Morning Calls - It Was Still Thanksgiving

One thing about being fourteen hours ahead of our family back home in the U.S., when we get up in the morning here it is still the previous day there. That meant we could call part of our family this morning to Skype with them on Thanksgiving Day. We spoke to three out of our five daughters along with two thirds of our grandchildren. And we had the perfect reason to stay home this morning, on the fourth Friday of each month we have Skype calls with a Senior Missionary couple in Taiwan and another in Hong Kong. The first one was at 8:00 a.m. and only lasted for half an hour and the second was at 10:00 a.m. that gave us an hour and a half in between calls.

We continue to be amazed at the wonderful Self-Reliance Service Missionaries that we have the opportunity to serve with. Both of our Skype calls went very well and the couples are doing such a wonderful job in their country. We will miss these opportunities when we are replaced, but we have been blessed to make some wonderful friends via Skype.

A lot of the electronics in the world are manufactured in Asia because of the cheap labor factor. That also means a lot of the after market repair parts are also manufactured in Asia. A few months ago the iPad got dropped and cracked the screen, and shortly after that the speaker started having problems. One of the local Stake Presidents told us about a shop owned by a member to take it to, so we finally got around to getting it fixed. The total repair cost was less than a third of the price that we would have paid in the U.S.

We had a fairly quiet afternoon at our office today. Sameth took the day off to take their baby for her shots, Phanna was out visiting businesses as part of his job and Neth that sits by us was off in other parts of the Service Center. It is nice to have a quiet afternoon, we were able to work on some projects that need to be done in the next couple of weeks.

Tonight's collage is the sunset over a thirty minute period. It is amazing how the colors transform before our eyes. The camera does a fairly good job of capturing the various hues, but nothing can compare to the actual view.