Happy Birthday Becki!!

Happy Birthday Becki! You should go out dinner or do something fun!!! We hope you have a great birthday! What number is this??? :) We love you!

Most recent email from James

Hey! How come no one emailed me?! :-( Oh well, that is ok. So questions. Alright dad these are answers to your questions. I will be getting to know characters. After I memorize 13 scriptures in chinese, and pass of lessons, and other things. So I will come home knowing a great deal hopefully. My MTC training allows me to understand. I do know understand alot, because the language is so vast. But, the Gift of Interpetation has helped so much. It gets better each day. There are colorful birds down on the east coast, other than that, I see lots of chickens. lol. My companion at the MTC, Elder Teare accompanied me. I sung for 700 people. The copy you saw we did over because Elder Teare stopped playing at one time during the actual perfromance, lol. I have used the mike before, I held it for the redo, lol. They love baseball here! My companion loves it. He is a Diamond Backs fan. You two would get along well. Mom's Questions Yes I can speak chinese for you when I call. Or are you sending a tape recorder? I can do that than and sing too. My house is an apartment. It is an 10 story buildling. My apartment is two stories big. We have stuff like couch/desks on the 1st. Bed stuff on the 2nd. It is just me and my companion. It is big and nice. We can cook, but it is hard to find stuff to cook. I am looking for stuff today. I love the chinese breakfast shops. I am going to cook those back home for sure. Sundays. We have food at home that we eat. I have yet to eat at a members house. A typical day. Is exercise till 7. Dress, eat, shower till 8. Book of Mormon and Gospel study till 9. Companionship till 10. Chinese till 1030. Bike contacting till 12. Lunch till 1. Bike contacting, contacting on foot, tracting, ke's to teach, meetings till 5. Dinner till 6. Contacting, ke's, meetings, tracting till 9. Travel home, get bingsha, and inside before 930. Phonecalls till 10. Prayers and bed before 1030. Yep. lol. It is really humid and hot. The typhoon stunk. Lots of rain, zero terror and danger, lol. The church is just like at home, except in Chinese. My chapel is on the second floor. People look at us because we are tall. The girls go crazy. Staring and trying to flirt. We have had two take pictures of us. Little kids stare at us with awe. People go crazy when we speak chinese or Taiwanese, lol. I love it. my time is short, but I love you all. I actually baptized two people this past saturday. A little boy also go baptized. It was awesome. I have seen so many miracles of the Spirit. Last night, we were talking to this one man. He would not listen to my companion. I felt impressed to ask him for two minutes. He did, he was quiet the whole time. I bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Church. I gave the First Vision. I invited him to chruch. He accepted! I immediatly burst into tears. Reaffirming my testimony. I got his info and I am going to call him tonight to set up. That man was one of the people I was meant to find. I hope I can continue to teach him. I had zone conference yesterday. It was so powerful and awesome. Twice I felt the Spirit so strong I literally felt like I would pass out. We had pizza hut to for lunch that was delicious. I also go my officialy name tag. And I am now legal to be in Taiwan, lol. We have this beautiful family we are teaching. Oh they are so wonderful. A three member family. The dad is so awesome and the mom accepted it too! We meet them tmw night again. Well, I hope you email me for next week. You dont have to write lots of letters if you dont want to. Emails rock. Besides other missionaries give me dirty looks from the letters. I hate that they get jealous. I dont rub it in, but you know. But the letters have been nice thank you. Well, I hope you are all well. I dont know, lol. No email! Well be safe, I love you all! Keep the faith! Love always your son Elder Whelchel

A new word

Nathan has added 'Mama' to his list of spoken words. He nows says Dada, baba, and Mama... along with other babblings. It is so darling!

Lion King Tickets

Hey everyone,

Are we really having that exciting of a summer that we can't find time to make a post on the family blog? Sheesh. Talking about SLOW.

Anyway, we have some exciting news. A few years back when Lion King was here, my old boss gave me two tickets as a birthday present. Lewis and I went and vowed if we ever had the opportunity we would take the kids. Well to our good fortune, Lion King is returning to the Pantages starting Nov 16th into the early part of January. We got tickets!!! I loved this show and thought that the scenery and costumes were incredible. I can't wait to go again and share the experience with the kids.

Oh one more thing, we have ordered a cd from BYU bookstore's website called "I believe in Christ" by Chinese Hearts. Half the songs are in Mandarin the other in Cantonese. We are going to try to learn one of the hymns to sing to James friends when we pick him up. Anyone who is going with us want to join us in this little endeavor?

Gymnastics

Mialee enjoys her gymnastics class. She does somersaults, jumps on trampolines, goes down slides, walks on balance beems.... Sorry for the lighting; that was the best I could do. Nathan and I sit in the balacony and watch her every Monday morning.

Funny blonde joke

A blonde goes into a nearby store and asks a clerk if she can buy the TV in the corner. The clerk looks at her and says that he doesn't serve blondes, so she goes back home and dyes her hair black. The next day she returns to the store and asks the same thing, and again, the clerk said he doesn't serve blondes. Frustrated, the blonde goes home and dyes her hair yet again, to a shade of red. Sure that a clerk would sell her the TV this time, she returns and asks a different clerk this time. To her astonishment, this clerk also says that she doesn't serve blondes. The blonde asks the clerk, "How in the world do you know I am a blonde?" The clerk looks at her disgustedly and says,"That's not a TV -- it's a microwave!"

Girls Camp

We survived. Thank goodness its over, I am tired of driving. I usually like to drive but going up and down that mountain gets old quickly. I don't know how people commute every day from up there. Our life guard commutes up to camp from Victorville. Yuck!

The girls are glad its over as well. We had a new camp director this year and they struggled with all the changes she made. It was Lauren's last year and she was very disappointed. I thought it was different but ok. I like escaping the city and with the horrible temps that they were having it was nice being up there where it was at least 10 degrees cooler. 100+ is not my idea of fun.

Jonathan was at scout camp while we were at girls camp and earned 3 merit badges. He got his swimming, his environmental science and shooting (not sure what its called). The most merit badges earned from our troop was 4 so he did well.

We are anxiously awaiting James first email from Taiwan. We can't wait to see what he thinks and where he is located. In his phone call he mentioned that he really wants to be in some city along the coast I think on the east side of the island about half way down. I don't remember the name of the city. But some of the "investigators" (native Taiwanese people) that he dealt with in the MTC said it was a beautiful place and if possible he should see it.

We are going to Quake stadium for the 4th and fireworks. I am tired of hanging around home and just seeing what the neighbors bring home. We have avoided all of our married lives purchasing fireworks. This year we decided that the kids were missing out. Having been a military brat all of my memories include huge patriotic celebrations always topped off with a huge firework display. So, tonight they get to see one of those and hopefully this will be a new tradition for us.

What are you all doing on July 4th?