ANOTHER AMAZING FUNERAL PARADE

At the head of this parade was the female band leader and two flower tossers with their baskets of flowers followed by the young woman's band playing hymns. What the women wear in these parades never fails to amaze me.

I have never learned the meaning of the men decorated like devils in attire that would be appropriate for an American Halloween parade.

These characters are fairly common in parades here. There were four or five in this parade.

All of the funeral parades have drum trucks followed by huge drums on wheels which are beat upon by walking drumers

Sister Greene is never far from her desk especially when new missionaries are scheduled to arrive or when missionaries are preparing to go home. We had seventeen new missionaries arrive two days ago and she did all of the paperwork to get them here legally along with countless letters to the missionaries, parents, bishops and stake presidents long before they even enter the Missionary Training Centers, either in Provo, UT. for foreign missionaries or in the Phillipines for the local Taiwan missionaries. Five days after these missionaries arrived we have fourteen missionaries completing their missions and returning to their homes, and Sister Greene has to have all of their exit packets, missionary travel tickets and documents completed and in their hands and everyone mentioned above notified by mail weeks before they are scheduled to leave. As for Elder Greene, I have to have all of their financial paperwork completed for their arrival and later for their departure, plus getting their monthly money to them during their mission and in my spare time I pay all of their rent, utility, travel and other expenses related to the missionaries and the mission home..

A TRIP TO THE TAIPEI TEMPLE

Last Saturday some of us in our small LDS Branch went to the Taipei, Taiwan Temple. The Girls in this picture are the English teachers who came to Taichung to spend six months to a year teaching English to young children at two different private schools. In all we have ten LDS young women who are all university graduates and they give our little English speaking Branch a great deal of support. Our Relief Society President, Primary President and Young woman's President all come from this group of young women.

This young member, and a close friend of ours, is applying to attend BYU-Idaho and is hoping to be accepted for the Fall 2010 semester. Her name is Geena Li and she served a mission here in Taiwan.

These are some of the members, meeting outside of the temple, who made the three-hour trip to the temple with us. Some made it a family outing and brought their children.

This is just a small Portion of the huge Taichung Cemetery where thousands of mostly Buddhist Chinese are buried. The giant pagoda is a focal point on the edge of the cemetery and from the various floors you can see the whole cemetery

Today is Monday, April 5, in Taichung, Taiwan and is the annual Qing Ming Festival or better known in the USA as Memorial Day. We left early, about 8:30, for the cemetery with forty two Sisters and Elders to participate in a large service project involving the cleaning, sweeping and bagging of trash that had collected since last year. We all wore the church "Helping Hands" shirts and were very visible among the hundreds of Chinese there to clean up the tombs and graves of their departed loved ones. On many occasions, as Sister Greene and I picked up empty food containers and other trash, people would come up to us and thank us for cleaning their cemetery. They were surprised and very pleased at what we were doing and often people would bring their trash to us rather than throwing it on the ground. There were TV camera crews and reporters there and some of us will be on the evening news report, although none of us will see it. This kind of service project is very good public relations for the church.

Elder and Sister Greene cleaning a few of the grave sites in this predominantly Buddhist cemetery. A number of graves were in disrepair with no family members to attend to them.

Sister Infanger (from Idaho) on the left and Sister Weinheimer (Ivins, UT) on the right.

When we finished we hiked a short distance to a coverd pavillion, with President Hoer and Sister Infanger carrying the water, to eat a lunch that the city government had provided for us. It was a full morning effort that was well appreciated by the government and all of the Chinese families who were visiting the grave sites and we missionaries really enjoyed giving a morning of service. The weather was overcast and cool during the work but as we finished and gathered together to eat, the heavens opened and we had a heavy rain which lasted until we had finished eating and were ready to head back to the mission office.