American New Years

Merry Christmas Everyone,

I hope your all waking up to a great Christmas morning. Taiwan doesn't celebrate Christmas so this has been one of the most interesting Christmas seasons I have had for sure.

We did do some Christmas stuff this week. We had a Christmas themed Zone Conference on Thursday where we talked all about the names of Christ, had a talent show, and watched "Mr. Krugers Christmas," which is famous or something. I don't remember ever seeing it before. During the conference they had everyone run down to the basement one zone at a time to get Christmas packages, which made the elevator a little crowded. We took a good zone selfie. Featured below. 

Sunday was interesting because all three ward's that meet in our building had a combined. It was a little frustrating because we had a referral who was supposedly coming but we had never seen him before and there was no way to find him in the sea of faces.

Sunday night we had a Mission Christmas concert. Unfortunantly, it was raining really hard and none of the people we invited who were going to come actually made it. But it was pretty fun because basically the whole mission was there and there was a ton of reunions and stuff right before Christmas which was a lot of fun.

But yeah, honestly it's been a pretty normal week. A little Christmas flavor to it but nothing too out of the ordinary. It is kind of interesting to be in the minority when it comes to a religious holidays. For my entire life I have been in the cultural majority when it comes to how well known and celebrated my holidays are but now It's the opposite and everyone refers to Christmas as "American New Years" because Chinese New Year is the major holiday. Kind of an interesting experience.

It's such a small deal in Taiwan that it would honestly be easy to forget it's Christmas! We tried to do our best to make things Christmasy though. Last night we read the Christmas story as an apartment (and all realized halfway that the version you hear as a kid is a complex edit of Luke 2 and Matthew 2 not just a straight reading of Luke. Thanks wise men) I also ate some Christmas ham Flavored Lay's and egg flavored soy milk for some Christmas eve dinner (I haven't seen any real egg nogg). 😂

Wishing you all a holly and jolly Christmas,

Elder Neilson

our apartment reading the Christmas story

my entire zone jammed in the eleveator

One is of Elder Merrill carrying his even bigger than the pumpkin pie Christmas package home.

 our zone having a Christmas activity 

Breaking

With this last Thrusday I have officially put my time as a Trainee behind me and moved on to the period of the mission they call "greenie breaking" and with that comes a new companion named Elder Merrill (吳). He is from Southern California (Woodland Hills). He has been out for around 8 months and so he isnt super old by mission standards.

Its been a fun last couple of days. We have seen a ton of miracles. We tried visiting this one less active family the other day who didn't have time to say high despite asking us to come back that morning earlier. In anycase that didn't work out but because we were in the area we got to talk to a lady carrying her young son to a breakfast shop who we tried to set an appointment with for the next couple days. She randomly asked, "what about this afternoon?" and we ended up meeting with her the same day just a few hours later. She seems super prepared and it was a really cool miaracle. 

Other miracles happened at church, including another random awesome family walking into the church third hour. They live in the other elders are but its still all cool. 

We also got to take part in ward council for the first time since I arrived in Taiwan. It was super cool even though I didn't understand much when they were talking about non missionary stuff. I just think that ward councils are a great testimony of the divine organization of church leadership. Councils are just electrifying and it is so awesome to see all these people taking time out of thier own diverse lives to sit and talk about how to help those in the ward and in the area at large. Super cool.

Today for P-day we cleaned a lot and got rid of a lot of junk left by older missionaries and stuff. The Apartment is a lot nicer to be in now. Then we went to Taipei 101. Which was super cool! There is this huge really nice mall with a ton of really expensive brands so we just kind of walked around. Still a fun time. 

Hope everyone has a great week before Christmas!

Elder Neilson

my ramen for lunch on sunday. I threw in an extra Noodle patty from these weird purple noodles a member gave us. Turned into Ying Yang noodles

 Elder Merrill taking home a pumpkin pie one of the members in the English ward gave us. He tied it to his bike with a reflective vest and somehow it made it home

Elder Morgan and I rearranging the closets after Elder Bunn and Cheng left

6 months!

