May 14, 2012

Hey mom how’s it going.....hope you had a great mother’s day!!!  This week we had was good but not numbers wise...they took away our best day to do zone conference, we still had ok numbers but we should have done better.  We are teaching Ruth right now, she has a baptism date for the 26th still, she came to church yesterday and just loved it.  Today we are going to have a FHE with Andres our convert and with Ruth.  We are going to watch the restoration with them and then we only have 2 commandments left to teach her.  This one is like a sure fire baptism!!!!!

It was so great to talk to you all Saturday....I can’t wait for Christmas ha-ha!!!  I bet you can’t wait either, then you’ll get 2 big Christmas presents!

Well hope grandma can get over the last few days or weeks ok, and I’m sure she is just wanting to see grandpa great so much.  It will be good for her...she has done what she came here for.  But it’s sad that she is leaving us for a small time.  

So grandpa is going all out on his calf ranch that means that they got the permit I guess....10,000 more cows?  Well that’s what Darin told me in a letter ha-ha. Yeah so talking of getting home, I don’t know what I am going to do....I don’t want to get home and then a month later have to start school.    But I would like you to send me info on some schools.  Send me stuff from BYU and BYUI and ISU and BOISE STATE....well BSU can be the last resort!!!

I have talked to President Callan a little about what I need for dental school, not much just some basic things.  But look up stuff on pre dental at those 3 schools....to be a dentist I have to graduate from a good school(4 years) then dental school(another 4 years).

So since you didn’t really understand what I said in my testimony in Spanish, I said that I know that we have eternal families and that even though the boys and McCall don’t know as much about the plan of Heavenly Father, I said that I know that one day I will be with him and I will do what He does.  That’s what I want mom, to have my own network of eternal families, I want to create worlds.  I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that it has changed my life...I can see where I was a while ago and what I wanted or thought but now I can say that I am a different person.  The gospel is true mom....sure do love you and am grateful having it in my life!

Love

Elder Salinas 

Getting to Skype with Elder Salinas for Mother's Day!

May 7, 2012

This week was so great....we had tons of miracles.  SO I went on divisions with Elder Griffin on Tuesday so we could do the baptism interview.  He passed easily....he isn’t just answering questions he uses scriptures to back up his testimony.  Also he is studying the Book of Mormon and the Bible....also the gospel principles book and the ones about the priesthood.  HE is a baller...so on Saturday we had the wedding and the baptism of Andres.  Now he can help his wife get back into the church and be baptized someday!!!!  We also almost reached most of our goals this week.  We had 19 with member and a bunch of other stuff....that’s almost the mission goal, the one that everyone thought was impossible.  We are almost getting it.  We also got some new investigators from the ward mission leader and his girlfriend....this one is progressing a lot and came to church on Sunday.

SO exciting for Spencer to get his mission call....Jacksonville Florida....that will be fun.  He won’t really have much of a winter ha-ha. 

Man i don’t really know what else to write....the week went by fast, we had a baptism and Spencer got his mission call. 

Still am trying to get my camera to connect to a computer here, but they all are just so cruddy that I don’t know when I will be able to send a picture or two.

SO the shells and cheese saved me last night when I had no food....they were delish.  The jerky is gone, the Easter candy is gone, the seeds are almost gone, and the rubix cube has been solved tons of times.  I haven’t used my shoe inserts yet, I’m waiting for mine to blow out....not gonna be too long.  The inside is going to be gone in like 2 weeks, they are already destroyed.  Tell Spencer to get some good shoes cuz he will need them, fetch, I bet he has car in his mission :)

Love you mom

April 30, 2012

Dear Mom. . .

This week was another good one and we accomplished many of our weekly goals.  We have the baptism set for this Saturday at 5.  They are going to get married and then Andres will get baptized...and his wife has started the repentance process that will take some time.  We have his interview tomorrow night when I will be on divisions with the DL.  So Elder Keller and I  are pretty stoked on that.  We can say that we fulfilled with our missionary purpose with him....he is so ready, when we went over the baptism questions with him. . . he used scriptures to back up his testimony and it was ballin....that doesn’t happen much.  We have lots of investigators that are just kind of hard to find or just are lazy Paraguayans!!!   You give them one little homework to do like read a chapter or even a page and pray and they can’t do it in like 3 days...Spencer will find out soon enough that it’s not what it seems....did bishop give him the district or the district 2....he will watch both of those in the MTC and when he gets to the mission...during his first 2 months when he is getting trained. 

