September 26, 2011

Well we finally found some new people to teach...we found 7 last week and of the 7 we found, 5 of them got invitations to be baptized. We are just hoping that of them, some will continue to listen to us, and that we can find more people from them. We found a really cool family, we haven’t gone to visit them yet, so they don’t count as new investigators, but this is a family of 3 or 4. She was really nice and asked us to come back, usually they just say that to be nice, but hopefully it will turn into something better. Yesterday we had basically stake conference. All the missionaries in our zone, all 16 of them were here yesterday, it was good to see some of them, like Elder Bartlome, who is now in my zone. That made the day. All of them are coming back to watch General Conference too, Elder Boydston (the district leader, from Moscow Idaho, soon to be Spencer’s friend who has tickets to the ducks games) and I have it all planned out for this weekend. Saturday, we get money, and for breakfast before conference, we are going to the fruit store in front of the church for a huge bowl of strawberries and cream, they are so good. For lunch, we are going to Bendos for pizza, and for dinner, we are going to get lomitos....Can’t wait, last night we had no food, and I had a slice of bread with some dulce de leche for dinner. My comp didn’t eat anything, and after this we are going to get some food finally. It’s hard for us because we only have one lunch appt well 2 but they are both with the Delgado family. Well 1 and a half....Sunday isn’t always, like yesterday we didn’t have lunch with them, I had 2 eggs for lunch, and I lost some weight the last few weeks. My pants that I wear every day, I could barley fit into them....but now I have a bunch of room, I sweat so much, and the heat hasn’t even started really, it’s hot and it’s just going to get worse!!!!!!!!!!
It’s about time that Columbia has won some games though, the boys are going to keep winning, they got some swag and they just can’t lose it now. And the truck didn’t make it home...ha, should have kept the old big blue one, it was way cooler.
I don’t really have that much more to tell you. Just trying to work hard, even though half the day is just walking around looking for people cuz there are none....it gets very boring and very depressing. Spanish is bugging me right now. If i could just talk to people in English. Well that about it for this week need to ask me some questions next week mom. But I have some stuff to add to my Christmas list

1. Dr. Sholls shoe inserts...the ones that I can cut to size to my shoes, like 2 or 3 of these.
2. Reeces Pieces
3. I thought about it and I want more than one of them peanut butter Twix bars...like 5 maybe.
4. Trinkets.
5. Photos of tons of stuff, family reunion, football games, just stuff.
6. Reeces
7. Licorice...twizzlers, the ones that i can pull apart :)
8. I don’t want cake or cookie mixes, they are kind of hard to make here.
9. With the labels, can you send me some of the bigger ones that are blank, i have a bunch of envelopes that have something in the top right corner and i want to cover it so i can use these envelopes!

Thanks for everything mom....love you

Taylor

September 19, 2011

I’m having a hard time getting pictures to you. Elder Moore knows how to do it here but not me. So right now Fatima is trying to download the pics to her facebook so you can see them there if she gets them to do it.

But i really wanted to send you some pictures, cuz we did some swimming this week!!!!
HAHA!

So Thursday the zone leaders told me that they were going to come and bring me all the baptism cloths. Well they didn’t and I had to take a bus out to their area to look for the cloths. We waited outside the church for 45 min in the pouring rain. Then they only had not very good cloths but they had to do. While we were waiting the branch president called and he was ´´sick´´ and wasn’t able to come. The night before he was fine and yesterday at church he was fine. The branch president here never does anything. So we called Fernando to ask him who else could baptize him. And he chose me.

No one was at the church for his baptism. We waited like 30 min and then started, and after about 10 more min a few more people showed up.

Yesterday he got the Holy Ghost and the priesthood. Also he is going to bear his testimony at stake conference. And he is trying to get work off for the 15th of October so he can go to the temple and do baptisms. He is pretty cool!

Now we have a problem, we don’t have anyone to teach. We found one new investigator this week. Everyone in the zone has the same problem; we can’t find anyone to teach. Don’t know what I’m going to do this week.