Well friends, 

I have officially been on my mission for 6 months! To celebrate Elder Bunn and I went to the only 7-Eleven either of us have ever seen in Taiwan that sells Slurpees for language study! Maybe Slurpees will become a thing in many 7-Elevens by the time it gets around to the summer. That would be sweet!

Did I tell you about that guy last week who showed up to our sacrement meeting randomly and then to the fireside by the temple later Sunday night? Well we met with him twice this week. He is actually a member already but he has had some periods of falling away and spent some time going to another church. Basically he just has a ton of questions based around the Bible that we assume the other church (and possibly the Jehovahs Witnesses) drilled into him. It's kind of funny meeting with him because it's kind of like pretend Bible bashing with a member of the church just trying to play the devils advocate. He doesn't really seem to believe anything he brings up. I think he just wants us to prove them wrong so he can settle some doubts. Hopefully we can give him some tools to figure these kinds of questions out on his own, because they aren't just going to stop after our meetings!

After English Class this week we met with a long time former who was really cool. He has met with missionaries multiple times throught his life but it seems like he has really been prepared to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ again at this time. I'm hopeful that he will progress quickly!

Last notes, we had a Christmas Caroling event with our district at a Carrefour (Kind of like a Taiwanese Target?) this week. Luckily some of the 永和 (Yong He) members came because otherwise we would have been really low on numbers. Unfortunantly, they had us carol Thursday night so no one was really in the store to listen. It was still good though. 

Also the transfer ends this week and with that, my time as a Trainee will end as well. Theoretically, if everything follows typical patterns, I will stay in 中和 (Zhong He) and Elder Bunn will leave. We shall see.

Love you all,

Elder Neilson

Notes on pictures,

as part of P-day today we went to the 中正紀念堂 (Chang Kai Shek Memorial) so there are some pictures from that. Then we also were in a really nice area of Taipei and found a combo KrispyKreme and Jamba Juice. 

Picture of me getting some 冬瓜茶 at a restaurant one of our friends works at. 

Hello again

It's P-day again!

Its been a weird few days since we last talked.

At church a random guy showed up who apparently went to my English class last week and then just decided to come to church. That was pretty sweet. Even more awesome, he later showed up unexpectedly at the new member fireside that night too, which is all the way up by the temple. Seems like a really prepared guy!

Speaking of the temple, our ward mission leader got sealed the other day and invited us to come, which was super cool. Then guess what? He came out and did some missionary work that night. On his wedding night! We tried to reschedule but he insisted because his wife was at a choir practice that night anyways, so we got to spend the night riding around in a our ward mission leader's Mercedes Benz on his wedding night doing missionary work. Pretty crazy. He thought it was super fun too and wants to do it every week now! He is such a legend.

Today we went to 六福村主題遊樂園, probably the most well known theme park in Taiwan. A few weeks ago a member came up to us and was like, hey, want to go? So today we went with him and one of our Recent Converts. Seeing as theme parks are kind of my thing it's been quite a memorable pday. Some of the main rides were closed or under referbishment but I guess that's the price we have to pay for coming during the off season and having the park to ourselves. Everything was more or less walk on so it was a ton of fun. Funny thing is, the member and our Recent convert weren't always down to go on some of the bigger rides so they would wait for us while taking a bunch of pictures and videos. But now I have a bunch of cool pictures and videos of my companion and I on rides!

Taiwan is the best, loving the work. The other day, after a lesson where Elder Bunn and I straight taught the Restoration for a little over an hour, we got home and just sat a little in awe about how true this thing whole thing is, and how the blessings of the Gospel are so so real. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to teach that to others. 

Hope you have a great week,

Elder Neilson

As promised here are some cool pictures. 

One is from last P-day where I had to bike home with a ton of packages. And the others are from today at the theme park.

Oh and here is a funny video of Elder Bunn and I at the park doing a sort of Egyptian themed spy laser game. you can't really see any of the Lazers in the video so it's pretty funny.

Questions and Answers

Tustins responses to questions from his Dad about the mission..

