Chaing Kai-Shek Memorial pictures

This picture does not do the gorgeous sunset justice. But it was amazing! The colors were brilliant. We were so glad we spent some time visiting this beautiful place.

As it began to turn evening, we sat down on the rocks at the side of a pond. All of a sudden, a large bird came flying very close behind where Elias was sitting! It was like it was "looking us over"! If have no idea what kind of bird it is. Anyone take a guess.

I hope you can see that this sign says, "Take kind care of flowers & trees. Please don't tread on or pick up." I love the way the Chinese people word things! How quaint is this? "Kind care"

Aren't these flowers beautiful? We are just missing Elder Miller, who was sitting on the bench, but then decided he did not like the picture with him in it, so this is the second one we took.

One of the pine tree paths we walked down at the grounds around the Chaing Kai-Shek Memorial. It felt good to be in the shade of these big trees. They are a different pine tree than at home.

They had a Mammoth elephant display inside the Chaing Kai-Shek Memorial. It was too expensive, so we didn't see only but this part! This is the Visitors Center where we bought Joyce a jade necklace for her birthday.

There are hundreds of these guards who do fancy footwork and marching at the Chaing Kai Shek Memorial. They are really impressive to watch - especially when it is time for the "changing of the guards."

The Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. It doesn't look big, but it is huge! The Memorial property takes up many square blocks of the city.

We cannot believe how loving these Filippino sisters are to us. For our birthdays, they gave us flowers, an expensive, long-sleeved white shirt and silk tie, a beautiful blouse and beautiful picture frame! How do you like the vase? We don't know where to buy one, so Elias made one out of our plastic, milk bottle.

"Typhoon day" scene from our dining room window. The rain came down as if poured from a huge bucket! We were so comfy in our cozy apartment!

A beautiful Taiwan rainbow. This picture was taken when Elias and I were walking home from the temple one Tuesday or Wednesday evening!
Us and the Hendrys, at their last FHE at the Walkers. They are really a great couple who have been married only a few years. Both of their spouses passed away. He was home teacher to them when her husband died. His wife told him to marry Valerie after she knew she was going to pass away!
The fireworks that nearly cost us getting smothered and trampled to death! They WERE good, though!
"The group" - Daisy and myself, Sister Durrant and the sweet Filippino sisters, who have "loved" Daisy into the church!
Daisy, just before her baptism on September 6th! Sister Durrant and I (mostly Sister Durrant), taught her. She was so prepared to accept the Gospel. Her husband passed away just months before and you can imagine her joy to hear about life after deat, Eternal marriage and families!
Christine, Natalie and (I can't remember her name!), at her farewell party before leaving for Utah. Natalie is so special. I hope Brock gets to meet her! She has become dear to us.

One of the senior couples, the Dodges, who were the first couple to go home since we have been here, took us to this pita bar, close to the temple. When we get tired of rice, it is nice to have a place close that we can get something different.
This is how Elder Miller does dishes. The sink is definitely made for those who are about 4 foot high! He is so sweet to do them anyway!
Our "formal" temple presidency and one of their skits - singing their hearts out!
The "choir", singing at the temple pot luck dinner. I couldn't believe that our conductor, Sister Tan, had us do voice lessons and breathing practice before each practice. We were only singing a church hymn that everyone knew. The Chinese are very exacting in all they do. That is why they are so good at all they do, I guess.

Maribeth and I at the piano just before her lesson on Sunday. What a sweetheart! She is learning so quickly and doing so well. It is a real joy to teach these Filippino sisters piano! They are more than appreciative and try with all their hearts, because their dream is to be able to go back to the Philippines and teach their family and friends, who are too poor to take the lessons there!

