12 New Friends

Hey All,

Pday we spent our time eating some all you can eat hot pot and buying stuff at the mall. It was raining as we were biking home though and my new shoes almost got ran over by a car when the rain dissolved the paper bag hanging on my handlebars! 😅

Tuesday and Wednesday I was on exchanged with Elder Zhao who is a native Taiwanese elder serving in Fenglin. He is always a fun guy to exchange with because you always learn so much Chinese! 

One fun thing we got to do during our exchange was visit one of our way sick new friends from last week. Last week we gave him the Restoration Pamphlet and he actually read it! He asked where he could get a copy of the Book of Mormon and later when we were talking about the questions answered by the plan of Salvation (where we come from, what our life's purpose is, and where we are going after we die) he said, "Yeah, I have been thinking about these questions a lot lately" which is the best possible answer! Excited to keep teaching him. 

Backing up a little to Sunday night. We visited a cool family we met in a Family Mart who live way far out into the mountains. It took us around an hour to bike out there, maybe even a little more and we taught a pretty okay lesson. Then things started getting crazy when we asked if there was anyone she knew for us to teach. She started calling people up and that night we visited one of her cousin's households and ended up getting 6 new people to teach in one night! Crazy miracles! Then, thanks to a bunch of other finding miracles, we found another 6 new friends by the end of the week bringing the total to 12. Totaly crazy! In our misison the goal each week is 4 new friends but it is often hard to hit that consistently. Good week for finding to say the least.

Well that's a pretty summary of the week. I'll leave it at that. 

Wish you all a good one,

Elder Neilson 

Pday hot pot

Exchanges with Elder zhao

Frisbee In the morning 

The Hualian missionaries

Knives and Movies

Hey All,

Had a sweet p-day going up to a lake, doing some nice bike rides and then going up to the Aboriginal knife stores to get some sick knives. Taiwans native peoples make these way cool knives for hunting wild boar and all your other knife needs. It's kind of a traditional thing to get one during your time in hualian to prove you were here.

Wednesday night we listened to the BYU talk President Nelson gave the other day at night in our apartment. I love to hear the Prophet speak out for the truth of God in this ever more confused world. It's fascinating to see how the voice of the Lord through his Prophets and Apostles is always steady, strong and full of love, as the voices in the world becoming increasingly hostile, confused, and shifty. Stay strong to your testiomies friends! And if you need a testimony boost, do as the Prophet suggests and put in the Spiritual work necessary to receive your own answer as to if the teachings of our living Prophets are true.

Thursday night Elder Berges and I made some new finding goals. Our new plan is to give ourselves significantly more time between events so we can litterally talk to everyone we see on the street. It's based off the thought that it is easier to simply talk to every single person then to try and decide who to talk to every time you pass a person. We started Thursday night an saw some awesome miracles just in that one night. For instance, I talked to a man on a scooter at a stop light and since the light was about to change I asked if he would pull over on the other side of the light to talk to us (which is always a nice thing to ask but almost never happens) and he said yeah! We were then able to all a bit more, share a verse out of the Book of Mormon and he set up another time to meet! Way powerful to see the Lord's hand in the work. We just had about and hour but chose to make the most of it we could and blessings resulted! 

Saturday marked my first full year of service on island in Taiwan. Pretty surreal. Spend the day teaching a pretty empty English class, getting stood up by a family, visiting a friend to talk about Baptism, and then watching the first episode of the new Book of Mormon videos as an apartment at night. We are all way excited. It's going to be hard to wait a week for each episode!

Sunday was a good time. We had church, watched the Chinese broadcast of the recent face to face for young adults with Elder Soares with all the other YSAs and then biked an hour away into the mountains to teach some families kind of up by where we bought our Aboriginal knifes on p-day. It was a way cool lesson and when we asked the first family if they had any friends who might be interested, she started calling up friends and family for us to visit right then. We didn't have time to visit the village so we ended up just visiting one of her couzin's households and telling her to bring other friends to our appointment next week. 

