Sunday, March 2, 2008

Terrific Taiwan

I'm squished between two people on a middle seat in the back row of a huge, bumpy at the moment, airplane, flying home!  Dad is sittiing in a bulk head somewhere. he absolutely refused to be squished in this seat next to me for 11 hours so somehow he got this cute Chinese girl to change places with him. She seems happy and is sound asleep.
We had such a fun group last night but I must admit that we were both about to run out of gas after 5 hours of being on duty and twelve presentations under our belts.  We did a two and a half hour presentation and workshop first and then had dinner with them. During the break we found that it was the Dad's who needed some family laws!  They told me that they spend 3 or 4 nights every week with each other while their wives and nannies are home with the kids.  Their wives had tried to impose a curfew without success.  We tried to light a fire under them in the second session and they seemed to appreciate it!
Our hosts for the event who also owned the hotel we stayed in which was on the Four Seasons standard with a private butler and food down the hall 24 hours a day, was kind enough to lend us his driver for the day today. He picked us up and took us to a ward where we loved talking to the missionaries and then had one of them translate for one of the talks for us before we left.  It was heaven to be back in a church.  We have been either on a flight or traveling every Sunday since Melbourne where we heard President Hinckley's funeral. It was so fun to talk to the Elders who were fired up about the mission and so complimentary of their mission president.  One of them was from Gilbert, AZ and another was from San Diego and had been given his Patriarchial blessing by Julie's Dad!  How small is our world?
We liked it so much that we found that there was another English speaking ward right next to the temple, not too far from our hotel so we decided to try that too!  We had our driver first take us to the Royal Museum of Taiwan, which had some amazing ancient Chinese pieces that the Taiwanese took with them when they left China as well as a wonderful diarama of all the dynastys!  I loved it!  And then it was on to temple and a big stake center right next door which was literally bulging with Chinese members, mssionaries and ex-pats. Reminded me of the Hyde Park Ward. We met the Mission President and his wife in the hall and they immediately introduced us to all their missionaries and gave us a tour!  We ducked in to get the sacrament one more time...make up call...and then headed back for the hotel to pack up and leave for the airport.
We have learned so much on this trip!   Hopefully I'll have time to record everything a little more fully when we get home. I'm listening to the Four Seasons thanks to Eli and getting ready to finish my book...Three Cups of Tea...which Noah loved!
We might be talking before you get this but just wanted to get this memory down before I forgot it!  We're thinking that Chris and Hedy might have their call and are dying to get to LA to find out and to try to call ya'll!  We have a very long layover there unless we can get an earlier flight so we'll try.

2007-02-22 taiwan 028

2007-02-22 taiwan 063 2007-02-22 taiwan 037 2007-02-22 taiwan 076

1 comment:

Shawni said...

Mom it will be so fun to look through all your pictures together some time. We've been to so many of the same places it's so fun to see them. Sure love you.