Sister DeVictoria writing:
This has been a very busy and stressful week for me. I'm having to learn how to do tasks for which I've never been trained. I should mention that after the birth of our first child, in all our almost 38 years of marriage I have never worked outside the home. So actually, if I were applying for a job with similar duties as I am doing now, the person hiring would say, "I'm sorry, you just don't have any experience." But here I am with the attitude of Dory's mantra going through my head, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..." I am learning as I go, but it is stressful. I remember years ago when I taught at the MTC, I was given a class of senior missionaries. I tried to teach them Chinese, but they had very closed minds and didn't believe they could learn. Their attitude really hampered their ability to learn. I don't believe that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I'm an old dog, and I'm learning new tricks every day. But I might get a few more white hairs in the process.
We received some wonderful news this week. The Institute teacher is feeling well enough to start teaching again! Woo Hoo! I can't remember if I said before that in addition to breaking 3 ribs, he also got the flu. I can't imagine coughing with 3 broken ribs. He thanked us for subbing for him. I told him we are always willing to help, but admittedly we feel very incompetent. He replied saying that at least we were able to meet the students and get to know them, and they were able to get to know us. I told him that we loved meeting them because they are all so wonderful and are very patient with us and helpful. I'm glad I snapped this selfie with them on the last day that we taught.
One night I went looking for a craft store that someone told me about. We never did find it, but we stopped and had some dinner. The restaurant had some really interesting decorations.
Every week we have a devotional via Zoom for the entire mission. I snapped a picture of our view of the devotional.
Tomorrow our ward here is having another baptism. One of the Elders asked me and another office elder to play for a group to sing a song at the baptism. Elder Smith will play the violin, and I will play the piano. At the last baptism he and his companion Elder Sims played a special song, but the music stand couldn't hold all his music so I stood and held the first page for him, then made sure the last page was all the way on the stand.
Don't die of shock that I'm not including any food pics. lol We don't really cook much at home. There are two reasons for that: first, we are so tired when we come home at night that we don't have the energy to cook, and two, it takes such effort to go out and buy all of the food. We have a little grocery cart, but we are limited in how much we can fit in it. Sometimes it is really heavy when we drag it home and have to heft it up the stairs. So we just buy some necessities and eat out the rest of the time. I do cook oatmeal every morning for breakfast. Also, eating out here is not really expensive.
We had to go to Xi Men Ding (popular tourist shopping area) to pay a deposit for a restaurant reservation for the departing missionaries. While there we saw this restaurant with such a pretty ceiling.
Elder DeVictoria writing:
We got a surprise visit in the mission office from some strangers from church headquarters. They wanted to do an audit of the mission finances. It was a couple, a man and a woman. He asked specifically about our petty cash usage. I sat down right then and showed the cash box sitting on my desk, and the spreadsheet that I use to track it, and I opened up the online Missionary Portal software to show the matching cash balance in the system, and I had some examples of reimbursement forms and documentary evidence (receipts) processed earlier that day, right there on my desk. He asked a few general questions and then they were done. The woman remained completely silent the whole time, she said not one single word, just listened and watched. Then they stood up and said they would come back tomorrow for a full formal audit with all their forms and checklists and their laptops etc. OK then. See you tomorrow at 10:30am. So the next day they came in and counted my petty cash box (roughly 1000 USD equivalent, it was correct to the penny) and then looked at a couple of reimbursements in detail, then asked to see a specific rent payment, and the associated rental contract. I showed them, but to me it is mildly humorous because it's written completely in Chinese (they don't speak or read Chinese). They asked about our bank account and my interface with it, but I had to explain that there is none that I use or access. All the actual banking transactions are handled by the church corporate office across the street that has full-time accounting and finance employees who handle all of that. They asked about our budget, I showed them the monthly emails that are sent from headquarters with our spend totals, but I told them frankly, from my perspective we just ignore it. Because as a practical matter, it's irrelevant to the actual decisions that the president is making for the needs of the mission. We are actually spending what is actually needed for the work in real time as we go along, regardless of what someone predicted or "budgeted" last year. You can tell I'm an engineer, not an accountant. Anyway they were satisfied and left. Later in the week I saw them grilling the people in the country office. I wouldn't be surprised if the encounter a lot of "findings".
