Week 13:

Primeramente: mi compa. Oh boy, this is going to be a fun probably 2 transfers. Elder Carpio from the DF, (Distrito Federal). Total city slicker. Always has his hair perfectly set and slicked back, always wears his shirt with the sleeves just so...oh he{s fun to watch. We get along just fine. HE{s a lot more efficiency-minded than Elder Alcalá was, which is nice. He was a cocinero antes de venir en la misión, which was awesome one day when the hermana que iba a alimentarnos ya no pudo. Me hizo una espagueti bien rica. Lo chistoso: es algo perféccionista en cuestión de la comida. I{d made a pasta less than a week earlier and one day we were getting ready to eat some leftovers. He pulled it out and sniffed it, paused and then in total sinceridad: "Ésto ya no sirve." I reassured him it was fine, I{d been eating from it, it was less than a week old, there was nothing in there that would spoil in that time. Then I had to excuse myself to die laughing silently in the other room. He{s really kinda socially awkward in this state of country bumpkins and cowboys. I{ve met other people from the DF and they{re all kinda of the same demeanour in this regard. Very polite and never raise the voice over a certain level. But maybe it{s just been the few that i{ve met. Well, all of them minus Hermana Angelina, but she{s a whole other story. ANyway, at times I have to explain things to him. Like when the people were telling him that the house for rent we were looking for was on the other side of the boulevard outside of our area and he was just about ready to hop in the car with the señor, i had to basically pull him back out and tell him the house was on the other side and si fuéramos a ir, tendríamos que pedir permiso a nuestro líder del distrito. He got really confused until the señor explained for the fourth time at least that the house was indeed on the other side of the boulevard. I have to repeat myself about 3 times when talking about the investigators to him before he understands who I{m talking about, even when I use names. Whatever, he{s acclimating....after 18 months here...It{s fun.

Investigadores: Los Alvarez Lopez are all queued up to be baptized in 2 weeks! a whole family of 5, and we just barely started teaching them but they{ve come two weeks in a row and are super excited. Little issue: Carlos no puede respirar ni moverse él mismo. Entonces, podría ser un desafío de bautizarse, pero vamos a invitar al Presidente a que vaya con nosotros a una lección con ellos para ver y analizar la situación. 

Norma and Marta: two different investigators that we started teaching (reteaching for Norma) the same day. Two very different personalities. But such a spirit con las dos. With Norma, we had such a spiritual lesson. It was one of those times I opened my mouth and thought what the heck am I saying and why am I saying this to her. But the Spirit was so strong and she felt it and wants to know a whole lot more. WIth Marta it{s different. She always teases me about my falta en el idioma and so I search for new words with which to impress her. ("Ya mengua la hora." She was very impressed.) This is our game plan for her: 5 to 10 minute lesson, 15 to 30 minute question and answer session. She{s very, very opinionated and has tons of questions about God and the world, but so far EVERY SINGLE OPINION has been 100% in line with what the church teaches and believes and EVERY SINGLE QUESTION has a direct answer in the Book of Mormon.  So yeah. Definitivamente escogida.

This is something that gets me: Los Alvarez Lopez, Los Córdoba Moreno, Los Mendoza Peña. Two times, once, and not at all have come to the church. But they already want to join it. Hermana Juani Moreno told us she already considers this iglesia suya.  Why? Why on earth would anybody be crazy enough to do that? And then I remember: because this gospel changes lives. I haven{t seen my own investigators baptized, but I{ve seen enormous changes in their lives. Now this is what worries me and comforts me at the same time: my patriarchal blessing says that many people will not accept this gospel in the time that I{m there with them, but will much later after i{ve gone. As a selfish missionary, I{m saddened that any one of these will not be baptized while I{m here to see it. But as a representative of Jesus Christ, I{m happy because I know that at least some of them will eventually accept it and enjoy these blessings.