1. What is the weather like? Humid? Cool at night?
During the day, hot and humid (although I think it has been pretty dry recently). This winter has been unusually warm and it rains less which is nice because winter rain at night can get pretty cold to bike in. The last couple days have been really really nice. If you check the weather in Taipei right now you'll see it's a pretty great day. Pretty much any day with out rain is nice. It can get pretty cool when the sun is not out though and sometimes it gets kind of windy. That might just be the city though.

2. How are the people? Mostly friendly? What has surprised you most about the Taiwanese?
The people are really nice and friendly. Probably the meanest people we find are the middle aged women/moms. Kind of glad President told us (sort of) not to talk to them! I was really surprised at first how well the people can speak English. It seems like most of the people in my area can speak basic English (that's not true outside the city though). The old people are super funny too. It's not out of the question to see some random old guy peeing in the street or rolling around in a field. Also all the old people are very worried about health so they are always getting up early to go hike up mountains or do funny exercises (sometimes on top of mountians). The old lady's especially will gather at parks and do group exercise routines just slapping their arms or legs and doing funny stretches to music.

3. How does church compare? Same carpet? Same hymns? Do they have a favorite? (In Chile, we sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy every week!!!) 
Church is pretty similar, there just isnt as many people. My ward only has 60ish active members. Our chapel is too small for a basket ball court in the cultural hall but we do have two ping Pong tables. Perhaps the weirdest thing was during election season when the stake put out a bunch of notices and had bishops anounce in sacrament (sort of quote) "the church has no policical stance but we do have doctrine on all the LGBT stuff..." and then basically they went on to announce all the people not to vote for! Probably bending the rules a little there. I haven't noticed too much in terms of favorite hymns. I have heard it's very much a thing but since I don't really understand anything we are singing its a little hard to catch patterns. Maybe ask again in a year? 😂

4. Do you ever play the piano? Practice hymns?
No. Sometimes I try to sit and play something but Elder Bunn isn't too down. 😔

5. What do you like best about the language? What is the most frustrating?
I think characters and how the language is built around them is super cool. Chinese can be really simple in some ways. There isn't really such thing as a crazy big hard to pronounce word in Chinese since you just build big words out of a few characters to express the meaning of the big concept. For example, the other day I learned suicide which is "Zi Sha" or "self kill." there is also this really cool Grammer called resultatative verbs. I probably can't explain it super well in an email but it's super cool and let's you express concepts in a cool way. For example, the idea of not being able to handle something can be expressed simply as, "Shou Bu Liao," or to take upon oneself but not be able to complete. Kind of complicated to explain but trust me it is cool. The Language is still really hard though because Chinese has weird sounds that are hard to pronounce and understand. The romanization (Pinyin) can also be frustratingly inadequate.

6. Any Taiwanese customs you enjoy? Taking shoes off? Holidays? Crafts? Games? (In Chile there was lots of kite flying and battles and lots of tops and ping pong) 
The garbage trucks travel around the city and blast ice cream truck music to announce when you should come down and throw your trash in. That's pretty fun.

7. Where do you do most of your shopping? Laundry? 
Shopping is mostly at convinience stores like 7-Eleven or Family Mart, and sometimes grocery/department stores. Taiwan also has these stores called "dongxi dian" or "things store" that sell basically everything. We do laundry in our apartment. We have a washer and dryer

8. Do you have a favorite native dessert or candy? 
Pretty much anything with red beans is good. Red or green bean soup are both pretty good. The best dessert is probably the shaved ice though.

9. Do you mostly ride bikes or take buses/subways? Is there a subway?
Mostly bikes. There is a subway called the MRT. We take that pretty often to get up to the mission office / temple or just to go to cool places on pday. Buses are less common but on pday we use them sometimes.

Build the Church

Hey all,

I forgot to mention it is temple P-day this week, so sorry this week's letter is a little late. The good news is next pday is only 4 days away! 😂

Thanksgiving looks like it was a party! They don't celebrate Thanksgiving at all in Taiwan, (although they have a name for it in Chinese: 感恩節, literally "Gratitude celebration") but we had our Zone Conference last week mostly on Graditude and stuff. President Peterson shared a really funny story of going to Costco and buying more or less 10 out of the 16 turkeys in all of Taiwan. Turkey in Chinese is 火雞 meaning "fire bird" or "fire chicken." As president stood at the freezer looking at the turkeys a crowd of Taiwanese people crowded around him asking questions like, "what is that?" or "how do you cook it?" and then when he started taking them out of the freezer, eventually putting 5 in the cart (He and Sister Peterson had bought 5 already) they were really impressed and amazed that the white guy took 5 of these huge birds. Needless to say those 10 turkeys were used to create an authentic Thanksgiving feast for our Zone Conference lunch which was super awesome. They even had Costco custom make them a ton of pumpkin pies. Costco is  truly a wonder.