Anyways Columbia is 4-0 now, and sounds like they can have a way better chance of winning state. I can’t wait for them to beat Skyview. Hopefully Columbia is ranked right now. Are they?

Oh yeah, i have a few things you can add to my Christmas list
-- tuff actin tinactin....my feet are getting destroyed.
-- white tootsie rolls
-- peanut butter choc. Twix
-- jalapeño cheetos

idk what else for now.

I got the letter from Spencer, M’Kay and you today. Ballin!!!! And I got one from Saige and Richard too. Tell Richard to tell James to write me a darn letter. What does James think he´s doing not writing his only brother?

I just read a book in Spanish called dia de la defensa....Elder Moore is going to send it to me in English so I can understand it better, but all it is all the leaders of all the other churches and 2 missionaries. The missionaries can only use the bible to answer all the questions that come from the other ´´leaders´´. The other leaders can use talks, any book they want, What’s cool is that all of the questions are ones that we usually get. Ya’ll should read it.

Well that’s about it for this week, not too much exciting except a baptism.

Love ya mom

Taylor

September 12, 2011

Oh finally its pday again. It seemed like this last week was really long but I don’t really remember any of it. Just glad to have a break!!! First I’ll answer your questions:


1) Tell me all about your new companion!!! Where exactly is he from? Has it been hard to only speak Spanish - -or are you a “baller” as you would put it
Ok well my new companion is Elder Perez. He is from El Salvador. At first I thought “this is going to be a long change” But not so much! He is cool. He is just really quiet. But duh I’m a baller at Spanish....I can understand everything. But idk where it came from, I could understand pretty good before but now it’s just so clear. Elder Moore always did the teaching and most of the lesson. I don’t know how I just pulled out scriptures, and talked for hours but I did.


2) I am so anxious to hear about your “golden” investigators!! I’ve thought so much about you this week and am hoping that you have found success with them! Also, how is Lily? And Sonia?

Well I’m pretty much counting out Lily. She pretty much told us that she didn’t want to work on fixing problems; she is out of the picture now. Sonia idk, she didn’t come to church and I don’t think that hna Delgado has talked to her yet.
Well let’s get on with the good stuff!!!!! My golden boy....Fernando. Reference from Salt Lake whoo hoo that never happens. He found the church website and started to talk to a lady from Salt Lake, then we got him.....Elder Moore and I taught the restoration, he had some questions and we answered them and he understood. Oh and he asked us for a Book of Mormon too. So I went back wed with Elder Perez and I said well idk about this investigator, he isn’t that good at keeping commitments and stuff (as a joke.) We left him about 4 chapters to read on last Sunday, and he had all of them read by Wednesday when we went back. He found the questions of the soul online and started to read those too. He prayed about everything, and says he can feel that it is true. We left him stuff to read and went back Thursday. He read all of it and prayed, and you should hear him pray....no other investigator is like he is. He also printed out invitations to his baptism to give to his family and friends. Tell the boys not to get too excited on a mission because this never happens.....everyone is so jealous of us. So basically the next 3 days we are going to teach law of chastity, word of wisdom, and tithing. Thursday we are going to go over the baptism questions and Friday is his interview. He is getting baptized Saturday, and it’s about time I had one. oh and he went to the stake activity in another part of Encarnacion and he drove people to and from. BALLIN!!!


3) What was your favorite thing you ate this week? What was the worst thing you ate?
Well that’s easy, yesterday when Elder Moore and his dad came to church, after we went to eat lunch at Vanessa’s. Hermana Delgado made 85 empanadas. We are taken care of really well here. It was a sweet party.
The worst thing I ate was well I drank it. I’ve been kind of sick, like a cough and sticky green slimy snot. Hna Delgado made me drink this anti sick stuff, barf it was nasty, she made me drink 2 spoons of it. But it worked, I’m fine right now.