This week has been an interesting one of contacts. Actually, just one day. Two days ago, we had three contacts bien raros. One, the hermano hailed me in an area where we{re not allowed to proselyte nor contact. "Hey, I want to talk to he!" So we went over and talked in English. He{s believed in God earlier and when he sees chavos like us he wants to return to his former faith. He told us to call him 20 minutes before we come especially on Sunday Morning so he can make us breakfast. Too bad he lives out of our area. Some other missionary will enjoy it. Then we met a man on a corner and asked him how he was doing. He told us frankly, bad. He was struggling with alcoholism. Then he told us to take down his address and pass by and help him. Okay, we can do that. Then we met a lady who told us that we were worshiping the wrong guy because Jesús means something different in Hebrew than Yeshuva. She{s right, if we were speaking Hebrew or Aramaic, then the sounds Hay-soos would mean something than the sounds Yeh-shoo-vah. Fortunately for us, it doesn{t matter what language we{re speaking, we can call him the name that corresponds to that language. Anyway, my companion argued with her for about 10 minutes in the calle while I let my mind wander...I probably should have supported him more. But then it was awkward because we ran into her 2 more times that night.

Language progress: I watched the video of the First Vision in Portuguese yesterday. I understood quite a bit. I{d heard before that Portuguese is just español borracho. Yep, that{s exactly what it sounds like.

Also, the more I{m here in México, the more I forget English and the more my Latin from what, 6 years ago?, comes back to me. Weird. A quick dictionary of Coahuilense Spanish: aguas-cuidado. combi-bus. vulka (yes, with K)- mechanic. refri-fridge. alaska-freezer (I{ve only heard that one once). fresa-rich and always ends with A. (Está bien fresa, hermano.) andar-to be. (ando enfermo- I{m sick.) No Manches! (o sea, No manche para nosotros misioneros)-no joking! marcar-call on the phone. Also, everything{s said as though with sarcasm and when asking a question or a favor, it{s said as though with English (de inglaterra) inflection, starting the sentence high and dropping on the last syllable. And everything, EVERYTHING ends in -ita, -illa, or -ote. Qué tal el calorcito? Tiene un ratillo? Progreso poco a poquitillote en el idioma.

Scripture: read Helaman 16:17-21 this week. Wow, how similar things are now as far as attitudes towards religion. Joseph Smith couldn{t have expressed it better if he{d written the book.

Con mucho amor, Elder Taylor

Week 12

Well, it's already that time of the year. Cambios time. Me quedo aquí en Aurora 2, pero mi compañero se va a Zaragoza en el Norte. Mi nuevo compañero se llama Elder Carpio y es de Pachuca. Supuestamente también habla Inglés. Que Bendición! No lo aun a conocido a él. De todos modos, me quedo con mis investigadores.

I baptized this week and I would send pictures but I can't upload them. Her name is Istela Martinez Martinez. I didn't know her before and I probably will only see her a few more times in the future, pero ahí va. I baptized her in water that was a little more than knee deep, so we were kneeling which made it awkward for her to lean backward so there was a lot of awkward slipping and splashing around and we had to do it twice because her dress didn{t go completely under. But I must have done something right because she said she felt clean and pure and with more ganas de seguir adelante. So i'm not complaining. People kept asking me if i was excited and I didn{t know how to answer them. Yeah, it was kind of exciting to be part of that and of course I was excited for her, but it didn't really have the same import that i think everyone was expecting it to have for me. I didn{t know her. I love her as a child of god, but I don{t really have that same love that I have for Los Córdoba or Los Mendoza Peña. Or los Alvarez, whom i{m about to tell you about. I'm still praying really hard to help bring these people to Baptism and they want to so badly, and as much as I appreciated Hermana Martinez, I don't care who does the ordinance: I want to see my investigators in the water.

