Doctrine and Covenants 4:3

"Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work" -Doctrine and Covenants 4:3

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

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