4) What was your most spiritual experience?
Probably when I was teaching a lady and I just talked and talked and talked about stuff. I don’t really know how, it just came to me.
But it sounds like football is doing good; all the kids are good too. I sent home a package bubble envelope with a camera card. Hope it gets there. I’m still working on some stuff that you can send me for Christmas; I really hope I get to stay in this area for Christmas. Its sooooo ballin. But tell grandma I love her, well all my grandmas. But that’s about it for this week, not that much got done, but I don’t care, as long as Fernando gets baptized then I’m good.

I love you mom

TAYLOR

September 5, 2011

Hey mom how’s it going? Going all good here, this morning found out who my new companion is going to be, Elder Perez. A Latin, which is what I need, I can understand about everything, but me cuesta or idk how to say that in English, it cost me or it’s hard for me to talk in all or every situation. But with him it will be good. This change went by faster than the last change did and I guess they will start to go by even faster when I start to become a better missionary. Anyways this last week was the longest week that I have had on the mission, it just, well we were just ticked!!!!!

So last Thursday, we did divisions with the zone leaders, I stayed here in centro and Elder Moore went to the other rama. We went to Lily to do her baptismal interview, and guess who was there, Hno. Nappa. His brothers got tired of him in Asunción and basically kicked him out. So he just showed up here, justito the day of her interview. Lily is such a nice person, even though she hates him for what he did, she let him back into the house until he can find somewhere to live or whatever he is going to do. SO she didn’t get baptized, I just want him to like fall off the face of the earth right now.

Pedro and Sonia are doing mas o menos. Hna Delgado went over to her house one day to see how Sonia was doing. Sonia said she wanted Hna Delgado to come back another day and talk about her wedding. Which is good, because Sonia is thinking about it, I don’t know what she said to her but, hopefully whatever hna Delgado is doing is helping her.

We did find two new golden investigators though.....out in San Miguel, we found a family who is really interested. They asked us for folletos,(pamphlets) and when are we coming back. They had good questions too. It will take a little time but, they will hopefully progress.

While we were at this family, the church called us and said they had a referral from Salt Lake. Yeah those never happen. Well this guy or referral (Fernando) is real.. He asked us what time church started, before we could invite him. He came to all 3 meetings, got there before we did at 8:30 and he was wearing a suit. 20 min after church was over, he sent us a message asking for a Book of Mormon. Later in the day he asked if we were still going to come visit him. We had an awesome lesson with him, the first lesson. In Preach My Gospel, there is a section that has questions of the soul like do kids need to be baptized, other stuff. So we gave it to him to pick out a topic. He picked out why does God allow suffering and pains. So we marked like 3 chapters for him to read. Then he asked, did Jesucristo really come to the Americas, so we marked that chapter too. The only problem he may have is looking up stuff on the internet, he is a little nerdy. I would not be surprised if he has read the whole Book of Mormon by Wednesday when we go back. Also a lady from Salt Lake calls him ever so often and talks to him about church and the Book of Mormon, so yeah basically he is getting baptized next Saturday!

It sounds like the boys are lovin football, and M’Kay is well idk what he is, does he like passing the sacrament, and does he like going around for 2 hours to get fast offerings. HAHA. Didn’t get any email from McCall this week. What the heck McCall? Where is it.


Well that’s about it for this week, I’ll let you know how my new companion is this next week. Elder Moore leaves tomorrow night, and my new comp will get here Wednesday. He looks pretty cool. I love you mom, I’ll keep working on that list of possibilities. Elder Moore is going up to Utah when he gets home as soon as he can to see his grandpa who isn’t doing the greatest. He is going to send me a few things, so if you want to drive down and meet him and his family and drop a small note or candy bar that would be cool.

His mom´s email is

Tracy Moore..... E-mail
And my companion (FACEBOOK)


LOVE YOU MOM

Taylor

August 29, 2011

¿Hola, que tal?

