Wendell Friest (傅立德)

Wendell Friest came out of nowhere and became a close friend during the last three years of my Taiwan life. One night he came to listen to the Truth Church choir rehearsal, standing outside the church. He was impressed and introduced himself to Ms. Jones and to me. Since he had a car, we could go visit many places around the city, which we did, and he regularly became our week-end companion. Wendell was then in the US Navy, stationed in Taipei, and he was a graduate of the University of Nebraska with a major in music. He later directed a choir at Christ College, which was a church college established by an American missionary. And on one occasion he carefully and painstakingly recorded quite a number of Chinese songs that I sang without much rehearsal, as he was very interested in what was taught to me in music. Somewhere, there is still a 7" tape of that recording in the attic.

The picture below was taken as a slide. It shows the four regulars on one of our outings.

The next picture was taken by me in Wulai, a nearby waterfall outside Taipei. We went there for a picnic on the spur of the moment. The people in the picture were Wendell, Sherman, Ms Jones, and a girl whose name I no longer remember.

After his Navy commitment in Taiwan, which I believe was four years, he came back to the US and went to a seminary in St Paul, MN. After Janice and I got married in 1965, a year or two later we went to vacation in the Minnesota area and visited them, as Wendell had married Faith by that time. They went back to Taiwan as missionaries, and successfully achieved their goal there during the next thirty and more years.