Blog:

The final count down for the ship off date is upon me. Its 8 days now!! I can taste the near freedom...Or the Taiwanese pollution...haha.

We all received our travel plans this last Friday. All of us muchly appreciated this, as we had been waiting on the very edge of anticipation all week long. We leave next Tuesday and arrive in Taiwan at 10:35 pm the 17th. (so if you write me you will need to use the new address, provided by my dear mother. I believe dear elders will still allow foreign mail, but they cost as much as regular foreign mail and they take just as long to get to me.) We have two days of orientation in the Mission Home then we head out to our first area. I'm excited and filled with trepidation all at the same time! Who will my trainer be? Will she be entirely frustrated with my inability to comprehend a word spoken to me in the strange language I'm being thrust into? Will I have a bike? Will I ever see my beloved companions again? HOW WILL I RECEIVE MAIL!?!?! I'm sure all of these questions will find answers in due time....patience...patience...

This weekend was rather amazing. Yesterday in Devotional we were treated to The Sister Sheri Dew, who gave us a quite wonderful talk. I took about 4 pages of very small notes. She is an amazing woman and should be an inspiration and example to us all. Then we had a wonderful temple walk where I took about a bazillion pictures of the beautiful fall foliage and beautiful servants of Christ. I would love to send them too my mother to add them to this fabulous inter web, but the bookstore here is backed up and I would not get them printed in time. So Alas, you all will have to wait until I can snail mail them from the orient. I took some great pictures of my entire Zone, my District, My roommates, My companions, and some really great ones with an Elder Thiessen who just happened to be lingering near by.

Our first departure was today, to Canada. Our districts very own Frenchman, Elder Jaquier. Oh we miss him already, and the fun spirit he brought to our class. He was the most gentle and reasonable of Frenchmen, we sisters never knew he had a prankster side deep underneath the spirituality...until we heard the stories. So many stories...Oh If there were time to share...maybe in 16 months. His departure was sudden, but we are all trying to adjust. The rest of us leave together.

So This ends my time unfortunately. I love you all. I miss you all. I hope you all are well! Until next week!!

Sister Melissa Thiessen.