This week was pretty ballin....it started out crappy but has ended good. On Tuesday we went out to look for all of the less active members again, and yep, all 10-15 don’t exist anymore. So that day we were pretty mad but just kept looking and looking. The next day on Wednesday, we went to visit Lily. She is the one who just opened the business of delivery with her boyfriend and he bailed because it was going under. Anyways, the business is doing good, really good. We made a lesson for her on the Holy Ghost, and how he can help us make choices. We made this lesson that morning, then later that day when we went, we talked to her about stuff and she didn’t really know what choices or decisions to make. Our lesson just happened to work out pretty well for her. Her date to be baptized it Saturday. We are going to go to her see her every day this week; Satan really works against the ones who are ready. Pedro and Sonia are not doing too well though, it seems like they are going backwards. We have been promised that if we bring members and have prayers on our knees that they will be baptized. The members that we take bear testimony of their same problems, about getting married. Hermana Delgado, our mom who cooks for us 3 days and does our laundry, ripped them a new one. In the most loving way she told them what’s up. You know it’s a good lesson when they cry and they know what they need to do but it so sad when they don’t do it. They got some folletos from the J.W.s We were pretty shocked when they didn’t come to church on Sunday, I told Elder Moore that they probably went to that church on Sunday.....he agreed!

So that night, the assistants got to our apartment at like 12:00, so we didn’t get to bed until 12:30 and I fell asleep around 1:30. At 4:45 we all got up and showered, shined our shoes, got looking all churro and we left, got to our church at 5:30 to set up for the zone conference. Took a while but it was good. President Arnold came, he is the President of South America South or Argentina, Paraguay, and Uraguay. He is so cool, he came around right before we started, gave us all hugs asked us where we are from. His wife was real nice too. We had a ballin zone conference with him his wife and President and Sis. Callan. Pres Arnold would tell jokes and make comments all throughout the conference that were just funny. He´ll make fun of you a little in a loving way. At the end, he said now all of you are not going to stay around and take pictures and whatnots, leave and go work. But Elder Moore & I are in charge of the chapel so we had to stay for a bit to make sure a person would be there to lock up. So during that time we just talked to President Arnold for like 10 min. Asked us how you guys were, how I like the mission they are just really nice. The churches here don’t have a gym, they have a soccer field, basketball court mix type thing, and after the conference, he went out and played soccer with some kids and he is just a baller!!!!

Ok now for the questions.....

1. I am in the city, but we do have places out in the campo. Once a week we go out to San Miguel. The furthest place out there is about an hour and half. There are no street names out there, no house numbers, and so good luck finding any references out there.

2. So the animals are not in big supply here in the city. I killed two cockroaches last night. When it is hot there are tons of lizards, but they are colorful, unlike the ugly ones in the Idaho desert!! There is an ugly dog in the city, well there are a ton of them, but this one has a broken leg, so it hops around all lame. There is a lady in our ward who has a monkey, we have only gotten into her house once....she keeps her monkey in there and it smells so bad, probably because they never clean out the mountain of poop in the cage.

3. How to have fun, idk. The importance of knowing a ton of scriptures.....a quote from Elder Alexander, ´´remember elders, we don’t bible bash, but when we do, we win! Just remember that boys!

4. All you can do as a family is pray for all the investigators that we have which isn’t many. Pray so that we can get more, and that they will keep their compromisos.

Mom, ok my package was great, we don’t have a muffin pan to make the muffins, so we are going to buy flour and make pancakes out of them. The peanut butter was good on our chocolate cookies. You don’t have to send candy, there is tons of it here that is so good, you can’t even imagine how good the chocolate alfajors are mom....I will bring those home. Pictures are always good too. I’ll start to make a list of stuff we think off that you could send.

The scripture that I want on my plaque is Mosiah 3:41, the one that says remember remember because the lord god has spoken it, but I want it in Spanish, so if you could look it up and have them type it out in Spanish :)

So this is the last week with Elder Moore. He goes to the mission office on next Tuesday, and on Wednesday his dad will pick him up and they are gonna hang around Paraguay for a week. We have a mission calendar with all of the missionary’s pictures on it and we started to have a draft of who’s coming here with me to be the new district leader. Hopefully a Latin companion.

Well thanks for everything until next week, oh and you´ll get another email with some pictures of my scripture cases that finally came today!

