Moses

Elder St. Clair and I have this one person we are teaching who randomly wanted to read the Book of Moses with us. We were like, "Okay, why not?" So we had a whole lesson where we sat together and read/discussed the first chapter of the Book of Moses. It was actually really cool though because the readings helped explain a few concepts that we had wanted to teach to this guy anyways, such as the ressurection. So that was cool and then a few days later Elder St. Clair and I had a contacting experience that very closely mirrored the first chapter of Moses.

To recap the part of Moses 1 I'm about to reference - Moses is on a high mountain, is translated, and talks with God face to face. After this experince, Satan comes and tempts Moses to worship him instead of God, but Moses is of course able to tell the difference between God and Satan. The moral of the story is basically that after miraculous spiritual experiences, Satan always tries to sneak in and make us doubt.

So on Saturday, we had this really awesome finding experince where the first door we knocked on led us to this cool young dad, who has a pretty awesome spiritual background as a leader in the non-denominational Christian youth scene. We committed him to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and are going to try and meet him again this week (we unfortunately couldn't get a solid return appointment), but it was over all just a really good experience talking about Christ and the positive experiences we have all had with religion. So we finish talking with this guy and turn to go down the stairs when immediately a lady down at the bottom by the garages calls us over. She was a Christian too but proceeded to Bible bash us all the way back to our car. She was fairly nice about her bashing but it was obvious she was trying to make us doubt our faith. She wasn't very effective, and we  walked away laughing because just like in Moses, we had this really cool spiritual experience and immediately were tempted to doubt the spirit we had just felt witnessing of the truth of the Gospel. 

It was such a cool experience to see the Pearl of Great Price apply to my life, just days after reading it with someone we were teaching. Gives a new meaning to applying the scriptures to myself! That's one of the benefits of studying the scriptures so often. Even when people Bible bash you, it becomes a testimony building experience! 

Have an awesome week!

Elder Neilson

Tustin's aunt and uncle, Glen and Joni Neilson, live in Portland Oregon right next to Tustin's mission. They got permission to go see him and take him and Elder St. Clair out for lunch!

Service Projects

Okay so our mission presided changed the emailing rules so now we only have two hours to email. Fun! Makes this a little more rushed!

We end up doing a lot of service projects out here in this mission. Especially since we have facebook missionaries who basically just find service opportunities for everyone online and hope those become people we can teach later on. I'm not complaining, but sometimes we have a random 2 hour service project Elder St. Clair and I don't adequately plan for that cuts so deep into our study time that the whole day is thrown off.

Anyways, one of our planned services we do each week is volunteering at the PACS thrift shop and food bank in Portland. We kind of laugh though because in order to start volunteering you have to read and sign all this paperwork. It kind of feels like your selling your soul to the Seventh Day Adventists. One of the questions is "Do you currently volunteer for any other organizations, and what are the hours?" I just laughed and put The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 24/7!

The next day, Elder St. Clair and I were out trying to contact former investigators and just started knocking doors in this one apartment complex. We started talking about the gospel with one lady, (as you do when you are a missionary), but this time we actually got somewhere. We taught a little about the Godhead because she brought up the Trinity, and we had a little lesson. Probably our best door aproach so far. Hopefully, we plan on trying to meet with her again on Friday, although in the long term we might hand her off to the Spanish Elders since her spiritual language is probably Spanish.

Not to much to say about this week to be honest so I'll just leave it at that. Hope everyone has a great week! 

Elder Neilson

Check out the fancy meal I made when the Zone Leaders where too slow at responding to our request to leave the area to get Wendy's for dinner!

Hey From Oregon

Well I made it out of the MTC!

It's been a little crazy this last week, but luckily we have all of P-day to look at and write emails in this mission (They also supplied a tablet for my time here which is awesome). I assume that won't be the case in Taiwan so it's kind of a nice suprise. 

Anyways, on Wednesday all the new missionaries met our trainers. My trainer's name is Elder St. Clair, who is from Eagle Mountain Utah. He is a pretty chill guy and we get along well. It's a little weird to go back to having a single companion after being in a trio for most of the MTC but it hasn't been a hard transition. 

There are no Chinese people in this mission (well, more on that later) so I'm really only teaching in English but they are giving me my language Study time which is really nice. However, the extra hour of language study, plus the additional hour of Companionship study associated with being trained means Elder St. Clair and I have a ton of study time and don't get out the door until really late. Kind of a bummer, but I am happy I have time to study Mandarin while I'm here. 

