End of an Era

Hey All,

I'm running a little late. I had to go up to a meeting in Taipei today and it took the whole day but it was fun to go and see all my old missionary friends. We don't see a lot of outsider missionaries down here in the south east! Hahaha

Not too much to say about this week. Went on a sick coast line drive with some members on pday to visit a cool sea cave and a small hike.

On Saturday our ward had a Christmas party where they reenacted the nativity. They wanted some comic relief before the spiritual stuff so they called in the missionaries the night before to ask us to make a skit or sing a song or something to show American Christmas culture. So we quickly spent some time on Saturday throwing together a reenactment of the Night Before Christmas poem. It went pretty well and we got some laughs.

Biggest news of the week is that my time in Hualian is coming to a close and I'll be moving back to the city on Wednesday. My next area is called Ankang and it is in the same zone as Zhonghe, my first area in Taiwan. I'm excited, although there is a lot I will miss about Hualian. I'm going to miss the tropical scenery, being able to see a small amount of starts at night, and the fun atmosphere. Hualian just has its own feel to it and I'm not sure I am ready for the hustle and bustle of the city again. But! If the Lord wants me there, that's where I'll go. I know Hualian will be in good hands with Elder Gibson. 

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Neilson

- a famous seacave that is supposed to look like a car.

 Some shots form our pday hike

We found a big spider one day and so I took a picture with it.

Back stage selfi before our big performance

When I was in Taipei today I ran into my MTC companion Elder Brady and Sister Jenson (the one in the middle) who are my only MTC district mates in my mission. Sister Jenson goes home this week!

18 months already!

Hey all,

For this week's pday we tried the hike that supposedly has monkeys on it for the third time, but this time we tried the other trail which- low and behold- is the one that has the monkeys on it! We had just been taking the wrong trail the entire time. It was a good time with a great view of Hualian from the mountain side.

This week was full of exchanges (one with the district leader and one with the Zone Leaders) and Christmas gift making. Our ward's sisters approached us a few weeks ago and asked if we wanted to help them hand make Christmas cards and cookies for all the members. Little did we know how much of an undertaking that would become! Everything took a lot longer than we anticipated especially the card making. We decided to just make one message and change the name at the top for each card. We naturally let the native sister write the message but she went way overboard and wrote this really long message that took us non Chinese speakers  20 minutes to copy per card! It was just like writing one of those test essays at school again. So much hand pain! After many hours of toil we completed our project and now we have been making trips around with the sisters to drop them off at our member houses. I figure this is how it feels to be in charge of a ward party or something.

In English class we have decided to make more movies. My group's movie this time started out as a redo of Titantic but then we changed the whole plot and now it has a dragon that takes over Rose and Jack's castle so a fairy godmother has to give Rose and Jack magic fireballs and a sword to slay the dragon. It's pretty funny. I still have a lot of editing work to do before class on Wednesday.

Had some fun missionary work experiences too. One of our friends set a baptismal date in January which we are excited about. He also comes to church really often so we are excited to see where he goes.

Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Neilson

- Monkey hike pday

baking cookies

Making Christmas cards

Another zone Conference picture (why does everyone in our zone have to be monster tall?)

Thanksgiving zone conference dinner

Thanksgiving.

Hey All,

OH let us Rejoice! The Christmas season has come. Hope everyone is excited. My district is trying to bring on the Christmas hype by making our ward Christmas cards and cookies and by doing the Light the World activity each day. I'm excited for another Taiwanese Christmas especially because my ward down in Hualian likes to decorate the church a lot and have a big Christmas Musical activity or something. Looking forward to that in about two weeks.

Anyways, this week was pretty fun. Had a good Zone Conference where we talked about the new Missionary Handbook and pride. Both good important topics to improve all our missionary work. The consensus is that the new Handbook focuses a lot more on the principles behind the rules instead of the rules themselves which makes it a lot more applicable to non-missionary, normal disciples of Jesus Christ. I invite you all to give it a quick read and find some good principles to apply to your life, whether you are a missionary or not!

