More about Conference and Gladis!

As I said last week, Conference is my favorite time of the year and it TOTALLY lived up to it's expectations once again!  It was so amazing.  All last week I thought of questions that I needed answered.  Gospel questions, personal questions, and some certain things that I felt that I needed help with in my life.  And Friday night I prayed about it and told Heavenly Father that I needed answers to these questions and I would be looking for them in Conference.  President Monson's opening remarks alone answered many of them.  I was totally amazed because his opening remarks were all very subtle and sweet; nothing strong or profound...but exactly what I needed to hear.  Everyone asks if I have a favorite talk but I definetly cannot pick one.  There was so much that I loved.  I'm pretty sure there was at least a few things in each talk that impacted me.  I felt that every talk had been especially prepared for me.  I loved it!

But I think the most important thing that I left conference with is a much stronger testimony that Thomas S Monson is a prophet that has been called of God to lead and guide His children.  As he was talking, I had this overwhelming feeling come over me that he has the ability to communicate with God and Jesus Christ.  He sees them face to face and can testify that they live.  Just as I can testify that I know that my companion is a living human being.  He sees them, he speaks to them, he knows them better that any person here on this earth.  That feeling just hit me like a ton of bricks.  I know with all my heart that Thomas S Monson can speak with God face to face  and that he knows Him and loves Him.

There were so many new things that I learned and little parts of certain talks that I loved.  Here are just a few of them:

• The words of the living prophet are more vital to us in this day than the standard works (the scriptures)
• If we're judging someone than we don't have time to love them and that is breaking a commandment of God
• Slow down.  Sometimes we think that the faster the speed of our lives, or the longer our "to-do"list, the better.  Slow down and focus on the important things!
• about missionaries:  for anyone who holds the priesthood authority of God (Will, Sam, Brady, Taylor, Noah....) It is a priesthood duty to serve a mission. Sisters do not have the same obligations but their efforts are greatly needed and welcomed.  Anyone that is coming upon the seasoned age to be a Senior missionary (huh-hum Mom and Dad!!!!!)  WE NEED YOU!!!  We need more Senior missionary couples.  Start preparing now!

Ok enough plancha for right now!

Anyways, besides conference, not much has changed around these parts.  We're going to be having a baptism on Saturday which I am SOSOSOSOSO excited for.  Her name is Gladis, she's 66 years old, single, and SO SO sweet!  She has been wanting to be baptized and not known which church to join and then we found her!  She prayed and received SUCH a clear answer from Heavenly Father.  I thought I wasn't going to have time to write about it but I'm going to tell you about it because it's AMAZING!!!!!

So the day after Sister Solano's surgery we didn't leave the house but we gave our district leader a list of people to go visit for us. So it was Saturday afternoon and Gladis was cleaning her house.  (we had already visited her twice before but she had told us that she wasn't sure if our church was the one that God wanted her to be baptized into)  So she was vacuuming and she began to pray out loud.  She said "Heavenly Father, you know that I will do whatever it is that you tell me to.  I need to know what church to be baptized into.  Should I join the catholic church, or the Mormon church, or is there another church that is best for me?  I just need to know.  Heavenly Father it's 2:00  right now.  At 3:00 I will be done cleaning and I'm going to sit down and read the chapter that the Sister missionaries left me.  Please give me my answer at 3:00."

So she continued cleaning and she finished just as planned and sat down to read.  The second she sat down there was a knock at the door. It was the elders!!!!!  And right then she know that was the sign that Heavenly Father was sending her to tell her to be baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!  Right then she knew what it was that she needed to do and she told the elders exactly what had happened.  They invited her to be baptized and now she'll be baptized on Saturday!  I am so excited for her.  She has so much faith!!!!  And she shows it by acting upon the answers that she receives because she know whatever the outcome, it's what Heavenly Father knows will make her happiest!

oh man, I love this work so so much!  I can see how it's changing me.  I see things in a completely different light.  I love the person that I am becoming.  I'm trying to become more like my Savior Jesus Christ.  I know that He lives!  I know that He is the Savior of this world!

I love you all so so so so much!   Have a wonderful week!

-- 
con mucho amor
Su misionera de Sion
Hermana Taylor

Conference Week

Oh how I love Conference week in Salt Lake City!!!!!  The air is crisp, the leaves are turning beautiful colors, there's a different feeling in the air!!!  I love it SO much!!!!!  OK that was a little cheesy but it's totally true! I love conference so much!

