Another great week in Boerne... say it like Bernie... :)

Hello everyone!!! Another amazing week has gone by!!  where to start??? well last week the library was closed so we went to a members home and emailed shortly so sorry for the lack of details and no pictures :( 

This week has been very interesting, We had extreme lows with the tempature and had a freeze warning and could not drive for a bit because the roads were iced over and no one here knows how to drive. There were quite a few accidents. 

This has been another hard week with trying to set appointments and when we go to the appointments no one is there. But Monday night we ran into a big group of spanish people in an apartment complex and we found nearly twenty or so people that we could teach. What is funny is that most we have knocked into and the ladies home that they go to is a less active who was baptized when she was 12 in Guatamala and she has two children, one we taught before without knowing she was a member. So it was awesome and we are hoping to get in today. I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with Elder Hernandez this week and we had cool experiences with going to members gome and having lessons with them. 

We have some amazing members down here in Boerne  and a family brought two friends this sunday who are doing a multicultural project for school so we were able to talk to them and give them Book of Mormons and resources for them to look at and we are hoping that their interest will be spiked past the educational need and more to the siritual need :) 

I love Y'all and i hope you have an amazing week and keep sharing the light of Christ :)

Happy MLK day!

Okay so this week we had a really good week!! Last Monday we had a nice tour from a member in the fair oaks ward and they have a lot of cools things on their property and then we had exchanges on Tuesday and I had the opportunity to be with Elder Rodgers(cousin to sister Rodgers from my mtc district) and he was super cool!! He had served in this area about a year ago so he was super excited!!! Through out the week we had various activities and of Friday we had a Elders Quorum social and we had a non member there, we played board games and had wild meat (deer and stuff like that) and so it was really cool!!! Then on Saturday we did some service for some members in the Leon Springs  area and we did some farm and barn work, it was smelly haha. Yesterday we went and knocked Comfort for a little bit and found a few people that could have  a lot of potential so we are excited, then we had a little downer because we were dropped by one of our investigators. But we have a lot going on this week so we are really excited!!!! :) 

Elder Bednar visits TSAM!

Well this week was an incredible experience!!! On Friday we had the amazing opportunity to hear in person from Elder Bednar :) After wards it felt like that one commercial where the guys it talking to the kids and they are like "what about infinity times infinity" and the guy does a head explosion. Yup, that is what happened spiritually all night for 3 hours :) haha I can not tell y'all a whole lot because he said he would find us and do bad things to us haha.  He is actually a very funny man and made it a great learning environment!! He is kind of short also haha it suprised me when he first walked in. But anyways it was a once in a life time opportunity, even though I did not get to shake his hand. But the focus was on faith and a few weeks prior we were given 3 talks that he had given, all of them were based on learning by faith and acting by faith.

Also this week I had the opportunity to give a talk about The Restoration of the Gospel in sacrament meeting. I feel like it went okay haha :) I was able to incorporate certain points that Elder Bednar spoke about. We found a few new investigators this week through good old knocking on doors!!! One of our investigators is going to be baptized on the 1st of February as along as we can keep teaching her and she comes to church. But she had a really hard week this week and had quite a few miracles happen to her. One was she was not able to pay the phone bill and was going to have no way to talk to anyone, but it never shut off so someone paid her bill. Just a lot of things have happened to her and her husband recently and being 19 with 2 kids.. she has really recognized that this is a trial from God testing her faith.     

Our district having a goodbye lunch for Sister Feist (The short blond sister haha) with our super hero capes that Elder Tapia made

While we were out knocking doors

At a members house, same breed and color as Max!

Staying in Boerne for another six weeks!

