23 Marzo 2015

It's hot here. We're at about 100 degrees right now and I am sweating a lot.

Well, everybody but mom, listen to this: There was a manhunt in our area this week. Apparently they found some of Los Zetas in our area and chased them down in helicopters and shot and killed four of them. They passed right by our house. The members afterward told us it was just like a movie, people running in the street, the helicopters with their spotlights, the gunshots, even grenades. The noise was heard out by the other colonia, about a mile and half down the road. And we slept right through it. I even had to get up to use the bathroom that night and my companion was snoring like a bear the whole night long and we never heard anything. We tell people that and they don't believe us because the noise was so loud. They say the windows and doors were banging open and shut and people were screaming in the streets. But i truly believe angels just kinda put their fingers in our ears so that we wouldn't be afraid.

And....Elder Tamo has kidney stones. And his back has started hurting because he had an accident about 3 years ago and he never went to get checked. El pobrecito. But it turns out he lied on his mission papers about his health to come out, so I told him this is probably God's punishment. Or not punishment because God doesn't normally punishment. This is just God not protecting him like he normally would.

WE HAD A BAPTISM! Karen got baptized! and she almost didn't want to get in the water because the boiler wasn't working and so it was cold and it turns out AT THE LAST MINUTE that she's afraid of the water. But oh well. We dunked her, she's in. And she came to church two days later so she was able to get confirmed. Which is actually a sadly low statistic in this area. I would say about half the people that get baptized here never even come back to get confirmed.

And we didn't find Carlos and Rodrigo all week long! BUT THEY CAME TO CHURCH ANYWAYS! So this was our conversation: "Hey! How are you? Yeah, awesome. When do you want to get baptized? Saturday? Okay, even better." So they're going to be baptized this Saturday and I will be one step closer to being the kind of missionary that baptizes every week. What's more important is that I'm seeing that these people won't just be baptized, but that they will actually become active members. I'm very excited.

And then there's Irma...she's still inviting us to come to eat and she's still reading the Book of Mormon every day, but today we took the baptismal record to her to fill it out and when we asked her how she felt about Saturday, she just started laughing nervously. She's so ready and so willing to learn and progress, but there's something that's missing. And we only have this week to figure it out because I think I'm leaving after this week. But even if she doesn't get baptized this saturday, I have faith that someday she will. 

And we started teaching two sisters. They're teenagers and the whole time the first lesson they were on their phones. But they accepted the invitation bautismal and afterward the younger one prayed which is rather unusual that an investigator volunteers to pray in the first lesson. But then on sunday we went to a member's house and the son saw us and whipped out his cell phone to show us something. He pressed play on a sound file and I heard my companion's voice coming out of the phone. Turns out the older sister and this kid were boyfriend and girlfriend once upon a time and that she was recording the whole time we were in her house.

But yeah. I'm happy, I'm working. And some of my best friends from the mission are going home this week. But that's okay. I know they're going to a better place to rest from their labors.

Okay, I'll leave off here to send you guys fotos.

Elder Taylor

Baptism

Xochipilli

más de xochipilli, un parque grande en monclova

más de xochipilli, un parque grande en monclova

16 MarTHo 2015

MarTHo because that's how Elder Tamo pronounces it. Z is TH in Bolivian Spanish. Actually, it's interesting. He says that we don't even speak Spanish here. It's Castellano (pronounced CastalYAno) according to him.

CARLOS WASN'T BAPTIZED THIS WEEK! We still don't even really know what's going on, my companion is saying "come on, let's just fill up the tank and get it over with," the bishop is mad because we don't really know what's going on, Carlos might be getting fed up because he hasn't been baptized yet but THEY'RE NOT ANSWERING THE PHONE AND THEY'RE NEVER AT HOME! AAAAAAH! So basically we're doing everything we can, but.........yeah. So we're looking at this week.

And the baptism of Karen Sanchez this week as well. This is going to be weird because she doesn't want anyone else to be there, just the bare necessities (the bishop, the witnesses, the baptizer, etc.).

And the baptism of Irma I think next week. We're going to it happen. She is just as excited as ever.

But this week has been hectic.

I read a conference talk (conference is coming!) this week by Elder Cook. In it he recommends a book "Life and Works of St. Paul" by Frederic W. Farmer. It sounds interesting. Just thought maybe mom would like to read it or mention it to Book Group or something.