The investigators: The Cordoba family have missed 3 weekends in a row now. They're getting super frustrated with themselves, which is good and bad. The same with the Mendoza Peña family. But the Alvarez family came! María Angelina and her three children, her husband, her sister and her son. It was awesome! I never found out if the family was a reference or a contact or waht, Elder Alcalá never told me, but we met them and entered there home. Carlos, the son, can´t breathe on his own and can´t leave his bed for other deformities. The family is kind of centered around his needs. They've been searching for a church but hadn't been able to find one that they liked. Well now they have! A ver que les pareció la iglesia. Vamos a verlos esta noche. They've just been a fount of new investigators too because every time we pass, there's a new aunt or the grandma or someone new that's looking for a new church. This whole family is just so ready to accept it and they could ALL be baptized in a month. That's about 20 new members to the stake. And they just come to church and don't have any struggle to do it. How WONDERFUL!

Something I've learned about myself: I'm too individualistic. I don't like accepting help from other people and I don't like asking for it. I also have a hard time relating to people my own age, especially with a language barrier. Not that I'm a total recluse or refuse help, it just hurts me a little inside. This can be a good thing at times, but in a team effort thing like missionary work....no tanto.

Something interesting: the Coahuilense version of the Canadiense "eh?" es something parecida a "vdah?" It's a really slurred version of "Verdad?" but is used a whole lot more often than we use "right?" Also, there´s a difference. When people actually want a response, they say "Verdad?" when they´re just saying it, it's more like "Vdah?" one syllable with all the sounds smooshed together. Yep.

I made the crisp! it actually turned out alright. not exactly crisp, but it tasted good and felt good. So i'm counting it as a success.

One thing that I forgot to write about a while ago: I was wondering if I was actually doing anything here in Saltillo. Mejor dicho, i was wondering if Peter Taylor was making a difference or if I was just doing what any other elder tom, elder dick or elder harry could be doing. I got my answer fromt he Grandmother of the girl that was kidnapped. She told me what her daughter, the mom of the girl, had said. That she would never forget the prayer I offered over the food, how it brought such comfort into her heart and into that terrible time of her life.

I've seen evil things here. Correction: i've seen the results of evil things here. I entered a house where, just minutes before, the active member had beat his wife and broken every door in the house. I saw a family whose daughter had just been kidnapped. I've seen families split by drugs. Many other things as well, and all in the little time that i've been here. My patriarchal blessing says that I will see much evil in the world but as long as my testimony is strong, my family will not be touched. Well, so far that's been true. How grateful I am to have this testimony.

One last thing: what's Mrs Castro's complete name? It's longer than most latino names, vdah?

Que Dios les bendiga!

-Elder Taylor

week 5 of this transfer...so 11 of mexico

Hola todos!

I don´t know if you´ve sent a package yet or if you´re going to, but I have a request for one more thing: could I have an english dictionary? the problem with just having spanish-english and not a just english is that often I don´t know what the English word means and so the spanish-english does not help diddly squat.

Mom, I think you would really love one of the resources we have as missionarys. It´s called Adjusting to Missionary Life and it´s a pamphlet/book thing. It just has a ton of really good advice about adjusting to life in general and sometimes I read it and I think Oh Mom told me about that or sometimes I´ll bet mom would like to try that. So yeah. The Boise Mission or the Nampa mission probably have it and would probably give it to you if you asked for it.

In Alma 34:11-12 I ran into something that me llamó la atención. It´s a question, but behind it is another implied question, something that I´d run into in The Brothers Karamazov. "How can the suffering of one man, even a perfect one, pay for the sins and sufferings of any other person?" And then Amelek offers an answer. And there´s an answer in Alma 7 también. 

Also, I read Alma 24:19. Me hizo pensar: ¿en qué manera podemos nosotros enterrar nuestros armas de guerra? I took this around with me for a scripture thought and nos encontramos en la casa de una miembra menos-activa. La puse la pregunta. Empezó a llorar, diciendo que ella tenía mucho rencor y odio para familiares. Nos salió una bonita lección. Y iba a asistir a la conferencia, mas no fue. Ni modo, la vemos hoy día.

