Highland Utah East (aka The World in a Box), Week 2

Hola Friends and Family!

Still working on my Spanish, but I can almost bear my testimony! Sister Ortiz is the Sister Training Leader for our Zone (Basically the sister version of a Zone Leader), but she doesn't have an STL companion, so when we go on exchanges so she can see how they're doing, I will go to the Spanish Area and be an Hermana. So I'm working on my Spanish.... it's rough though. :P 

NEWS OF THE WEEK!
New Policy! There is now no responding to emails. So those of you who I've been chatting with, I can no longer do that. So if you have questions for me or want me to respond to something, you have to email me before I email you. It'll be a bit of a transition, but exact obedience is the way to success! :)

I was a "Senior Companion" in a trio this week, because all the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders went to MLC (Mission Leadership Committee), and there are two sisters in the mission who are also companions with STL's, but they just came out a week and a half ago, so we were in a trio for the day. Since I had been out the longest, I was the Senior Companion. We had personal study, companionship study, and 12 week, then we went to go visit a couple in one of the other sister's areas. This couple used to be a senior missionary couple, but they pretended to be investigators, and we taught them the Restoration. It was interesting having the other sisters rely on my to teach most of the lesson. I realized how much I've learned in the last almost 2 months. 

Now to my "World in a Box" Subject Line. 

We are teaching a refugee from Haiti named Myshima. She's a sweetheart. But her English isn't the best. She speaks Creole and French. Sister Ortiz understands and mostly speaks French, so that helps. Myshima is great! She has such a desire to "be convinced" of the Gospel. We were laughing that "A black girl from Haiti, a brown girl from the Dominican Republic, and a white girl from America" were all sitting there speaking 4 different languages. It's amazing how the gospel brings people together and transcends all racial and language barriers. 

We are also teaching a man that moved from China. I still struggle pronouncing, let alone spelling, his last name, so I'll just call him Bro. Jones. He was raised in a society where school teaches you that believing in God is ridiculous, so it's interesting to teach him. He told us this week that he's "trying to believe in God". He's awesome. 

Last story of the week. We had a rough day....got yelled at twice, never let in, chased by a dog, found out that ringing the doorbell by touching two wires together is NOT a good idea :P .....anyways, we were grumpy and frustrated when we got home. We walked down the stairs to our apartment and our front door was glowing. We started to freak out because we thought we left the lights on all day. Then we looked in the front door and this is what we see:

Our sweet landlords and their family set this up for us. :) 

Tender Mercies!! 

It's been a good week here! Hope it has been for all of you! I love you, and am praying for you! My Utah friends: enjoy the snow!!!


Love,
Sister Taylor


Zone Training Meeting - one set of elders (which I helped plan, even though I'm not a zone leader)




...at one of the 7 ward Christmas parties we went to on Saturday!

Highland East Area, Week 1

Hola Familia y amigos! 

Como estan? Yo estoy muy bien aqui en Highland. 

Well, I'm serving in Spanish now.....


just kidding. But I sure feel like it sometimes! Transfers happened this week, and I am now with Sister Ortiz in the Highland East Area. Sister Ortiz is from the Dominican Republic, and has served in Spanish for the last couple transfers, but started her mission in English. So we went to the temple with one of the people that she taught this week (thankfully the session was in English), and I just rotated between conversations afterwards depending on who was speaking English at the moment. I'm learning more Spanish every day though....maybe eventually I can introduce myself in Spanish. :P We also went to a baptism in Spanish. Sister Ortiz or one of the other Sister Missionaries translated the whole thing for me. It was really funny though. The little boy (probably about 9 years old), was pretty scared for baptism. When they opened the curtains to the font, there he is, standing with his branch president.....wearing scuba goggles. All of the sister missionaries (including me) had the giggles so hard, but we were trying to be reverent. But he was baptized! (Along with his scuba goggles) :P 

