It was a fun week here in Taiwan! We started out with a good pday hiking with some mission buddies, including my old companion Elder Ransbottom from my time in XinZhu. The mountains we were on had a ton of mist on them so it was impossible to see any good views but it made for some cool atmosphere effects. Hiking and exploring Taiwan is just one of my favorite ways to start a week!
This week we have been trying to emphasize visiting with members and helping them to either become more active in the church or do more missionary work. It's been a lot of fun to finally meet with some of the active families in the ward and start to get to know them! We have been trying to find good ways to build up their ability to do missionary work and so far our best stratagy is to send the members a conference talk on missionary work before hand, then simply have a discussion about what successes or challenges they are facing right now in doing missionary work and how we missionaries can help them or giving any advice we have. Its been super cool to see how some of our members are trying to do missionary work in their daily lives. Anything form simply bringing up the fact that they are a member of the church in a natural way with coworkers or sharing how the gospel is impacting their lives on facebook. Every little opportunity counts! I love Elder Uchtdorf's last talk on missionary work titled, "Missionary Work: Sharing what is in your heart." He says:
"In whatever ways seem natural and normal to you, share with people why Jesus Christ and His Church are important to you. Invite them to “come and see.” Then encourage them to come and help. There are numerous opportunities for people to help in our Church.
"Pray not only for the missionaries to find the elect. Pray daily with all your heart that you will find those who will come and see, come and help, and come and stay."
That's powerful stuff right there!
We have been focusing a lot on helping some of our current new friends to read the Book of Mormon. I might have said this before but I have learned as a missionary that it is prettymuch useless to start teaching people the commandments and asking them to live them if they are not already praying, reading the Scriptures (specifically the Book of Mormon), or coming to church. Coming to church can be hard for people if their schedule doest allow it but every one can find time to read and pray. However if they don't, they never develop the faith to move forwards with their testimony or repentance. So I don't really like moving past the first couple missionary lessons (the restoration of the gospel, the plan of Salvation, and the gospel of Jesus Christ [think the doctrine of Christ: faith, repentance, baptism....etc.]) if people are not reading and praying. So that's what we are doing with some of our friends when we meet, reading and praying with them! I have been enjoying it a lot. I think it is really important to read the Scriptures with people and show how we can liken it to ourselves and think deeper about the Scriptures that just what is happening. I had parents, and teachers and friends in the church to show me how that is done but new people learning about the church have no such resources at first. So it's fun to be their guide through a spiritual journey.
Well I could go on about more stuff but this is already a pretty long letter! Hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Elder Neilson
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| Misty Bridge from pday |
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| Elder Ransbottom, Me, and Elder Engel (another elder that went in the The MTC the same time as me) on the pday hike. |
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| We saw a tiny tiny motorcycle outside a family mart this week. |
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| Eating awesome noodles on exchanges with Elder Zhang |
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| Sometimes you run into a small enclosure of turtles. This happens more often then you would expect |
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