#12... 3 IS BETTER THAN 2

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

alright so first off my companion is blind!! haha  no jk. kinda. so this week though my companion found that he actually doesnt have perfect eyesight like he has thought his whole life. which was quite the shock for him! he litteraly walked around our room in circles saying no no no estoy ciego!! he´s also quite dramatic. but it was super funny how he freaked out.

new fruit for this week: papaya and mago verde! papaya is delicious and super juicy! idk maybe youve eaten papaya fruit plain before, but i dont think i had. and it is goood! also, mago verde. which is just mango that isnt all the way ripe so its still green. hence the name. haha but they eat it that way here! they take the mango verde and put some salt and lemon on it. its good. its a little sour. but its tasty.

also, sooo remember how we had 2 new elders move in with us? ya so one of them... isnt here anymore. so the other elder is now in a trio with me and Elder Rios! his name is Elder Chas, from the Dominican Republic. he is hilarious! but also, along with being in a trio, we kind of adopted another sector too, Union Civica. so that is funning working a little over there too!

well we have a new investigator we are working with, named Jesus. he is really awesome and interested and things are going well! we also contacted some super chevere families, so hopefully they will work out for this next week!

well i love you all and hope all is well!

love

Elder Taylor

#11 CAMIONETA

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

okay i really have like no time so this will be short. seriously i like never have time. but anyways heres what happened this week:

we met a woman who doesnt believe in the Devil or in sin. i dont understand how that even makes a little sense. she believes in God. but doesnt think theres a Satan, and doesnt think theres sin! so i guess murder or stealing is cool then? idk i dont get it. we tried to talk to her and explain that yes statan is very real and so is sin. but she wouldnt hear it. so we just said have a good day and went and talked to new people. i just hope that maybe one day she will understand the truth. sometimes i just wish people would just listen to us with their hearts, because i know it will make them happier, and make their lives better.

oh so Ecuador style, we got two new elders in our appt this week, and we had to help them move, and their stuff was in Monte Sinai, which is about an half hour away. So to get us back to Alegria with there stuff, we took a truck. but the truck only sat 3 people. and there were 4 missionaries. and the driver. so me and Elder Rojas (new roomie) were sitting in the bed of the truck the whole trip back to alegria! on ecuadorian busy roads. Sketch! but it was fun! and a lot cooler with the breeze. but i was glad when we made it to our house safely! haha

we had Zone Conference this week. it was amazing!! the preidents and his wife spoke and they are so smart and inspired and it was just amazing. i wish i could just upload the whole meeting to you guys so you could understand what im talking about! 

we had more lessons with mariana this week. she is progressing really well! she has real intent to know which is the true church, but she is Evangelica and has a little trouble with praying and asking specific questions. but we are working on it!

this week has been great, but thats all i have time for today. thankyou for all of the emails! they really help and make y day! i seriously love you all and hope you all are doing great!

love elder taylor

#10 BACANSISIMO

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

wow, okay so i go so much in a hurry last week i forgot to explain my title! ´´yo veo venezolano´´ or i look venezuelan. so first off, here i am like considered a straight up gringo. from the US and doesnt speak spanish. even if im tan. im gringo. and before i never really considered myself a full on ´´gringo´´. so that was kinda of a rude shock to me when i got here. but anyway, so in one of our lessons, one of the ladies there asked my where i was from. so i told her US. then she was like and your parents? and i was like US also. But then i added that my grandma is from Venezuela. and she was like ´´oohh okay yes you have the face of a venezuelan. and you talk really good spanish.´´  at that piont is when i wanted to have my own littl bubble, like in Get Smart (if you remember that part) and yell and do a happy dance. but of course i didnt. i just said gracias. but seriously what great compliments! they made me so happy. and reaffirmed my inner thinkings that im really not gringo. of course the very next day someone else called me gringo on a bus... but no importa. haha

also, fun fact real quick, Elder Rios, my companion, was apperently in a rap group in his town in chile. he even performed at a festival they have there. so thats pretty cool. and so we freestyle back and forth. the only problem is he goes in spanish and me in english, so neither of us really knows exactly what the otehr one is saying.. but its still fun. Another thing, there are some HUGE ants here. like as long as a cap of chapstick. they are ginormious. Oh and i saw some iguana this week! they were just chillin up in this tree at a park. they were pretty big. apperently they eat iguana some parts in ecu. not here in alegria. but i want to try it sometime. E Rios says its good. but i have my doubts.