Speaking of Mandarin, a crazy thing happened on Sunday. Elder St. Clair and I were beckoned out of Priesthood opening exercises and got introduced to a native Mandarin Speaker named Peter who moved up from San Diego super recently and who wants to meet with us at the church. It was crazy random but when he saw my Mandarin tag he got pretty excited and we were able to switch into Mandarin for a fair bit of the rest of our introductions. Elder St. Clair just kind of stood their for a lot of it, which I kind of feel bad about but luckily Peter knows English too, so our lessons won't be totally one sided. We are meeting with him this week and both Elder St. Clair and I are pretty hyped about it.

The rest of the week was just really busy and non-standard missionary work. We had a lot of service, and a lot of service projects who canceled on us. on Saturday we really didn't get to do anything because by the time we were done with studies we had to go to the Stake BBQ to help set up and be the labor all day. That went from 3 until 8:30 so by the time we got home the day was over. It was nice to meet with the members in the area and see a few of the people we are teaching who showed up. 

The members in the area are great and feed us almost every night without fail. Elder St. Clair and I are actually assigned to an area in Oregon and are over two wards, the Crown Point and Columbia wards, but they meet in the same building which is really convenient for having to meet with both wards every Sunday!

We tried to have a big cleaning day this morning because all of us are new to the apartment except Elder St. Clair,  and it was pretty dirty. Unfortunately, only Elder Fouts and I were dedicated to the project and we only really got the kitchen done. Moving stuff around, reorganizing and getting into all the nooks and crannies made me think of being back home working on cleaning projects with you and dad. Fun times! Thanks for teaching me to try during a cleaning session! 

It's been a busy week for sure, but it's also been a lot of fun. This truly is the Lord's work. I have already seen his hand helping me along and making up for my short comings. It's been a wild ride so far, and I can't wait to see what the future holds here in Oregon. 

Love,

Elder Neilson

Me with the Mission President and his wife, President and Sister McAtee

A picture of all the elders in my apartment. (Elder St. Clair and I are in the front. Elder Gardner and Elder Fouts are in the back).

A Service Project with my district 

Last Week at the MTC

Hey Folks,

This week was my last here at the MTC, so there has been a lot of going away stuff going on. I finally got my temporary Visa-waiting-reassignment, to the Washington Vancouver Mission which is really exciting. All of the Taiwan bound missionaries have been anticipating a Visa waiting period since the beginning so honestly, I was just excited to see where I was going! It was almost like a second Mission call! I have no idea if I will be speaking Chinese in Washington, but I wouldn’t mind giving a few lessons in English 😂 In any case, everyone guesses that we will be in our reassignments for around 3 weeks.

In other end of MTC news, we got our Chinese name tags which we are all really excited about. We can’t wear them on Campus because security can’t read them and get nervous, but the second I am on the bus and heading to the airport tomorrow morning I am switching to the Mandarin tag!

This Wednesday my district got to host international missionaries, which took about 4 hours and all our study time. I never actually hosted any international missionaries but I did host a few domestic missionaries who arrived before their assigned times. It was kind of a nice and relaxing experience because most of the time we were just sitting on couch’s in the main lobby of the old main MTC building talking to the elderly volunteer missionary couple who is in charge of “international intake.” I’m not sure missionaries are really allowed to relax that much to be honest. Kind of threw off my day to miss all my study time!

It’s been kind of an empty week in terms of big grand experiences. Just getting ready to leave. It’s weird looking back at how quickly this time at the MTC seems to have gone by. I’m not sure how ready I am to get out to the field, but if I have learned anything at the MTC, it’s to trust in the Lord and his plan, and not to stress to much. Whatever comes I am excited to get going!

Love you all,

Elder Tustin Neilson

倪長老

Taiwan, Taipei

台灣，台北

My companions and I during our last companionship study

My district pointing to all our missions

All the Taiwan missionaries pointing to their reassignments (Washington Vancouver, Oakland San Fransisco, and Fort Collins, Colorado) The sister on the right is going to Canada and is not reassigned to Africa. She is just in the picture for mission rules purpose.

Zone 1, the first of the two Chinese speaking MTC zones

The Two districts from Zone 1 leaving this week. My district and then the five Cantonese sisters going to Hong Kong.

My awesome Chinese name tags

Re-assignment!

Yesterday our reassignments came through on the Missionary Portal but today I got the official reassignment in the mail with permission to email you to let you know the new plan.

So my temporary assignment is (drum roll):

The Washington Vancouver Mission! Hyped!

I’m really excited. I have no idea if they speak Chinese there, although we have part of Portland in the mission so I would assume there are areas that speak it. Whether or not I will be in those areas is another question. I fly out with one other Elder from the other MTC Chinese zone but I don’t know him at all so at least we will have lots to talk about!

Talk to you more on Monday!

Love,

Elder Tustin Neilson

倪長老

Taiwan, Taipei

台灣，台北