6 Companions, 4 areas. 7 days

Hey all,

It's been a whirlwind of a week. as they subject says, since last email, I have worked with 6 different missionaries, and worked in different 4 areas. It's been quite the ride. 

Started off on exchanges with the traveling assistants to the president whos job it is to just go on exchanges with every elder in the mission. For one day I was with both and then for the second day just one of them. Then after that exchange I went to Zhong He with the elder there because both our companions are in isolation so president put us together to wait until our companions are free. Then the very next day I went on exchanges with my zone leader Elder Gray and during that exchange we talked to president and decided it would actually be a better long term plan to keep me in the xindian tri-companioship and create a Zhong he tripanionship out of the three people over there to cut down everyone's travel time. So after that exchange I went back to xindian to be with Elder Zhang and Elder Gibson again. It's been so fun but very tiring.

We did see some cool miracles. While with the traveling Assistants we set up 3 people from the streets and calling people who were taught in the past and during this week all three met with us and became new friends of ours. It's just been a really fun time doing a lot of missionary work. 

We started doing virtual church using Zoom like I know some other places have been trying out. This week worked out pretty well, we just went way over time beacause the ward originally planned on only a 30 minute meeting it then people wanted to keep sharing testimonies and so we went to about 45 minutes. It was cool to see how people could still come together to share about the Savior despite current challenges. 

COVID-19 rages on but we are still safe here in Taiwan so no really updates on that. Hope all my friends and family in the USA stay safe though! Things are getting pretty wild over there from what I am hearing. 

Love you all,

Elder Neilson 

I ate IKEA for dinner with one of the traveling assistants since it's his favorite food. Connecting with our shared Scandinavian heritage

I finally took a cheesy picture in front of these angel wings painted on a wall in my first area. I have been meaning to take a picture here since training a year and a half ago!

An elder in our apartment had a birthday so we all wore our matching space masks to celebrate

Biking down the road

Weekly frisbee

Tuning in for church

COVID-19 in Taiwan

Hey all,

Since the Corona Virus is pretty much the only thing anyone talks about now a-days I figured I would give a wholesale update on how Taiwan is dealing with it and how it has affected missionary work here. 

As I'm sure a lot of you know, most missions in the world are being affected by the virus outbreak either in the form of missionaries begin isolated, or being sent to work in their home nations. However, Taiwan is one of the safest nations in the world right now and so in most ways our missionary work goes on as normal. 

Taiwan was hit really heavily by a smaller outbreak of a different virus called SARS back a few years ago and since then the government and the people have learned how to respond to this kind of threat. 

Months ago, when the virus was still only in China, Taiwan was already creating travel restrictions from the infected areas and the people acted quickly by buying and wearing masks almost immediately. This helped stop any spreading of the virus in the early days. 

Another cultural note that helped keep Taiwan safe is how people deal with illness. In Taiwan if you get sick, you go straight to the hospital or some sort of clinic. There is very little self medication or self diagnosis going on. So the healthcare system in Taiwan is used to dealing with a lot of people coming for help, and it also has access to a lot of information on the current state of the nations health. It is easy for Taiwan to learn of new cases of the disease because when people get sick they go to the doctor and get professional help and are tested for the virus. So at least from my understanding, Taiwan probably has some of the most accurate understanding of how many people are sick and how to prevent further spread. 

So long story short, because the people have done such a good job of controlling the virus in Taiwan, life goes on as normal. Most if not all businesses are running as normally, (although they might leave all the doors and windows open to help get more air flow or something like that) and missionary work goes on more or less as normal. 

We still contact people on the street and still try to meet with people as much as we can. We do a lot more video call lessons and stuff like that but no major adjustments have been made in the way we do things. 

We are trying to protect ourselves as much as we can, we wear masks in busy places and when we meet with members, we don't shake hands anymore, and we wash our hands a lot. It's a fun time here in Taiwan trying to do as much as we can to help people while also being cautious and trying to protect ourselves and others.

It's been a fun week of doing just that in my tripanionship. It's been a fun time. This week it should be changing and I'll work with another elder as my normal companion waits in Isolation for 14 days with some other missionaries who are also in isolation. ( any missionaries now entering Taiwan from other places have to isolate) So I have at least 2 weeks before my life returns to complete normalcy. But I love to get all the weird assignments because it sure is more fun.

Hope you all stay safe,

Elder Neilson

Costco on pday

Noodle lunch

Elder Zhang and I fall asleep in language study a lot

- random other pictures

 Elder Gibson contacting someone 

Tripanionship

Hey all,

This week transfers happened and I started out my companionship with Elder Dobbs, but he actually has a leg injury and had to go back to the USA on Saturday and we don't know how long he will be there. So, for the time being I am in a tri-panionship with Elder Gibson (the Elder I trained in Hualian) and Elder Zhang. It's been really fun. 

So it's been a busy week of packing, unpacking, packing more, moving and switching companions. 

Sorry not a lot of time to write today. 

I'll just leave it as saying we got to teach some cool people and now that I am in a tripanionship we have many more friends who I have never met!

Love you all. Stay virus free!

Elder Nelson

Moving a members cabinets 

A few pictures of places we went on pday.

District transfers are chairs picture

Elder Dobbs and I trying to visit Returning members

Elder Dobbs after we tied his suitcase to his back with rope and ducktape to bike it over to the train station 

New companions

Hey All, 

This week was a fun one. We had interviews with President, started meeting with a new family (only over video call to midigate the rise of passing any sickness) and had two different district councils because we used to have it on Thursday but President announced Monday night to the mission that he wants us all to have district council on Tuesday. Our poor district leader had no time to prepare so he had us do a short goal setting district council on Tuesday but then all the training parts of district council on Thursday.