Love you mom

Taylor

August 22, 2001

A few more pictures from the MTC

MTC District

Once a wrestler, ALWAYS a wrestler!

Enjoying a little snack!!!

More wrestling . . .

PARAGUAY PICTURES

1st package from home

He looks so happy!  That makes me happy!

Look at the dirt they come home with everyday!

Dear mom,

So now that all the kids are gone back to school, you can just enjoy it....since there is nobody to bug you.

Well I got my package this morning.  The thing that they sent out about packages isn't really that important....it just means that I have to pay for them to send it out to me, not that big of a deal so whenever you want to send one you are more than welcome to!!!  One thing, we don’t have a muffin pan so I think those will just get made into the pancakes. My breakfast of starbursts was very yummy too.  I just loved all of it.  I haven't tried out my water enhancer yet it smells good!!!  Mom remember what you said about the summer is going to go by slow for you while I am out here, well it’s over already and  it went by fast.  This week we had some interesting stuff, on Saturday night we ate cow heart which wasn't that bad, it was actually good.  

On Monday I expect a bunch of pictures from Spencer and Grants games. Idk if M’Kay is playing football or not, for east or for little kids again but pics of his games too.

With my handy dandy Skippy peanut butter I'm gonna want to eat 3 of them sandwiches a day too, but the only thing here that is close to jam is Dulce de guayaba, it’s like guava jam, its def not my favorite but i can deal with it.  

I'm surprised that Spencer got to take the boat out by himself with Grant and M’Kay but with friends wow wow wee wow....and yep sounds like Spencer to forget the boat keys, surprised he didn't do that with his dirt bike too.

And M’Kay has his b day in 5 days.  Did Spencer and M’Kay get their letter yet???

I’ll have to tell you my fave scripture next week, I don’t really know one right now....

Elder Moore & I  try to work out in our appt, we have boxes of Books of Mormon that we can use as a weight I guess, we can do pushups, jumping jacks and stuff that will help in the long run.  We do however get a ton of walking in during the day, I had an idea that I should have brought a mile counter with me so I could write down how far I walked everyday in my journal and by the end of 2 years have it be hundreds or thousands of miles!!!

I'm not sure if I have really gained weight or lost weight, when it’s hot you sweat like a dog and it’s not even summer yet, forget about going to the bathroom, it’s always water whatever end it comes out off!!! But the food I eat, oh so yummy and greasy. Yesterday we went to the Delgado's for lunch(pretty much every day it seems like) and she made a huge thing of empanadas, so I had like 10, I don’t want to get fat but it’s so hard to not get fat here in Paraguay. 

This week we got a referral from Hna Delgado and we went to his house, he was a less active member and apparently he moved or something, but his dad came to the door and he said we could come back on Thursday, so we went back and it was a good lesson, his wife and son are members. He has a good chance of getting baptized  next change.  We taught him lesson 1 and it was pretty good.  When people don't talk a billion miles an hour I can understand them, pretty much all of it, there are just some words that I don't know yet.  And I can talk back to them about most stuff now. 

I learn lots from Elder Moore, he knows about every scripture or a scripture for about every situation and me ha I know like none.  But one day I hope!   He never has problems with saying OK mi compañero va a compartir una escritura con nosotros. I’ll pick one out, have them  read it and then I’ll explain it and ask them about what they understand, how it applies to them and bla bla bla. I like doing that, it’s fun, being here is great. Yeah i miss all of you but I have another family down here.  

This Thursday Pres. Arnold of the 70 is coming for zone conference.  Probably going to be ballin. And they said he probably has time for interviews, like talk to you and see how you’re doing how your family is, stuff about you. Elder  Moore & I are going to try and get one.

Oh and Elder Moore and I get along all the time just fine, we never fight and always have a good time. There are tons of missionaries who just hate their trainers, but I was lucky!

One of the better experiences this week was I took a picture of YODA....this old lady out in the campo came to the door with her star wars beanie, return of the Jedi, I’ll send  it home today.

