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