End of an Era

Hey All,

I'm running a little late. I had to go up to a meeting in Taipei today and it took the whole day but it was fun to go and see all my old missionary friends. We don't see a lot of outsider missionaries down here in the south east! Hahaha

Not too much to say about this week. Went on a sick coast line drive with some members on pday to visit a cool sea cave and a small hike.

On Saturday our ward had a Christmas party where they reenacted the nativity. They wanted some comic relief before the spiritual stuff so they called in the missionaries the night before to ask us to make a skit or sing a song or something to show American Christmas culture. So we quickly spent some time on Saturday throwing together a reenactment of the Night Before Christmas poem. It went pretty well and we got some laughs.

Biggest news of the week is that my time in Hualian is coming to a close and I'll be moving back to the city on Wednesday. My next area is called Ankang and it is in the same zone as Zhonghe, my first area in Taiwan. I'm excited, although there is a lot I will miss about Hualian. I'm going to miss the tropical scenery, being able to see a small amount of starts at night, and the fun atmosphere. Hualian just has its own feel to it and I'm not sure I am ready for the hustle and bustle of the city again. But! If the Lord wants me there, that's where I'll go. I know Hualian will be in good hands with Elder Gibson. 

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Neilson

- a famous seacave that is supposed to look like a car.

 Some shots form our pday hike

We found a big spider one day and so I took a picture with it.

Back stage selfi before our big performance

When I was in Taipei today I ran into my MTC companion Elder Brady and Sister Jenson (the one in the middle) who are my only MTC district mates in my mission. Sister Jenson goes home this week!

18 months already!

Hey all,

For this week's pday we tried the hike that supposedly has monkeys on it for the third time, but this time we tried the other trail which- low and behold- is the one that has the monkeys on it! We had just been taking the wrong trail the entire time. It was a good time with a great view of Hualian from the mountain side.

This week was full of exchanges (one with the district leader and one with the Zone Leaders) and Christmas gift making. Our ward's sisters approached us a few weeks ago and asked if we wanted to help them hand make Christmas cards and cookies for all the members. Little did we know how much of an undertaking that would become! Everything took a lot longer than we anticipated especially the card making. We decided to just make one message and change the name at the top for each card. We naturally let the native sister write the message but she went way overboard and wrote this really long message that took us non Chinese speakers  20 minutes to copy per card! It was just like writing one of those test essays at school again. So much hand pain! After many hours of toil we completed our project and now we have been making trips around with the sisters to drop them off at our member houses. I figure this is how it feels to be in charge of a ward party or something.

In English class we have decided to make more movies. My group's movie this time started out as a redo of Titantic but then we changed the whole plot and now it has a dragon that takes over Rose and Jack's castle so a fairy godmother has to give Rose and Jack magic fireballs and a sword to slay the dragon. It's pretty funny. I still have a lot of editing work to do before class on Wednesday.

Had some fun missionary work experiences too. One of our friends set a baptismal date in January which we are excited about. He also comes to church really often so we are excited to see where he goes.

Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Neilson

- Monkey hike pday

baking cookies

Making Christmas cards

Another zone Conference picture (why does everyone in our zone have to be monster tall?)

Thanksgiving zone conference dinner

Thanksgiving.

Hey All,

OH let us Rejoice! The Christmas season has come. Hope everyone is excited. My district is trying to bring on the Christmas hype by making our ward Christmas cards and cookies and by doing the Light the World activity each day. I'm excited for another Taiwanese Christmas especially because my ward down in Hualian likes to decorate the church a lot and have a big Christmas Musical activity or something. Looking forward to that in about two weeks.

Anyways, this week was pretty fun. Had a good Zone Conference where we talked about the new Missionary Handbook and pride. Both good important topics to improve all our missionary work. The consensus is that the new Handbook focuses a lot more on the principles behind the rules instead of the rules themselves which makes it a lot more applicable to non-missionary, normal disciples of Jesus Christ. I invite you all to give it a quick read and find some good principles to apply to your life, whether you are a missionary or not!

Pride is also an important thing to work on. No worries though, no pride over here!  In all seriousness, the talk "Beware of Pride" By Ezra Taft Benson Back from the April 1989 conference, and the more recent BYU speech "Wrestling with Comparisons" by J.B. Haws from May 7 of this year are both good stuff on Overcoming pride. Worth a read for sure!

We also got to watch the Children and Youth Devotional this Sunday now that it is finally translated. It was pretty cool, I liked the stage design a lot. I do think it's awesome that the church is teaching all the kids how to set goals and achieve things early on. I think the new program will produce some killer missionaries going forward! 

I'll leave it at that for now. Didn't have a ton of lessons this week but we did get three of our friends to come to church which is the most our area has had at church for a long time. I was happy about that. People really start to progress if you can get them to come to church but it can be a serious struggle sometimes. And even once you get friends at church you really want them to have a good experience but there is so much out of your control! Hahaha. If you really want to be your home missionaries' best friend ever, then when they bring a friend to church, go introduce yourself, have the friend sit with you, and help that friend through the whole meeting to understand what is going on and where they need to go and stuff. That missionary will forever be grateful for your support.

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Neilson

 built a really colorful rock tower

- taking try hard dramatic photos at the beach on p-day

 biking by the beach on exchanges with my district leader

 Helping the ward make some corn husk dolls for the Christmas decorations

our mission president took us all out to a really nice American restaurant for Thanksgiving lunch during zone Conference. So good!