Wish you all a good week,

Elder Neilson

good view from a little hill by the beach. We biked up here to call some people. It was really windy and kept pushing our bikes over.

The lake we went to on p-day

We have been playing our Dungeons and Dragons game with the one member and he drew crazy good portraits of all our characters in his free time!

Elder Berges and I by a big empty river bed.

Add caption

Zone Conference with the Hualian Zone

Mid Autumn Festival

Hey All,

So this weeks P-day wasn't all that exciting. Pretty much just playing frisbee, volleyball, and various other games with the other missionaries.

On Tuesday Elder Peterson (my district leader) and I started our exchange. All our appointments fell through so we just did a ton of knocking over the course of two days. We did get to visit one of our friends with whom we had lost contact with for a week or so. That was good.

Wednesday night we had the first English Club meeting where we used the new curriculum. It was pretty interesting. The office is supposed to send us slideshow presentations that will serve to organize the class experience but because Hualian is so far away we won't be getting them for another week. Without the slides it was kind of a mess, but we are supposed to get the slides for next week. Crossing our fingers!

Thursday morning during language study we got a call from the Fenglin Elders asking us to help them come clean their new apartment. They have been trying to move to this other town in their area for a while but every house in the town was taken. Finally one house opened up but the guy who used to live there left basically everything. Even a refrigerator completely full of expired food. So they asked for some help and that took most of the day. It was an interesting change of plans from the beginning of the day where we had no appointments and just planned on finding for hours!

Friday was the Mid-Autumn festival and it is a tradition for people to BBQ outside ther house so we spent our evening going from house to house talking to all the families at thier BBQs. It was actually really successful and we got a few people to set up times to meet with us, as well as getting some meat and stuff given to us. Taiwanese people are very hospitable and are always trying to give you food! 

Saturday was a ton of fun. We had English Club in the morning but at the same time there was a Taiwan wide YSA conference going on in the chapel so afterwards I saw a lot of familiar faces from old areas, and even my Branch President from the MTC who is back in Taiwan with is wife as some sort of special self reliance missionaries or something. It was a fun time and we got to spend the night doing more of our new favorite method of finding: Mid-Autumn festival BBQ finding! People were still out BBQing tonight so we got to walk around the streets, say high and got invited to sit down and eat at pretty much every party we passed! 

It was a fun week. National Holidays always make for an exciting change of pace. 

Have a good one

Elder Neilson

getting ice cream after cleaning elders apartment

- eating some moon cakes

- random BBQ we got invited to

 path we took that turned out to not be a road

all the food people give you during the mid autumn festival featuring a lot of Pomello which is the big green fruit. It's only really eaten durring this festival. Think grapefruit that is really hard to peel and doesn't have as much flavor. 

Dungeons & Dragons

Hey All,

This P-day we had a fun time going on a hike in the morning with the whole Hualian squad, minus one companionship of sisters. It was a pretty sweet hike with a good view of all our areas from the side of a mountain. After that we went and played Dungeons and Dragons with some of the Elders and a member. Never thought my mission would get me starting on some Dungeons and Dragons but it was way fun! 

Tuesday we went to McDonald's with a young returened missionary in our ward who is going to be the Young Men's President to talk about some young men in the ward. During the course of dinner he showed us this way funny video a different church made to show the baptism of Jesus. It was not at all accurate and Jesus basically just baptised himself, so we decided the video is a really good example of the importance of Joseph Smith in restoring the correct manner of Baptism and other Ordinances. Biblical accounts can be interpreted many ways, but when we get modern revelation things become remarkably clear, to the point where we can have step by step instructions in the missionary handbook of how to baptize someone! Pretty big difference.

