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