I think it was on Tuesday, Elder Tamo asked me to give him a massage and i told him that I give horrible massages but he said it was okay, that I could give it to him right before going to bed. So then we got ready for bed, we said our companion prayer and I stayed knelt down for a little longer saying my personal prayer. When I came back up, there was ELder Tamo shirtless with his massage cream stuff. And I thought "Oh. I didn't sign up for this." But then I did it. It was weird, I never want to do anything like that again and my hands smelt like the cream afterward. Yuck. Weird companion story.

And we went to Xochipilli today! It's a park in Monclova and it's really pretty. I'll try to send pictures, but it's basically Albertson's park just with fiberglass copies of Maya/Aztec/Olmec sculptures. So it's pretty cool.

And I don't have anything else to say. That's basically the whole week. Weather's been nice. Sorry it's not a lot this time!

Que les vaya muy bien!

Elder Taylor

9 Marzo 2015

I wish I could say this week was better.

Well, nothing much has changed in the investigators. Irma and Hector are still super excited. Today they called us to ask us if we wanted fish when we came to eat with them. By the way, it was delicious. Majarra del rio i think it was called. Carlos this week told us he wants to be baptized, he just doesn't know who Joseph smith is. So we're going to have to work on that. And karen says she's received her responses from God, she's just not sure if she's going forward with this for herself or for social pressure. And we asked her if she wanted to change the date of her baptism, and she said no, the 21 is fine. And like i said, i was hoping to find Oscar, but we never saw him again. These people are hard to just plain find at home. They suddenly get a new job or they suddenly change the turn (the whole city judges time in primero, segundo or tercero, the turns at the factory) and we never see them again. Or they suddenly get divorced or move without telling us or sometimes without even knowing it themselves beforehand.

Really there's nothing to report from this week. Besides with the investigators, nothing special really happened.

Well, my companion. Like i said last week, my companion is something else. I think I'm going to have a whole ton of stories to tell about him after the mission, and unfortunately I can't tell you guys everything now for reasons of confidentiality and international safety. But i can tell you he's had a colorful life.

He was in the army and basically lived the hunger games in the Amazon, he comes from Brazil, speaks fluent Spanish (but he often doesn't understand the members, I actually understand them more than he does because of difference of cultural clues, vocab and accent), he's a convert from 3 years ago, has some STRANGE STRANGE ideas about the world and sometimes about the gospel and can talk for HOURS on end about his life or AWFUL AWFUL advice about life to anything that will sit still long enough to listen. We were sitting with an investigator Jorge Ramos and listening to Elder Tamo about his life when suddenly Jorge said, “I like how Elder Taylor talks better. He's more spiritual. He makes me think and feel differently." And Elder Tamo just deflated. It was something I'd been telling him, that here in the mission we should listen more than we talk and we should talk about the other people as much as possible. It was just sort of self-gratifying to my humble pride to hear it from the mouth of the investigator.

He also told me about all the rumors he's heard about me. Apparently nothing really bad, only that apparently i don't "enjoy" my mission, which apparently means I actually go out to work on monday night instead of watching disney movies. 

But yeah. In a year and a half, ask me about Elder Tamo from Bolivia.

Just pray for me, guys.

One thing spiritual this week: I really noticed this week, I do have a strong testimony about all of this. I know in my heart and in my mind that Christ is real and the Atonement is real, that God loves us and that we can truly come back to live with him once more. Through our obedience to his laws, we become the people that he wants us to be. We are cleansed from sin at the moment of baptism, but that does not mean we are perfect. We still have faults, we still have temptations. Only through a lifetime of increasingly stricter obedience and a constant effort to be perfect will we be able to be the people that we need to be to be able to return to God's presence. And not only obeying, but learning from the obedience the attributes that we're going to need to live in the celestial kingdom.

Well, that's it.

Elder Taylor

2 Marzo 2015

AAAAAAAHHHH!

The lesson i learned this week: never EVER pray for ANYTHING!

