A Good Week

It's been a really good week. We had a lot of finding miracles when going around visiting less active members, including the first time I can remember being allowed to go teach a family in their home.

We got to have two lessons with less active member yesterday and it was super cool because both still have pretty strong faith and it was cool to be able to talk with people who already understand our beliefs while still trying to help people become more active in the Kingdom of God.

Our mission has really been putting tons of focus on member work recently and I think this week, Elder Merrill and I are starting to see the blessings. There is still much work to be done and we are only seeing the tip of the ice berg but it's exciting to see the start of it all. 

For P-day we hiked up this mountain over in Yilan on the east side of Taiwan, with a Catholic church on it. Kind of crazy to see Christian churches in Taiwanese mountains instead of Buddhist temples. Views from the peak of the mountain were awesome. 

Later we went to the beach. We couldn't touch the water but it was still fun to be on a beach. We also found 6 or 7 dead puffer fish in the sand which was really random. Had to be a little careful walking around barefoot!

Yilan is a lot more rural that Zhong He which is the heart of the city so it was crazy to see all the jungle and beaches with green mountains in the background. Taiwan is a really beautiful place. 

I also have a picture of my ward below that we took after church this week! 

Have a great week

Elder Neilson 

funny excerpt from email Tustin sent his mom (otherwise known as blog editor)..."Recently I have started cleaning something in the apartment every day. I alternate between sweeping and cleaning something like the kitchen or bathroom. It's kind of relaxing, and it brings back all the things you two used to tell me about cleaning. Especially now that I have basically deep cleaned everything at least once. Now it's a lot faster, mostly wipe downs and cleaning up things I couldn't get to the first time. I thought it was funny the other day when I cleaned the bathroom for the second time on the weekly rotation and my companion was like, "Thanks for cleaning the bathroom, but didn't you do that last week?" That's the mentality that causes mission apartments to get pretty gross sometimes I guess. Also it is amazing how no matter how many times I sweep the floor, it still seems to be dirty by the next day! And we are not even in our apartment most of the day! I think my mission is turning me into a boring adult. I guess when you can't do anything as a hobby you start cleaning everything for fun. 😂 

One more in Zhong He

Hello World,

Transfers came out last night unexpectedly, (they usually come out Tuesday night not Sunday night) but I am staying one more transfer in Zhong He with Elder Merrill. It will be fun to stay here for the next 6 weeks especially with Chinese new year right around the corner.

This week was pretty good. We helped a member paint their house and helped our bishop move more stuff. Double Service projects- let's go! 

We also went on exchanges again. This week I went with Elder Morgan, the other elder in my apartment who has been out as long as I have. The last time we went on exchanges was our second or so week in Taiwan so it was pretty fun to see our progression from then until now. Our Chinese is night and day better. We were able to teach a whole Plan of Salvation by ourselves and we didn't do half bad! It's pretty crazy nowadays when I find myself expressing my thoughts in a language I couldn't identify individual words in a few months ago!

This Friday Elder Merrill doubled the size of our window whiteboard by adding two more plastic white boards. I had to lean kind of far out the window to attach them which was pretty fun. Picture below. 

Finally today we went to the Starbucks on the 35th floor of Taipei 101 with a bunch of members and two other missionaries who had connections to Elder Merrills old area. Its kind of an intense Starbucks. The member who invited us had to get reservations, and once the escort takes you up, you have to spend a minimum of $250 NTD. Which is pretty expensive seeing as I usually put $200 in my wallet each morning for lunch and dinner that day and I don't even spend all that usually! It was really cool though and the view was amazing. If felt like we were above almost every building in Taipei and we were not even halfway up 101!

Its been a good one. The Gift of Tongues is real, the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real, and this whole things is true. That's my testimony for the week.

Have a great week!

Elder Neilson

Me putting the new "whiteboards" up

one of the many pictures we took to try and get a good one for our Chinese new year card. Elder Merrill wanted to do one Asian squatting, but he can't hold the squat for very long so its a little funny.

Taipei 101

cleaning up paint after our service project

Japanese

Hey all,

It feel like this week went by so fast I can't believe it's already P-day again. This week we got to help our Bishop move down the street. It was pretty funny because we started taking bags of stuff down the stairs to the street and Bishop started loading them into a big cardboard box on a little trolley thing and I half expected we were going to attach the cart to the back of a scooter to drive it to the new apartment (that wouldn't be too suprising in Taiwan) but really the new apartment was just down the street which was much easier. It was good to be doing some service after all this time. It was basically all I did in Washington but in Taiwan we don't really do any because of the culture. I like service projects though because you know exactly what needs to happen and what the result will be. All you need to do is put in the effort. Not many things in missionary work are like that because usually other peoples agency is involved! 

Another cool experience from this week, we had a lesson with a family where one person only spoke Japanese. Fortunately, our ward mission leader speaks some Japanese and was able to help translate but It really helped  me see my progress with Chinese. When we would switch from people talking in Japanese to Chinese it was super refreshing and comforting almost as if they had switched to English! Elder Merrill and I were laughing about that wierd language learning phenomenon where a language that at first sounded like gibberish sounds like meaningful words. Chinese is now meaningful to us but Japanese is still just sounds! 

Today for P-day we went to this really big Buddhist temple on a mountain which had really awesome views of Taipei. I could see my entire area from up there and basically every place I have ever been in Taiwan. It felt like I was looking at my entire world from above! There was also some statues of dinosaurs. 

I got really tired of just eating an egg and plain oatmeal every morning (I can never find stuff I want to put in it!) so a few days ago I tried pan frying the last little bit of my oatmeal into a sort of oat pancake. Ive transitioned into mixing my oatmeal with an egg and making oat pankakes. Yesterday I had too much liquid and they fell apart and were really gooy but this morning turned out pretty good and I threw some Costco peanut butter on them for a complete breakfast! Haha.