Trip with Brother Lin - Tues July 15th, 2008

Here is the best part of the whole trip. We miraculously met Jerry and Minnete Chen, who wanted to have us tell them how they could receive the blessings of being together forever! Jerry had been baptized a little over a year ago, but had not been active in church and had a lot of questions. His wife is Catholic. We did not have time to talk to them while we were with Brother Lin and the Seows, but went back down to FengYuan on the train two days later and had dinner with them and talked for a couple of hours with them. Now they know about the Temple and the committment they will have to make to be a forever family. Now it is up to them to chose how much they want this great blessing from the Lord. We pray for them to make the right choice and go to church and have the missionaries give the discussions to them, so that they may have the desire they expressed to us!! They are really a great little couple. Their first baby is due in October! I need to tell you of the great, many miracles that had to happen to have us meet them. First of all, we would not have stopped in their town at all if it hadn't been that Brother Lin and Dad were talking about what kind of food Dad liked and he told him he liked pie. When Dad said this, Brother Lin asked him what kind of pie and Dad responded with - "hot or cold". So, to please Dad, Brother Lin stopped in FengYuan, the town he grew up in as a boy, and bought us something "hot" (wonton soup), something "cold" ( an ice slush drink), and he was leading us to a pie shop for a piece of pie when we had to stop for Jerry, who was parking his motorcycle on the curb and he noticed our missionary badges. Had he come a second later, we would have been past him and he never would have seen our badges! Also - when we came back down two days later, we did not know exactly what train to catch or how to do it, but there was a very sweet man we sat by as we waited for the train, who not only told us which track it would come on, but went and bought us two bottles of water to drink and just happened to be going the same way and stayed right by us on the train until he had to get off one stop ahead of ours! Then as we got off and began looking for Jerry's optical shop, we could not remember which way to go! As we stood on the corner, wondering, a motorcycle drove up beside us with a young man and his mother on it. He recognized us because he had been to the temple doing baptisms for the the dead and had seen us there! Then they proceeded on their motor bike to lead us to Jerry's shop! Another amazing "perfect timing" incident occured when Minette and Elias and I were waiting for Jerry to bring his car around and pick us up to go to dinner, two missionaries just "happened" to be going down the street across from us and came over and made themselves acquainted with us and Minette! So now they are aware of the situation and can take over where we left off with them! How the Lord must love these two! The many "coincidences" that He orchestrated to have this all happen in such perfect timing was almost unbelievable! Oh, another miraculous thing that happened was that we were three hours earlier getting to Jerry's than we said we would be. We actually had bought tickets on a faster, much more expensive train that brought us to FengYuan in one and a half hours rather than three to four hours, yet Jerry and Minette were able to leave his shop at that time and spend those two hours with us. And had we been later we would not have had the help of the kind man at the RR station, nor the guidance of our friends on their motorcycle, or the Elders coming by at that particular time to meet Minette and us! I know the Lord loves His children and I know more now than ever before, to what extent He will go to to see that they have every opportunity to hear what He wants them to hear - WHEN He wants them to hear it!! We feel very humble to have been a part of His plan for them! The Buddhist Monastary we stopped at on our way home.

Further on down the road, we stopped at this huge Buddhist Monastary. It was massive. Across the valley, there was a golden Buddah that was so big that you could see it for many miles! We did not go over there, however.

Brother Lin and the Seows - patiently waited for us to hike down and back up those 366 steps to the water below! I can't imagine why they didn't want to come.Dad and I would have liked to have stayed longer at Sun-Moon Lake, but our driver and the Seows did not want to take the time to find the Aborigini Village we were hoping to see, so the next best thing we could do was hike down to the water. They had 366 steps with each one having the date carved in it. You could pay money and buy a "prayer" to hang on the wrought iron fence on either side of your step. Hiking down and back up these steps took a lot more effort than I anticipated! We really had a work-out!After a couple of hours driving, we came to Sun-Moon Lake - still high in the mountains - a gorgeous place which now is quite a tourist spot. This lake received its name because the major part of it is round like the sun, but one part of it is crescent-shaped like the moon.After the "sunrise" tour, having taken our pictures, we packed up our things, had breakfast, and headed down the mountain. Right along the side of the road were some aboriginal "sales persons" selling their wares - All in tribal dress! There you have it - complete sunrise!! It was worth getting up at 3 am for this event! I forgot to tell you that we stopped on our way up here, while it was still pitch-dark, and looked at the stars, and our guide pointed out some of the constellations to us!The first shaft of light breaking over the mountains even though we could not see the sun yet.A little brighter picture - a little more daylight - the pinkness of the clouds now gone.The beginnings of the sun hitting the cloud in back of the mountains and making it a pink color.Here we are - (it was cold just before sun-up) - waiting to catch those first rays of the sun over the mountain. Brother Lin is in the forefront in the white jacket. I was surprized at how light it was even though the sun was not up yet!

