Is it Whensday or Blursday?

Happy Halloween! It's a day early for you, but they celebrate it here in Taiwan as well, apparently. There is a big event today at the stadium and local ward members and missionaries are going so that they can talk to people. We're cheering them on from our cozy little home. 

Taking our daily temperatures

Our quarantine will be coming to an end soon, just two days and three nights left, but it's not like we're counting down or anything. We're losing track of the days of the week, hence the title. Rick feels as if he's living the same day over and over again (think Groundhog Day), which is a pretty good analogy for us since not only are we seemingly living the same day over and over again, but we are also trying to improve ourselves each day. Each repetitive day gives us a chance to take small steps towards self-improvement, repentance really, and it gets us closer to our goal of being good Taiwan missionaries. We've even started exercising!

Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Doctrine and Covenants 88:63

This week, we were privileged to be part of an Asia Area Missionary Conference with Elder Dale G. Renlund and his wife Siter Ruth Renlund. Elder Renlund is an apostle for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Two other area leaders that we call Seventies and their companions also spoke. The conference followed a previous meeting from the day before where they met with all the members of the church in Asia. All of this was done with the now-familiar miracle of Zoom. Both meetings were so spiritually uplifting. One interesting highlight came during the question and answer session of the Missionary Conference. A sister missionary from our mission asked Elder Renlund if he remembered her grandmother, who lives in Sweden. Elder Renlund's parents are Swedish immigrants and he served his mission in Sweden and speaks fluent Swedish. He not only remembered her grandmother but told us details about her life and how he had baptized her some 45 years ago. He tearfully told us that if her baptism was the only thing that had happened on his mission, then it all would have been worth it. He said he was honored to see this wonderful woman's granddaughter serving as a faithful missionary so many years later. Afterward, the sister missionary told our mission how it felt to see Elder Renlund get so emotional talking about her grandmother and how excited she was to share in this work. Pretty cool, huh?

Elder Dale Renlund and Sister Ruth Renlund 

As if these two meetings weren't enough to fill the spiritual well, we also had a chance to watch a missionary devotional with President M. Russell Ballard and Elder Jeffery R. Holland, two more apostles and two of the best missionaries that the church has ever had. They reminded us of the amazing power of the Book of Mormon to transform our lives, that earlier missionaries, like Paul, had it even tougher than missionaries do during the pandemic, and that there is no work on this earth that is more important than the work we are doing. Pretty heady stuff and very motivating, to say the least. We love our leaders!

Not only were we blessed with an abundance of spiritual learning opportunities, but we also had a chance to talk and video chat with family members and friends. We realized that one of the blessings of leaving at this time is that many of our friends are having to be creative as they celebrate the milestones in their lives. As a result, we were able to be part of a birthday celebration for two friends, one turning 50 and another turning 60, by making a video greeting for them. My mom also celebrated her birthday, but we kept that one low tech with a simple phone call.  

Because of video chats we were able to celebrate Halloween with our grandsons by playing "Truth or Scare"- it's like Truth or Dare except.....well you get it. My favorite moment was when Leo was asked "What are you most scared of?" and he answered, "Vegetables!"

Our Halloween Game

Another part of our Halloween celebration was putting on a puppet show, which included a lonely monster named Moonchie, his wise friend Raven, and a friendly robot named Robo. I found some cute templates online and cut them out of our cereal box. They even had Halloween costumes for trick or treating. See what happens when I have too much time on my hands and access to internet tutorials?  The puppet show included songs like "I'm a little robot short and stout" (sung to I'm a Little Teapot) and "The legs of the robot go up and down" (sung to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus). Moonchie and Robo may make future appearances in the boys' bedtime stories, we'll see. 

Since I had the time, I really indulged my creative side this week.  Not only did I make puppets, but I also started to illustrate a new set of scriptures that I brought along, a journal edition of the Book of Mormon. The wide margins give me room to highlight some of my favorite scriptures, add quotes, and my own thoughts and stories to help me learn and remember what I study. The goal here is not to spend too much time on the aesthetics instead of the content, so this is not original hand lettering, I simply traced free images off the internet to save time. Someday I hope to pass along these scriptures to help someone else with their study. Here are a few of the pages that I've worked on so far.

While I was doing this, Rick was getting caught up on some paperwork of his own that he brought from home. It's not as artistic, or fun, but it is a good way to pass the time. Most of this will be reduced to one pile before we begin our office work on Monday. Notice that he's even multitasking by taking his temperature as well. :-)

Getting caught up on some unfinished paperwork

Our food adventure of the week included a new breakfast option. It's a sweet porridge called mixed congee that's made with a variety of grains such as red beans, rice, pinto beans, barley, wheat, mung beans, and/or peanuts. Traditional congee was a watery rice porridge, a comfort food back in the day. Today it's eaten as a dessert or breakfast. Apparently, it's popular with hikers as well. We give it a thumbs up.

Another highlight of this week was welcoming back our favorite Chinese tutor, Casey Leung. We were on a two-week hiatus while making the transition to become ex-pats. Now, more than ever, I am so grateful that she is such a good teacher. She has worked so hard to get me to a place where I am comfortable conversing with others. I have a long way to go yet, but it's not because my tutor hasn't tried. Just the other day I had my first encounter with one of our neighbors. I was sweeping the courtyard area when she came out of her back door. Just in case the Taiwan government is reading this, you need to know that we were keeping all the quarantine rules and we were a safe distance away from each other. I don't want to have to start these two weeks all over again. Anyway, back to the story. As she came out I realized that I should be courteous so I summoned up the courage to initiate the conversation. Okay, so the whole "conversation" consisted of me saying "Ni hao!" and her saying "Ni hao!" back, but we all have to start somewhere. Casey would have been proud!  If I wasn't worried about being in quarantine, I might have ventured to add a few more phrases.....or maybe not. The Chinese language still intimidates me. Well, after that encounter I realized that I needed to up my game with my language studies. As a former teacher, I was a little embarrassed back in Utah when it dawned on me that I hadn't thought about starting my own language learning notebook until several months into my lessons. Up until then, I had been photocopying my notes, but I knew better than that. It is much more effective to write notes by hand because you are reinforcing what you have learned through repetition, so I have spent the last several days collecting my notes and creating some word study pages. By the end of my mission, I hope to have that notebook full and the confidence to carry on a conversation that is more than one word long. Here's a peek inside...

The soundtrack to all of our projects this week has been podcasts and music. I have always been a fan of listening to podcasts while I sew, but I have found a few new favorites since beginning our mission. These include Y Religion, Come Follow Me: BYU Speeches, and Book of Mormon Central, all of which you can find on Spotify. I have also discovered an album I love on the Church's website called Songs of Devotion. It is soooo good, and I'm not saying that just because I'm a missionary. It is really good. Listen for yourself and see if you don't agree. Apparently, it's available to download in the app store for free. I'm in awe that so many musically talented people would be willing to donate their time and testimonies. It's a reminder to me that many people throughout the world are sharing their light in several diverse ways, whether that be through art, service, the written word, or missionary work. 

And I guess this is a good place to leave you for this week. On Monday, we will jump right in as we start our orientation and help with two large combined zone conferences. We will be serving up an early Thanksgiving dinner to a group of 76 missionaries on Tuesday and 64 on Thursday. It will be a great way to introduce ourselves to everyone and get off to a running start. The hours and hours of quiet reflection will be behind us, but we are grateful for this time and hope to remember the lessons we have learned.   

We're looking forward to getting out of quarantine. Luckily, it hasn't changed us a bit! :-)