Instead, they have bottles of glue on the countertops at the post office for everyone to use to stick their stamps on the envelope and to glue the envelopes shut. If they did have sticky backs, they would stick together just from the humidity. Also, people usually put some raw rice in their salt shakers. If you don't, the salt clumps up and you can't shake any out.
This blog post might be a little longer because I really wanted to share the following pictures. There is a tradition here in Taiwan that on the day of the Dragon Boat festival you can stand an egg on end at noon. It's supposed to have something to do with the position of the earth and sun and the gravitational pull or something like that. So of course the missionaries all had to try their hand at it and shared their pictures on our mission communications app.
That last one made me laugh! :D And finally I saw a news article about how they even balance watermelons. Here is the picture from the article.
As mentioned before we have been teaching the English Institute class. We don't usually have very many students show up, but we always have really great discussions and feel the Spirit. Many times we only have one student, but one of them told us that after our class, even though she struggles with anxiety, she just felt so happy. The most we have ever had in attendance was three students. Last night two showed up. It's just a wonderful way to bring the Spirit in to our lives.
Elder DeVictoria writing:
This week went by fast. For me, most of the office time was spent doing the usual financial tasks, like preparing the mission presidents expense report in the church's Oracle credit card accounting system. For the month of May and first week of June he spent about US$5000 on his mission president credit card, about 40 or 50 transactions. A lot of them were Taiwan Railway train tickets for missionaries going back-and-forth to and from Hualien where the epicenter of the big earthquake was back in April. Out of abundance of caution the missionaries had been pulled out of Hualien, but they went back on weekends for baptisms etc. Now they're totally back living in Hualien. This whole episode did create somewhat of a spike in our mission travel expenses which is not a big deal financially, but not all of the physical train tickets (which are the receipts) got back to me for documentation. In the Oracle credit card expense reporting system each transaction is supposed to be supported with a receipt that gets scanned and uploaded and attached digitally in the system. Without a receipt for each expenditure then I have to complete an "alternate receipt" form, with a bunch of explanations of exactly what the expense was for and greater detail of the expense. It all gets approved and signed for by the mission president in the end, and this was all his own spending to begin with. Anyway, it all has to be handled. Typical accounting stuff. Another example is the closing of an apartment, we got the deposit back from the landlord in cash (around US$3000) -- it has to be deposited at the bank, etc etc
"And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Phillipians 4:7
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