Also speaking of food. We are able to get BYU speachs on our missionary phones now and someone found something right up your ally about insulin resistance. One of. Our zone leaders gave it to us on exchanges telling us it changed his life and he no longer eats candy. We all listened to it and I Have to say it was pretty good. Now everytime Elder Merrill and I see sugary stuff we just say "look at all the insulin!" and when you look at it that way it's a lot easier to not eat sugar! I'll send the talk.

So we are thinking about going to Seminary sometime in the future to cook the kids pancakes. President is always trying to get us to do member work and work with the youth but there really aren't many youth and they are all crazy busy so I figure if we go cook them pancakes once every one or two weeks they will have to start liking us right?!

Got me thinking about Seminary though and this quote from the talk "Laying the Foundation of a Great Work" By Elder Steven R. Bangerter Of the Seventy in the last conference that I think applies well to how Seminary influenced me...

"I believe that it is less a question of whether our children are “getting it” in the midst of our teaching, such as while striving to read the scriptures or to have family home evening or to attend Mutual and other Church meetings. It is less a question of whether in those moments they are understanding the importance of those activities and more a question of whether we, as parents, are exercising faith enough to follow the Lord’s counsel to diligently live, teach, exhort, and set forth expectations that are inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is an effort driven by our faith—our belief that one day the seeds sown in their youth will take root and begin to sprout and grow."

I think Seminary is a great sower of seeds in the youth, which makes Seminary teachers... great farmers or something! In any case, I think one of the most important thing in teaching the gospel, (this applies to missionaries and Seminary teachers) is to have faith that the teaching effort will have an impact even if we won't see it immediately. Good example of this, remember that...Jewish guy I taught in Washington whos wife got baptized? Well my old companion just told me that he is on date to be baptized at the beginning of Febuary. So long term hopefully all our efforts teaching him will result in some fully fruited faith plants. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't get bummed out if your kids are all asleep and don't seem to be getting anything out of your teaching, they are. It's just all being planted so deep into thier hearts they just don't realize it yet, and someday when the time is right and the spiritual soil of their life is rich for the harvest their testimony will be strengthened by the foundation set for them each morning at 6:15 am. 

Have a great week, 

Love Elder Neilson

倪長老

First week of the New Year

Hey All,

Not a hugely exciting week to be honest. We didn't have a ton of lessons and a lot of the lessons we had fell through. It's all good though we just had another week of a lot of finding.

There is this one young kid we found who is crazy willing to do anything, almost to the point of us getting suspicious that he isn't actually down to learn about the Gospel, but he keeps following through on stuff so I guess he is just really really prepared! He also bows to us all the time which is funny.

Two hour church yesterday was awesome. I think pretty much the whole church is universally excited about this new year especially with the new  Come Follow Me stuff. My companion and I make that our Sunday personal study and it's been pretty good so far. I'm excited to learn more about the New Testament because I feel like after the four gospels I don't really know what happens.

Today we went back to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. It's still pretty cool. Got a lot of pictures this time, and everyone got really carried away trying to take the best photos using the selective focus (portrait mode) on the phones. The actual memorial was in the middle of changing guards when we got up there so there was a few Taiwanese soldiers doing the ceremonial salutes and stuff which was cool.

Hope everyone had a good New Years on Tuesday and good luck on all the new year's goals. My district has a whole goal strategy we are doing together and it's actually pretty effective. Our system basically comes down to choosing three goals (the classic formula is one physical, one mental, and one spiritual goal) that you have 100% control over achieving, such as doing a certain number of push-ups every day or writing in a journal every night. They can't be a goal that is too broad or something you don't have control over because the whole process is intented to build your discipline not achieve some wild crazy Dream. Then you do those goals for 3 weeks straight. And if you miss a day you have to start over all three goals from day one again. It's a pretty effective system if you choose three simple goals to start building good habits.

Have a great week! 

Elder Neilson

P.S. Costco is literally exactly the same everywhere, haha. Its like a portal to America! It's $50 NTD (for a hot dog and soda), which is about $1.50 USD. So basically the same. Costco is the only place I have ever seen Pepsi products in Taiwan. Thank you so much. Costco membership is above and beyond!

Note from "publisher" (Tustins mom. 😊): We learned that Elder Merrill (Tustin's current companion), is the grandson of  a man who served in the bishopric with Tustin's Grandpa Greene in the California, Van Nuys 2nd Ward in the late 70's. Small world, and such a great family history connection!

Happy New Year

Hey everyone,

Not much to report on this week. We didn't have very many lessons in the last couple days so we have mostly been spending a lot of time going through people who were entered into the records as having interest but never began meeting, as well as trying to visit a lot of less active members. It's been pretty fun but it has felt like a long and rainy week. I do actually really enjoy trying to go visit less active families because walking around the residential areas in the city is a ton of fun. 

The Zhong He 2 elders had a baptism this week which they had us come too becasue it was a 4 day weekend and thier ward had next to no one show up. (literally there was 2 members there for the actual ordinance and then maybe 4 others arrived before it ended). It was kind of cool to be at that baptism though because the lady being baptized was the first person I remember trying to set up after an English class, probably my second or third week on island. She was already set up to meet with other missionaries at the time and ended up being taught by the other elders, but it was cool seeing her at the begining of her journey with missionaries and now at the begining of her journey as a disciple of Jesus Christ. It's also funny because in that English class all those months ago I played Simon says with the kids and ever since then she has thought my name is Simon!

Today for P-day we went to the zoo again. It was pretty cool because we found a lot of new animals that we had not seen last time like Koalas. The Taipei zoo is crazy and literally has every animal ever!

Have a great New Year!

Love 

Elder Neilson