We still went to McDonald's for dinner though. I got one of the fancy "signature" burgers. Picture and hopefully Video below. Unfortunately, I made the ultimate fail video-taking-mistake and switched from portrait to landscape halfway through. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Oh, also I finally tried the 7-Eleven Beef Noodle Soup. I thought it was really good! 

At our Thanksgiving Zone Conference, President Peterson had a lot of knowledge to drop and at the core of it all is our need to "build the Church in Taiwan." Central to his plan to achieve that goal is to work a lot more with members, which is one of those missionary tasks that everyone knows they should do but is hard to actually get in the habit of doing. He quoted statistics such as, in terms of long term activity (at least in our mission) finding and baptizing someone through members is 20 times more effective than finding on the street. In other words you have to baptize 20 people you find on the street to equal one person found through members! He also talked about how in recent years activity in Taiwan has dropped 60%, and that we need to spend 70 to 80% of our time working with members.

So yeah, the call to action has been pretty clear and Elder Bunn and I have been setting up a lot of plans to work more with members. This whole thing though has really been changing my mind set on missionary work and I feel like I really need to take President's council to heart and make building the church in whatever ways possible, my main concern at all times.

So that will be the way I'm going to be organizing my missionary prioirities from know on: what will strengthen members and build my ward? We'll see how it works out, but I am feeling good!

I also read a cool talk given by some mission a president called "the Fourth Missionary" at the request/recommendation of one of my Zone Leaders this week during exchanges. Its more or less just about truly dedicating yourself to the Lord in your work and wanting to do the Lord's will, not just doing the Lord's will. It had a great point about how peace, joy, and personal change come when you don't just follow the commandments or mission rules and follow the will of the Lord because it is the right thing to do (although that does bring results and is good on its own) but because you have truly consecrated yourself and sacrificed your other desires and wish to do the will of the Lord because it has become your own will as well. He went on to talk about how it's really the only intelligent way to do missionary work because you are out in the feild for two years doing the same things no matter what so you might as well learn to want to do those things so you can enjoy and be changed by the experience.

I think that last part can apply to all of life not just missionary work. Of course mission rules and expectations don't apply in normal life, but the commandments are still there and you still need to follow them even if you don't really want to. (ignoring the fact you could just use your agency to not follow the commandments- let's just pretend no one is choosing that option!) But you find a lot more joy when you learn to love and appreciate the commandments, and following them becomes joyous.

Love you all, talk in a few days

Elder Neilson 

Redemption Email

So it appears my email last week got lost in the digital nether-so sorry about that. Biggest news from last week, Elders can no longer teach single women and sisters can no longer teach single men. It's only families or people of your own gender. Elder Bunn and I are actually pretty good about it because we hardly ever talk to women while on the streets anyways and now we basically get all of the sisters area 永和 as part of our area!

On to this week...

I taught possibly my last children's English class this week. As the advanced class teacher, Elder Morgan hated teaching his class and so I said I would switch. The kids are super crazy so I'm not too sad about it but it was kind of fun. So far, just in the prep, advanced class seems like a lot more work since I'm not preparing the same class as my companion but hopefully I can make it fun since supposedly the advanced students basically just like discussing stuff. 

Sunday was really cool. We had one of our friends who is in the 永和 (Yonghe)ward come  to Sacrement Meeting for the second time even though we have only really met with him once. At the end he even expressed curiosity to know what the second two hours are like! Then in our ward, 中和一, a random guy shows up during Sacrement. Turns out he is not a member but just some random guy who is retired and likes to go to churches. He even stays for gospel principles and we set up another meeting for Thursday. Super random, but then at our dinner appointment and later with the 中和二 (Zhonghe 2) Elders, we discovered this guy has met with missionaries before but cannot be baptised because he has 3 wives, living in 3 different countries!