We are "Whitewashing" (or "pinkwashing", depending on who you are) this area. For those of you who don't know, that means that there were elders in this area before, but now they were both transferred to new areas, and we both came in, knowing nothing about the area. They do that for a variety of different reasons, but most often just to mix it up and get the spark of missionary work going again. I know that Sister Ortiz and I are supposed to be here. It was a little interesting moving into the apartment (a basement apartment of a cute member family...they have 5 little girls under the age of 6!) where the elders lived before. Elders and Sisters sure have a different definition of "clean". Let's just say there were feathers in the fridge. :P But we spent the whole rest of the transfer day deep cleaning, and now it's really clean and more "Sister-fied". :)

It's hard to start up an area, but there are some really awesome people here. One of my favorites is a sweet severely autistic girl named Karly. She can't talk, but she's SUPER smart. She just recently learned a new technique that's been discovered, where she taps out letters on a card to spell words. She wants to be baptized SO bad! She bore her testimony to us at the end of the lesson. It was incredible. She is going to be baptized next week!!!

We met mini horses!!! They were so cute!!  And the Highland sunsets are beautiful!

Hope you all have a wonderful week, and I hope you got to watch the Christmas Devotional. It was great!! If not, log onto LDS.org and watch it!!

Thanks to those of you who email me!! It's fun to hear about your lives!

Shoutout to my newly-nine year old brother, Gabe!! 

Love,

Sister Taylor

A Week of Miracles: Saratoga Springs South

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been a week of miracles! #1, BROTHER MCHAW GOT BAPTIZED!!!!! We hadn’t been able to meet with him for a bit, so we thought that we’d have to cancel. But were able to meet with him again, and the baptism could still happen!! Here are pictures from the baptism. He also has a little girl, but she was busy playing with her cousins when we took the picture. When he came out of the water, the Spirit was literally poured out on us. I have never felt it like that before. It was incredible. I taught him from the beginning, and experienced a lot of miracles while teaching him, so that was really cool to see him get to that point. He’s awesome, and the ward has already given him a calling!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I’m SO grateful for the opportunity that I have to serve a mission! For Thanksgiving, we played a flag football Turkey Bowl, Zone against Zone. One of the members that we love and work with a lot, Sister King, has access to the West Lake High School Athletic gear, so we borrowed football jerseys for our whole team. It was fun to be wearing that #10 again, even if it was the wrong jersey. :) We played against the Lehi zone. We don’t keep score, but we had a lot of fun. President Killpack, the Mission President, and his wife, even came for a bit! Sister Killpack had an awesome interception. 

We helped Sister Flowers and her family make Thanksgiving dinner, (we made the yams, which they said was the best part), then ate with the Kings and all of their family. We dropped by the Flowers (picture with Brother Selds, because I missed his baptism) and another family for dessert as well. Pretty good day!

Another wonderful thing that happened was that the Church’s new Christmas InitiativeChurch's New Christmas Initiative has come out! The videos are really great, but the message is even better. “A Savior is Born…Discover Why!” I encourage you all to go to christmas.mormon.org, watch, and share the video! There are a bunch of fun things that you can do. There are daily gifs to share as a countdown to Christmas, a new music video for 12 days, 2 different videos, and a print to share your feelings! PLEASE get on, share them, and spread the Gospel and the love of Christ!

The last story that I’ll tell for this week, is from yesterday. We taught a foreign exchange student from China named Jana (her English name, not her Chinese name). We have been teaching her with two other students, but one was sick and the other dropped us. So it was just Jana, and it was a super incredible lesson. She doesn’t have a religious background AT ALL, so everything was super basic. We spent a good 10 minutes explaining what the “Gospel” is. She thought it was a person, and was very confused. But we challenged her to pray, and the Spirit was there so strongly as she knelt and offered a simple, heartfelt prayer. She’s great. 