Here's why: recently i had been praying that God help me have more faith, because I felt like I wasn't progressing as much as before. Well, on Tuesday the assistants called us to tell us that my companion was going to be changed to Saltillo for his health and that I wasn't going to have a companion for 4 weeks, that I would need to be at the mercy of members and the elders from the other half of the ward to be able to work in my area. Well, that was a daunting idea, knowing how much these members are always busy. Then my companion left on Thursday and I moved all my stuff to the other house and I went and did divisions with another struggling companionship in my district Friday. So then I got back to the house of the other elders at about 9:20 at night on friday. There was no electricity and so we planned in the dark. Turns out these elders have certain problems as well. In my basically daily rant session at the zone leaders, they told me they assigned me to these two companionships because they felt like i would be able to help them. Then on Saturday, the assistants called me to tell me that they had to do emergency changes and that I would receive my new companion. They told me who it was. I was very tempted to say "no thank you, i'll stick with these problems that the zone leaders say I can handle, but thanks all the same." I'll tell about him a little later. So then on sunday, almost nobody came to church, which was hard but really kinda understandable as it was super cold, but anyways we're going to have to stop visiting a few investigators because they haven't been coming. We went to go eat after church and after leaving, i noticed i didn't have my wallet. I think it fell when I was getting off the bus. So then I had to go figure out what to do about that, walked all over the ward (which is huge), still call to collect and report the data from the week, pick up the phone charger from the house of the other elders, and go to the house of a member to be able to charge it. The hermana there got really worried about my wallet and hopped in the truck and drove us and her son (my companion for the day) to the local radio station where they got the guy to announce the information on the air. then the other elders showed up and we went home. And then I realized I hadn't asked anyone to help me move back to the other house. So then the next morning (today) i called the (inactive) assistant to the ward mission leader and he said he could help at 10. so I packed until suddenly he showed up at 9:30 saying he had to go. So we crammed everything in the van as it was and got here. And then we had to figure out how to get to the bus station to pick up my new companion because I didn't have any money and the other elders had already spent everything they had, and so We called and called and everybody was busy or didn't have a car until we called Brenda Peña who is awesome and she came and picked us up and drove us to the bus station. And then I met my companion. He's Elder Tamo from Bolivia, he's ex-soldier, hasn't seen his family in 8 years, joined the church in Sao Paulo while he was studying, wanted to marry the stake president's daughter but couldn't because her father said he had to be a returned missionary to marry her, is 24 years old, and very, very bipolar. And has a broken nose. When they assigned him to me, they told me the same as him.  Well, shoot. I've gotta do something stupid. Stupid enough to get me out of being district leader but not stupid enough to get me sent home. Maybe then the Lord will stop sending me these things. All because I prayed to have more faith. Hence, the lesson, never ever EVER pray for anything.

With love, Elder Taylor

By the way, Carlos says he got his answer in a dream. Well, sweet. He's getting baptized the 14 and we're going to make sure his son does too. And his wife if they can't find her records.

Irma and Hector are struggling right now, but she is super determined. Unfortunately, they didn't come to church yesterday, so I don't know what's going on. But they have a date for the 21 of this month.

Karen wants to be sure that she's doing this for herself and not because of her husband. She has a date for the 21.

And we found Oscar this week. We were going to the house of a less-active member and I suddenly felt like it wasn't right. So we started knocking doors. And we got to the end of the street and out came Oscar. He's 25 and his marriage is failing. He wants to get closer to God to help him with his situation. I hope we can find him again. That's the problem with these people. You don't see them for two days and suddenly they're gone. They've moved, they don't want anything anymore, their work schedule changed but it'll change back again next week, the grandma moved in and she wants nothing to do with the church, etc. Yeah.

Elder Taylor

23 Febrero 2015

I have a ton to talk about:

First: I'm staying here in Aeropuerto 1 in Monclova, my companion is here as well, but I am now District Leader. Hermana Vicky made us chiles rellenos because we told her I was leaving. So then when I stayed, she told me to give her back the chiles.

Interesting thing that happened this week: I gave my first baptismal interview. Her name is Maria Lina and she was baptized in the Guadalupe Ward on Saturday. This is the interesting part: I helped find her. One time elder Muñoz and I were walking on our way to the Ciber to write, we saw that the door was open to the house of a referral but that the car wasn't there. We both felt like we should go and contact the referral even though we knew he probably wasn't there. So then we went and knocked and she came out but was locked inside the house and so couldn't let us in (she's the referral's mom). So we took her address down and passed it to the Elderes of Guadalupe. And then we never heard anything again. Until Friday when we went to the interview. She recognized me and I recognized her. Something about having already met her made me feel a whole lot better (I was pretty nervous) and so we did the interview without a problem. Apparently several people had given her name as a referral and several sets of missionaries had found her and passed her address. God does respect our agency but he can be awfully persistent. So that was cool.