Pride is also an important thing to work on. No worries though, no pride over here!  In all seriousness, the talk "Beware of Pride" By Ezra Taft Benson Back from the April 1989 conference, and the more recent BYU speech "Wrestling with Comparisons" by J.B. Haws from May 7 of this year are both good stuff on Overcoming pride. Worth a read for sure!

We also got to watch the Children and Youth Devotional this Sunday now that it is finally translated. It was pretty cool, I liked the stage design a lot. I do think it's awesome that the church is teaching all the kids how to set goals and achieve things early on. I think the new program will produce some killer missionaries going forward! 

I'll leave it at that for now. Didn't have a ton of lessons this week but we did get three of our friends to come to church which is the most our area has had at church for a long time. I was happy about that. People really start to progress if you can get them to come to church but it can be a serious struggle sometimes. And even once you get friends at church you really want them to have a good experience but there is so much out of your control! Hahaha. If you really want to be your home missionaries' best friend ever, then when they bring a friend to church, go introduce yourself, have the friend sit with you, and help that friend through the whole meeting to understand what is going on and where they need to go and stuff. That missionary will forever be grateful for your support.

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Neilson

 built a really colorful rock tower

- taking try hard dramatic photos at the beach on p-day

 biking by the beach on exchanges with my district leader

 Helping the ward make some corn husk dolls for the Christmas decorations

our mission president took us all out to a really nice American restaurant for Thanksgiving lunch during zone Conference. So good!

Taiwanese Successes

Hey All,

After being in Taiwan for over a year there are a lot of things I have come to love about this place. So for today's email I would like to write a short list about a few of the things  I thing Taiwan does better than the good old USA -or that I just think are really great.

- LINE

Line is the texting / calling app in Taiwan. I think it is a Japanese creation but more or less everyone has Line in Taiwan which makes it a super convenient way to communicate with literally everyone! While I don't particularly like Line over other messaging services (I think Apple's iMessage and Facebook messenger are both nicer to use) everyone has it, so you can call or text anyone in the whole country for free! Also has a ton of fun sticker packs. 

- Motorcycle / Bike lanes

Most main roads in Taiwan have a dedicated motorcycle and biking lane on the far right which is really nice for us missionaries. Honestly, Taiwan has a lot of nice features to their roads. You'll hear about a few more in this list.

- Everything is super fast

Taiwan likes everything to be really fast. They like food to come out fast, they like things to be close together and so on. In fact if something is more than a 10 or 15 minute drive away people start to thing its a really far distance and would take too much time! Kind of funny from our American perspective but nonetheless makes life pretty efficent. In Chinese this idea is simply called convenience which is a word you use a lot when talking about Taiwan.

- Stop light timers

Another nice road feature is that on main roads (especially in cities) stop lights have timers next to them to count down until it will switch to green.

- Squatting Toilets

I won't say anything else on this one. But they are great! 

- Turning left (for motorcycles and bikes)

Since the two wheeler lane is on the far right, it can be kind of hard to make left turns. But Taiwan has solved this problem with the nifty left hand turn box that I will explain with one of the attached photos

- Getting told I am handsome by people

It is normal in Taiwanese culture to tell people they are handsome and such which is very flattering! Also nice when random people want to take pictures with you!

- Food is really cheap

This one isn't really something you could take back to the US, but I really like how cheap food is! Hahaha! 

There it is. A few great things about Taiwan I especially like! It's been a good week. Hope you all had a good one as well. Had some fun meetings and taught some good lessons to a few of our friends who are starting to progress quickly. Looking forward to another good week of trying to bring people closer to Christ! 

Love

Elder Neilson

Left hand turning box explination 

I met up with one of my MTC companions, Elder Brady when we went to Taipei for a meeting

Train station going back to Hualian

Picked up a new reflective vest at the mission office! Safety stat improved! 

Another week, Another transfer

Hey All,

This week for pday we went up to a lake and rode some four people/tandem bikes and also did a hike. It was pretty chill. Fun time with all the missionaries and a few members.

This week was transfers and the most exciting part was when one of the new elders missed his first train on transfers day which caused him to get lost for two hours! All is well that ends well but his companion was stressing pretty bad traveling to a bunch of different train stations trying to find the new Elder!