A few people have asked what I would like for Christmas. If any of you feel like giving me that extra million dollars you have laying around, I won’t say no ;), but what I really want for Christmas is for you to share the Gospel. Pray for a missionary opportunity, and invite the missionaries to teach someone in your home. If you will pray, and be prepared, God will give you the opportunity. Then, write me a letter and tell me about it!! I would love a stack of letters telling me of my friends and family member’s missionary experiences! My address is: 
Sister Rechelle Taylor
Utah Orem Mission
612 W 100 S
Lindon, UT
84042

Remember the Reason for the Season!!
Love,
Sister Taylor

ONE MONTH! Saratoga Springs South

Dear Everyone,

Well, this week has been different! Monday night to Tuesday night, we were on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. (The Sister Missionary version of a Zone Leader). Sister Wallace came to our area, and I went to Riverton with Sister Inman. It was weird being apart from Sister Cruz and out of my area. We definitely had some interesting experiences, including a fellowshipper going on about how he’s not sure if he killed people as a teenager….it was a very off-topic lesson. We both just walked out of that lesson going “what just happened?!”. But I learned a lot from her, and was even able to teach her a teaching object lesson that Sister Cruz had taught me!

Thursday we had a dinner appointment with this sweet Chinese sister who served us traditional Chinese food. We picked what we wanted and dumped it in this pot of boiling water at the table, then we’d fish it out with these little nets. It was fun. 

Friday was a big adventure! We had Weekly Planning (3 hours where we plan for the next week), and then we went to our Mission Musical Fireside. We ate dinner as a mission, then went over to rehearse at the Alpine Tabernacle. (For my Logan friends, it’s about the same era as the Logan Tabernacle. Really historic.) We rehearsed, and then everyone came. We invited all of our recent converts, less actives, and investigators, but only the Morta’s came. It was good to at least have them there though!! We performed our mission song (Send Me), and recited The Living Christ as a mission. I only have about ¾ of it memorized, but I’m trying to get it all memorized by the end of the transfer. It is a powerful declaration!! The President of UVU, who is also Elder Holland’s son, President Matt Holland, spoke as well. The UVU institute choir sang with us. It was all about the Restoration of the Church. Really cool!!

Saturday I woke up sicker than sick….half the mission was sick the night before, and I managed to catch it. Just a 24 hour stomach bug, but I was SO sick. I nearly cried, because Saturday was also the baptisms of Brother Selds and Annie. I missed my first two baptisms!! :’( I was sad that I wasn’t there, but as long as THEY were there, that’s all that matters! They both went well, and I was able to attend Annie’s confirmation yesterday, so that was special.

Yesterday we went to dinner at the King’s house. Brother King is the Ward Mission Leader of the ward that both Brother Selds and Brian attend. His wife is awesome. (She informed me that my Grizzlies are state champs! Way to go, guys!! Basketball is next! J ) We had a discussion first based off of what one of their sons learned in Sunday School. The basis scripture is a little scary, but bear with me!

2 Peter 2

1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.



"Pernicious" is an adjective that means: "Having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way." The example that the dictionary uses is "The pernicious influences of the mass media"



Now, let's think about this. In the last 5 years or so especially, the phrase "truth shall be evil spoken of" has definitely come to pass. The Church's positions on same sex marriage, abortion, drugs, pornography, and many other things are being bashed by the world. The thing is, it's not the Church's position.....it's the Lord's position, because it's His Church. Satan is desperately trying to convince everyone that God's position is wrong. 



Moroni 7

16 For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

17 But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him.



This scripture is wonderful, because there's a 100% accurate way to tell if something is from Heavenly Father, or from Satan. If it helps you come closer to Christ, it’s of God, and if it doesn’t, it’s of the devil! Pretty simple, right!? I invite you to consider the decisions you make and stands you take with this in mind. Stay on the Lord’s side!!