Thanks for the package of goodies, I have to write some letters and stuff and then I will send all them home and my camera card home so yall can see some more pictures.

Love ya mom

TAYLOR

August 15, 2011

Well another week gone, and been out here for 4 months.  It’s really hot. Like 100 degrees right now.  I don’t know how I’m gonna survive when the summer gets here in like a month.  The Spanish is so so.  We still don’t really have that many people to teach so that makes it hard.  This week we took the member list of all the members in our rama/ward. It’s not big enough to be a ward.  But we only have like 20 people show up for church every week, so we started to look for a bunch of these people.  One day, I think it was Thursday, the hottest day last week; we went to look for members.  We had about 10 had 2 street names and a house number, well all of those houses don’t exist anymore, they have all been destroyed.  So that helps that they are no longer in our rama so it’s getting closer to being a ward. Now we just need people that we teach to have so faith and do something. 

We have about 10 people that we are teaching.  And that’s not very good; you can’t go to them every other day, so we just look for other members and part member families.  This week we taught 5 lessons with a member, 10 other lessons, 3 baptism invitations, and 3 investigators came to church.

I don’t know if I had any best experiences, we had some funny good ones.  Yesterday we saw this guy from across the street, and he made a B-LINE right to us.  He said what’s up. What did Joseph Smith say? We said oh he already died a long time ago.  The other guy said oh he isn’t resurrected, and we said no not yet.  Then he said oh so he didn’t say anything about me?  Nope he sure didn’t, and he was like oh well I was already resurrected; I’m angel Gabriel, son of the son of God.  We said wow good for you and just joked with him for a minute.

Also, when people say George Bush to you they think it’s all funny, and you just say oh perdon, el no esta ahora.  y somos de canada.  Then they just feel dumb and walk away!

Elder Moore and I  are just in one ward, or rama.

This week the favorite most best thing I ate was a lomito.  And bollos.  A lomito is like a burrito but way better, I’ll take some pictures of it and send it some time, and bollos are like doughnuts that you eat with dulce de leche, we bought a nice big tub of that today to eat with our cookies. American cookies, no thanks, the ones here are so much better.  And they have these things here called bon bons, mom you will die when I bring some home for you. Just think of like the best chocolate peanutbuttery crunchy goodness. That’s a bon bon.  For breakfast and lunch today we went to Makos and got ice cream.

The couple that needs to get married is doing good. They came to church this week and last week on their own.  Pedro had his work times changed and so we haven’t been able to teach them because they weren’t home.  That’s happened for the last 2 weeks, but they still came to church. We are probably going to go there tomorrow night.  They have a baptism scheduled for the 27th of this month and hope it happens this time.  You might remember the Hermana I’ve told you about, Lily, she is the girlfriend of a guy in our rama, he always pushes her to do the right thing and come to church and stuff.  Her boyfriend Hermano Nappa, yeah he´s a punk.  We found him in the road one night a little bit drunk, so we were thinking he was a little sketchy.  But he has a business here called nappa express and they do delivery for a bunch of places.  Well he went to Asuncion for something that we didn’t know, and he didn’t come back. And nobody knew where he was. So, Lily called us and she was freaking out.  The reason that he left was because his business is going under.  They opened the business in Lily´s name because he has a ton of debt. So we went over there to talk to here, and nobody knows where he is or why he left, except Lily.  He sent her a text one morning that said hey just letting you know I’m fine physically but I’m not coming back.  Good luck.  What a jerk.  Now she is trying to figure out what to do, and she had a doubt that she wouldn’t tell us.  It was him, she said she couldn’t accept it because  he wasn’t living it, he was smoking and drinking, they were living together.  But now is the best time for her to accept the gospel, so pray for her and pray for pedro y sonia...they need it the most!

Sorry there are no pics this week.  Today is ´´kids day´´ so the normal place we go to do email is closed and the pics wont upload here because these computers don’t have the right program.  I have some other cool pics to send you though.

Love you mom Te Quiero Mucho

Taylor