On Saturday we went to a Thanksgiving concert talent show thing at the church where a bunch of members in Hualian performed. I was pretty impressed with the amount of musical talant from the members. it's also fun being in a different country because sometimes people bring out instruments you don't see a lot of in America such as Chinese bamboo flutes and giant bass recorders. Someone even had a hybrid electric/acoustic ukulele!

Sunday was the primary program which is always a kind of weird meeting, made a little weirder because our ward only has around 5 primary kids. We brought our friend Mr. Li and I am not sure what he thought about it. I did make sure to tell him we only do this once a year. Haha. On Sunday we also started choir practice for the Christmas musical activity, because if my parents have taught me anything about the church, it is to always join the ward choir. It was a fun time but it's also kind of hard because the hymnals are all in characters and the romanized pronunciation lyrics have no notes! So I have to juggle back and fourth and sometimes I just sing sounds that sort of sound like words when I loose where we are! Good thing is I have heard all the Christmas songs enough that the parts are not too hard to sing by ear.

This week I have made a more concentrated effort to read the Book of Mormon in personal Study, in the traditional front to back manner instead of just jumping around trying to find good scriptures. I have been able to find many more verses that I like through this manner of study which is a great blessing. Always makes personal Study more exciting when you find verses to write notes about!

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Neilson

- Super four man bike on pday

Last district council before transfers

Hualian train station 

 Giant spider we found in the bathroom one night

Missionaries at the end of the hike on pday

Tri-panionship Miracles.

Hey All,

The big news this week is that Saturday morning we became a tripanionship with Elder Patterson from the Fenglin/Guangfu area down south. His old companion Elder Zhao became an office elder and had to go up to the mission office a week early so Elder Patterson has been our companion for the weekend. It's weird being in a tripanionship again. I haven't done that since the MTC!

We have had some awesome miracles too! First we let Elder Gibson take charge and be senior companion for an hour or so while we went knocking. He choose a place he has wanted to go before and the very last door we knocked that day (also a door he was in charge of opening the contact with) had two older women in it that immediately invited us in, gave us a bunch of food, asked us to share, asked us to teach them how to pray, and are now two new people we are teaching! They also have some member family members who live in the USA which might be why they were so willing to talk. In any case it was extra sweet because we hadn't found any other new friends this week.

Then on Sunday we had more miracles when a member brought their daughter's boyfriend to church for us to start teaching and then that night we met with a way cool family who used to be taught by the missionaries! So in total we found about 6 cool people in the last two days! 

I love finding cool people because It really feels like the Lord is putting people in your path and guiding you. And it is a great blessing to be out here as a tool in the Lord's hands to do His work!

Hope you all have a great week,

Elder Neilson

More moving wood service! This time we finished moving all the wood.

Elder Gibson eating some beef Noodle soup for the first time

The tripanionship taking a selfi to thank a friend for thier delicious home made rolls

Elder Gibsons glasses making my eyes look way big. 

Halloween

Hey All!

This was a fun week filled with two different exchanges, one in my area and one to Taidong (or Taitung, as it is sometimes rendered) which is the southernmost city in the mission. It's as far away as possible from the mission office and is also an area that our mission president served in back when he was a missionary in Taiwan. It was a really fun time where we did a lot of street contacting. Taidong has sidewalks which is something my area really lacks and it was fun to walk around and talk to people!

We also had a Halloween party with the Hualian wards and English classes Saturday night. It was a lot of fun and I pulled out my go to church party game where I tape a bunch of small paper cups on a wall or something and people have to throw ping-pong balls into them for prizes. It's way simple and easy (to put together) but actually pretty hard to do so eveyone gets addicted to it. Always a hyped game. For the party us Elders came dressed as various flavors of milk (Taiwan is really into flavored milk such as watermellon milk, papaya milk, fruit milk, apple milk, malt milk...etc.) It was a pretty funny costume. The sisters told us they were going to be Hogwarts houses, and needed ties in the colors for each of the houses, so we gave them ties and then low and behold they came as us- the Elders. They made fake name tags and everything. Tricked us way good. 