 

On Saturday we got the opportunity to go to the Relief Society session of conference and it was amazing!!!!  I absolutely loved President Monson's talk on Charity!  There were a couple of things that he said that I just loved:

• When you're judging someone you have no time to love them;  And that is breaking a commandment of God
• Without charity we cannot enter the celestial kingdom

 

It was a great conference and I can't wait for this weekend to hear even more spiritually uplifting talks from the other general authorities. 

 

I love this work so so much and I love what I'm doing.  I can't believe that almost 11 months have past by already.  When I think about going home and taking my tag off it kind of makes my heart hurt a little bit.  I just can't even think about that moment.  But that's enough of that!!!

 

I love you all so so much!

 

If anyone is comeing to conference you have to come find me!!!!  Any time before, after, or inbetween sessions I will be at the reflection pool on the east side of the temple  just twaiting to see your beautiful faces!!!!

 

have a great week!

 

--

con mucho amor

Su misionera de Sion

Hermana Taylor

I'm Staying in Millcreek!!

Transfers were yesterday and I stayed in the same area with Sister Solano again and we also got another companion Sister Williams!!!!!  I've always heard that it's hard to be in a trio but I'm excited about it!  Sister Will iams is SO sweet!  She's from Delaware-  she actually knew President and Sister WInn before her mission.  She's amazing! I'm really excited for this transfer!

 

Anyways, I just wanted to tell you how everything is going!  Everything went perfect with Sister Solano's surgery.  It was only about 30 minutes and we were out of the hospital at 1:30pm.  She's recovering very well but yesterday she was feeling really good and them we just did way too much!  OOPS!  I should have taken better care of her.  So last night she was in a lot of pain and today too.  We'll just be taking it easy from here on out.  But thank you for your prayers and care and the things that you sent her. 

 

We stayed in for most of this week becaue Sister Solano hasn't been feeling up to going out and working.  But that's ok becaue we really don't have many investigators anyways!

 

So I really don't have anything exciting to tell about becaue we didn't work all week.  But we're super excited about conference--we're desperatly looking for tickets but we're really excited!

 

I love you all so so so much!  I hope you all have a great week!
--
con mucho amor
Su misionera de Sion
Hermana Taylor

My new companionship

Oh, Good Old Millcreek

So once again nothing is different in our area...sad to say :(  We rode our bikes a lot this week and it helped us to be able to contact people to ask them where any spanish speaking people live. It worked cause we contacted a lot of people but never actually contacted any Hispanos.  But that's ok....we found out where they live and we'll just keep stalking them until we talk to them.  It's been really hard but I know that Heavenly Father is just testing our faith....still.  And all we have to do is prove to Him that we have the faith sufficient to find the people that He has prepared for us to teach.  SO we're just truckin' along...everyday...visiting members, riding bikes, contacting people...ya know....missionary things!

 

The other day we were on our bikes and we felt that we should stop at a certain apartment complex.  so we did and we met this lady named Xochilt.  When she opened the door she looked so sad.  We told her that we are representatives of Jesus Christ and we felt such a strong feeling to knock on her door.  She started to cry and told us that she KNEW that we are Representatives of Jesus Christ!  It was the coolest thing ever!  We walked away from her door feeling so good.  We had finally overcome the trial of our faith and we were seeing the blessings from the Lord.  It's moments like this that make all the trials so worth it.  I felt like these past 5 weeks were nothing compared to the joy that I felt to have met somebody that needed the gospel so much in their life.  We went back the next day to have the first lesson and meet her 4 kids but guess what....she's a MEMBER!!!!!!  She's been inactive for about 3 years and to make it even worse she doesn't even live in our area!  It was so disappointing.  My companion and I left the appointment practically in tears.  I know it's just another trial and that the Lord will bless us.  We just have to stay strong and faithful.

 

Other than that everything is literally still the same.  Except for the fact that I probably gained 7 ponds from all the birthday goodies that everyone sent me!  I ended up sharing with the elders because I just have so many amazing people that love me and sent me so much stuff that I couldn't eat it all myself!!!!

 

I'm sorry that this email is so short today but there's not much else to update you on.  I love you all so so much! Thank you for all of your prayers...we need all we can get!  And thank you so much for keeping my companion in your prayers as well.  She really appreciates it.

