Di Todo

5/30/11


Hola Flia, how in the shmeck are ya?

So.... a lot of things happened this week. and I feel so good about them.

first I want to describe what happened two weeks ago.

we had a zone meeting with all the missionaries. We were in the chapel of my church and the benches, (you can move them here) were in a semicircle. One missionary from utah, (there are three of us gringos in my zone) he changed into gym clothes and no one knew quite why. The ZL makes him go into the middle and starts offering us milky ways. Some people took them and some didn´t. Every time regardless if we took the candy or not elder larson had to do however many pushups. No one knew what was going on. but he just kept doing pushups. and kept doing them. and we could do nothing about it. and it was torture.

Obviously I`m thinking this is some sick mind game, and I`m supposed to act. but I didn´t. but when it was my turn to take the candy I stood up and grabbed it from the hand of elder Porter, the ZL and threw it away myself, (thinking it was a sin, turns out it was representative of Eternal Life...oops) then I kneeled next to elder Larson and encouraged while he did the 4 pushups for me. (he had done at least 100 or more by this point and was drenched in sweat and his body was shaking) then I stood up and left him alone again. Only me and his comp did something trying to help him.

After everybody had either accepted or rejected eternal life (the milky way, dang, I had it and threw it away...) and he had done over some high number of push ups, elder Porter explained the comparison. and watching someone struggle and sweat and suffer for you like that, even in only pushups has an effect. it was nuts.

but I didn´t realize how much it affected me until later when I shared my testimony reading Luke 22 40ish to 44 ish and reading about the angel and thinking of this experience, to a member who we ate lunch with. the Atonement is real.

Then last week, we had a conference with Elder Nash. He is one of the seventy pictured in the magazine even! qué chévere! He spoke in spanish but i could understand his spanish, it is the flippin native speakers, anyway he told how his son returned and said to him, di todo, which means, I gave it all. that is what I want to say. I gave it all. and after that when we went to thank him he said to me, in English, "You could understand?" ya, pretty much all of it, and he said, "I want you to know your family is proud of you. You are doing what you are supposed to be doing. You bring a good spirit with you. Thank you for being here. You are going to be a great missionary."

He looked right into my eyes as he said this. He reminded me of my strength, of the way I handle problems, of what I want for myself. and with God I can really do it. for me, he basically told me that I don´t need to fear. General Authorities are decently trustworthy and when they tell you are you good, and you have potential it sort of means a lot. He answered so many prayers.

And you know what happened this week, when I was myself and had fun? We had 9 investigators at church. That`s a lot and that`s not even all of our solid ones. so sweet. We have three weeks left in this cambio so who ever is in this area next is going to have a lot of baptisms ready.

Oh this feels so good. I have not yet found the adress or how to send letters. Though I have written some. And I always feel safe, I`m 6` 8``, amongst not 6`8`` people, unless a bird attacks, which happened to my comp yesterday. so funny.

And rain, after 15 minutes of rain a river downs my street. nuts. you wouldn´t believe.

I`m really beginning to love it and the language comes... so slowly. but I open my mouth regardless.

I decided I`d much rather burn in infierno, (guess what that means), for an act of comission than omission.

love you all,

Elder Taylor

Speaking Spanish

5/24/11


Familia!

I hope everybody is loving life. I am doing wonderfully, having recently returned from the costco of colombia and having acquired over 6 pounds of cereal.

I need all the help I can get in this language. I understand a lot, but still speak way slow. and a lot of the times I can pick out the words now but I can´t translate them fast enough or don´t have the vocab yet to understand fully. It is distressing man. but hey. Deny not the gifts of God and the don de lenguas is real! and it will come. This whole thing is really requiring me to humble myself to the dust.

And this is ironic because in the last week I have found at least 6 people who speak English really well randomly in my area. One girl works for greyhound bus lines as an operator and her vocabulary is very colorful.

I also received an invitation to Audrey´s wedding. We were practicing in the church for our missionary choir and the zone leader elder porter gave it to me and everyone was loving the ´´dear john´´ as i hopelessly tried to explain that was not the case and failed in English and in Spanish. So there you go. First girl to write me off. We´ll have to keep a tally.

