Valentines Day plus

Note from editor: two letters included below .

2/20/19

Okay well it's temple P-day today and next P-day is in four days so I'll keep this short.

But basically because of valantines day the convenience stores are going hard with strawberry flavored things. But Family Mart came out swinging hard with strawberry flavored hot dogs. Still haven't tried them. 

In other news we had a young men missionary activity on Sunday that no young men came to. That was kind of a bummer but at the library there was a huge Pokémon go thing going on and there were hundreds of people standing and walking around playing Pokémon go. It's crazy to see so many people quietly walking around. Kind of creepy but it was kind of cool to be around for a little while.

See you next week! 

Elder Neilson 倪長老

2/25/19

It's only been a hot second since my last email but here is the week since Monday:

Basically on Monday I went in exchanges and taught some fun lessons with Elder Chruch. We had this one plan of Salvation lesson where we talked a little about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as our purpose on earth and at the end the guy we were teaching asked, "so what is this Gospel you are talking about and how do I do it?" pretty much the golden question to be honest but we had to end there because we had another lesson right that second. Tons of fun though and I truly felt the gift of Tongues helping me teach and speak that whole day. 

Tuesday we had a cool zone Conference where President laid out his vision for member missionary work. President is making member work the major focus of the mission and although it is at times a harder approach than straight finding on the street, we are already starting to see some of the blessings of our efforts with the members. Im excited to see where it goes for the rest of my mission. 

Wednesday was temple pday which was an awesome day. It was pday and temple, and then immediately English class so we didn't really do much normal Missionary work. But it was a fun time. 

Saturday night we had a board game Activity with all three ward's in the "shuang he" Area which was a lot of fun. We had a pretty good turn out and it was a great opportunity to get to know members and help some less active members feel comfortable at the church. Less active members are another thing we are working on right now as a mission. President even made less actives at church a measured "key indicator" for each week to keep track of our progress. It's super cool to meet with those members too because they already have an understanding of the Gospel you just have to rekindle the fire so to speak. 

Well that's about it for this week since Monday. Today we are at the board game store again for Elder Churchs birthday. We went two weeks ago and now we are kind of obsessed with games. Kind of a problem. Haha

See you next week 

Elder Neilson

strawberry flavored hot dogs anyone?

Pokemon go event in the park

Chinese New Year, Lots of food

Hey all,

So it was Chinese New Year this week which means members were feeding us like crazy! Almost every lunch and dinner this week was a huge meal, and since culturally you're expected to eat everything, or at least as much as possible, we were stuffed to the brim all day every day. A lot of people also fed us pizza (we had pizza every day from Tuesday to Saturday) which isn't exactly what you would expect for Chinese New Years but we got plenty of Chinese food as well.

The New Year is kind of a blessing and a curse. We got to work with a lot of members but finding on the streets is pretty hard. The first night (Monday) there was hardly anyone out side at all. It felt like it was more or less just us. The next couple days there was still very few people out and mostly people traveling to and from the Buddhist temples to worship. And the rest of the week was pretty much just low numbers working back towards normal. That first Monday night was really weird though being on the empty streets. Felt super surreal.

Lots of Fireworks going off all the time. Fireworks here are kind of crazy- they are smaller but they go off a lot lowwer. There was this one time a green firework went off and one of the green fireballs landed next to a lady on the ground. That's how low they go off! Not even as tall as some of the buildings.

Our last meal last night was really fun because we were with a member who plays the Chinese Piano. He played some for us at the end of the meal which was super cool. It literally sounded like something out of a movie (probably because I assume it's featured in a quite a few movie scores) but anyways cool way to end the week.

Also cool note from today, we went to Carrefour to get groceries and they had dragon dancers outside. Then as we were shopping the dragon dancers came inside and danced around the store!

Have a good week!

新年快樂！

恭喜發財！

Elder Neilson

倪長老

OH also in the "after new years picture" I accidentally wore a black shirt and so it's basically impossible to see if I gained any weight. Fail! Maybe my face shows something.

BEFORE NEW YEARS:

AFTER NEW YEARS:

A New Year

Hey all,

Been a pretty good week

Elder Merrill hit his year mark on his mission on the 31st of January so we went to go get some shaved ice in celebration. 

Wtih the new year heppening this week, Monday is kind of like the "Christmas eve" of Chinese new year. Speaking of the New Year, members tend to feed the missionaries a lot during this week, and dinners are allowed to be 1.5 hours instead of just an hour. Going in to Sunday we had about one dinner set up and we're ready for a pretty so so week, but by Sunday night, we had an appointment for lunch and dinner basically every day this week! On Friday we were talking with our ward mission leader and he said that Taiwanese people like to plan things last minute. I guess he is right!

In other news today we spent the whole pday cleaning our apartment as it is new years spring cleaning. I'm pretty happy about it. Our apartment went from pretty clean to really clean in a matter of hours! Hopefully it will stay this way for at least as long as I am here. Haha. I also got to replace the toilet flushing handle which I have wanted to do for some time. The old one has been broken since I arrived and so the top of the toilet was never on and you had to pull the broken flushing rod up to flush. Now we have a fancy new one that even has both a large and small flush function so we have a real toilet again! Picture below. The only thing we were not willing to clean was the one cupboard above the stove that has a bunch of dead cockroaches and probably a lot of cockroach poop. Picture of that below as well. (I promise the rest of the apartment is clean😅) I'll probably get to that one later in the week but after a few hours of cleaning I wasn't up for it.

This week I was working on allowing the Lord to work through me as a missionary. After reading this quote from Gordon B. Hinckley in Preach My Gospel, 

“Every morning … , missionaries should get on their knees and plead with the Lord to loosen their tongues and speak through them to the blessing of those they will be teaching. If they will do this, a new light will come into their lives. There will be greater enthusiasm for the work. They will come to know that in a very real sense, they are servants of the Lord speaking in His behalf. They will find a different response from those they teach. As they do so by the Spirit, [the people they are teaching] will respond under the influence of the same Spirit.”

I have seen some real miracles this week where I could feel my abilities as a missionary performing at a higher level than I could ever achieve on my own. It's still been a slow week as not a lot of people are willing to meet with the holiday so close, but to see the Lord carrying me through has been a great blessing. 

Have a Happy New Year!

新年快樂！

Elder Neilson

倪長老

Not a lot of photos this week unfortunately...

Elder Merrill and I eating our shaved ice and Family Mart sweet potatoes on his year mark

We got my fancy new toilet

The horrifying Cockroach black hole

Finally our apartment before new years photo to see if we gain any weight by the end of the week. Some people are known to put on a lot with all the huge meals! Will send the after photo next week.