Elder Tustin Neilson: 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