Halloween is a good example of a phenomenon in Taiwan I would like to call "American Holiday Commercialism Trying Really Hard To Plant Seeds By The Wayside." It happens with a few holidays but the most notable are probably Halloween and Christmas. This phenomenon is characterized by random Holiday themed things being sold and occasional decorations but with no true purpose behind them because no one celebrates those holidays. As a result it never really feels like a holiday and it's kind of just a check box passing when the day is over. Kind of a weird experience I wasn't anticipating before I came to Taiwan. 

Which gets me on another point, now that I am training and helping someone get to know Taiwan for the first time, it reminds me of the times I was first introduced to Taiwanese things. Especially food. Taiwanese food is delicious but sometimes it takes a while to get used to. Here are some good examples of possible first and long term reactions to Taiwanese food:

冬瓜茶 (Winter Mellon Tea) 

First - This drink kind of tastes like melted candles mixed with graham cracker essence

Long term- This drink is the elixar of life and insanely sweet

麥茶 (Barley Tea)

First - this is tasteless bitter water

Long term- this is a refreshing lightly sweet drink

珍珠 (boba?) or really any food thing in a drink

First - why do I have to chew my drink?

Long term - I want to add this to everything I ever drink for the rest of my life!

酸辣湯 (sour spicy soup) 

First - This litterally looks and tastes like vomit

Long term - This is a great soup with a really unique taste and texture (although sometimes it's actually really weird. Usually if it has some sort of blood product in in you should pass)

麻醬麵 (sesame past noodles)

First - This is just noodles with bad peanut butter on it

Long term - This is just noodles with good peanut butter on it

燙青菜 (boiled vegetables)

First - This is vegetables...

Long term - This is Vegetables!!!! (in a happy way)

紅/綠豆湯 (red or green bean soup)

First - Why are we eating slightly sweet watered down baked beans?

Long term - This is the best dessert soup ever

Taiwanese cake

First - this is the driest cake in the universe

Long term - at least its cake!

臭豆腐 (stinky toufu)

First - this food stand smells like diapers, can we leave?

Long term - Wow- that is some good coleslaw/sourkraut stuff on top of this weird toufu

Pretty much the majority of the other stuff

First - This is amazing!

Long term - This is still amazing!

That's a pretty inclusive list of many of the main staples of missionary Taiwanese food. Still need to get Elder Gibson to try 臭豆腐 (stinky tofu) though. A member told us a good place to get it at some point. I'm hyped.

Hope you all have a good week,

Elder Neilson

Elder Zhao and I eating curry on exchanges (that's one food that is good from the first time you try it)

Exchanges with Elder Peterson in Taidong where we had the one drink without coffee from Starbucks which is really expencive but all the missionaries like getting once in a while because of its amazing American milkshake-iness.  

Our milk carton costumes (apple, papaya, chocolate, and watermellon)

The sisters pretending to be us for Halloween

A Starburst miracle

Good times.

Hey All,

This week was a fun time!

We had Zone Conference, some good lessons (have a new friend this week who reads the Book of Mormon using the guide to the scriptures in the back!) and other fun stuff like a two hour tri-ward youth event that a member put us missionaries in charge of the week before, which no one even showed up for! Hahaha we want to try and reschedule that event because we all had a pretty good plan.

I have a reader who asked me to write an email about one day in depth so this is what Sunday looked like....

This Sunday was Stake Conference and the first Sunday of the autumn where President told us to wear suits to church. The dreadful days of going to church in a suit have returned! It won't be so bad when it actually gets cold in December-January or so but for now it is still way too hot! The things missionaries sacrifice for style...

Since Stake Conference was in the morning we just got ready and headed over, got there early to welcome the members and wait for a couple we are teaching who said they would come, which they did! Stake Conference is a long two hours to be totaly honest. I feel like as a church if we shortened normal church by an hour we can afford to shorten Stake Conference by an hour too. Maybe thats' just me as a tired old missionary trying to listen to Chinese gospel talk for a long time? It was a good meeting. At one point one of the YSAs in our ward was speaking and talked about how he and his girlfriend are planning on getting married and then he pulled out a ring on the stand! Everyone started gasping wondering if he was going to propose right then on stand but he assured everyone he had already proposed and the ring was just for a prop or something!