 

Have a great week!  Hopefully I'll have a real miracle story to tell you next week!
--
con mucho amor
Su misionera de Sion
Hermana Taylor

 

PS:  The picture is me and my "mom"/trainer  Hermana Hernandez!

Best Birthday of my Whole Life!

This week went by so fast I just can't even believe it! It was so stressful and we had so much stuff to do, it just flew right by me!  I guess I'll start from the beginning!  Last week after I wrote my email we went to get our hair cut and then we went to the doctor for my poor sick little companion.  The doctor told her that they're going to take out her gallbladder.  I guess a healthy gallbladder works in the 35% range and hers only works 6%  so they'll be taking it out next Friday (the 17th).  She says that she's not too worried about the surgery even thought sh'es never had any kind of surgery before because I'm so excited about it.  But to be honest, I'm not excited about it I'm just trying to keep her from being scared about it and it's totally working.  Everyone keeps telling her horror stories about when they got their gallbladders taken out but it hasn't effected her quite yet.  I know that everything will go well.  Please keep her in your prayers!!!!

 

After the dr appointment we went bowling with the whole zone.  The elders put us 4 sisters on a lane by ourselves :(  These Eles aren't quite as fun as other Elders that I've serveds around but that's ok! I'm just glad that there are other sisters and we're not the only ones.  I'll try to attach pictures but I'm not quite sure if I can on this computer....we'll see how that goes!  I just tried it and I'm pretty sure it'll work!  So anyways...bowling was really fun.  It was fun to do something different!

 

On Thursday we had to go to the dentist becaue my poor companion had more problems.  This is kind of a long story but I'll try to make it shorter:  So sister Solano got one of her wisdom teeth taken out about 5 or 6 weeks ago and now just about a week ago she told me that it started to hurt again and it was all red.  So I pretended to have some kind of knowledge of dentistry  and I stuck my finger back there and didn't feel anything.  But then about 2 days later she said that it hurt even more and there was something sharp so I put my lab coat back on and felt back there again and there really was something sharp back there.  So it turns out that a piece of her jaw bone chipped during surgery and surfaced over the past couple of weeks but the bad thing is that it was still attached so he couldn't break it off.  So they had to do surgery on her right there in the dentist office...poor thing! So now she has stitches again and she got all swollen and in pain just like when they take out a wisdom tooth.  The worst part of this whole story is Friday.  On Friday she didn't even leave the house at all :(  The pain edication that they gave her made her really sick so she started throwing up.  And while she was throwing up, her stitches started wripping out.  Then that put her in even more pain and she had a throbbing head ache but didn't want to take anything because she would just throw it up.  And on top of everything she had a cold with an extra sore throat and her gallbladder pain!  I felt so bad for her and there was nothing that I could really do.  I just tried to play the best mom role that I could cause all she wanted was her mom and I can't blame her!

 

So Friday evening I left with Sister Myers (that's who we live with) and I went out to teach some lessons with one of the sisters in our branch.  We had some great lessons but it's just not the same teaching with someone who's not a missionary.

 

Saturday  we had a zone find where all of the missionaries came and worked in our area to help us find more people to teach.  We didn't get that many referrals but we got a lot of work done that we never would have been able to get done on our own.  The hardest part was organizing it all.  The Zone Leaders wanted it to be perfectly organized so we had to do a lot of work!  But my companion was in bed a lot of the time and I had to jdo most of it on my own.  It was so stressful because I don't know the area so well but it all worked out.

 

On Sunday we ate with the cutest family ever!!!! They are in an Eglish ward.  They have 4 kids and the 14 year old has autism.  His mom said, "Hey Carson tell the Sisters what you did 2 weeks ago."  And he yells "I got baptized!!!  And now I feel SSOOOOO CLEAN!!!!!"  He had me in tears right there at the dinner table.  It was so sweet!  Then he found out it was my birthday the next day and he made his whole family sing me happy birthday!  It was so sweet!