In interviews with President, President Peterson told Elder Meredith and I that he wasn't exactly sure if he was going to keep us both in Ankang this transfer because he is thinking about putting sisters in the area, or if not enough visas come for new missionaries he might take us out temporarily. In any case we knew that Elder Meredith was going to leave but it sure made transfers more exciting for me to know that the location of my last two transfers as a missionary were pretty up in the air. 

Transfers came this morning and turns out nothing too dramatic is happening. President decided to leave me here and my new companion will be a younger missionary named Elder Dobbs. He was actually MTC companions with the misisonary I trained in Hualian (Elder Gibson). And wouldn't you know it but Elder Gibson is coming up to South zone to be in the other companionship in my same ward. So it will be like a weird little reunion after just two transfers. Pretty funny. 

The Carona virus keeps making its way around the globe but Taiwan is still pretty much the same. This week some members made all the missionaries some nice cloth masks that you use to cover a normal mask barrier thing. Basically just makes face masks more comfortable and capable of using longer. Should help us stay pretty safe since Elder Meredith and I were running out of other masks to use! 

I just finished second Nephi this week in my Chinese reading and was struck by his last line as well. I then went through and skimmed all of first and second Nephi to look for all the good scriptures on obedience that he wrote for us. It's a long list!

1 Nephi 3:7

1 Nephi 9:5

1 Nephi 15:10–11

1 Nephi 16:8, 28

1 Nephi 17:3, 8–9, 13, 15

1 Nephi 19:1, 3

1 Nephi 22:30–31

2 Nephi 1:9, 20

2 Nephi 2:21, 28

2 Nephi 3:2

2 Nephi 5:10, 27, 31

2 Nephi 9:23, 27

2 Nephi 25:24, 30

2 Nephi 26:24, 27–28

2 Nephi 28:30

2 Nephi 31:7, 10, 14, 20

2 Nephi 33:9, 11

Nephi is probably one of the scripture prophets we get the most information about. We don't get such a clear look into the lives of many of the other ones. So amazing to have his example of obedience and faith recorded in such detail! I think it's wonderful to think how the Lord specifically prepared this handwritten account of Nephi for us to read and learn from. We were so close to having a third person account by Mormon! Who knows how that version went. I'm sure it was most of the same stories but I love the personal glimpse we get into Nephis life from his own record. 

That's about it. 

Have a great week! 

Elder Neilson 

a tasty hamburger we got with a member on preparation day. They like to put peanut butter on hamburgers in Taiwan. Sounds strange at first but it's actually really good! 

me standing in front of a broken fountain that we thought looked kind of cool (sorry didn't take a lot of good pictures this week. Kind of have to scrape the bottom of the barrel)

- cool scenery

- one of my new fancy masks. It's got some nice dinosaurs on it. 

- district council part two with drinks and chips

Exchange Miracles

Hey All,

This week for P-day we went on a short hike in a farther corner of our area by a place called Bitan. There were many ruins of former structures including a theme park from the 1980s. Not too much remained except a murual of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and what I think were the footings for a ferris-wheel and some other rides. For anyone who knows me well, anything about theme park history catches my interest! I wish I had some pictures of the Bitan Theme Park to better imagine what it must have looked like back in the day! 

We went on two different exchanges back to back this week. One with the zone leaders and one with the traveling assistants (a new assignment president started this transfer where two additional assistants to the president are chosen to simply make the rounds and go on exchanges with ever Elder in the mission). It was a fun time and we had a few cool miracles happen during the course of the week. 

First miracle occurred as we visited some returning member families we haven't been able to get in contact with. We didn't have time to visit a lot of members but we chose one that I had visited before but they were never home. This time the doorbell didn't work, and they didn't come the first or second time we knocked but we knew there were people inside because we could hear them. We didn't have a phone number on record to call so we just kept knocking hoping they would hear! At last the son came out and we were able to meet the family. It was some pretty perfect timing too because that family was in the process of moving that very week. If we had not gotten ahold of them at that moment they probably would have moved without anyone knowing, and without an accurate address on record we probably would have lost contact with them forever.

Second cool miracle came in a Family Mart as we were doing language study. We were doing our studies up at some bar-style seating and we were sitting next to a young kid. I looked over and felt a small nudge to talk to him. So after a second I said hello and introduced myself. The kid is a about to graduate high school this year and doesn't believe we can prove God exists, but thinks highly of the religious beliefs of others. I asked him if he had ever tried to 認識 "renshi" (or come to know) God before and he asked me why we would have to come to know God, which launched us into a quick discussion about the Plan of Salvation and how God is our Father, and our purpose in this life is to prepare to return to His presence and to become more like Him. He later asked me how I know that this is true and not just the thoughts of men, which tied nicely into the Book of Mormon. All in all it was a very cool experience of impromptu teaching someone and I am still answering a lot of his questions over messaging in prep for our next meeting. It's so awesome to see how the Lord can lead you to interested people if we are only willing to listen for and act on the promptings He is always trying to give us. 

That's about it for the week. The Corona virus situation in Taiwan is still under control. There are a few more cases but we are still safer than a lot of other Asian countries. We are still out doing misisonary work. Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts! 

Love you all,

Elder Neilson  

If you look closely you can see snow white and some dwarves on this cement wall

- Me standing on one of the footings of what might have been a Ferris Wheel

- Elder Meredith and I at the top of our hike

- Biking up a hill on exchanges with the traveling assistants