After the Conference we had a coordination meeting where we talked about the new way President Peterson wants us to hold coordination meetings. He wants us to focus with the ward leadership more on Member Work and not just talk about how are friends are doing. Try to council with and involve the members more with our friends, recent converts, returning members, and so on.

After that we ran home to take off suits and grab lunch for the Fenglin elders who don't have keys to the apartment just in time to head back to the church to a meeting with the other missionaries on our Halloween party this week. More on that next week hopefully.

After the meeting we ran to a Family Mart for some language study. And then ran home for dinner at the house. Made some Kraft mac and cheese that a member gave to me a transfer or two ago. Good old American food!

After that we biked over to a 7-Eleven to text some of our friends and then went over to two member appointments. One of them fell through as the member wasn't home so we tried visiting a nearby part member family instead who were home but just didn't really have availability to talk so we said we would stop by later.

After that we had another member visit with one of the funniest families I have met in Taiwan. We brought the sisters this time so it was their first time meeting the two sister missionaries and my new companion. When they discovered that Elder Gibson has only been in Taiwan for a little under a month they announced happily and playfully in Chinese that they can all bully him because he doesn't understand anything we say! It was super funny.

Yeah that was Sunday! Pretty busy day but it was a fun time. Got a lot done and had some friends come to church for their first time! That's always exciting. Unfortunately those friends are going back to China this week so we will loose contact with them soon. They did say they will be back in a month or so and we can meet up then which is good.

Another fun note from this weekend is that one of the people I taught in my first area got baptised and confirmed this weekend! He is a super cool guy and I am way hyped for him. He wants to move out to Utah and go to BYU too! I'm just really excited because this was someone I actually got to teach a lot and work with so it's really exciting to see how much he loves the Gospel!

I'll leave it at that! What a long email. Congratulations if you made it this far!

Have a great one,

Elder Neilson

A collage of some of Sundays activites, starting at the top left and going clockwise we have Elder Gibson and I waiting for friends at the church, Studies at a family mart, Mack and Cheese, Biking in suits, Eating a box lunch at coordination meeting, and more biking. I think this was either heading to the Halloween party meeting or going home for dinner I don't remeber.

A service where we helped an old member move wood up to her floor of the building so she can burn it for heating or something

Elder Gibson eating some grilled octopus at a member dinner appointment!

Zone Conference

Super Slide!

Hey All,

This week for pday an Elder wanted to go to the mall in our area to go on the super tall slide that goes all the way from the top of the mall into the basement. It was a pretty crazy experience where they had to have us sign away liability and wear helmets and everything. Turned out the helmets were pretty useful because right at the end of the slide it goes into a tunnel and when you can't anticipate turns and stuff you get thrown around pretty good! Hahaha it was a fun time though.

Monday night we also had a fun lesson with a friend who has some deep questions about the after life and the meaning of life. But he uses some hard to understand Chinese and so this time we got a member to come help. After we taught a little bit and started to fall short our member just took over and then basically just taught everything we were going for! It was an awesome example of member missionary work because we had a little meeting before the lesson to discuss the goals and topics and because of that the member was able to touch upon everything we wanted to discuss, plus a bunch more awesome stuff, all in a way that our friend actually understood! The member even invited our friend to baptism, to which our friend said "if he knew it was true he would accept baptism." Pretty awesome. Members really are a missionary's best teaching tool.

Speaking of a misisonry's best tools, we have been using the missionary teaching pamphlets a lot this week. I used them a lot in training with Elder Bunn but ever since then I haven't used them as much. I wanted to start using them again now that I am training and so far it has been a huge success. Got a new friend, and put a friend on date for baptism and I'm not going to say the Pamphlet was the reason for success but they definantly felt like they helped. 

This week was kind of crazy. Hardly got any normal studies. Elder Gibson and I only got maybe an hour total of companionship Study together this week due to exchanges and other weird morning activities. That's really awkward because we are supposed to have an hour a day and up to two hours a day because of training. Sorry President! Hahaha. 

Anyways, more next week. We have a ton of stuff already planned but I am hoping for some normal missionary days to report about!