 

Then Monday was my birthday! And probably the best birthday of my entire life!!!! When I woke up in the morning my companion jumped on my bed and turned on the CD player blasting "las mananitas"  which is a birthday song that they sing instead of happy birthday!  And the entire basement was decorated from top to bottom!  She got up after I fell asleep and decorated everything!  Then, Hermana Miller and Zazueta brought me a huge chocolate cake which they called "better than swimming" cake.  It was delicious!!!  Then Hermana Hernandez(my mission mom) and Hermana reyes came over to our area just to visit with me for my birthday....they're so fun.  And then we went to dinner with the Serranos.  We always have dinner at their house on Mondays.  And she made me pasole and a birthday cake!  THEN,  we went with the Garcia family.  They've been members for just 6 months and they are the fam ily that keeps their branch together!  They're amazing.  We had a Family home evening with them and the family of Ana Paiva who just got baptized a few weeks ago.  And at the end they brought out another birthday cake!  It was so sweet!  I was birthdaycaked out but their house was my favorite cause I felt like I was actually with my family!  And Jose (who is like my little brother gave me a little surprise at the end of singing happy birthday!

 

Then on Tuesday I had the most amazing interview with President Winn.  He is so great and he cares about me so much!  He told me that Sister Solano and I will probably be staying together next transfer which I'm really excited about!

 

Well that was pretty much the extent of my week.  SOrry I wrote so much.  There was just so much that went on...I really didn't realize!

 

Thank you everyone who sent me birthday surprises!!!!!!  It made my birthday feel like I was back at home!!! I love you all so so so much!!!!!

 

Have an awesome week!!!

--
con mucho amor
Su misionera de Sion
Hermana Taylor

Another Week on the East Side

So another week on the east side and not much has changed.  We haven't found any new people to teach :(  But the Lord is blessing us with the things that we need for the investigators that we do have.  It absolutely amazes me how he works!  We've been praying so much to find some new people to teach and we just haven't been able to find anybody new.  And the investigators that we do have just haven't wanted to progress.  That's always so hard.  Because if they're not progressing then we should stop  teaching them and look for new people to teach.  So, needless to say, we've been really worried about our current investigators because they're not progressing and if we drop them we literally won't have anyone to teach!

 

Within the last few weeks we've been trying to do everything that we possibly can to receive blessings from Heavenly Father and it has totally been working.  BUt sometimes our blessings come in unexpected ways.  Like this week for example.  We've been praying for new investigators but instead of putting new people in our path the Lord has been blessing our investigators that we are teaching that we were going to have to drop.  All of the sudden Paula (who hasn't been to church)  has the strongest desire to go to church and to bring her 2 daughters.   And the other couple that were teaching who has a family of 9 are actually considering getting married.  The Lord is blessing us in ways that I never expected.

 

I love this wirk so so much.  Even though it's REALLY hard right now, I'm learning so much.  But most importantly I'm getting to know my Heavenly Father more and more and how he works.  I love Him so much! He's keeping me on my toes!!!!

 

I love you all! Have a great week!

 

Con Amor

Hermana Taylor

Not Much New Here in Millcreek

This week went by so fast! I can't believe it's Wednesday again!  There's not much new going on around here...unfortunatly:(  We had 2 baptisms on Sunday.  They both were baptized in the same ward so we had the baptismal program together.  They were both very excited!  The baptism was right after sacrament meting on Sunday so pretty much the entire branch was there at the baptism...it was so great!  This branch LOVES missionary work.  I've never seen anything like it!  They want to help so much but there just isn't that many spanish speaking people in this area.  It's kinda hard but the members are always more than willing to go to the lessons with us when we do find someone in that area. 

 

My poor companion has been sick.  She's actually been really sick for about a month.  She can't seem to keep her food in her stomach and she's always in a lot of pain.  so the doctor thought it was her gallbladder but she had an ultrasound yesterday and they didn't find any gallstones so now on Friday they're going to do another test to see if her gallbladder is working correctly and if it's not that...well then....we just have no idea what it could be.  Poor thing....she's always in so much pain.  It's really hard for her to get upl in the m orning and there's nothing that she can so to stop the pain cause nobody knows where it's coming from. 

 

Other than that, everything else is pretty much the same!  The baikes have been really fun and interesting.  We don't ride them every day because most of our area is in the mountains and it just takes too long to get around on bikes- so were trying to do every-other day.  It's fun! I feel like a real missionary!!!!

 

Well, I'm sorry that this week's email os so short.  We just ran out of time....too many things to do and too little time!

--
con mucho amor
Su misionera de Sion
Hermana Taylor