Well this week has been interesting with New Years going on and such! We received transfer calls last night and me and Elder Tapia are staying in Boerne!! As well as Elder Knudson and Elder Hernandez, so this transfer will be so much fun!!!! :) 

We have a lot of potential  here in this area, if we can get past Word of Wisdom issues we would be good!! But there is opposition in all things, So we have a bunch of ideas to find people! We wanted to start an activity night every week and we wanted to do soccer. We talked to a lot of people and they said they would love that and they would invite their friends and come!! So our ward mission leader said he would build some goals and we will get that started!! So we are super excited for that!! Also we talked about having a multicultural event and having booths for individuals and families to share their heritage. This would help the ward unity and be a great way to invite people! Our ward has everything from all over Europe to several different countries in central America.

 A fun little thing that my companion is doing is making capes with our super hero names on them. And so my MTC nick name came back haha we honestly have such a cool district!!! On Saturday the sisters had a baptism of a young man who is 17. We is truly an elect young man. We have become very good friends with him and he says we are like family and he really wants to serve a mission! He has such a strong testimony of the Gospel, Just like him I know this church is true with all my heart. I would never leave this church for anything. Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer and God is our literal Father in Heaven who loves us and knows us. Have a safe and an amazing week!! LOVE Y'ALL!!!!! 

A Missionary's Christmas

Well this week was great!!!! We had a very merry christmas!!!!! Thank you to all who sent me Christmas wishes!!! Well lets see, this week we had dinner with two great families, the Schiezz family Christmas eve and The Graham and wilson Family on Christmas day!!! We really felt the love and it was awesome!!!  All day Christmas we spent it with our district at the church building and we shot a basketball around and we played board games and had a lot of food haha.

 After Christmas we had exchanges and I got to drive for the first time in 4 months!!! haha in a Toyota Corrola. The next day Elder Tapia and Elder Knudson were sick so we went to the Leon Springs area and had to get a tire fixed haha. On sunday we had dinner with the Johnson family and we had some smoked ribs!!! It was a great week!!! 

What the Christmas Call looked like from the Arizona side... (before I started crying...)

Christmas Call.... (with the more personal stuff edited out....)

Taylor:  Hi guys!!!

Everyone:  Hi… Hello…. Hi buddy!  Merry Christmas!

Taylor:  Why do you sound like you’re on the other side of the room?

Eric:  We put you on speakerphone, is that okay?

Taylor:  Yeah.

Christy: Ok, otherwise it will take too long for all of us to talk to you.

Taylor:  Okay.

Eric:  It’s your first Christmas away and you’re missing Brayden’s fabulous morning hair-do.

Taylor:  Sweeeet…. I wanna a picture next week.

Christy:  Okay, we’ll send some.

Brayden:  No.. NO. NOOO!

Christy:  Did you get your package from the post office?

Taylor:  I did. 

Christy:  Oh good, I’m glad… I was worried you weren’t going to get it.

Taylor:  We went to the post office, but apparently it was already on the truck and they were going to redeliver it or something.  And….

Christy:  But did it get to you?

Taylor:  Yeah, it did.

Christy:  Did you open everything already?

Taylor:  Yeah!  J

Christy:  How did we do?

Taylor:  You guys did good.  The beef jerky, that was great. 

(Insert image of 2 bags Duck Dynasty brand beef jerky)

Eric:  Hopefully it’s not all gone already!

Taylor:  It’s not!

Christy:  Ration it out!

Taylor:  I will! 

Eric:  So my biggest question is… what are you eatin’?

Taylor:  Right now, BBQ…..

Eric:  Chicken or brisket or ribs?

Taylor:  Let’s see… uhh….

Eric:  We saw your picture with the Rudy’s… that look liked some healthy brisket right there…

Taylor:  Oh yeah…

Christy:  You like it now?  (meaning BBQ style food)

Taylor:  Yeah.

Eric:  Hear that kids?  We can actually go out for BBQ now…

Christy: Yay, when Taylor gets back we get to go to Rudy’s!

Taylor:  Let’s go to Red Robin…

Brayden:  Red Robin, yummmm……(sung in the jingle style from the commercial)

Christy:  How are things going today?

Taylor:  It’s going good.

Christy:  Do you have a lot planned?

