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
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| Me with the Mission President and his wife, President and Sister McAtee |
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| 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). |
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| A Service Project with my district |
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