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