I have been reading in 1 Nephi recently having just restarted the Book of Mormon in personal study. I read the other day the part where Nephi gets the commandment of the Lord to build a ship and Nephi's very first reaction is to ask the Lord where he can go to find ore. I think this is a really great scripture story because Nephi gets called to do something that based on human knowledge (such as Laman and Lemuels) he shouldn't be able to do, but Nephi has enough trust in the Lord's plan to know that as long as he tries it will work out. We don't know from the scriptures Nephi's background but I would assume he has some sort of experience with ore or tools since that's the very first thing he thinks to ask, but Nephi applying his experience, and his ideas to the Lord's commandment, reminds me of our need to trust in the Lord when he calls us to do hard things. Even if we don't have the exact skill set or experience we think we would need to fulfill the Lord's commands. As long as we bring what we got and give it our all, miracles happen! That's certainly true for missionary work! So, trust in the Lord, it will all work out. 

Hope you all have a good week. 

Elder Neilson 

Pictures of Elder Bunn and I eating shaved ice and our last English Class. 

Babysitting

Hey All,

I think it's daylight savings or something in America right? So maybe you can all start getting my emails a little earlier! 

This Wednesday was pretty fun because a ton of new missionaries got shipped over to Taiwan a day early and didn't have companions, so a lot of the missionaries in and around the mission office came and picked up new temporary companions for a few hours, or in other words: babysit. My temporary companion was Elder Berges from Arizona. It was weird to be on my own away from Elder Bunn, but it was a lot of fun leading a new elder through my area. Luckily we didn't get lost.

Because it was Wednesday the New Missionaries were with us for English class so instead of having my districts normal 6 missionaries and English we had 13 (the sisters had 3 new sisters with them). So that was a little crazy, but it worked out because Wednesday was Halloween and so the second half of English class we spent having a Halloween activity (we aren't allowed to call them parties) with all the students and having a lot of new missionaries for people to talk to was really good. 

Elder Bunn and I were in charge of games for this party and we made this one where we taped little cups to a white board and had people try to throw a ping-pong ball into the cups for prizes. Kind of as a joke we made one Book of Mormon cup so people could theoretically go for that. What we didn't take into account though is that eventually the game evolved jnto just a few of the child students going over and over again, and this one brother and sister started exclusively aiming for the Book of Mormon cup. We refused to give either of them more than one actual copy but the brother would keep coming up to Elder Bunn to remind him that Elder Bunn owes him 4 more! It's extra funny because they aren't even members.

We also had a mission Conference this week with the General Young Men's President, President Owen, and two members of the 70, one of which was Elder Homer who apparently comes and visits us pretty often. It was a good conference and I walked away reflecting a lot on the importance of gratitude. I particularly liked one comment President Peterson made, talking about how Faith is not measured by coming home everyday having had a great day. Some days are just not so good. Faith is more about the consistent hope that if you are obedient and work hard, it will all work out. President Owen also made some great comments on graditude, reminding us that graditude is not comparing the present to what has been or what could be. It's about looking for the good and learning to appreciate God's hand in your life right now in the moment. 

Lastly, I tried Beef Noodle for the first time this week! It's one of the foods Taiwan is known for but all my past efforts to try it have been thwarted. But totaly worth the wait!

Hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Neilson

Elder Bunn and I with one of our new friends from this week. We shared the Book of Mormon the other day and he was super excited about it and said he would read and share his thoughts next time before we could even invite him! 

Elder Bunn in front of our Halloween game

Elder Bunn and I eating Beef Noodle

Exchanges

Hey all,

Elder Bunn and I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders this week from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon. It was a really fun time, although our schedules were a little bizzare because we had to go up the the mission office for president interviews and had to take a trip to my area Tuesday night to teach a lesson. It was pretty cool to see other styles of missionary work though. Plus their area had a really nice 7-Eleven we got to study at! I wish I had taken a picture or something. Honestly, it had this second floor area that was kind of a loft balcony overlooking the rest of the store, and it was furnished like a nice room on the Titanic or something.