Taylor:  Right now we are just hanging with our district at the church building… we’re just playing board games, eating, shooting the basketball around…. And later tonight we have this big dinner with a family, here at the church again.

Christy:  Wow, it must be a huge family if they reserved the church!

Taylor:  It is.  J

Christy:  So how’s your new ward?  Do you like it?

Taylor:  I do.

Christy:  Do you speak Spanish with people or is it more English?

Taylor:  It’s more English.

Christy:  But your companion speaks Spanish right?  He’s Mexican?

Taylor:  Uh hum.

Christy:  Do you speak a lot of Spanish with each other?

Taylor:  Uh…. Sometimes…

Christy:  I’m assuming he’s fluent in both English and Spanish?

Taylor: Yeah.

Christy:  How long has he lived in Utah?

Taylor:  He’s lived there since he was seven, so….

Christy:  That’s good!  Are you in a car area again or are you on a bike?

Taylor:  I’m in a car area again… I’m getting fat!

Christy:  You’re getting fat?

Taylor:  Not FAT, fat, but yeah….

Christy:  You’re new companion doesn’t like to get up and go running every morning?

Taylor:  Not during the winter, no.

Christy:  Has it been super cold?

Taylor:  It hasn’t been too bad.

Eric:  How were you faring it up with Elder Morrin, running?  Were you able to keep up with him?

(Elder Morrin ran BYU track before his mission.)

Taylor:  Okay.  He injured himself about a year ago, so he hasn’t been able to do any exercise until recently.

Christy:  Dad looked up his bio on the BYU website.

Taylor:  Wow… okay…

Eric:  Yeah, they have a picture of him on the BYU website.  All the athletes have a bio on the BYU website.

Taylor:  Awkward?

Christy:  Yeah, Dad’s stalking your companion!  You don’t give us a whole lot of details about them, so we gotta get them on our own.

Taylor:  Sorry!

Christy:  You do take good pictures, though!  Make sure you send your full memory cards back to me so we can back them on a our computer.

Taylor:  I’m going to send you some stuff this week in a package.

Christy:  Do you know how to mail a package at the post office?

Taylor:  I can figure it out.

Eric:  We didn’t train him up for that before he left!

  

Eric:  So you live in an apartment with other elders, then?

Taylor:  Yeah, there’s two other elders with us.

Eric:  Are they English speaking?  Are you technically English or Spanish speaking right now?

Taylor:  Kinda both, we have some investigators that are Spanish.

Eric:  You’ll have to make sure you take advantage of your companions Spanish speaking abilities.

Taylor:  I know.

Eric:  Do you ride your bike at all?

Taylor:  So far, no. 

Christy:  So how are you liking Texas now that you’ve been there a while?

Taylor:  I love it.  It’s nice up here. 

Christy:  So do you have any super awesome experiences you want to share with us before we have to get off the phone?

Taylor:  Uh, let’s see…. Before I left Round Rock, I was telling you guys about Elena and how she wants to be baptized, but we’ve noticed that Satan’s been working on her really hard and she feels bad about everything even though it’s not big stuff at all.  The morning that I was leaving to come down to Boerne (pronounced like Bernie), before I left I was able to give her a blessing in Spanish.

Megan:  That’s awesome, Taylor.

Eric:  Wow!

Christy:  Is there a baptism today in Round Rock that was supposed to be happening?

Taylor:  Um, I’m not sure.  That’s supposed to be Elena, but when I texted the elders up there last week, they said they don’t know because Elena’s not sure based on what’s been going on.  Like she wants to, but she doesn’t feel prepared or worthy right now.  But she totally is!  I need to find out if she got baptized or not.

Christy: Oh, okay, so how many missionaries are serving in Boerne right now?

Taylor:  There’s six of us.  Four elders and and 2 sisters.  Our district has two other sisters from another ward.  There’s three wards here.

Christy:  What do most people do for a living that live there?  Do you know?

Taylor:  Um… let’s see… I don’t know… in our ward there’s a lot of old people, so they’re retired.  J  Like half the ward is old people.  Ha ha….