We got through teaching another Institute lesson last night, the lesson entitled "The Divine Gift and Sacred Responsibility of Sexual Intimacy". A challenge for us because of the nuances of language and terms when speaking of such an interesting and important subject. We did get a couple of laughs when we misspoke some words. These lessons have been full-house events, the classroom filled with young single adults, usually around 30-40 students each Tuesday night at 8pm. We prayed for help from above and I think we got it. Although it's a little hard for us to tell, a hard crowd to read (for us). But such wonderful people, the young adults of Taiwan, each one so precious. I loved the statements they made when we did a breakout session and had each group report. So pragmatic, so genuine, so well spoken and realistic. One person commented that Taiwan is still quite conservative and traditional regarding sexual activity but for sure there are voices and forces advocating for all kinds of temptation and sin. The lesson was supposed to be a bit more focused on how great and important sex is in marriage, and we read together plenty of statements from the prophets and apostles along these lines. These are young adults not yet married, so they each will have to find their own way through dating and into marriage just as we did as young adults. Each one a unique and precious person with their own unique path through life that is unknown to any of them (or us) before it happens. And the differences between people and the particular things that happen to each person, it's so interesting how much variety there is. I often ponder about what it's going to be like in the next world, I mean we'll likely be doing a lot of sharing and discussing and learning from each other, from our individual experiences on earth. That could take a very long time. Eternity, perhaps?
I learned recently about a horrible incident that happened 10 years ago (August 2014) in the Taipei Mission, where two missionary companions died in their sleep due to carbon monoxide poisoning. One Elder was from Taiwan, the other from US. Their apartment had a faulty water heater that was mounted incorrectly on an inside wall, that was the source of the CO. There are YouTube videos that show the local news broadcasts from the day it happened, that show the authorities wheeling the dead bodies out of the apartment. Sister Chen told us that when this happened, it was a such a shock and terrible blow to the saints all over Taiwan, the mourning and sorrow was intense. Now we try to take great precautions, to inspect and make sure about the installation of gas appliances, and we have monthly CO alarm checks that get reported into the Missionary Portal system, etc. The other day a gas company inspector rang our doorbell, unexpectedly, and came in to inspect the gas system in our apartment along with all the other apartments in our building. We're thankful for this service. And we passed.
Today the new mission leaders President and Sister Whiteley and their Assistants will be holding a short mission-wide meeting online (at 10am) to announce a reorganization of the mission structure. They will be reducing the number of zones from 8 to 4 and increasing the number of districts. I think the particular transfer assignments will be issued later today or tonight. Transfer day will be on Saturday this time. New missionaries will arrive tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon. There are now 13 scheduled to arrive but we're not entirely sure if all of them will actually come on this flight, there are some that will likely be delayed due to visa issues. I don't understand why we aren't told more clearly and earlier the exact headcount that is coming. Anyway, when that happens to a missionary they get temporarily reassigned to other missions in the US until the next transfer. There are 16 missionaries returning home this time, who will leave on Monday afternoon. So this is a very busy week and weekend for the mission. We're very involved with all of it.
Our mission leaders decided to install bunk beds in the two senior missionary apartments that are close to the office, which includes ours. We got them installed just in time to host the newly arriving missionaries later in the day. Now, in the two extra rooms of our apartment the single beds have been taken away and in their place are 4 sets of bunk beds, a total of 8 missionaries can sleep here at our house if necessary. It's for the purpose of temporary use during transitions, for the coming and going of missionaries, for a few nights each time. We will have to share the one main bathroom. It's all good.
"Your responsibility to endure is uniquely yours. But you are never alone. I testify that the lifting power of the Lord can be yours if you will “come unto Christ” and “be perfected in him.”
President Russell M. Nelson
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