Week Seis!

Hola Familia y Amigos!

So this has been a very good week. On Tuesday we had a devotional from Yoshiko Kikuchi (sp?), an emeritus seventy, and it was awesome. He was super funny but he always taught us of the importance of prayer. He challenged us to create our own sacred grove in the MTC and out in the field where we can gain inspiration for our lives. This is something that I have really been trying to do, to have the honest sincere and heartfelt prayers to my Father in Heaven because He knows what is best for all his children.

So we had a lot of teaching appointments this week and they all went very well. We committed all of our appointments to baptism haha, I only wish it was this easy to baptize in the mission field!

I got Randy's letter and I'm glad that he's doing well out in the boonies of Illinois. He's going to be a great and amazing missionary!!!!

Oh I finished the Book of Mormon this week! Read it 5 weeks boo yeah! It is such an amazing Book! I seriously love every single book in it because they all have such deep doctrine. I would have to say that Mormon and Ether are my favorite books, they are so sad but we can learn so much from them. When we harden our hearts against the will of our Father, we cannot be blessed and this is exactly what the people of Mormon, and the Jaredites did. It's very sad but we learn a lot from it.

Oh and thank you Dad for sending me that letter about Ammon and his missionary work. I hope that I can be the missionary that Ammon and the Sons of Mosiah were.

Oh and by the way Happy Fourth of July and happy birthday to Eric!

For the fourth we had a devotional about how the United States was the only place where the church could have been restored and about how it is a blessed land for our inheritance. It was really cool! Afterwards they let us go outside and stay up until 11 (way too late at night for me now!) and watch the fireworks from Stadium of Fire.

It's also been very, very hot, and I guess there are a ton of fires in Utah. Keep the people affected by the fires in your prayers please!

So on Sunday we had a really good priesthood class. My branch president, President Ricks (who is amazing!), talked a lot about getting answers to our prayers. It was just a week of learning about the power of prayer I guess! It was really good and he talked about how he loves cars... especially some kind of Ferrari and he asked us if he prayed for the Ferrari with faith would he get it? NO! We need to pray for faith, but we need to pray for what is right and then we will begin to receive answers to our prayers. It really helped me.

Also last night we had the opportunity to watch a talk given by Jeffrey R. Holland called "Missions are Forever" and it was uh-mazing! My favorite part is when he said "Salvation isn't easy... if it wasn't easy for Jesus Christ, how can it be easy for us." That really struck my heart because I know that Christ lived the perfect life. And his life WAS NOT easy... So our lives are going to be tough, but if we continue with faith in Christ and his atonement, we can make it to the Celestial Kingdom and life in eternal peace and happiness. I really love Jeffrey R. Holland, he is such a man of God and he is so amazing.

Well sorry this letter is so short. Spanish is going well. My companion is a stud, I love Elder Pace. Oh cool experience... so our district is the first district to do this "Real Teaching Experience" thing where we teach people that only speak Spanish. So Elder Pace and I have taught Carlos Garcia, an awesome investigator from Peru, twice and both lessons have been amazing! Elder Pace and I have found unity in teaching him and our lessons just go so well. We committed him to baptism on our second visit so that was cool. His Spanish is quite fast though haha however the gift of interpretation of tongues is helping out a lot. So Elder Pace is a stud because he just dominates every lesson and the spirit is strong with him, I love the guy. He'll do great things in Tucson.

Okay well that's about all for this week. I hope everything is going well back home, and I hope that Eric had a great birthday and that Katie, Cam, and Josh got moved in okay. I love all of you so amazingly much you can't even imagine!

Hasta Luego,

Elder Taylor