The Best Part of Christmas

The best part of Christmas was serving the Missionaries Christmas dinner.  The Christmas packages from home were stack on the stage waiting for the missionaries.  Sister Day, Mission Mom, had a dream that she wanted to feed every missionary in the Taipei Mission (152 missionaries) a traditional Christmas Dinner. So 80 missionaries came on Christmas Eve day, and 72 came on Christmas Day for a Turkey Dinner; received their packages from home, and many performed their talents in a Christmas program.

All the missionaries were excited to be together for Christmas  and eat an traditional Christmas dinner. The sister's were served first.

President and Sister Day are pictured here serving the missionaries. The Senior couples helped Sister Day with the cooking of 8 turkey's, lots of homemade stuffing, and real mashed potatoes and gravy, and all the trimmings. It was a privilege to help serve and clean up.

Elder Shu is warming up for the talent show. It was a wonderful Christmas Eve and Day watching the missionaries eat and have fun, and then we were able to spend Christmas Day working in the Temple.

More Christmas in Taiwan

We went Christmas Caroling with the Senior Missionary couples to the Taipei Train Station and a Hospital. Some stopped to take pictures of us and listened to the carols. We had fun passing out candy canes and missionary cards.

There was a little competition next to us in the Train Station. A group of young soccer players were next to us by the Christmas Tree, and several of them were showing off their nimble ball skills.  Hard to compete with that.

Sister Shen invited us to her Ward Christmas Party, and gave us a Christmas gift.  Her ward is located about 30 minutes from our apartment on the MRT.  Sister Shen is a dedicated Temple worker.  She was converted to the church when she was 21 and then one year later served a mission.  After her mission she taught school and is now retired. She never married, and is now 71 years old. We just couldn't say no when she invited us.  

We were sitting across from this cute family when Sister Shen started taking pictures with her IPad  The part of the evening that was unusual to us is that the Ward Christmas Party was on Sunday at 5pm. There was a program after the dinner, and then Santa arrived with a wrapped package for everyone including us.  They insisted that we each take a package.  It was cookies which we gave to the Missionaries.  We found out that the ward had been recently divided from another ward, and there is only 9 children in the new ward.

Christmas in Taiwan

The fresh potted Poinsettia plants in front of the Temple seem to thrive on the mild winter temperatures in the 60's day and night, and mostly rainy.

Our Christmas in Taiwan was highlighted by the 12th Annual Christmas Pageant performed by our English Ward. The Pageant is outside next to the Temple.  We took our Landlords, Herman and Wendy Xuang, who are Buddhist to see the Pageant. The Xuang's had never seen anything like this before, and they wanted to know if this what Christmas was like in America.

President and Sister He, the Temple President and Matron, invited all of the Senior Missionary couples over to help decorate the Christmas Tree in their home. This was their first Christmas tree; and they said, "we don't have any idea how to decorate a Christmas tree."

Brother and Sister Christensen, ward members who are from the US and who work for the US Government, invited us over for Sunday dinner and then gave each of us a large Christmas Basket of goodies. We enjoyed their warm hospitality, delicious dinner, and the American goodies.

Juming Museum - Final- Part 4

Bob, a proud "Father and Grandpa", standing
 by the Ju Ming statue titled, "Proud Father"

What looks like condo's on the hill side are burial sites.  The burial sites can be quite expensive, especially when you have view of the ocean. We have been told that the Interment sites cost $50,000 US dollars and up. That isn't so expensive when you can put many jars of ashes (several generations) in one burial site.

Juming Museum - Part 3

President Chen, 2nd Counselor, in the Taiwan Temple Presidency is retired form the Taiwan Military, so he posed next to the jeep sculpture. President Chen was our host and tour guide to bring us to the Juming Outdoor Museum, and showed us the north part of Taiwan for the day.

More military sculptures in the background, and an interesting metal sculpture. 

All branches of the Military were honored by the Artist; and the large military collection were all sculpted from foam, then bronzed and painted. 

Juming Outdoor Museum - Part 2

The Museum is the size of a large park. This is the 2 story Taichi Arch sculpture.  It is not carved out of rock; it is bronzed and painted. The grass is being weeded by hand. We have not seen any lawn mowers in Taiwan; but we have seen a large grass area like this one being cut with weed whackers.

We wanted a close up picture of the weeders; because we laughed when we saw this, and remembered how our kids complained about weeding our small yard.

A close up at the Taichi Arch
 by Ju Ming

Another sculpture of the same series.

Out Door Museum - Juming Museum - Part 1

Juming Museum is the exhibition grounds for the works by Ju Ming, one of Taiwan's most renowned modern artist. The soldiers along the walkway, and most of the outdoor art, was sculpted from Styrofoam, then bronzed and painted. 

As a tribute to the military, Ju Ming has completed and displayed more than 300 Armed Forces sculptures in his museum.

This is a large zipper.  The artist started purchasing the land for the museum in 1987; it took 12 years to develop, and all of the artist personal money.  I believe it is still owned by Ju Ming.  It is beautifully landscaped and maintained to display the sculptures.

There were several displays of the Zipper Series. .

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