before i forget again, ´´bacansisimo´´ is another word here they say thats like chevere. so cool. or awesome. por ejemplo if you wanted to say i had cool shoes, you could say they are bacansisimo!

this week while we were actually looking for a referal we go, but the houses arent really labbled so its super hard to find, but we knocked on this one hous, and a woman answered from outside and said ´´Estoy muriendo!´´ which means im dying! so me and E Rios were like uhhh thats awkward.. so can we still talk with you?¿ so she let us in and we talked with her. luckily she wasnt actually dying! but she was sick. so we talked a little with her, and scheduled to come back again and teach. her name is mariana. later that week we came back and taught a really good lesson about the restoration and book of mormon! it was awesome. and then on sunday, her and her son, fabrisio attended church with us! so all around just super awesome! and shes not dead or dying so thats a plus too.

also, side note, dont judge my spelling too hard. i dont know if its even off, maybe im spelling everything perfect. but i doubt it. but this computer only knows spanish so it out corrects only to spanish and deems every english word incorrect. so for me this whoole email is underlined in red squiqly lines. and plus i think my spelling is just getting worse in general.

well, i love you all. the church is true. joseph smith really was a prophet and restored the true church; the church that Christ established when he came to the earth. i hope allis well with you guys.

love Elder Taylor

#9 VO VEO VENEZUELANO

Ecuador Temple

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

alright so this week has been awesome. here are the highlights: 

we met a detective! a legit ecuadorian detective. he´s awesome. and swoll. his two sons are members, but him and his wife are not. and they have one more son who just turned 8 that wants to get babtized! so we have his babtism schedualled for this month! also, the sister of the mom, or the aunt to the kids that are members, is named Michele. she said she was intersting in the church so we taught her this last week too! we taught her and she accepted everything really well and we committed her to come to church this sunday... and she did!! that was her first time coming to church! we havent extended a babtism date yet, but we are going to try and shoot for the last saturday of this month. hopefully everything continues to progress something! she is awesome. and super nice. we are also working with the detective and his wife, but they are a little harder. but we´ll get there!

we also met a woman named Mercedez this week. she is older, and super nice and sweet, but doesnt really understand or comprehend what we are teaching her very well.. she lets us in to teach her (and by in i mean sitting outside her house but within a fence) and she said she´d come to church with us. but then on sunday she said she couldnt. so that was sad. we´ll keep trying to teach her and hopefully get her to understand that we are really just trying to help her.

we have another investigator named Javier Rios. he got sopme of the lessons already from some of the other elders, but he actually lives in alegria. so we are going to finish the lessons, but he also wants to get babtized! not his family though, which is too bad. but maybe he can be the influence needed to convert his family too!

so we were fasting this week to find a family that was ready to hear the gospel. we got nothing all week, untill sunday night. we were walking somewhere, i dont even remember where, and as we passed this small group of people walking, they called us over. there were 4 woman, 3 older, and one younger. like 9 i think. but the young girl named grace lives in alegria. the other woman were her aunts and friends of aunts, and they dont live here. they older women are all members. but grace isnt. she lives with her grandma who also isnt a member. but the 3 members told us to come with them and we visited with grace and her grandma, Digna. so now we have 2 new investigators, a family, which is just what we needed!! abd its crazy that we ere walking down that street just as they were, and they had only just gotten to alegria about 5 minutes before! it was awesome! 

well thats all i have time for today. love you all and hope all is well!

love Elder Taylor

#8 ECUADOR IS CHEVREISIMO

SEPTEMBER 1, 2014

 First off, i love Ecuador. this place is crazy and dirty and completely different. but i love it. i dont have a ton of time, so i will just try and focus on some of the more important things.

  i got here monday night about 8 ish with 4 other elders from the provo MTC. we all made it through customs fine and met up with our mission president and his wife and the ap´s and 2 other assistants. our president is awesome. he is so funny. from mexico. his wife is from utah. we packed all our stuff in a truck then got in a van to drive to the temple were we would be staying. the streets are ridiculous here!! there are no lanes. and a TON of honking. they honk for everything. its actually kind of effectively once you get to know it. but litterally everythine i step into a car i feel like my life is on the line. its crazy. we did make i to the temple safely though and got our things into te building we were sleepng at and got to sleep late.