The Church is true, and I’m so blessed to be a representative of Jesus Christ in this area!! I pray that you all are doing well!!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!! (We’re eating with the Kings and their extended family, who have varying views on the Church.) Taylor family members, I expect lots of pictures and stories!! 

Love,

Sister Taylor

Pictures:

Maddie Morta doesn’t like reading, but Sister Cruz and I both do. We recommended a few books to her, and she was sitting after the fireside totally engrossed in one of them! We were like proud parents! 





Some of the Sisters in my district at the fireside.






A cool chalk drawing we found on a board at a chapel. Remember this as we head into the Christmas Season!!

Week 4, Saratoga Springs South

“I am called [Sister Taylor]..... I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life.” (3 Nephi 5:12-13)

Life is pretty great here in the mission field! Missions are hard. We have doors slammed in our faces, we get jumped on by massive dogs, we’re tired, and we run into awkward situations constantly. But it is SO worth it!! We have TWO baptisms this Saturday. Annie (haven’t told you all about her yet. She’s basically a member, just has taken her time deciding to get baptized) and Brother Selds. Things got complicated with Brother Selds this week, because he lives outside the mission, but  we’ve been teaching him here because he’s dating someone in our mission. So we’re having to work with the missionaries and mission president of both missions to figure out who is doing what when. Nice and confusing. But the baptism is still happening! So that’ll be good!

One day this week we met with Brian! We sat on a bench overlooking the lake to teach him because his family doesn’t like the Church, so we can’t meet at his home, and we couldn’t find anywhere else to teach him. It was such a powerful lesson! Even though we were all freezing and our noses were running, the Spirit was so strong. It gave me a glimpse of how different his future life will be because of the Gospel. Being out in Heavenly Father’s Creation just made it better! He got his temple recommend, and we get to go to the SLC temple to do baptisms for the dead with him!! We're going to go after they turn the lights on, because neither he nor Sister Cruz has seen the lights at temple square before. (This picture is the view from our lesson.)

Awkward experience of the week:
We were talking to this nice man on his front porch, and he said he worked crazy hours at Firehouse. I said “Well, at least it smells good!”. Right as it came out of my mouth, I realized that he meant THE firehouse. He’s a firefighter! He just looked at me like I was crazy. It was nice and awkward, and Sister Cruz couldn’t stop laughing. Needless to say, we got out of there quickly.
We had a great dinner last night. The family invited a less-active brother, so we had a good gospel discussion. And the mom is a rep for a company called “LulaRoe”. She let us each pick a dress! They’re super cute and modest, so that was SO nice! Their little girl has curly hair like I do, and we looked a lot alike. 

I pray that you all are doing well, and striving to find the happiness and joy the Gospel can bring each and every day in your lives!! 

I would LOVE to hear from you and how your lives are going!! Sorry for the shorter email!

Love, Sister Rechelle Taylor

Week 3, Saratoga Springs South

Dear Everyone,


Q: What kind of man was Boaz before he got married?

A: He was RUTHless! ;)

That super cheesy Bible joke is courtesy of the Saratoga Springs South Stake’s Talent Show hosts. (I’m sure there is a specific name, but I can’t remember it right now.)

Well, this week has been interesting. Sister Cruz, not being used to cold weather, got a cold. And because we’re together 24/7, she got me sick as well. So we spent more time in bed focusing on breathing than we wanted to this week. But we still got some work done!

One of our former less-actives, Damien, that we’ve been teaching, got to go back to the temple!!! He had never been to the SLC temple, but his mom had worked there, so he wanted to
go to a session there. Because our mission is so small area-wise, we get to attend any ordinance of someone we taught. So Sister Cruz and I, along with Sister Cruz’s former companion Sister Vave, got to go to Salt Lake and go to the temple!! I LOVE the Salt Lake Temple. I love being in the House of the Lord. His presence can be felt so strongly there. 

