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