  tuesday morning had yogurt and bread for breakfast. you can buy yogurt here in big cartons. like bigger then milk cartoons. its really good. then went ack to the airport to pick up 15 more missionaries that were geting here. from mexico and columbia. then we had lunch and a breifing at pressidents house. then got to go to the Guayaquil temple! its beautiful! i was so glad we got to go to it. because it is in the north mission so we only go 2 times a year.

  wednesday morning was my last hot water shower.. and i met my new companion! his name is Elder Rios. he´s from Chile. and he speaks no english! jaja but he´s chevre. btw chevre means cool. people say that a lot here. ive gotten really good at using sign language and acting to help get my piont accross when we are talking. its fun.and i teach him some english. people love english here. they love it. but so he´ll sometimes say ¨whats up man!¨ but with a chilean accent. or ¨put your hands up!¨ or just differernt prases in english. its hilarious.

  Im defiently in latin america. walking down the street you can almost always hear music playing. and one day they were doing Bailo Tirapia, which is kind of like zumba, at the park. a whole bunch of people. apprently they do that like 3 times a week. also there are Cancha´s (little soccer courts) everywhere! its awesome. youll see kids playing there everyday. they call soccer Pelota here. so instead of vamos a jugar futbol, they´ll say vamos a jugar pelota. es chevre.

  the food. they eat soo muchh rice here! bastante arroz!! everymeal is a big plate of rice with either meat or fish or something. its super good. but that rice man... it just feels you up and stays there! they also eat a lot of bannanas here. they have a ton! they call them guineo. and also a lot of plantains. or verde and maduro. verde is when is young and green. and maduro is when its more mature. they make masa out of the maduro. and kind if make dumpling soup i guess is how i would describe it. but its way good. oh and the juice!!! ricisimo! delicious! they love juice here. so far my favorite is guanabana juice and maracuya juice. they are soo good. one prroblem here though is because they eat so much rice, and the feed you a ton, you can get fat. i dont want to get fat. i like dont even eat dinner most the time. because we lunch at 1 with a member, and then that rice just stays there. im not even hungry at night.

  also i found out the speak castellano here. well spanish, but castellano is a certain accent of spanish. so im learning castellano! sometimes its harder to understand though. they drop the ´s´at the end of words a lot. but its cool. i cant wait till im actually fluent! there are times here were i like understand almost everything and its awesome. but then other times where i am just comlpletely lost.

   crossing the street here is an adventure in itself. they dont have crosswalks. well ive seen one, in front of this huge mall. besides that, people just cross wherever whenever. its crazy. even on the busier roads. my sector is called Alegria. its actually really small. one of the smallest sectors in the whole mission! its in guayaquil. its one of the nicer areas. well its not nice, but its definetly not the super ghetto super poor area. the streets are actually paved.  but the only prolem with that is taht the people here are a little.. harder. they arent as open to here about the gospel. ive gotten yelled out twice. well really yelled out just once. the other time was just a telling off. but those times arent verry fun. but luckily sometimes always happens after to bring your spirits back up! another thing they say here is ´´aver´´. you yell that when your outside their house to let them know youre there and then they come out and you talk.

  we had 6 baptisms this saturday!! one family of 5 and then 1 other person. i got to babtize one of the dautghers of the family. Jamileth Dayris Rodriguez Parrales. it was so cool! i was so nervous i was going to mess up her name or the prayer. but nope everything went smooth! it was such a great experience!

  in front of the church theres a cancha. thats were we get to play pelota on mondays. i havent gotten to play yet, but im super excited for the opportunity to play! its going to be so fun! The people are usually super nice here. they will almost always listen to you, even if theyre not interested at all. which is nice. but at the same time can give you a feeling of false hope when they say yes you can come back to teach the next day, but then the next day say theyre too busy to talk. but its still good to have that inicial contact.

  well, i also learned how to break into houses... haha well atleast my house. elder rios and i left one day and forgot the key! so we had to break into our house. it was actually not that hard. all the doors here are metal. its way different. but its way cool. the temperature is HOTTT. and apperently this is the cold season. the only thing here thats cold is the showers! the showers are freazing! everytime i take a shower i have to like psych my self up just to actually get in the water. atleast i take really quick showers here!

  well im out of time. i love you all and hope everything is going well with everyone. hope things will go well for those of ou starting school. the church is true. God loves us all.

love,

Elder Taylor