Sad that Spencer only could land his back flip once or twice and has to pack it up for 2 years....oh well we can go when he gets back...I’ll have to practice a bunch and then I’ll be better than him by the time he gets back ha-ha.

Pretty cool that Mitch is getting excited to leave on the mish. . . he will have a good time.  At first it is really hard and and there are days when you just get shunned like it’s the end of the world...but you wouldn’t change it for anything else....you want to go home at the start of your mission but then you just understand things more fully and then you want to stay you can tell that to Spencer.

And Grant, M’Kay and McCall all seem busy too with sports and activities to keep them busy all summer.  I’m sure that you dad and grandma netters are running them all over the place.  How is netters....is she reading the BOM with M’Kay or was she joking about that....I’m almost done with that in Spanish again so that will be the 3rd time reading it...and I’m reading it in Portuguese still....so many people here speak it....so Elder Keller & I try to learn.. . But it is a task!!!

We met some more people this week who have seen Jesus or God. . . you are not a Paraguayan until you have seen Jesus....it’s so true.  Then you just don’t know what to tell them ha-ha.  Also it has been raining so much this week....my shoes and pants and everything, just covered in mud.  My shoes are already trashed, the ones that you sent me for my b-day....well the inside are, and hopefully I can use the shoe inserts that you are sending me.  I should get my package today...because I paid for it last Monday it got to the office on the 18 of April...fast!!!

That is about it for this week, it’s getting colder so we are just in heaven, all of the people here are freezing, but for us from Idaho and Utah it is great!!!!

Love you mom. . . 

Taylor

April 23, 2012

Well this was a good week.  We almost met all of our goals.  We had 14 with a member present and 12 others and 9 less actives and 15 new people again.  So it was a good week.  This morning we had interviews with President Callan.  It was good....we talked a lot about goals and building up confidence with your testimony.  The mail still hasn’t got here...we are hoping that it gets here at about 3.  

This week we went to that family just about every night....the one who has a baptism date for Saturday.  Well we found out that his wife wants to come back and wants to fix her life.  She has a long road ahead to get back into the church so what we want to do is get them married this week and then he can get baptized and get the priesthood.  Then he can give his wife blessings and help her get back into the church.  So he is really progressing.  Most of the other people are just one timers or they just reject us.  IDK  why they do it....Spencer will see on his mission....when does that get here...wed or next wed?????

Last night we did have a good lesson with a guy who has gone to church 5 times...he was worried about being baptized 2 times so we explained that with the scriptures and showed him that you can get baptized again and that a real baptism has significance to stuff....so he was more open after we got that doubt out of his mind.

So it’s rained all week and I don’t know how I get so much mud on my pants....My pants are muddy from my ankles up to my knees.  Elder Keller is never muddy....idk what to do about it...today sis Callan just laughed at me for it.  But today it was nice and cool...hope the winter is coming fast!!!  This area is so big...we don’t even know what is in some of the areas.  We have already condemned many of them because they are a waste of time!!!  Also in our district we have the Itapúa dam...it’s the biggest dam in the world., we might go to it next week or during this change.  That would be cool you should go look it up on the internet...it powers all of Brazil Paraguay and Argentina!!!

Also I think that Emilio and Margarita got baptized...I’m not sure yet I’m trying to find the numbers from last week!!!  Hope they did and President Callan said that I could write them because they are my converts....I might do that today if I have time!

Also it sounds like the fun has already started for the family back home....Ii only have to miss this summer. I mean it won’t be that hard...I’ll get home just in time to start having fun!!! I do wish I could go boating with all the heat we have here though.  

Love you mom....

Elder Salinas

April 16, 2012

About time for that one year mark to pass.....but it was fast and it was enjoyable.  I didn't do anything ´´fun´´ on that day but it did rain a ton and it was really muddy.  But the week was good.  Last week the branch president told everyone in ward council that they were going to shut down the branch if they didn't get 16 guys with the priesthood who pay their tithing.   They started to help us right away so we had a bunch of member help this week.  Also we finally had a miracle....yesterday this lady showed up to church with her family, she is a less active member that wants to come back to church....her husband is getting baptized the 28th this month....pretty cool.  

Sweet that Spencer sent his papers in.  I’ll say that he is going to the Eugene Oregon mission or the Montevideo Oeste mission in Uruguay.  So idk if he will get them next wed or the next one but can’t wait to find out where he is going.  This Christmas will be really different with two of the boys gone.  We are going to have 4 missionaries and maybe 5 if Michael goes in the family all out at the same time. 