Not too much to say about Wednesday. We had English class like usual. Although actually we are no longer an "English Class" and us missionaries are no longer "English Teachers" (for legal reasons). So now we are an English Learning Group (or as I like to call it, an English Club) and we are facilitators (club leaders). Apparently all the cram schools ( like tutoring schools that are a huge thing in Taiwan) got kind of mad we were a free English class and since we can be sued for being teachers without a 4 year degree we are abandoning all that terminology. One nice thing is the church has created a unified, structured 12 week curriculum for us to start teaching soon which should be nicer than having to plan every weeks class from scratch! 

On Thursday night we helped the Sister missionaries move. As we were biking over to their apartment it was raining really really hard so I was a little nervous we would have to move in heavy rain which would have been really annoying but luckily it stopped raining by the time we had to take all their stuff outside. Tender Mercies!

Saturday we had a ward BBQ because the Mid Autumn Festival is right around the corner. It was a great time and we got one of our most progressing friends to come with her family. I'm pretty confident she will be baptised. The ward already put her in the ward group chat! The BBQ was up at this mountain river so some members gave us a ride up. Its honestly so weird to be in cars nowadays. I'm so used to biking around that going 30+mph in a car feels like we are moving at warp speed.

Sunday was good. Through some good miracle action we got two new friends! 

This week I have been studying a lot about the Spirit and Prayer. I have been hoping to make my studies and my mission in general more led by the Spirit and I have come to the conclusion that powerful prayer is the key. So here are some prayer tips that have been brought to my mind recently:

- Remember to spend lots of time in prayers listening

- Pray often, even about little things

- Be completely honest and open in your prayers. Heavenly Father wants to hear what you really think

Well- hope you all have a great week and some great prayers! 

Elder Neilson

Service & Sea World

Due to techincal error-- it seems that Tustins last THREE letters did not actually get posted. 😳
We have things figured out now but here's all the latest from him.. 

Letter from 8/18/2019....

This week for P-day we went to Farglory ocean park which is kind of like a tiny little SeaWorld on the coast of hualian. We got almost all the missionaries in Hualian to come and it was a ton of fun. Saw a few shows rode a few ride. I laugh to myself a little because when I came on my mission I didn't expect to go to a theme park again for 2 years, but I have already been to parks three times on my mission!

Tuesday to Wednesday I was on exchanges in fenglin which is the emptiest area in the mission. It was a ton of fun. Fenglin is a really beautiful area but the beauty comes at the price of long bike rides and mountains. reminded me a lot of biking across the US a few years ago. As part of that exchange we also helped some members waterproof the cement walls on a house they are building.

Thusday we did some good door knocking and had some lessons. We had one lesson where we visited one of our Recent converts who is really old. We basically just visit him whenever we want without setting appointments because he is always home. But recently we started teaching his daughter who has been taught by missionaries in the past. But she has been really busy recently with a new job and classes to get a teaching license so we couldn't set up a time to meet. But as we were teaching her dad she showed up at home and we were able to teach her an improvised lesson and set up a time to go help her paint some walls. We don't get a lot of service opportunities in Taiwan so we jumped at a chance to help out someone we are teaching. Kind of a cool little Tender Mercy to be able to teach her this week. She also came to church this week and was way awesome. She went and found some members to talk to after church all on her own and already feels like a part of the ward. Lots of hope for her. 

Saturday was so so busy. We had five lessons all about 30-60+ minutes travel time away so we were biking around like crazy all day. But we got to meet with a lot of friends we haven't met with in a while so we got a lot of important stuff done. Also at dinner time we were out by the only establishment in our area of my favorite breakfast shop chain, Yonghe doujiang (永和豆漿)! We rarely go out that far to where it is got to eat some awesome Taiwanese breakfast food for dinner. Such a win.

Sunday morning we ran back down to Shoufeng which is the place about an hour away we biked to yesterday. It was a long long bike ride away. especially right in the morning but we got a new friend out of it. 

Had a really cool week. Really busy week end so Elder Berges and I are way tired now but it was good work!

Letter from 8/25/2019...

This pday we went on a short hike to a waterfall where a family of monkey lives. Unfortunately this week the monkeys were not there! We even brought a bunch of older bananas from our apartment to give them! Oh well. We will probably head back out there down the line and try to catch some pictures with the monkey family.