I want to conquer man! I want to lose myself. these last two months i did what was required, but really nothing more. and that is messed up. I am here to leave it all out on the floor, and if I totally forget myself in the process all the better. When all is said and done, I want to be able to say for the rest of my life, I am who i am because of my mission. I really was ´´handcrafted in colombia.´´

love you all, you are all the best!

love you tons,

Elder Taylor

Spiritual Points

5/16/11

¡Familia!

¿Cómo están frrrrrrreaking mahn?

Did I tell you that is what the elders all say here? ¡TAYLOR! frrreakingmahn!

It hurts my delicate feelings. Also i think i forgot to tell you that the Mission President visited me while i was in the clinic, personally. Like i was a missionary that already had merit. which i still may or may not be.

So these last couple weeks we´ve been weak in trabajo. i didn´t really notice, or more likely i didn´t understand. but Elder Zurita kept tellin me, I´m trunky man(in Spanish) and really has been upset with himself and his attitude and is changing it and it is good. but he sees the disobedient elders we live with having all these baptisms and we got squat and he gets down and all this stuff and i´m too dumb to know the difference, just a happy puppy trying to be obedient and bark (talk?) more. But i sometimes too am like man, i would rather just sit and study for a second or a day. but then i remember the 3 daysin my house, 3 in the clinic and 4 in the office and say, ¡NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! and i want to leave again and go work!

We basically had to ditch a lot of our old families cuz they didn´t progress and find entirely new ones which is a challenge. we have powerful spiritual lessons and yet these people won´t come to church. But i have faith they will this week. Yesterday none of the people we planned on having in church came but i still had faith and i said, as we walked our lonely selves a la capilla, hey man (i mean elder), don´t count your eggs until they hatch, which doesn´t translate very well in Spanish and guess who showed up? an ancient woman who was inactive for 6 years, that we had visited 2 or three times and another inactive woman we visited once with her nonmember spouse! who just happens to be the mom of our new bishop? what? heck ya. scoring spiritual points, or really just being given spiritual points, cuz it´s hard, impossible really to score something of yourself. can´t be done.

todo bien,

love you all so much, but really this time is giong to fly, day are like minutes and weeks are like.... really short.

Elder Taylor

Enjoy Yourself in Every Situation

5/9/11

¿Familia, cómo están?

So everything´s good. My comp is struggling a little bit with having a good attitude while we work but I`ve started a thing where every night before we terminate planning we declare the miracle of the day. It has been really good. I need to find a way to make mission work truly fun.

That´s messed up. If you put effort into it you can have fun. You can mix it up. You can enjoy yourself in every situation. I have a goal to never teach the same lesson twice, to never even do the same contact twice because really you never really FEEL the same twice, every instant varies from before so teach to your FEELINGS. BE YOURSELF and enjoy it.

The thing is también que these people deserve more than a recitation to be introduced to the gospel, yes obviously you stay in the guide lines of PMG but they give you SO much room! You can do somethings different with each person and each person can have a REAL opportunity to feel and choose for themselves, to really operate their agency and follow their FEELINGS. They deserve more than the same old thing.

And you want to know why'? because Christ loves them. he would give His all to let the fully operate their agency in each contact, lesson and everything. He´d leave them feeling pumped and slightly eager for something more out of life, they´d be able to recognize what they need to change and the power God gave them to make the change. agency man, it`s what it is all about. and if we don`t do our part to try and contact or teach according to the spirit and learn how to do it then we did not give them their agency. and that is totally messed up.

So here we go. I`m going to do what I FEEL, obviously within the guidlelines of the PMG and the Spirit, thus, you gotta feel it. It`s why i am here, because I FELT it. It is why I left you familia por 2 años. solo because I felt it.

entonces, do what you feel. I promise you it´ll work out. but you really got to feel it. and feel it deep.

cuz you know somethings just resonate inside you and you are so sure, but sometimes you are not so sure until after you acted on the little feeling,

so take a crazy chance, and do a crazy dance. cuz if you lose a moment you might lose a lot, so why not, in the eternal words of hilary duff.