Elder Neilson

Super Slide

Giant Toilet Castle in a park

Super Slide helmet selfie

Englich club 

Random Selfie

First Week of Training

Hey All,

We spend the first P-day of the transfer and the first P-day for Elder Gibson in Taiwan going to the Taroko nation park. It's a really famous national park made up mostly of a really beautiful gorge. It was a really cool place to drive through and walk around a little. Unfortunately our member rides had to go early and we didn't get to do any hiking but it was still a really fun experience to get to go into the canyon for the first time. I hope to go back and expirence more in a few weeks!

We then spend the night taking Elder Gibson out on the streets for the first time and doing some other misisonary work stuff. It's fun to have a newbie out with you because their excitement is contagious. Everything is new and fun for them so it becomes more fun for me too! Just going to a random restaurant is extra exciting now! Hahaha

Thursday we had a zone Council but instead of coming together and being at the meeting in person, president wanted to try having us all Skype in to trainings from the Zone Leaders and STLs and then do the rest on a district level. They Skype calls got a little chaotic and the whole thing was a little less organized than a normal zone Council so it was pretty funny that it was Elder Gibson first expreince with the zone!

Conference was really great! We watch it a week late here in Taiwan for translation, but then all the missionaries just end up watching conference in a separate English room anyway! Hahaha. Its a fun time though where we all get some snacks and listen to the word of the Lord through his Prophets. I especially liked the first session on Saturday where I felt a distinct theme of focusing on Christ and the Gospel as the centers of our lives. I thought that was a really apt place to start and it was nice to have that important message right at the Begining when I think everyone is the most alert! Hahaha. I also really liked Elder Uchdorf's talk, relating the Plan of Salvation to "The Hobbit." I think his talk and Elder Bednars about the Cheetahs are good examples of the importance of looking for gospel truths in everything around us. All things denote there is a God, to roughly quote scriptures.

It has been a fun week. Hope everyone has a good one!

Elder Neilson

Taroko National Park

a cockroach that Elder Gibson found in his shoe five minutes or so after leaving the house! Hahahaha welcome to Taiwan my friend!

watching General Conference

Taroko National Park

Transfers Get Complicated

Hey All!

So one thing I forgot to mention last week is that transfers came out and I am going to start training a new missionary! Elder Keys in my apartment is also going to train and we are super excited to help introduce two new missionaries to Taiwan. But this week has had some complications for sure. 

To start off, last Saturday I woke up with a killer headache that would not go away no matter what I did so I spent up until Wednesday just laying in bed trying various over the counter medications and stuff. On Wednesday we decided to get a professional opinion and biked over to the hospital. The doctor there said he didn't actually know what was up. Said it probably isn't a migraine but maybe I sprained my neck weird and it's causing a lot of side effects?, or I got a cold where I am not feeling any of the symptoms but a headache? So long story short- he gave me some medicine to try and so far that has been helping.

More news, the new missionaries were supposed to arrive on Thursday but we got a call earlier in the week telling us their visas were getting delayed and they wouldn't be here for another week. So elder Keys and I became companions for the week and it has been a ton of fun running between our two areas (which are two of the largest in the mission) and getting to know eachother's friends and stuff. We even got to teach an awesome Burmese man who the 3 Hualian Ward elders teach the gospel to but who is also in my English class so I already know him really well. He is getting baptized soon and his English is better than his Chinese, so it was a good time.

But on Friday we got another call, and the new missionaries got their visas! So then we had to run up to Taipei Sunday morning! Totally missed both our church meetings and was super last minute (had to cancel some appointment and stuff 😥) but we are excited to get started with training.

My new companions name is Elder Gibson from Centerville Utah. So excited to start showing him the ropes. Also really exciting was Sunday night the mission President's Wife cooked us all enchiladas! I haven't had an enchiladas for over a year! So good. Mexican food is the best! We basically just rode trains up and down to Taipei on Sunday and didn't get back to the area untill about 9. It was a full day event.

Well yeah that's pretty much the week! Super fun times and an exciting 12 weeks ahead.

Wish me luck with training! (send any advice)

Elder Neilson

- last district council

- Elder Keys and I doing missionary work

- Elder Keys and I with trainees in Front of the temple

- all the trainers and trainees from the meeting

 Elder Gibson and I