Letter From a Ward Member

Dear Brother & Sister Wills, Greetings from Kaohsiung, Taiwan! My wife Gloria and I live here -- I work at the American Institute in Taiwan, our “quasi-embassy” on this island. We were both missionaries in Taiwan in the mid-1970s, and it has been a real blessing for us to come back here, 40 years later, and reconnect with this wonderful place. One way we have of giving back is to host the missionaries to dinner as often as we can! Tonight, we were blessed to have Elder Wills and his companion Elder Osbourne to dinner. Gloria made pizza (pepperoni and Hawaiian) and salad for our main course, and for dessert we had vanilla ice cream with my home-made berry sauce and Gloria’s homemade chocolate-chip cookies! It was yummy. We enjoyed getting to know your son. We have some things is common! We were in Minneapolis for five years prior to our arrival in Taiwan last year (we’ve been here for just over a year), where I was the director of the State Department’s Minneapolis Passport Agency. My office was in the old Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis (3rd Ave. South) and Gloria worked at Hennepin County Medical Center. We LOVED Minnesota. The assignment was originally a two-year one, but I managed to stretch it out to a total of five years. While we didn’t care for the Minnesota winters, we survived them! And lived to tell the tale. I think God blessed us for having survived those winters with our sanity intact by sending us to the tropics! Last winter, it was a delight to have temperatures in the 70s throughout the season. And Elder Wills will get to enjoy two such winters while he is here. But, today was a rainy today - it’s the rainy season (which usually bring typhoons) in Kaohsiung. We had real downpours today. At noon, the sky was as dark as it gets at 6:00 pm! I went one block from my office to each lunch, and it started really coming down, and on my way back to the office (one block only remember), I was drenched -- and I had an umbrella. But when the rain falls/blows sideways, an umbrella doesn’t do much good! In Minnesota, we were in the New Brighton Ward in the St. Paul Stake. Our Stake President was Clark Wiberg, and then Ken Baker. Bob Matthews was our bishop. You probably know these men. Anyway, what a delight to meet your fine son in Taiwan! He tells me that your family knows the Christie Family. Dave Christie and I were companions in Taiwan! And we were reunited in Minnesota -- the first time I had seen him since our mission, 35 years before! Hope you enjoy these photos. If there is anything we can do for Elder Wills, please let us know. We would love to do so. We LOVE the missionaries, and we do our best to take care of them. All the best, Bob DeWitt, Lingya Ward, West Kaohsiung Stake, Taiwan