My companion is dying. Apparently he had some form of asthma when he was younger but after some rigorous treatments it cleared up and he hasn't had a problem since. But on thursday we were in the house of the Moreno Cantu family just talking about how Carlos wouldn't need a big sign to realize that the book of mormon is true, he just has to feel it, when my companion suddenly when palish yellow. He says he felt like he was literally about to die, as if his spirit was already about to leave his body. All his air suddenly escaped him and he started sweating. He asked me for a blessing right then and I gave it to him. When I took my hands of his head, his color returned and he said he felt totally fine. But we decided it was best to go to the doctor. So Carlos and Ericka took us. The doctors detected what they think might be basically symptoms of dying, and they say it's probably from the heat (we've been at almost 90 degrees all week), the dust and the contamination from the factories, the change in altitude from Oaxaca (his home), basically everything. The Mission president is in council right now to see if they're going to send him to a different mission, to a different area, if they're just going to leave him here...But yeah. Basically we don't know what's going on and with several trips to the hospital, getting back at 12 at night, getting up at 6:30 in the morning (my companion no, I told him not to get up before 8), the new assignment as district leader and preparing everything for that, all the investigators, all the less active members that we're worrying about, and this weird new habit that i've developed where when I wake up at night I instantly start thinking about the investigators and can't go back to sleep, I haven't slept very well in a long time. I'm exhausted. But happy.

AND IT'S STINKING HOT! It's hot in the shade, the wind is hot, the sun is hot, the streets are hot, everything's hot and dry. And I'm always thirsty.

AURORA CAME TO CHURCH! And the roof of the church didn't fall in! She was worried about that. she's the grandma of the little girl that we threw a little birthday part for. "birthday party" here meaning we arrived with a cake made by a member, we talked, we gave a lesson to the mom and granma and left. But I met Aurora my first or second week here in Aeropuerto and she FINALLY came to church. And of course everyone was super happy to see her.

We are figuring out what to do about Carlos's baptismal date. He's already been to church 6 times but it's so hard to find them in the week to teach him that we still have to finish lesson 3, do all of lesson 4 and 5 before he can be baptized. But he finally admitted that he probably had already received his answer and that he wasn't going to wait for a neon sign from god anymore (and then the thing happened with my companion. I was talking to Elder vasquez about how maybe that was the sign that Carlos needed and he said that it probably was but he didn't understand why it had to happen to him.) But we had put the date for the 28 of this month, but then later we didn't check before asking him how he felt about his baptismal date and he said "the 24th? I feel great, I think its possible" and my companion and I just said "...uh...Great!" but we don't know if he meant 24th of February or March...so anyways we're going to say the 14th of March. Pray that he can be ready by then, please! And also pray that we can find a way to teach Rodrigo so he can be baptized the same day and pray that we can find the registros of the sister Ericka or that they can be definitively and positively lost, because right now we're in limbo about that and we don't know if she needs to be rebaptized or not...And we would really like to know that before baptizing Carlos.

Irma and Hector didn't come this week because they were in Torreon, but we're going to visit them at the flower shop right now. we set a date for them the 21 of March.

And we found a great new family, Miguel and Alejandra Palacios Martinez with two little sons. They were investigators from other missionaries but just barely moved into our area. They both have aunts that are LDS. We asked them what they understood or knew about everything that we teach. "We know something about how some guy named Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus and restored the church of Christ and how the church is led by a prophet of God today and how prophets are necessary and how we have to be baptized and something about castles. What was that thing about castles, honey?" "Temples?" "oh yeah, temples. And i've already prayed to know if it's all true and it is because I feel like it is. I feel like God told me." And thus they destroyed our lesson plan.  But that's cool, she's already been twice in the other ward and he went once but had been going as a kid with his aunt and so we technically don't have to wait five times before baptizing him, we just need him to come a few times more and for her to complete five times.

And Claudia, Alma and Emily gave us dinner this week and said they are excited to come to church. Unfortunately they didn't come...So we have to see what's going on with that.

woof. That's a lot. And there's more to tell but I don't have time.

Que les vaya muy muy bien!