We started teaching Tevye. De veras, this guy acts, talks and even looks like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. To make it even better, he has a wife who sounds, talks and even looks like Golda and he has three daughters, one of whom we´d been teaching earlier but hadn´t seen for a couple weeks.

We watched Conference in the Church, the english speakers who didn´t have investigators with them in one room and all the members and investigators in the chapel. I LOVED how they could finally speak in their native language. It´s something, like mom just mentioned to me, I´d been hoping for for a long time and had commented to at least mom, maybe more people. But something funny happened. I recognized the late Greg Marsh and so did another missionary. He´s in her ward at home. Small world, this mormon thing is.

Quotes from the week: after a lesson about the law of chastity, man looks at his wife and says, "Bueno, Casémonos! Vamos a tenernos una boda!" later, after a lesson about follow the Prophet, the wife looks at us and says "El profeta habla con Dios cara a cara? Yo quiero ser profeta!" OH they´re beautiful. But they couldn´t make it to the Conference...

We haven´t seen the Cordoba family for a few days. THey suddenly disappeared. We know they´ve been at home but they´ve been arriving too late for us to knock.

Powerful spiritual moments from this week: during one of the prayers on Saturday, the prayerer said something about blessing the families of the missionaries. In an instant, I knew that mom´s heart had been touched by that and that everybody was just fine.

ALso, one night we were waiting outside the house of Los Córdoba and a woman passed us with her two kids. We said "Buenas noches!" and she kept walking, but something pulled both me and my temporary compañero Elder Monterosso to her. We chased her down and asked her her name, and suddenly I felt that I needed to ask her a certain question: "Está pasando por algo difícil ahora?" she nodded and said she was. Then I told her that our message wou7ld help her in her life and help her find the strength and courage to overcome lo que fuera. It was the most powerfully felt contact I´d ever made. 

Well, that´s it for this week. Vai!

-Elder Taylor

Week X

Sorry this letter is late and short. We had an incident earlier today which made us really late and we almost didn´t get a chance to write.

News of investigators this week. The Cordoba family didn´t come to church this Sunday, but we´re a penas de visitarlos ahorita. We started teaching another family, the Mendoza Peña, y están bien dispuestos para recibir todo! Siento como aarón en el Libro de Mormón cuando está enseñando al rey de los lamanitas. Ellos aceptan todo. The challenge with them is it´s too easy. We can´t be sure if they´re just accepting it or if it´s actually touching them, but they say they´ve seen changes in their vidas and that they feel it in their hearts, not just in the head. So...okay ;) Son bien buenos. No asistieron este domingo porque the hermana was shopping for a falda to wear and las combis tardaron.

Also, we started teaching an old man named Francisco who is parecidito a abuelo Taylor. Will you be baptized? Big grin and hands up in the air. COMO NO! And an old investigadora came to church! which was a surprise. NOt that we weren´t hoping, it´s that she hadn´t committed to do it.

This week has been the fastest and happiest so far. This has been the difference: When we commit someone to do something, we also commit to do it. We have the spirit suddenly bien fuerte en la casa en la noche y durante el día. It´s because we´re experiencing the same conversion the investigators and members are. 

I bought the family´s christmas present! Lots of galletas.

Una hermana nos dio una yerba para té, y pienso que se llamaba yerba missa, pero no estoy seguro de eso. Algo parecido. De todo modo sabe entre menta y anis. Está bien rica.

I taught ELder Alcalá how to make crepas esta mañana. Can peach crisp be made on the stove top?

Things i´ve been noticing in the Book of Mormon. ALmost always when Padre Eterno is said, it´s refering to Jesucristo. Interesante. I think it´s probably because there´s a different word for Eternal Cosmological Creator of Heaven and Earth than there is for Father. BUt that´s just what I think.