As I mentioned yesterday, we did not have to sleep in our hard beds very long, for we had to get up at 3 am to catch our tour bus to the top of Ali Shan so we could take pictures of the sunrise. Here are some of those pictures:

Trip with Brother Lin Mon & Tues July 14th & 15th

I could not take a picture of the hotel where we stayed because it was inside a restaurant and didn't have an outside entrance. (I guess I could have, but what we had to walk through to get there was not very pretty.) So this was on the outside of the area around the restaurant. Our rooms were sort of like log cabins, with beds with no mattresses and only a pad of about an inch or two between us and the board! It worked fine for the short time we had to sleep!
In front of the Railroad Station at Ali Shan. We did not take the train for our tour up the mountain to get pictures of the sunrise because we were told by friends that many times you cannot see it because of the clouds. So we joined a bus tour that took us up above the clouds - where the train could not take us.
There was a mural of small tiles - millions of them, that told the story of what one could see at Ali Shan. It was on two sides of a tile street and must have been one hundred feet long on one side and fifty feet on the other.

Here's an ornate pagoda that must have taken a long time to make because of the fine sculpturing on it. It was just there in the middle of the forest!

I had to show the sign because of the wording of the "Golden Pig" story. I love the way the Chinese express themselves in English! They are trying to talk exactly like us, but I hope they don't change the many signs we see that are so charmingly and sometimes humorously put.
For some reason they called this the "Golden Pig" It looks more green to me, but definitely a pig!
Having one of those "little rests" with the Seows. I don't believe we have walked and hiked that much in years! But don't we look happy! It was really fun!
So here are the "Four Sisters". They sprouted on top of the massive tree that had been cut down! You can get a feel for how big they were by looking at their size as compared with Sister Seow.
These three trees together were called, "The Three Brothers"
Dad and I relaxing for a moment as we hiked around the Ali Shan area by our hotel. This was unbelievably lush and beautiful. In the background is a thatched roofed pavilion we walked out to and sat and watched the fish in the water and a little bird flying all around the water.
Dad and I playing with the Aborigini maniquins at a place we stopped on the way to Ali Shan
We saw so many orchards and tea plantations on the way to Ali Shan. They were beautiful themselves. Here we are with our dear friends, the Seows - the new temple couple from Singapore! If it hadn't been for their translating for us, we could not have understood a word that Brother Lin said!
Sweet Brother Lin works in the Temple with us and is a Sealer there and also a Stake Patriarch! He wanted us to see the beautiful mountain called Ali Shan and take pictures of the sunrise from the top! He is quite a photographer himself!

/Trip with Chinese WArd - day 3 July 12, 2008

We then drove to more of the marble canyons and hiked down to the clear, blue water below. Everyone took off their shoes and socks and enjoyed playing in the coolness of it. We had planned to hike up to a valley called Secret VAlley, but it was so hot and this water so much fun to play in, that we spent our time here and did not continue up to the Secret VAlley. No one complained about cooling off instead of hiking more! All were so happy to be able to do and see all that we did together. What a great group of people. We enjoyed them and the entire trip immensely. When we finished playing in the pool, we climbed on the buses and headed home, stopping one last time for dinner at a steak house. Can you believe all this cost Dad and I $100 each for EVERYTHING! THe best part, though, was being with these dear CHinese brothers and sisters!!
This is brother and sister Tan, washing their hands at the entrance of the small Buddhist temple. There were a lot of other people there so we didn't get any more good pictures.
We next stopped to visit a Buddhist temple and found this antique truck while walking on the way. BRother TAn hopped inside and we got a good picture - don't you think?
Our BIshop and his family in their paddle boat, after he had driven his kids around the lake on his portable bicycle. It folds up so little and is so easy to take places! I took a picture of it, but am not sure I can find it again.
This morning after our devotional and exercise, we headed back to Li Yu Lake for paddle boating and motorboating. Our group chose the motorboating. Here is our boat driver!! Isn't she cute?
I'm so sorry this blog is backwards, but I don't know how to make it frontwards, so please bear with it and just read it from the bottom up. Here goes again: