Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
HAPPY CANADIAN THANKSGIVING!! Today has been so good so far! Today is still preparation day even though it is Thanksgiving! So, you will never imagine where we traveled to today! Well, the Georges talked to us yesterday and invited us to Niagara Falls!! It was soooo amazing! The Canadian side and Canadian falls are so much better, from the New York side you can barely see the Canadian Falls! The falls are absolutely huge, and can't even compare to anything I've ever seen, and there were soooo many people there! So that was a riot!
This week is the last week of the transfer and we aren't sure what will happen exactly, but we are guessing that Elder McKinnon will be transfered because he has been here for 6 months already and in the Zone for 9 and a half months! So Sunday we will find out what is happening, who will stay, who will leave. It's sad that I'm almost done with training, I won't be able to use the "I'm still in training" excuse.
We started teaching a man named Dilip this week, he is Hindu and from India! He is super humble and a referal from a member out west! We gave him a Book of Mormon and are going by again this week to meet with hime! Super excited to really begin teaching him about the Restored Gospel! A few days ago we got a text from a guy that we don't even know who had met the missionaries last August, so we are meeting with him tonight at McDonalds, should be super awesome because when people come to us they are actually really interested! As missionaries we are suppose to be in the apartments at 9:00pm, not before or after that. So as we were doing our "obedient walk" which is when we walk around and talk to people at like 8:55, we met a man named Syed. He was super kind and gave us his phone number! We also met a man named Sergey, from Ukraine! He had met missionaries back in Ukraine and wanted to learn more so we are hopefully going to pay him a visit this week and start teaching him also! Alanso and Mercedes are doing really well, they are reading the Book of Mormon for an hour a day and working towards Baptism, they don't have a date yet but I know that they will be Baptized eventually! Unfortunately our Baptism we had scheduled for this upcoming weekend had to get postponed due to some unexpected difficulties! We are still working with Dave to get him ready for Baptism! We have a Baptism scheduled for November 7th which is still looking promising, super excited for that!
There is the basic rundown of how our Investigators are doing! Did you all notice how in Conference almost every talk talked about the Sabbath day and the Sacrament? It just goes to show how important it is to keep the Sabbath day Holy! My challenge for everybody this upcoming Sunday is to change something you do on the Sabbath with something better! For example: Instead of watching television, you would do Family History! :)
Looking forward to this week! It's looking super promising! Sorry my email isn't super long this week, we ran a little short on time due to Niagara Falls! We are headed out now to Thanksgiving Dinner with Brother Neame and Sister Anne! Sounds like there is a whole turkey for the 4 of us, I hope I don't die from over eating!
Love you all!
Elder Taylor
Monday, October 5, 2015
The Potato Farmer Elder
Elder Taylor's companion Elder McKinnon and his potato plant. And yes...I believe he is brushing his teeth. 
Halet Chet O Re 10/05/2015
Good Morning Everybody! Halet Chet O Re means How are you doing in Farsi! I met a Persian man named Muhammed on the street the other night and he taught us that! :) I hope you enjoyed Conference as much as I did! We had the opportunity to watch at the Church and it was so cool to see and sustain the New Apostles, Elder Renlund, Elder Stevenson, and Elder Rasband! I loved their testimonies, they were so sweet and the Spirit was so strong as they did so! I loved how Devin G. Durrant talked about Ponderize, I thought that was so cool! So this morning I chose Ether 12:27 to Ponderize! Basically it talks about how we all have different struggles and trials and weaknesses, but through faith in Jesus Christ, and through repentance, we can over come them and make them strong! It's so cool and It's something that we should all remember day to day, because repentance and change comes over time, it is not immediate.We are downloading all of the Conference Talks onto our Jump Drives so we can relisten to all of them in the car when we are driving, that's one of the blessings to having a car :)
Last week we got the opportunity to go do some service for a Single Sister in our ward, it was quite the adventure, let me tell you. Hahah! It was so much fun though! We were out of Kilometers to drive for the month so we decided that we were going to bike it, not realizing quite how far it really was. Turned out to be about a 16 Kilometer round trip, which equates to approximately 10 miles. Woops :) So here we are in our jeans and t-shirts going to mow this lady's lawn and it starts to rain on us.. We finished cutting the grass and she was at work but she left us some sandwiches to have for lunch, so we sat on her back porch and had lunch in the rain, I can honestly say it was way fun! I never thought that as a missionary I would be doing that, but hey, it's so different out here than I ever expected!
On Friday we had an awesome Zone Council where we learned a lot of awesome things! Elder McKinnon and I had the opportunity to give a short instruction on Extending Commitments to people and I learned a lot about it as we taught! Right near the end of the meeting President and Sister Clayton showed up! They talked about how every area can see a Baptism every transfer! We really began pondering on that and tried to think about what we could do in order to achieve that with our investigators, having only 2 weeks left in the transfer it seemed kinda crazy, but we went forward in faith. As we got back to our apartment that night, we got a text from one of our investigators who we had invited to Pray about a Baptismal date, he said he wanted to be baptized on Oct. 17th!! Ah man! MIRACLES! It was an answer to much prayer and now we are working really hard with Dave to help him be ready for baptism that day!
We have been having a really hard time finding new people to teach, we have been trying to meet with a lady named Pam, but our appointments with her keep falling through! Hopefully she we can meet with her in the next few days, she is really prepared, but she keeps having super random things come up. We stopped by another man named John who we have been trying to get a return appointment with, he is super excited about getting back into religion which he has been out of for so long. He hasn't been able to meet because his wife is super against us meeting, but It was a blessing to get his phone number and set up a time to meet with him! He is super prepared, the Lord really does prepare people for us to meet with!
