Familias De Oro

¡Hola!

I think I mentioned this before, but this month is ¨mes misional¨. Presidente challenged us to find a familia de oro this month and Heavenly Father has blessed us beyond that. Right now, we have 3 familias de oro. We feel extremely blessed because Pueblo Nuevo is definitely an area of faith. Those of you who are praying for us, we are seeing the blessings every day. Very recently the branch president challenged all of the members to visit investigators and menos activos (less actives) before church and after church. The members here have become super pilas (pedal to the metal)! Something else super special happened this week. There´s this little kid that we met and taught a few days ago with his family. On Wednesday, we went tracting and he found us again and told us he knew some people that we could visit. We received 3 references that day from an 8 year old non-member. 3 may not sound like a lot, but here in Guatemala every reference matters. Most of the time when we ask for references the people say the exact same thing ,¨La mayoría de las personas aquí ya van a una iglesia¨ (Most of the people here already go to a church). Not one day has passed in the mission field where someone has not said those words to us when we ask for references. We just shrug it off and keep searching. We keep searching for that familia de oro that has been prepared by Heavenly Father. 

Today for P-Day we played soccer at a field across the street from the Stake Center in San Felipe. It was pretty fun. Im not very good at soccer but the other missionaries said I wasnt bad so I guess thats a compliment. Other than that today has been pretty relaxing. Hopefully we can have a good family home evening tonight. Last week we had one with one of our familias de oro and some members in the ward. Members make lessons SO much easier and the investigators can relate. My desafio (challenge) to all of you is to accompany the missionaries to visit the investigators. The lessons are even more powerful when there are more witnesses of the blessings of the gospel. I really hope this family gets baptized. They are super duper special.

Conference is coming up and I have never felt so excited. I want to bring all of our familias de oro. We are going to visit them daily and get them to go because I know they will receive answers to their prayers there. Ive already heard multiple stories of people becoming converted because they watched conference. Another missionary from Cedar City that is serving here in Reu told me that a few conferences ago, he heard that 8 investigators arrived and that all 8 got baptized because they felt the spirit so strongly. I want to see that happen with our families. They are all very special children of God and we can´t afford to not share the blessings of baptism and temple convenants with them. 

Oh yeah. I dont know if I said this before, but the dogs here are crazy! For some reason they like to gather in groups and roam the streets. Then, they attack other dogs that bark at them or act like a threat. I attached a picture so you can see one of the groups. After I took that picture we went inside and waited for the dogs to pass because you can never tell if the dogs will be nice or not. 

Thats all I can think of for this week´s email. This week i will have completed my first change but im pretty sure my companion and I will be staying here together in Pueblo Nuevo for at least another change. Have a great week, and watch conference!!!

Elder Taylor

Mission Life

Elder Lumbaco and Hermana Ivet. Hermana Ivet is actually from Honduras. Below is the package that my mom sent to Elder Taylor.  It arrived!!! 

Elder Taylors First Mission Apartment

Xetululul & Calahuache

Hola Everyone!

This week was awesome. We´ve been doing great things here in the mission. On Friday, we had chance to go to an amusement park called Xetulul. It is such a cool little place. There are lots of rides and there wasn´t that many people, so we were able to ride a lot of the rides multiple times. It was a blast! Before we went, we all got matching soccer jerseys with our Zone name (familia) and our names and numbers on the back. That way, nobody would get lost. When we got there we had a little spiritual message from the assistants and Presidente Ruiz in the theater. After that we had time to ride the rides. For lunch, we had hamburgers and crepes and then got to watch a really cool play with lots of awesome stunts and magic tricks. There was one ride there that my zone got on four times consecutively. Basically, it is just a ginormous water slide where you ride in a raft with 20 people. We got soaked. Luckily, the weather was warm enough to dry us off pretty quickly. 

On Saturday we brought one of our investigator families to a baptism in the San Felipe Stake Center. It was such a great baptism. I think the kids really liked it. This family is looking really positive right now. This area has been a little tough on us and we know that Satan has been working full force against us here because our progressing investigators keep falling on us just days before their baptism. We´re working extra hard now with this family because we really want them to have the blessings of the true gospel. All the people we teach here are really special. 

The members in our area are really starting to help us with la obra misional (missionary work). The Presidente de la rama (branch president) called a bunch of members to be ward missionaries! We are super excited to have them helping us here in Pueblo Nuevo. Presidente Ruiz says that Pueblo Nuevo is an area of faith. Im really starting to see my prayers being answered now. I know that so much can be done here in Pueblo Nuevo. What this area lacks is priesthood holders. The branch could be a ward if we had more worthy men that hold the priesthood. Please pray for us here in Pueblo Nuevo and pray for the members as well. They are very faithful and really have the desire to invite others to come to Christ.