Sister Cruz was super sick, (she hadn’t infected me yet) and she wanted a priesthood blessing. So the Elders (both our Zone Leaders and our District Leaders….not sure why) came over and gave her a blessing. I also asked for a blessing, because adjusting to missionary life is hard. In the blessing, I was counseled to read a certain scripture, so that was cool! The comfort of feeling Heavenly Father’s love for me was really what I needed.

Because Sister Cruz was sick, she didn’t want to teach our recent convert Hannah, because she has an adorable little one year old we didn’t want to infect. I wasn’t sick yet, so we went on splits for the first time! Sister Cruz stayed at our good friend’s, the Morta’s, while Hannah’s mother-in-law came and picked me up. She didn’t really participate in the lesson, so I taught it all by myself. Terrifying, and I was slightly awkward, but it turned out ok! 

Random thing:

We made friends with this cat that liked to hang around our house. We named him Stanley. (Picture 3) Sister Cruz is a total cat lover, but somehow Stanley liked me more. He hung around for a few days, then disappeared. We hope he found his way home.

Our sweet less-active friend Abi FINALLY opened up to us this week!! She’s super shy, but wants to know more about the church. We taught her the Plan of Salvation, then had her teach us it (with little map cutouts). She finally participated! It was great!

We’re preparing for 3 baptisms right now. We met with Brother Selds at the chapel this week, and after teaching him about the 10 Commandments, we gave him a chapel tour. Good thing we did, because he had some good questions about baptism that we were able to answer! 

We also met with Brother McHaw yesterday. He’s seriously so golden!! He’s excited to get baptised and then start working towards getting sealed to his cute family. He’s such a good dad. It’s fun to see him with his kids. 

Another one of our recent converts, Brian, got the priesthood this week!! We got to be there, and I also taught him how to tie a tie. (Benefits of having all brothers, I guess!) In the picture, he’s the one with the plain red tie and white shirt. He texted us yesterday and told us he also got a temple recommend!!!! He’s so great!

Yesterday, we met with a sweet 10 year old from Africa named Addia. I had actually been to her home country more recently than she has! She’s super willing to learn and so cute!! She accepted the commitment to be baptised, and she’s SO excited! Her foster family has been working really hard to teach her in the home. They’re awesome.


Well, this email has already taken up half of your day, so I’ll end it now, but I love hearing from those of you who have emailed me/ sent letters!! You all are great! Know that I’m praying for you!! 

Love,
Sister Taylor

Week 2, Saratoga Springs South

"Hi, I'm Sister Taylor. I'm from Logan. Yes, Logan Utah. Yes, it took me a few days to adjust to the idea, but I'm super excited to be here. I've been out a week and a half. Yep, I'm a greenie. I'm sorry, our dinner calender is full."

This is how basically every single one of my conversations begins. Sister Cruz and I have discussed just recording our answers and giving them to people when we meet them. :P 

Anyways, it's been a great week! I love being a missionary. It definitely gets hard some days, but it is so worth it!! Sister Cruz and I have a lot of fun. We have 5 people "on date" for baptism before the end of the month, so that's SUPER exciting. 

First, two things that I forgot to talk about last week. 
We dropped by our crazy friend Michelle's house. She's really funny. Her grandma doesn't like us very much, so we went to a lookout point looking over the lake for her lesson. She finished smoking her cigarette and then we read from the Book of Mormon. It was really cool to see her insights on things. We just have to keep her progressing. She tells us she's still reading, so that's nice!

Sister Cruz and I were doing companionship study when all of a sudden she looked behind me and screamed. My first thought was "murderer!". Then I realized that wasn't logical. Then I thought "spider!" and I panicked. But she's not afraid of spiders. Turns out she saw a mouse running across the doorframe of our bedroom. So I tried to find the mouse while she stood on her bed. It was really entertaining. We never did find that mouse......we have traps out though. 

