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
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