Other stuff, on morning Saturday we went up to the Chapel by the Temple to play basketball for exercise time, and on the MRT (subway) on the way back we were getting this guy's LINE (that's the messaging app everyone uses here. It's really fun to say "I'll message so and so on LINE", [say it out loud]), but this guy was taking a while to get the QR code to scan. We arrived at our stop and the doors started to close and Elder Bunn finally gets the guy's LINE and just dives for the doors. but the Guy we were talking to gets in the way and then turns and grabs Elder Bunn by the backpack. So we missed our stop. I mean, I wasn't even trying to get out the door, so I would have been left on the train anyways. Not sure what I would have done if Elder Bunn got out and left me there. But Luckily we were kept together and eventually got back on the train going the other way to get back to our stop. pretty interesting start to the day.

We also met  this other guy on the street the other day who is really into the Rocky Mountains and got really excited when Elder Bunn said he was from Utah. It was pretty funny because he was way into America and said he wants to move to Montana because it is the Land of Big Sky or something. He says, "Taiwan is my country but it is too small." It was hilarious but we are set up to teach him later so it worked out!

One good spiritual thought that has come up a few times this week is about a concept called "Divine Discontent." I think it comes from a talk or something I'm not sure, but President Peterson has mentioned it a few times in conferences and mission emails. Anyways, basically its something along the lines of being disasitified with your current state of being, not because you are being negative or critical about yourself, but because you know that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ you can become more like God and the Savior. I think it's kind of related to Humility and turning your will over to God. I don't really have all my thoughts put together about it just yet but it's kind of a fun concept to ponder on!

Dad- I really like your thoughts on not gambling and not wearing masks ... Its really interesting that when it comes down to it, it seems like the difference between Satan's plan and Heavenly Father plan is that Satan wanted to ignore responsibility. I mean pretty much every sin is just avoiding responsibility in one way or another. That's why confession is important, because it is taking responsibility for our actions.

This brings me to one thought I have been mulling about for a lot of my mission, about agency and the mind. You know we always do object lessons with the primary kids and stuff about the body and the spirit where the body is a glove that is dead and useless without the hand (or spirit)? I think this is a little to simple and not totally accurate. The mind can't simply be the Spirit because that doesnt explain how we can have unrighteous thoughts because our spirit doesn't desire wickedness right? I think the body has its own will ( natural man) and the spirit has its righteous will. Then the mind is kind of where those two wills come together and we need to choose within ourselves to follow the will of the Spirit over the will of the body. I mean if bodies were just lifeless flesh suits, why would we need to come to mortlity to learn how to use one?

Probably my favorite talk in Conference this year was "Choose you This Day," by Elder Dale G. Renlund. I loved his opening about Mary Poppins and especially this part:

"Our Heavenly Father's goal in parenting is not to have His children do what is right; it is to have His children choose to do what is right and ultimately become like him. If He simply wanted us to be obedient, He would use immediate rewards and punishments to influence out behaviors. but God is not interested in His chilren just becoming trained and obedient "pets" who will not chew on his slipper in the Celestial living room. No, God wants his children to grow up spiritually and join him in the family business."

What a great way to summarize the importance of agency and the the end goal of the Plan of Slavation!

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Neilson

烤肉

Hey everyone,

Its been a pretty good week. but I don't have a ton of time,

So, remember that service project I was talking about last week? Turns out everything we were told about that was wrong! Instead of helping disabled people take tours of a museum we basically just stood outside and did nothing for a few hours and groups of old people went and took tours of the museum. We were supposedly helping organize the groups into their lines to get on the right busses but honestly we were totally unessessary. Kind of a bummer.

Second, we had an answesome Zone Conference on Wednesday. One of my favorite points was from President Peterson, who talked about his "20 second rule." Basically it's saying there are tons of things we spend so much time debating whether we should do or not, when in fact if we just did them they would only take 20 seconds. The example was making your bed but It applies to all sorts of things and by doing all those 20 second things you slowly become a really awesome person.

Third, we had a Kao Rou (that's how you pronounce the Chinese in the subject) today. It means grilled meat. I have a picture of it below.

