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

No Phone

Hey everyone, 

I still don't have a phone which kind of wrecks my emailing schedule.  My emailing hours are all day on Pday which is really nice, but for now I have to use my trainer's phone which is really inconvenient. They got me a phone on day one but the corner had a bunch of dead pixels and as you know, I'm not about that life! Good thing is I have a year on warranty so the Office Elders are getting me a new one. Hopefully I'll have it before next pday right?! 

We did a lot of hiking today on, (two instead of one). Elder Bunn says we will have a more laid back day next week and hopefully I will have a phone so I can get more emails out. Anyways, I thought for this week I would just assure everyone that I have had some cool finding experiences this week. The Lord really does help you  find those he needs you to find. 

To answer some of your questions mom...

For General Conference, we get it a week late because they need to translate but I assume we will watch it at the church or something with our friends (new way we say investigators). There are a ton more rumors of huge changes so I assume if anything big gets announced we will already know before hand. I think we get to watch it in English too so the translation delay is kind of funny I guess.

My bike is pretty nice, all the missionaries have matching bikes (I think there was a picture with it in my last email) I got a nice bright red helmet for visibility and at night we all wear bright reflective vest things. They are very "shuai" (handsome in Chinese) Taiwan is funny because it is totally normal to call grown men shuai all the time. Especially the young men who are called "shuai ge" or handsome brother. 

My exact address is:

 新北市中和區景平路786號

Sorry my companion doesn't know it in English but Google can probably figure it out! Not sure what the rules are about packages in this mission so probably just send everything through the mission Office. Also DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SEND ME MEDICATIONS. President Peterson was telling us there is an Elder in Taichung who is in prison right now because his parents sent him some medicine or something. The mission is working on getting him out, but he could be in prison for 7 years! 

I have been to many 7-Elevens and Family Marts (the other big convenience store here) we spend a lot of time in places like that doing studies or contacting. I haven't eaten much out of them (and still haven't found the beef noodle soup) but we did get a 7-Eleven curry bowl Saturday night for Sundays lunch. It was really good. We have been eating at this potsticker/other food place called Bafang a lot because it's pretty cheap and my companion had like 500 NT$ (around $15) for the week. It's kind of like the McDonald's of Taiwan.

My companion Elder Bunn is from Hurricane, Utah by St.George. Maybe he has run into some of our family down there?

I hear Costco here is pretty great actually because Missionaries will use members cards to go get huge tubs of peanut butter and stuff. Not sure if you are joking about getting me a Costco card but it might be nice? LoL!,

Chinese is going pretty good. It is soooo hard to understand people but I feel like I can speak enough to get ideas across. My companion is really good and a lot of people here actually speak pretty good English so you can usually "Chinglish" your way through stuff if you have to. I try and go mostly Chinese because I need the practice!

 Have an awesome week! Hopefully next week I'll have my phone and I can email more. I have also heard we might be able to use LINE (the main messaging app we use for everything here in Taiwan. Literally everything. My companion told me the Police once had him send them a photo of a car accident he got into as evidence over LINE) to chat during pday. I'm still not sure that is 100% kosher. Might be a little weird. I'll let you know. 

Elder Neilson