#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

#7 UNA SEMANA LOCA

AUGUST 19, 2014

 wow, what a crazy week this has been! i dont even know where to start. we met with Domingo Avila again. he is doing great! its been over a week since he's taken drugs or alcohol! super happy for him. he is such a great man, and he even said he is getting one of his friends to go to the addiction recovery class with him, and is going to try and bring him to our next lesson, so we can teach him! his friend isnt a member. we'll see him again wednesday, so super excited for that!

   last monday, the 11th, which was our p-day, me and preciado got to go out with one of our less actives, in his truck on some of the dirt roads around here. it was intense! at one point, we were going up this super steep hill, with a cliff on our side, and not great traction since its super rocky dirt. it was super sketchy! especially since i absolutely HATE heights! i almost had a panick attack. but luckily we survived.

   Thursday, we had Zone Conference. it was awesome! best zone conference ever! okay true, first zone conf ever.. but it was pretty great! i learned so much and felt so uplifted and motivated to just be better! one thing just cool i learned, is that, Barabbas, the theif that Pilote let go instead of the Savior. well so Barabbas was not only a thief, but also like a freedom fighter. so he fought against the government. so anyways, after he was released, he went and gather together a small army, and came back AGAIN against the government, and actually killed Pilote. how crazy is that? i think thats pretty interesting. and all verifiable in history. oh, also, apperently there has been a big bed bug problem in the mission. so they talked about that and how to detect and to beware of the bed bug.

   Friday was packed. in the morning we helped the sisters move. but thursday night, preciado found a little bug or something in his bed, and so after that whole breifing on bed bugs we had, he was convinced we had bed bugs. so friday morning before helping the sisters we actually took all our stuff out of the appartment into the hot vegas sun to hopefully kill and bugs that might be residing there. so then we helped the sisters. then one of the couple missionaries were here, so we had them come over and tell us if in fact we did have bed bugs. so they came over and.... we are bug free! what a relief. so anyways, now all our stuff was just chilling outside for no good reason. so we decided to make a good reason. so we took this opportunity to do a good cleaning on our whole appt. and wow, ive never been so excited to clean before in my life! we vacuumed everything and rearranged out furniture and it was just awesome. then we pul all our sun treated stuff back in our clean house. and it looks good. so then later that day, we went over to the Navarros. and i cant remember if i said this already, but abuelita, hermana navarros mother, was terminally ill with cancer. and we knew she didnt have long to live. but ofcourse no one knows exactly. but it was apparent it would be very soon. so as we pull up to her house, we see some cars their, and something just feels a little different. so when we go in, we dont see abuelita laying on her bed, like she usualy is. in fact, the bed isnt even there anymore. so we ask sister navarro about it. donde esta abuelita? and she responds that she died. but she said it in such a happy way! it was almost a little weird. but she explained how in abuelitas last moments here on earth, she saw the spirit world, and how there was no sickness there and everyone was young and happy. and how bad she wanted to be there. and so it really was almost a happy moment when she did cross the veil fully. also, that evening while we were visiting, president called. he asked for me. and he told me that me Visa was here!! so i will be leaving to Ecuador this coming monday! i was super happy and excited to hear that news! but also a strange tinge of sadness was present also. i sadness to be leaving all the wonderfull people i have met here. but im excited for all the new wonderfull people ill meet in ecuador!

   Sunday i had to give a talk. it was just a short 5 minute one. but it went really well i think.

   Monday, was abuelitas funneral. it was a wonderful service.  it was super cool, because there were tons of spanish there. and so the whole service, all the talks and prayers and everything, were actually done in spanish... and english! it was crazy. everyone who talked was bilingual, so the would say it in spanish, then right then translate to english, then back to spanish, and so forth, so everyone could understand. so i got to hear every ones talk like twice! it was pretty cool.

   Im gratefull for this opportunity ive had to serve here in Nevada and for all the wonderfull people ive met here aswell. its been a blessing in my life.

i love you all

Elder Taylor

#6 HOW TO "SKINNAFY" A TIE

AUGUST 11, 2014

 Friday, me and Preciado had to go to Vegas for a Train the Trainers Meeting. after the hour drive, we finally get there. alive (so preciado is kind of an awful driver. so being alive after him driving to vegas is almost a miracle in itself!) But we got there and had a meeting and talked about how to improve companionship and by improving that improving our teaching. it was solid. then after we went to eat with two other spanish elders and some sisters. it was cool hanging out with some other spanish elders.

   So i learned how to "skinnafy" a tie. ya i dont know if thats how youd spell that. but seems legit to me. but anyways, thats where you take a super fat tie, and undo it, cut it, then re sow it so now its a skinny tie. hence the name. but its pretty cool. ive gotten some ties for free some of the other elders that are super big and honestly quite ugly. so then i skinnafy it, and now they are actually pretty cool looking! so thats how us missionaries save money on ties.

  The highlight of this week was definitely Wednesday. We stopped by Domingo Avila's again and he was finally there!! But thats not even the best part... he had been sober for 3 days now!! and i know 3 days doesnt sound like a lot... but when youre dealing with drugs and alcohol and some stuff, three days was awesome!!! and he just looked so much better!! like his face seemed brighter and he looked happier and healthier and just better! and he knew it. and he was so happy to see us again! and he told us how thankfull he was we finally got a hold of him, and helped him get that desire and strength to change again! it was amazing. i love Domingo. i just wanted to go up and hug him so bad! but i didnt.. but we are going to be seeing him again next Wednesday. and he told us he is going to start attending the 12 Step Program, which is an addiction recovery program from the church. and he was even like excited to go to that! and he said he wants to start attending church again. and all this stuff. it was just so awesome. please if you can pray for him to continue to have the strength to remain sober and to do those things he needs to do to increase his faith and thereby increase his aptitude to resist the drugs and alcohol!

   Yesterday, we heard Hank Smith give a talk. he is awesome.he is kind of like a john bytheway. super funny and entertaining and uplifting. like the best combo! One analogy he gave was about "water off a ducks back", in relation to families and relationships. so basically dont take offense, just let the insults or whatever (water) roll off you, like how water rolls off a ducks back. so that is good to remember in any relationships we have.

  Well i love you all! hope this finds you well.

Love,

Elder Taylor