Today, for our P day activity we went up to the water dam in Calahuache. We couldnt take pictures there because its illegal here to take pictures of government structures like dams and airports. But we did go on a mini hike to a little lake in a place called Antiguo Palmar. It was really fun and they had those cool wooden bridges that go over rivers. We ended up getting rained on and soaked, which kinda sucked but our zone always makes the best out of everything. I really love all the missionaries in our zone. We are a family here. 

Anyways! Hope nobody misses me too much! Im loving it here in San Felipe and Pueblo Nuevo. Hope everything is going great for everyone right now. Have a great week!

Priesthood Blessing

Hola Everyone!

This week has been pretty great! I cant believe im about to start my 5th week in the field! I haven´t baptized anyone yet but I know that will come eventually so Im not worried about that. However, we did have a miracle! We have a family of investigators that we were visiting and the mom and a couple of the daughters were sick. We asked the mother if we could give her a priesthood blessing and she agreed. Through her faith, she told us that the next day all the symptoms of her illness were gone. We didnt give blessings to the daughters because one wasnt home and the other was asleep and we didnt want to wake her up. They were just barely getting over the sickness when we had visited the next time. The mother was amazed by the blessing that Heavenly Father had given her of good health. We hope that the miracle will build her faith and that she will finally have the desire to go to church because that has been something she has struggled with. 

On P Day we had a fun little get together as a zone. We had our own Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening). We each showed each other pictures of our families and talked about our families. It was really fun. I love my zone. They are all really great missionaries. 

This week we found two positive families! We love families here! Its really hard to find complete families because one of the parents is out of the picture or parts of the family dont care to listen to the lessons. Right now we are continuing with our two progressing investigators. They are cousins that live on the same property. One is 16 and the other is 11. We brought them to Stake Conference yesterday where the messages were awesome. The main topics were Sabbath Day Observance and Missionary Work. We also had a chance to show them the baptismal font. I really hope that they feel the spirit and receive the answers they are looking for! They are really special and they will be my first investigators that Ive taught all the lessons to and baptized. 

We had divisions again this week. The missionary in the picture I attached is our District Leader. His name is Elder Heyrend. He is a really good missionary. Hes hard working and we get lots of stuff done whenever we do divisions. We were proselyting in an area called Guadalupe. Its right by Pueblo Nuevo and its part of our area. Weve been tracting there because it looks like the missionaries havent done too much work there before.

Ill leave the email here. Thanks for the support and hope you all have a great week!

Elder Taylor

Hola Friends and Family

Hola Friends and Family,

This week just flew by. There wasn't anything too out of the ordinary this week. As of right now we have two progressing investigators that have accepted a date of baptism this month. This month we want to have a super mega baptism with our zone, so as a zone we are working together to bring the gospel to all of the people and invite them to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. We are also trying to find ¨Familias de Oro¨ aka. Golden Families. Right now we are on the look out and trying our hardest to be in tune to the Spirit to guide us to a family that is waiting to hear the truth from the missionaries. Keep those families in your prayers!

This week has been a week of much rainfall. It rains so hard here that we have to cover all of our books with plastic bags in our backpacks and we have to try to jump over huge puddles. We have to be careful at times because the hills in our area cause huge currents of water to rush down the streets and flood the road, which causes the street to be really slippery. Yesterday it rained so hard that it started leaking through my umbrella and dripping down my neck, which was really irritating. 

Guatemala has been holding elections for presidency these past few months and this past week was crazy. There were parades of cars, buses, taxis, and people that were flooding the streets with signs and noise makers. It has made it a little hard to talk with people because they are either not home, part of the parades, or get distracted by the ruckus outside. Yesterday everyone voted and we thought that things would start to calm down but they've only stayed the same. At around 2 in the morning today, another parade of people and cars marched by our house and set off a bunch of fireworks. It was a little hard to sleep through that. I have never seen so many public displays for candidacy in my life. I don't know if there are places in the United States where people do things like this, but here it is absolutely insane! Everyone and their kids and pets march through the streets of Pueblo Nuevo holding banners for their party. It was also very interesting during church yesterday because the voting tables were right across the street from the chapel. During fast and testimony meeting, we kept hearing people cheering and shouting outside. It didn't stop us from feeling the spirit though. We knew we were in the right place at the right time.

Also, I cant believe I failed to remember this, but ill attach a picture of me and my companion. Elder Tumbaco is his name. 

Thanks for all the emails and support from everyone this week. Hope you all have an amazing week!