Now to this week. 
We met with the Green's for a really cool lesson. Sister Green was baptized at one point, but Brother Green isn't a member. He wants to learn really slowly, but he has SO MANY questions. He thinks sort of how I do, wanting to map everything out. We helped him with Lehi's family tree. I think it's just a matter of time before he realizes that he knows that the church is true.

We met with Sister Flowers and her daughter, and her boyfriend Brother Selds, as well as some awesome neighbors. Brother Selds had some questions about the Book of Abraham that neither Sister Cruz or I knew the answer to. The next morning, during personal study, I got to work trying to find the answer. I found it on LDS.org and it PERFECTLY answered his question, and more! We sent Sister Flowers the link, and she forwarded it to Brother Selds. We met with them again yesterday, and though everyone there is pretty distractable, the Spirit was there, and we were able to set a time for his baptism. 

We also met with the Larsen kids, some cute foster kids who have taken the lessons like 5 times and know more about the gospel then most primary kids, but the foster system won't let them get baptized. Hopefully the court will decide they can this month. 

Yesterday we went to visit Brother McHaw again. SUCH a powerful lesson!! He is just solid! He reads the Book of Mormon with his daughter every morning, and bore a simple but powerful testimony of it. He is so ready to be baptized! It's going to be awesome!

One of my favorite lessons of the week came when we met with a recent convert, named Johanna. She is in high school and super busy, but trying to keep the Spirit with her all the time. We had her teach the lesson to us. She wants to serve a mission, and holy cow, she's going to be great!

We ate SO MUCH chili this week. We went to multiple chili cookoffs, and were served chili for dinner a few times. That would be fall in Utah! One of the coolest things that happened was we stopped at a chapel to use the bathroom and there was another chili cookoff going on. Neither Sister Cruz or I are good in big groups, so we went to the kitchen to help wash dishes. We started talking to this sweet mom named Samantha and her cute daughter Nida. When we told her our names, she asked why we called ourselves sisters! Just that morning we had studied "How to begin teaching" in PMG. That is one of the things it explains! It turns out that she just moved here, and loves the family aspect of the church. I asked her if we could come visit her, and she was totally open to it!! Woohoo!!!! 

HALLOWEEN! I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! I sure did! We went and had dinner with our whole mission. We sat in groups by last name, so I wasn't with Sister Cruz....that was weird. But then we went to the TEMPLE!!! It was so cool to see an army of missionaries all in white. The Mt. Timpanogos temple is beautiful! Wonderful day! I just felt at home when we walked in. 

I've learned more of the power of the Book of Mormon this week. It is truly an inspired book. I just wish that I had studied it more before my mission! I challenge you all to read the Testimony of Joseph Smith and the Introduction at the front of the Book of Mormon this week. It will bring the Spirit. 

I love you all and would love to hear from you!! My mailing address is 

Sister Rechelle Taylor
Utah Orem Mission
612 W 100 S
Lindon, UT 84042

Love, 
Sister Taylor

Week 1, Saratoga Springs South

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, I'm officially a full-time missionary! For those of you who don't know, I didn't go to the MTC, so my family dropped me off right at the mission home on Tuesday. I got to spend some time with Sister Killpack, the mission president's wife, and my family, before the rest of the missionaries arrived from the MTC. We ate dinner there, and stayed there overnight. I love President and Sister Killpack. They are great. 

The next morning we ate breakfast and went to transfer meeting. We "greenies" had a smaller meeting before, and then we went to the big transfer meeting. My companion is named Sister Cruz. She's 4'11", from Mississippi, a convert of 3 years, and awesome! We have a lot of fun together talking and goofing off, but we are working hard on our purpose to bring others to Christ. 