It's been super rainy and windy the last few days because of Hurricane Joaquin. The waves on Lake Ontario the other day were huge!! Like, you could of surfed them huge!
Elder McKinnon decided to grow a lovely potato plant a few months ago and here is the fruit of his labors, there is a tiny potato growing in the soil, typical Idaho Boy.
Well, That is about all for this Week! I hope everything is going fabulous for everybody!
Love, Elder Taylor
Monday, September 28, 2015
Dinosaurs & Jamaican Centipedes 09/28/15
Hello from Canada! Another Week has gone by and it seems like yesterday I was writing my last email, I know for you it probably doesn't Mom, but it does for me! So earlier this week I heard about Jamaican Centipedes which are basically HUGE centipedes that live here in Canada! Some people tell me they get like 6+ inches long! I really hope not, but as we started emailing this morning one crawled across the wall right in front of us! It was like an inch and a half long but its legs were so long. If you don't like bugs, this thing would really creep you out! Elder McKinnon smashed it with our Clipboard... ahaha :)
Last Preparation Day we went into Hamilton and Played Hockey with a bunch of other Missionaries and a few members! It was a RIOT! We played that and a few other things for a couple hours and Elder McKinnon and I were so sore for the next like 4 days! It was worth it!
We had dinner with the Stiglich family this last week and it was so much fun and so funny! They are originally from Peru but just moved here from Montreal. They speak Spanish and English in their home and have 2 kids, Stephen (5) and Miah (2). They are both Bilingual already and it makes me feel really dumb because all I speak is English! Haha, Miah is hilarious though because everything she speaks is in Spanglish, and she yells, and she is 2. Put all those together and you couldn't understand her either. I guess the Gift of Tongues doesn't work in that situation? We meet with members a lot and teach them the missionary lessons so we taught them the Plan of Salvation. When we were talking about the PreEarth Life, Stephen asked us if we knew who was on Earth Before us. He ran over and grabbed a book and yelled "Dinosaurs!" He went on and showed us a book about dinosaurs and told us how they had been killed by huge flaming rocks. It was hilarious :) Luckily we were able to finish our message with them :)
We meet with one of our investigators on the fly each week. He works in the GTA and gets home at random times, usually he will give us about an hour or so notice, but we got a text from him and we were at a dinner appointment on the other side of Burlington. After dinner, we raced too meet with him at McDonald's for like 25 minutes and then had to go back to the other side of Burlington for another Appointment! We talked about the Restoration a little bit and helped answer questions he had. He asked us about what makes Baptism in our church different because he said he was baptized by immersion twice into different churches but he felt like something was missing both times! :) We explained to him Priesthood Authority and he became super excited about being baptized! His lessons are super scattered but they are so much fun to teach! He also said that the other morning he was sitting down and he had the realization that he needed to be Baptized! Ah man, it's so cool to hear those stories from people when they receive answers from the Holy Ghost! We haven't set a date yet with him, we are going to do that next time we meet!
I got to go on Exchanges on Friday with Elder Smith! He is one of our Zone Leaders and him and I spent the day in Niagara YSA. Let me tell you, YSA work is so different from Burlington! We spent like an hour down by McMaster University and got like 5 phone numbers and 2 return appointments. In Burlington, we are lucky if we get that in a week! College aged kids are a lot more open to hearing more. Elder Smith is from a dairy farm in Idaho, he has 7 siblings and he is so awesome! He is super hard working and we had a blast spending the day together! We taught a Shiek man named Roop, and it went pretty well. He told us that he believes in all Gods, including Hindu Gods and Jesus Christ, which makes no sense because there can't be both? They also carry small swords on their belts are a symbol for their religeon. It symbolizes that they are willing to help any other shiek who is being attacked for standing up for their religion. They don't use it to protect themselves however, just other Shieks. The Zone Leaders live in Hamiltion in an apartment known as the "Batcave". It's in the upstairs of a Member's home and they live with the Mandarin Elders! I learned how to say the Churches name in Mandarin, but I have no Idea how to type it, so you'll just have to trust me on that one.
One of our Investigators has been investigating for years. She has missed a few baptism dates so she felt like we were holding her back, we have been working really hard with her to help her learn and we found out she wasn't reading the Book of Mormon! She didn't understand the Restoration or why Joseph Smith wasn't talked about in the Book of Mormon. I felt like a ding-dong for not catching onto that. She has been investigating for so long and gone through so many missionaries that I didn't even think to ask her. We invited her to read and just over the last week we have seen so much change in her! Her desire has sky rocketed! We even set her with a Baptism Date to work towards! Before she was reading I found myself doubting that she could reach the date, but as I put my trust in the Lord, I have found the Faith that she could easily meet that date! It just went to show me that I really don't know that compared to the Lord.
Man, I am so excited for General Conference! 3 new apostles! Oh my goodness gracious, I'm pretty sure all the missionaries are guessing the Whitney L. Clayton will be one of the, that's President Clayton's brother! He is a member of the Presidency of the Seventy and gave an amazing talk last conference! I hope you all are preparing questions to have answered at Conference! This week our Zone is trying to have each companionship invite 20 people a day to conference which would mean we would invite over 2000 people this week! Yes!
Last night we had a Fireside at the church where Brother Ryan talked about strengthening relationships. He game some awesome pointers to use, and it was really focused on focusing on Jesus Christ, and our own improvement, not focusing on what others are doing wrong. It really is about communication too!
Interesting experience this week, remember the Nigerian lady who we helped with her car? We went over to teach her and basically we got preached too :) We'll go back and give it another shot! Haha, she is awesome!
That's about it for this week! I love you all and hope everything is going well! CHEERS!
Love, Elder Taylor
Monday, September 21, 2015
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