Also, one thing I´ve been wondering about. I´ve heard people in the church talk about how as Europeans, we´re literal descendents of Ephraim. I´ve doubted this. I´ve been searching for scriptural support of one side or the other. I´ve only run across one scripture that hints that Joseph SMith was literal descendant, but by all the others I´ve found, it seems that we´re adopted, in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I have yet to check the DOctrine and COvenants. The Book of Mormon talks about three different peoples generally: The Israelites, the Remnant of Israel, and the Gentiles. It´s pretty darn clear and succinct in dividing the groups. ALso, algo interesante is the promises to the Lamanites, a lot of them haven’t been fulfilled yet. 

Êsto es todo. Bye!

Elder taylor

Week no me acuerdo...nueve?

Back to english keyboard...a ver como me vaya...

Hola todos familiares!

I thought more about the question of what I wanted for Christmas, and I hope you all haven´t already sent it, because now I have a list. :) I would really kind of like some Peanut Butter, if it´s possible. Not the kind that needs to be refrigerated, but PB is stupid expensive here and I find myself craving it a lot. Also, could I have a hand towel and a rag? The ones from the CTR clothing smell really bad after getting wet and hand towels and rags here are also pretty darn expensive. I don´t need a body towel though. Another elder bought me one from a yard sale because he needed one too. Also, could I have a photo of the family? One that´s not too serious. And can I also have a small, desk-sized version of the painting O Jerusalem? I really love that one.

Stories: I walked up to a man on the street and told him Buscamos a personas que se quieran cambiar la vida. Es usted? He laughed and said that yes but he didn´t have time. So we took his address and will go and visit him sometime.

New favorite Agua: de Limon y Pepino. It´s really easy to make; it´s just Tang sabor a limon with cucumber blended in. Oh it was glorious.

Supposedly the Angel Moroni on the Mexico Temple is different. Supposedly he´s dressed as a Maya or Aztec and is holding plates. Dizque. I can´t check. Also, the Temple se diseñó para que se parezca azteca. Que interesante.

The Cordobas came to church! Yay!

My companion had problems with his panzita this week, so we went to the doctor. And the doctor said that he has a gastric problem that is genetic called Intestino perezoso and he can´t eat white flour or anything fatty or greasy for a month. That basically rules out all mexican food ever. And it really sucked because I had already mixed up the stuff for crepes for Sunday. So on Sunday, I made myself a whole bunch of crepes and ate them (He wasn´t in the room; I´m not that rude). Crepes with peaches and peach yogurt and peach syrup on top with cajeta that Hermana Cordoba gave us. I thought I would die from yummyness.

We had a great companionship inventory last night and I think we´re going to be a whole lot better off because of it. It´s funny, he wants to be an administrator but has about zero administration skills such as doing things in a timely manner or thinking ahead. I want to be a teacher and I have about zero teaching skills right now, such as speaking the language. Just kidding, we´re not such polar opposites nor absolutes. It´s just funny. Broma.

Interesting thing from scripture study: I found in 1 corintios evidence that Christ’s early church had a centralized welfare system, much like ours. Hm, figure that.

Some things I’ve learned about faith, because I feel like God is teaching me a whole lot about that right now: Faith is doing the seemingly stupid thing because God commands it or it´s just the right thing to do. It is bravery when it´s hard and persistence when it´s easy. It is believing you can still accomplish something even when you don´t the first or second or even hundredth time. Faith is hope and hope is positivity. At times faith is desperation because you have nothing else. But usually, faith is tranquility in the face of doing hard things including simply living and smiling because we know God will help us. But most importantly, faith is action. If God tells us to move the mountain because by faith we can move it, we take our shovel and start digging, hoping that at some point and in some way God will provide and make it possible. Not easy, just possible.

But that´s what I´ve learned.

Espero que Dios les bendiga a todos! Tengan una buena semana!

-Elder Taylor