Look Beyond What You See

3/12/12


Hola familia,

I'm in Colombia! What the heck? And Jess and Ez are in China with twins! I even saw pictures of Kristina and Adam in Europe. What an excellent world. Questions of mom: Shoes: Totally good. Scripture cases. Do not need. Not a big deal.Twice(robbed). Colombia struggles in organization and most girls don't shave their legs but I find the necessary toiletries easily. Vitamins: I still have those you sent me in September, and what do you mean ointments? What a gross word. I'm good on SD cards too. And pictures we can only take on P-days and in activities especially.


P-days are just long lately. All we do is clean from the Elders that slept in our house for whatever reason. But the trainings were good. The problem that we face is that we baptize and baptize and baptize, but the church stays the same size. Not good. But it also made me not worry about how many baptisms I've had. Just to keep working. Honestly i just thought during the training I am not made to sit all day. And we sit so much in the mission! In study. Lessons, planning, lunch, walk and sit, walk and sit. So there we go. 7am til 8:30pm in the church. Two full days. But it was only like that for Elder Cregor and me because it's our capilla that's used to hold these. But after each night we got to close the church and he first night we totally freaked ourselves out. It was like 8:30. And the second night we cleaned and I really liked it. But I was really disappointed in the missionaries. The leaders of the mission hardly even tried to keep the church clean. Made all these little paper messes and left their trash everywhere. But it's easy to be critical so I'll stop. Elder Cregor and I and 1 other missionary, Elder Spencer, cleaned the church. Those 2 are awesome. At the end of the training I was just thinking, gosh I want to be able to help someone! How am I going to help the church to really grow? What can I do? How can I do this? I don't feel like I've helped anyone! And I was filled with desire to help someone and I thought about the companionship with Elder Cregor. And then an awesome conversation started and I helped someone. It was good to clean the church.


I met an hombre menos activo. He's coming back. No family support, but we visited him on his 11th floor of probably the highest point in Barranquilla. Sweet view. And we shared just a mormon.org video of "I want you to know we're having a hard time." with Quentin L. Cook and he got all teared up. It was sweet. Though I may have killed the moment. Oops. we could hardly meet with anyone this week because of the trainings for LZ and LD. But we did meet with Ledi twice. And I asked her. Will you live the law of chastity? (She's a 20 year old joven) and her eyes went all big and she looked around and was like, "Uh, yes" and it was totally awkward. But still came to church. We actually had a bunch of investigators in church. Like 7 with very little time to work. The magic of starting to work with members for ya. But then there is also a danger because they always want to feed you and you lose a lot of time. (Discovered that the hard way. Some situations are just hard to get out of when it comes to food.) Trying to focus on building my comp, I haven't been doing that very well lately, and repenting. Starting to discover what it is, really.

It is really already March?

Love you all tons!
Elder Taylor