Christy:  Do you have dinner appointments every night?

Taylor:  We have quite a few… but not every night.

Christy:  Do you cook on the other nights?

Taylor:  I make chicken sometimes.  I like to make orange chicken. 

Christy:  Did you get orange chicken sauce from Grandma?  I asked her to send it to you. 

Taylor:  Yeah, I actually opened that box like two weeks ago.

Christy:  I knew you wouldn’t be able to wait!!

Taylor:  No, it was because when I got transferred to Boerne, I had no food to eat.  So I opened their box, because I figured there was food in there.  I didn’t open the card!

Christy:  Was there any food besides the Orange Sauce?

Taylor:  There was Pringles, beef jerky, red vines…

Christy:  Well that’s awesome that you were able to live off it!

Eric:  A much needed survival kit!  How long did you live off that?

Taylor:  I got there Saturday, so I just had to wait until Monday.

Christy:  So do you guys share food, or all get your own?

Taylor:  In my last area, we started the law of conservation, I mean, consecration, (ha ha ha!) so we shared everything.  But here, everyone just buys their own food, which is fine too.

Christy:  What’s the weirdest thing you’ve been fed at a home?

Taylor:  Let me think… I don’t know if I could say weird… but just different.  Our ward mission leader in Round Rock, they fed us this soup that has meat and corn in it.  Dad might know what it is….

Eric:  Menudo?

Taylor:  No, I haven’t had that yet.  I think the strangest thing was having cow tongue in Mexico City.

Christy:  Did you know what you were eating when they gave it to you?

Taylor:  No.  It just looked like a very thin slice of steak.  It was salty, and then I found out later what it was.  It wasn’t bad, so….

Christy:  You were probably really hungry, right?

Taylor:  kinda. Yeah.....

Christy:  Do people feed you BBQ more or Mexican more?

Taylor:  I’d probably say Mexican more.  As of right now….

Christy:  What’s your favorite Mexican food that you’ve had?  You can’t say rice.

Taylor:  I know!  Hmmm, let’s see, we’ve had some Chimichangas that were pretty good the other night.

Everyone:  WOW!!! J

Eric:  We’re having our local elders over for dinner today.  Gonna make some ham, mashed potatoes, Megan’s making scones….

Taylor:  You should get some of that creamy corn from Rudy’s….

Christy:  Isn’t that stuff amazing?

Taylor:  It is!

Christy:  Crack-corn… that’s what we call it.

Taylor:  It is crack corn! 

Christy:  You didn’t believe us how good it was!

Christy:  So are you having fun?  Are you glad you’re out there?

Taylor:  I am.  I love the mission.  Isn’t it crazy?  In about eight weeks, I’ll have been out for six months!

Eric and Christy:  That is crazy!

Christy:  Brayden wants to know what you do on your p-day.

Taylor:  Well we get up, have breakfast, we have two hours of study, which isn’t that long , (good thing he couldn’t see out astonished faces at this comment!) then we shop, then we’ll play a sport (basketball, or volleyball).  Our zone is too spread out for zone p-days, so we go to another zone’s p-day that’s closer.  Yeah, p-days are fun!

Christy:  Are you getting ipads in your mission any time soon?

Taylor:  We were told next December. 

Taylor:  Tell everyone thank you for the cards and packages. 

Brayden:  I love you!  I MISS yoooouuuuu…..

Megan: I love you, Taylor!

Eric:  We are super proud of you Taylor.  Makes missionary work easier for me.  Friends don’t understand how we can let you go away for two whole years!  

Christy:  We love you!! Ian and I figured out that we could drive to Boerne in a day…. It’s only 930 miles from Chandler on the I-10.  Crazy, right?

Taylor:  It is?  Really? Wow!

Christy:  Yeah, but don’t worry, we won’t come!  We want to, but we won’t! 

Ian:  LOVE YOU!

Everyone:  LOVE you…. Bye!