Tuesday night we took a train down to Fenglin so that on Wednesday morning we could help that one family building a house again. This time we leveled some ground and layed tile. Unfortunately we are not that great at laying tile and so the member had to give us a lot of help. He probably could have done it better himself! 

We also had a cool fireside in Hualian with Joy B. Jones, the General Primary president. it was way cool. Big take aways are listen more in prayers and the feeling the Spirit trough primary stuff. 

Thursday was kind of a fun day because we spent most of it helping out one of our friends paint their front room. We didn't expect it to take very long but it after prepping, painting, cleaning, eating dinner together, and then sharing a message it took the majority of the day. This week has been kind of a special one for service, two projects in one week! That's the highest frequency of service I can remember having in Taiwan! I guess the problem with not doing a lot of service is when opportunities do arise, you are terrible at gauging how long it will take! hahaha.

Saturday a Typhoon hit the southern tip of Taiwan and so it was rainy and windy all day. Luckily we had a Misison Conference in the middle of the day where all the Hualian missionaries went to the church and watched a live stream from the Taipei chapel. Joy B. Jones and the whole crew from the fireside earlier this week. It was good but sometimes the Audio was weird and we couldn't really hear what anyone was saying!

Sunday it was still raining a lot from the Typhoon so not a lot of people came to church. Other than that it was a pretty standard day. We did visit this one potential we knocked into last Sunday who said we could come back sometime, in that way you know means they never expect to see you again. So we decided to knock her door again just for the heck of it. It was way funny seeing the surprise on her face when she saw it was us. Still didn't set up a time to learn about he gospel but we got a phone number this time! small and simple things my friends. Small and simple things.

 

Letter from 9/1/2019...

Had some weird stuff happen on Monday night after p-day. Basically we were chilling in a FamilyMart so we could text some of our friends and we ended up talking with these young boys (10-13 range) who we sitting at the table next to us. They were pretty energetic little kids and kept on pausing our conversation to sing some of the words to the song playing in the store. That in and of itself was pretty funny. But then like 8 other kids eventually showed up in around 5 minutes and we were suddenly being mobbed by a bunch of little Taiwanese kids who were going absolutely crazy in this FamilyMart. Like tackling eachother, copying NBA victory dances...someone had a fake sword, it was maddness. Long story short we ended up sitting in on about 10-15 minutes of their Catholic kids prayer and hymn singing meeting next door!

Wednesday we taught our English class on Slang terms which was the funniest English class I have ever taught. It's really really hard to keep a straigt face when teaching a bunch of middle aged Taiwanese people American slang. Just writing vocabulary words on the board was way funny. It was made even better because we had this one guy who already new some more informal English and he would always try to use his own slang words in example sentances. This guy came up with some funny stuff that I'm not even sure counts as slang like the word maniac. None of his sentances really made any sence but I give him an A for effort!

Thursday was Elder Berges' mission year mark and Zone Conference. Zone Conference was good. We talked about companionship Unity which is always an important thing to try and improve through one's mission. When compniaoships are not running smoothly life is rough. Anyways for Elder Berges year mark (and Elder Keys' who also lives in our apartment) we bought a bunch of snacks at the end of the day and sat on the flat roof of our house talking about our mission experiences so far. Things are moving quickly and but its nice to talk about your experience as a whole sometimes because it shows you how much your mission and your perspective on missionary work change over time. That kind of applies to life too I guess.

Anyway Saturday we had some good lessons where we were able to get members to help us. One of which the member helped us through video chat because he was in Taipei. Pretty cool day and age we live in here! We also missed English class because we found a staple in my bike tire when we were leaving the house. Got to love those inner tube replacements! 

Sunday was good. We knocked into a Jehovah's Witness and a girl who just got back from her 2 week mission for her church to Berma. Neither were really that interested. Maybe next time!

Hope everyone have a great week!

Elder Neilson