Love, 

Elder Neilson

P.S. I can't believe Mamaroneck Football started getting good right as I leave the country! 

Baptism

Well it's been a good week everybody!

First of all, I finally got my phone! 

Second, we got to watch Conference this weekend. Now, all the missionaries already knew about all the big announcements because there were a ton of rumors even here in the mission and so we all checked the mornings of last weekend. So there were not really any surprises per say but It was a lot of fun to actually watch the sessions. I feel this General Conference was especially awesome! For those of you wondering, I only had to watch one session in Chinese and for that session I just read the talks in English on my phone. I am already planning on following President Nelson's council and began restudying the talks this week so I can get through them all once or twice before next Conference. Can't wait to continue to be inspired

Also, the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square should sing non-hymns at Conference more often. Sunday morning especially had really awesome choir numbers. 

After Sunday sessions of conference Edison, a friend of  Elder Bunn and I,  got baptised by one of the recent Converts in the ward named Aaron. (In the photos Edison is on the left) It was a super awesome service. Not the most well attended and not the most refined, but I think it did a really good job of giving Edison a base of good friends in the ward. 

For conference here everyone watches in the church. Saturday was intense because there was only a 15min break between the two sessions but on Sunday there was a 30 min lunch break where we all ate stuffed buns (包子). Which were good. Although I tried one of the vegetarian one of those and it was pretty hard to finish. It was such a weird combination of flavors. I think it was seaweed and some sort of peanut stuff... I couldn't decide if it was trying to be sweet or savory!

But the weirdest stuff I have eaten so far was at a Thai food restaurant some members took us to a few weeks ago. We all had "black soup" and it turned out the pork was acutally pig liver. Honestly it wasn't that bad. Maybe mine was just so spicy it killed my ability to taste. At that same restaurant I also tried cuttlefish (which I didn't know was a thing), and 1000 year old eggs, Which also wasn't so bad, basically just like a hard boiled egg. Maybe even a little less eggy. (could be the spicy soup killing my taste again though)

Still managed to dodge bulut and stinky tofu!

 It's sometimes hard to try and get variety because my companion likes to eat at the same cheap places all the time but it's still tasty food. Lots of fried rice / noodles, dumplings and potstickers.  I try to get vegetable ones every so often but vegetable pot stickers just really aren't as good. The best vegetables are in the box lunch places but those can be a gamble because the options are always changing. 

Tell, Warren and Laura they need to go to the City more. They are going to leave NY and all anyone will ever want to know is their stories from NYC. Their future social lives depend on it! Not really, but still. Tell them I told them to go next time. 

I feel like this week is a little bit of a turning point in my training. I feel, especially after Conference, my excitement for the work is increasing and I think the next few weeks are going to be great. And hey, tomorrow is a huge service project where we are helping disabled people tour a famous museum!

Elder Neilson

The Subway and the Zoo

Okay- so the first time I wrote this letter it accidentally got deleted, so now you all get a really short recap version! (And I STILL don't have a phone so emailing is still weird)

Basically I went on exchanges with another Greeny in the district who lives in our apartment (Elder Morgan who is over the other part of Zhong He). We spent the whole day street contacting and learned a lot.

In Taiwan the subway system (called the MRT) is way different from NYC. The whole thing is really clean because once you pass the turn styles you are not allowed to eat or drink anything (even water), and there is always a glass wall of some sort that blocks off the train tracks from the platform. Long story short unless you dropped something between the crack between the train and the platform while getting on the train you can't really drop anything. Another thing I like are the priority lines and priority seats for the elderly, disabled, pregnant, injured, or people with kids. It's a pretty good system. It would never work in NYC but in the orderly Asian world it's pretty good!

We havent heard conference yet- but we already know about all the big conference announcements because there were tons of rumors getting all the missionaries hyped so we kept checking in the morning for all the announcements!

Elder Bunn and I also have a friend named Edison who is getting baptized this Sunday. He is awesome and we went to a zoo with him today on P-Day. It was raining a lot so the zoo was dead empty and the Zoo is only $60 NTD (about $2 USD) so it was pretty sweet.

Elder Neilson