Friday, January 27, 2017

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快樂!

In order to keep up on our Chinese, President and I are taking a Mandarin class with the 
Ventura County Chinese American Association on Friday evenings. 
It is a pretty small class and our teacher is from mainland China. 
We are getting a taste of simplified characters and love being engaged in Mandarin conversation!
We celebrated Chinese New Year's Eve with families of students of all levels at the school:
 Can you guess who President and Sister Blickenstaff are? A few close ups:


 Did you get it right?!

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

1-25-17 Departing Missionaries

How grateful we are to have President and Sister Teh taking care of our missionaries...
inspiring, teaching, loving and leading them!
 Congratulations on missions well served!
 A hike up to Elephant Mountain:
 At Shilin Night Market:
 Gotta get aboard that plane!
Australia...here I come!
Did you make it under the weight limit?!
 Their families are SO excited!

Monday, January 23, 2017

1-23-16 New Year Taiwanese Missionary Visit:)

We were so excited when we got a Facebook message from this returned missionary saying she was coming to America to visit! She had a 9-hour layover in Los Angeles, heading up to Salt Lake City where she would vacation for three weeks. We made plans to pick her up from LAX and take her for a quick tour of the town! She wanted to attend church to partake of the sacrament (warmed my heart) so I found a YSA ward behind the LA Temple that met in the afternoon. We could tour the temple, attend sacrament meeting, then head out to the Santa Monica coastline! I decided to bake a braided ham, cheese and carmelized onion sandwich, pack a picnic lunch, and looked forward to a delightful Sabbath with our Taiwanese guest! Until I woke up Sunday morning to heavy rain and a forecast of showers through the ENTIRE day:((( Well, I baked the sandwich, packed the lunch, and we still had a delightful but VERY WET Sabbath after all! 

The Los Angeles Temple Visitors Center
By the way, guess who is the new Assistant Coordinator for the Los Angeles Temple monthly Mandarin session? Brother Blickenstaff! He was called this past Saturday. In the setting apart, President Reynolds blessed him to be able to keep up his Mandarin skills through this calling, and to have the health and strength necessary to serve the temple patrons:) We love serving in the temple!!!
We didn't head out to the coast, but we did go to Hollywood instead:) 

 We couldn't exactly make out the Hollywood sign, but we didn't get into a car accident either, 
deja vue hahaha!

Sunday, January 22, 2017

1-20-17 Look Who's Watching Over our Niece in Taiwan?

We've been so excited to have our niece Tiffany serving in the Taiwan Taipei Mission.
When she wrote and told us her first area was Xizhi, I was ecstatic!
Just look at all the missionaries watching over her:
The Ward Mission Leader's family inviting her over for dinner:
 Then at a zone activity...
 ...another one of our RMs was her companion for the day!
 So much fun street contacting!
We love and appreciate our missionaries!