So some of the hard things that we have to do here is talk in Portuguese....like a fifth of the people here are Brazilian.  So it’s not too hard to understand when I read the Book of Mormon in Portuguese but to try and understand the people that speak is hard. We only speak a little bit, and Guaraní just screws it all up....4 languages in your head are not fun!!!  

Last week we had cucumbers in vinegar with onions and it tasted like summer....it was great!!!! Can’t wait to eat that when I get home in less than a year.  HAHA Oh and on Easter this lady who feeds us lunch who only speaks Portuguese wanted a big ole kiss from me because it was Easter and then she gave us cake with alcohol in it!   So when I got to this area and now that I have a year in the mission, I just want to get rid of all my junk.  I am tired of hauling it around, my bags were so heavy to get here....one of them, the biggest, is all broken, the wheels are trashed....I’ve just decided that I want to come home with just my carry on if I can, and maybe the smaller suitcase in other words I don’t want to buy anything else while I am here...I have some cool stuff but there is nothing to bring home to yall.  When Spencer gets his call I will make a list of things to take and things not to take....like about suits, pants, shoes, luggage and other stuff...I have a little list for him. 

Well that’s about it for this week I will try to send a pic, no promise because this place is old.

Love you mom

Taylor

April 9, 2012

Well I got through the first week in my new area.  I’m in Ciudad Del Este in the city of Hernandarias.  Its all red dirt and the area is huge.  We have some city parts and then we also have the campo of the campo in our area.  It’s like I’m out in the middle of the end of the earth.  It rained the second day here and when it rains here you grow like 4 inches.  There is so much mud everywhere and its red clay mud so it sticks to everything and it doesn’t come off.  My new companion is Elder Keller from Box Elder Utah. He is cool, and pretty funny.  So that’s a good thing, it was a 6 hour bus ride Wednesday and then a 45 min taxi ride...and this is the nicest place I have seen to live, above all other houses of the mission this is by far the nicest, we have a door on the shower, everyone else just has a hole in the ground and that’s it, with the shower head, but this is a sweet place.  And its huge, like 3 or 4 times maybe bigger than Puerto Pabla.  We always have something to do also, but there are about 35 members who attend church so that’s a big difference coming from like 120.  I saw sister Hubbard on Wednesday, she went to my area when Elder Perez and I left.  she said that Fernando is getting ready for the mission, that he really wants to go now....I guess he sold a bunch of his stuff so that he could start to save money for the mission, and they said he sent me a letter but we didn’t get mail today because all of Paraguay shuts down for the Holy Week so I didn’t get my mail from him today.  

Sounds like all of the family had a good time at the Easter party,,,,too bad I wasn’t there!  And I can’t wait to see the videos of Spencer while he was all drugged up.  But in everything else the family sounds good. Elder Norton is a trainer now . . . and we have 3 elders who are in the mission that are from Paraguay. Kind of lame....it would be like serving in Pocatello!

Some more stuff from my area, all the roads look like the fields at the farm right after all of the compost has been harvested, and it smells the same also, like cow poop.  There are areas that are just shocking to see.  I knew Paraguay was dirt poor but some of the houses are standing by magic.  I’ll get some pics this week maybe.  On Sunday, we walked a solid 3 miles at missionary pace to get this guy to come to church so that he could get confirmed, he was working...so we walked the 3 miles back to the church with no investigators......but it’s ok....we always find new people to teach and we have big numbers.

This computer is really slow so I can’t type much...trying to load pics for you mom.

Love You

~Taylor

 Elder Salinas at the temple

 At the shrine of the Virgin

 Great meal from Pancholos!

 Elder Salinas & Elder Norton

April 2, 2012

Hi mom how was the week.  Sounds like the family is good.  This week was better.  We didn’t find one single new investigator.  We have 3 that are doing well.  Emilio and Margarita are still getting baptized and married the 14th and Osvaldo is getting baptized the 21st.  All 3 of them came to general conference yesterday and Osvaldo came Saturday also.  Saturday we went to downtown Asuncion to watch conference, and then between sessions we walked around down town with Jorge and he showed us all the cool things...if I would have taken money I would have bought some really cool stuff...but when you end your mission you get to go to that place and buy stuff.  Also we went to the Plaze de Héoes...something of heroes from Paraguay.  They are buried there, well it’s above ground in just a coffin or ashes.  I got some good pics there, and right behind it all, is a giant statue of the Virgin, and a tiny  tiny statue of Jesus  I saw Elder Perez at Conference.  He hasn’t heard anything from Fernando.  Me either, we have both written letters to him but we don’t know how he is doing.  Conference was good, for once it was enjoyable...all the other times its like oh great conference again, and you try hard to listen when the prophet talks but you still can’t focus.  Not anymore, I loved listening to all of it.  I took some notes, not too many cuz I’m going get the Ensign in a month or two.  But yesterday and today after all of the sessions, I was looking over my notes and my mind was opened up with the spirit and I wrote my own chapter of Alma 5....I made a list of questions that we need to ask ourselves...the questions that I wrote were these, ask them to yourselves....