Also i don´t think i told you. I literally showered from a pot of refridgerated water last week. Our water was out and I had a cup and shampoo and two liters to wash my gigantic body. Colombia is the best.

also i found the costco of colombia. macro

love it.

love you all

Elder Taylor,

also mail takes a long time sometimes. A letter sent in the beginning of april just got to me last friday. so there you go.

Baptisms in Colombia!

So Good To Be Back

5/3/11


Familia, so good to be back.

I love your letters, they make me laugh a lot.

My leg´s totally fine. no pain in walking or anything. I even played soccer today with the zone. We don´t get to do that very often, in fact we can`t even kick a ball. only when the president says we can. Our zone had the most baptisms this last transfer so we got a treat.

Also i learned there are only 30 or less gringos in my mission at a time. i´m going to become totally latino. but it may take a while. I probably won´t have many US companions. also this last week upon my return i decided to finally begin to be myself and be happy and say what i think. Entonces, i told Elder Zurita that himnos are useful in helping people feel that spirit. because really, lots of these people are not educated. they really struggle to grasp concepts and apply them. but they can FEEL. so we started to sing hymns almost all the time. Elder Zurita loved the idea like nuts and basically just starts singing at the door now. we even made a whole family cry. either from the spirit or my horrible voice i have no idea. But a tough looking guy sitting in a sillòn even started to cry and Elder Zurita has a good voice so it must have been from the Spirit. It makes me feel better to.

I have no more time.

Love you all a ton.

hasta domingo,

Elder Taylor

Totally Healed

4/25/11


Hola Familia, I´m fine. How are all of you?

So now that the cat is out of the bag I´ll tell you what is UP with this dealio.

But first off just know i am fine. totally healthy. I have no pain, no sorrow, no sickness, nothin, but a still slightly red leg, and medicine to fix it, but i'm not on them anymore. Entonces, here is the story,

Last Sunday i see my leg is red so we go to the clinic like 20 minutes away and they tell me three days of rest and all this nasty stuff i had to do including having an elder, who luckily had some medical experience before his mission, and that lives with me from Argentina, He had to give me shot in the butt. how lovely. once a day for three days (the doctor did the first one.) I also had to soak my leg in this potion and spray nastiness on my right foot blisters.

So i did all that along with taking an antibiotic and ibuprofen for pain. Wednesday came round and i could WORK! my leg was a little swollen but it didn´t hurt so i didn´t worry about. i had no fever since Sunday and all these things. i felt great, just a fat red leg that was healing so i worked. Thursday the zone leader Elder Porter from Morgan Utah made me go to the clinica, basically the hospital and they told me i had to stay a few days. so i stayed there and studied for 72 hours straight. they put an iv or drip bag in my veins and gave me medicine through that some pills and i felt perfectly healthy and fine the whole time. the swelling went down and the redness and now i have to rest til Wednesday. Thursday i can work again. And just like that 10 days of my mission are gone.

And it is weird. the week where i felt sick and had head aches i was happy, i was working, i was being a missionary, and now that i feel fine, they shelf me. i don´t even have any pain in which to glory, i have no problems except the challenge of continuing to use my time wisely. The week where i worked through the pain i felt like i accomplished things, even had the chance to baptize Jesus, but this week i couldn´t work, even though i felt fine. i´d much rather feel nasty and keep working than feel fine and not be able to.

Thus it ironic the only English talk i have is on patience by Pres. Utchdorf. Probably that is what I'm supposed to be learning. I hope it is learnt. I´m trying to use my time here to the fullest but going over 100 hours since i was last able to work is not fun. I want to be in my area.

Thusly I am totally pumped to return Thursday. maybe this is what i needed. an awakening to my real desires to be out there being a missionary. i´ve seen the dark side of not being able to be, and some missionaries choose that for themselves. i don't understand how. If ever i don´t feel like working, like serving i will remember these ten days i lost of my mission and i will continue with all my heart to serve the Lord.

I´m fine and I love you all. keep writing me. they are always the best.

Elder P. Sonntag Taylor

Totally healed, a few more pills that i mentioned above and 3 days of rest and i can work again. pray that it be so.

Also i finished the Book of Mormon in English for last time on my mission, it is true.