We went from the transfer meeting to our apartment, which is in the basement of a widow that we call Grandma. She's very protective of us. We then proceeded to plan. The first lesson that we taught that day was to Tori and Ella, sisters who are recent converts. Tori is 11, and Ella is 17. We are teaching them the review lessons. Ella had a lot of questions about life after death, so we got to explain what we know. We then went to the Morta's house. Brother Morta is a recent convert, and his wife and her daughter are members. They are all awesome. We ate dinner there, and reviewed the Word of Wisdom with Brother Morta. We then went to the Randalls. Sister Randall, and her son Bradley are recent converts, and we are preparing them to go do baptisms for the dead. It would be AWESOME if they could go together. Brother Randall has TONS of questions, but doesn't want to meet with us, so he asks his wife the questions, and she asked us. It's hard to try to pass it along like that. We went home and planned, I unpacked, then we went to bed. That was our first day. I'm just going to give the highlights of the rest of the week, because we don't have much time. We met with one recent convert, named Sister Fields, and she is trying so hard, but she manages a gas station, and it's super hard and stressful for her. She doesn't have much time, but she's trying really hard. 

Fridays are our weekly planning days, so we didn't leave the house until 3. That was hard, but the planning is SUPER important. We helped Sister Flowers (active member) and her 2 daughters make dinner. She's awesome. Her boyfriend, Brother Selds, is an investigator. I got to put him "on date"! That was really cool. He is going to be baptized on Nov. 21. So exciting!!! Saturday was really fun! We got to go to Provo, where ELDER BALLARD and President L. Whitney Clayton of the 70 met with us!! Front row seats, literally!! It was a really powerful meeting. One thing that stuck out to me, was that he promised us that we are in the right mission! I already knew that, but it was very comforting. 

We then went to this AWESOME Harry Potter themed Halloween party. Hermana Ricks was with us because her companion went to a baptism. The Harry Potter party was thrown by the Morta's . We got to talk to Tori, and Sister Morta's ex husband, who is not a member. He was really funny. Yesterday was EXHAUSTING, but INCREDIBLE! We didn't have a dinner scheduled for that night, and we prayed that someone would feed us, because we were so hungry. Less than half an hour later, Sister Flowers texted us asking if we had a dinner scheduled for that night. It was an answer to prayers. The Lord protects His missionaries!  

We spoke in 2 sacrament meetings, and taught 3 sharing times in another ward. It was crazy, but really fun. I loved being in the Primary. All the happy chaos reminded me of my family reunions. Sister Cruz and I spoke on missionary work. I talked about King Benjamin as a member missionary. (Read Mosiah 2-5 and see if you can pick out how he was a member missionary!) After our second talk, a little girl came up and gave us drawings that she had done of us. She even quoted us! Then we met with Brother McHaw. He is an investigator who we were trying to put on date to be baptized. We had decided on Dec. 5 during our planning, but during the lesson, I kept feeling like we needed to move it to Nov 28. I was trying to figure out how to tell Sister Cruz before I asked him, when she nudged me and pointed at her ipad. There she had typed "Nov. 28". The Spirit is real! It was so cool. He agreed to work towards being baptized then, after we testified that God would help him with his Word of Wisdom concerns. It was an incredibly powerful lesson. 

I'm excited for Halloween. We're going to get together as a mission, eat dinner, then GO TO THE TEMPLE!!! I'm so excited to be in the House of the Lord again! 

Funny things that happened this week:
• A little girl joined us while we were out "Finding" (like tracting, but adjusted for Utah). Her mom was very anti-Mormon, and slammed the door in my face (mid-sentence), but her daughter loved us and joined us as we talked to others. As we prayed with one man, she followed our example, folding her arms and squeezing her eyes tight. She was adorable. I know that she felt the Spirit with us.
• Sister Williams, who I came out into the field with, and I have the same birthday. She also managed to slice her finger on a plastic fork when it broke into 3 pieces as she ate. It was really funny. 
• Little kids in general are HILARIOUS.
I love the Utah Orem Mission and I know I'm supposed to be here. I love being a missionary and being able to live by the Spirit and testify of what I know to be true 24/7. 
Thank you all for your love and support!!
Love, Sister Taylor