1. Am I focused on my covenants?
2. Do I have a desire to learn?
3. Am I happy with what I Have?
4. Have I ´´Stepped Up´´ to fulfill my duties?. . .it’s getting late!
5. Do I give the Holy Ghost room in my heart?
6. Have I ´´Come Home´´ to my Father in Heaven?
7. How Resilient am I?
8. How can I have the Spirit more in my life?
9. Have I banished all things that keep me from fulfilling my missions(s)?
10.What king of an example am I setting?
11.Am I being positive and of good cheer?
12.Do I speak in a way that the Holy Ghost would be present?
13.What am I doing to Sanctify myself?
14.Am I acting, or being acted upon?
15.How am I keeping my priesthood covenant?
16.What can I do to strengthen the Power of my testimony?
17.Do I accept my call as a missionary, or any other callings that come my way?
18.Am I doing what matters most?
19.What, and how much am I willing to Sacrifice?
20.What things am I doing now to prepare me for Eternal Marriage? Family Life? Godhood?
21.How can I increase the love I have for my Heavenly Father and for Jesus Christ?
22.Can I respond to everything like Nephi?  ( 1 Nephi 3:7 ) 
23.Am I doing the best for the Lord?
24.Can I look at God and say ´´I did my best´´?
25.Do I forgive myself of the sins or wrong doings in my life?
26.Am I supporting all of my burdens?
27.What treasures am I making in heaven?
28.What are my priorities?
29.My Spiritual GPS . . . where am I?
30.What does Christ think of me?

This is a lot of the stuff that I got out of general conference....just more things to help me be a better person, missionary, dad, husband, priesthood holder.  Also while I was sitting there listing to the talk by Jeffery R. Holland, the thought came to my head ´´It’s an honor or a privilege to be a missionary right now´´ that’s what I was thinking during his talk about the Lord and His vineyard.  That I might have started at 6 in the morning or at 7 at night, but I am a servant in the Lord’s vineyard and that I will get the same ´´pay´´ as all of the other workers who worked more, who have more baptisms, who are district leaders and who are whatever it is.  And how Elder Holland says not to be mad because things good or bad happen to other people and not you.  Also at Priesthood when Pres. Eyring spoke about loving your wives, and how we need to put their happiness, interests and everything above ours. . . and while I was reading that this morning I realized that it’s the same with Heavenly Father, put his glory and happiness and everything above ours and that is how we will be more happy.  I have a lot more stuff written down but this is all that I’ll write today.  

So Spencer is done with everything and just needs to hit send on the computer.  Pretty sweet, lame that his engine blew up.  I guess spring break paid to fix that one!!!  Take him and buy him some new scriptures mom, get him the genuine leather ones so that they won’t get all ruined.  And as a family read every day, and help him to understand the doctrine of Christ.  I wasn’t ready to go to the MTC, I had no clue why I was there, what I was doing, maybe I went for the wrong reason, but I stayed for the right ones.  Help him to GO with the right reasons.  Tell him to get a preach my gospel in English and read it....mainly the 5 lessons that he will be teaching.  We know what we need to know now, so now Spencer doesn’t have to go in to the MTC half blind!!!

Grant better be able to play all my favorite songs by the time I get home, tell him to learn Spanish songs, and I’ll bring him home a mariachi suit so he can play for dads family at the parties and Spencer can do the Mexican yell.

My back is the same...it will hurt, then it won’t.  I probably shouldn’t pop or crack my back but it’s the only thing that makes it fell better.  And idk what to do, we aren’t ´´allowed´´ to buy medicine unless sister Callan says we can.  

 But this is about all, I’ll send you some pics in a diff email

I love you mom

ELDER CHARLES TAYLOR SALINAS
PARAGUAY ASUNCION MISSION
2011-2013

 This is the Manta Ray Jorge caught down at the river, and it was delicious!!!

 This is where some famous people from paraguay are burried or should I say "stored".

Here is a giant shrine of the virgin.  there is a tiny statue for Jesus.