Colorful Stuff

Hola Everyone!

This week has been excellent. We have been extremely blessed to find new people that are interested in listening to our message. We have found like 5 families just this week and they are BIG families. I LOVE visiting families because there is always a different spirit felt. My favorite part of teaching families is gathering all the members together and getting on our knees and teaching them how to pray as a family. If the people don't end up progressing and there is one thing that I want them to remember, is that the missionaries taught them how to pray every day as a family on their knees. The Spirit is so strong in those moments, especially when we ask the father of the home to pray.

This week I had companionship exchanges and I went to a place called Serchil. I've been there before but I don't think i've mentioned it. It's up on the high plain (altiplano) of Guatemala where it is super cold. We went to visit a member and she showed us a machine that they use to make typical Guatemalan fabric. The pics are below.

Also today, we went to La Grandeza (a village of San Pedro) and went to see exotic birds that a member has in his backyard. They were really fun to watch, especially when they would start to fight each other. It was funny. I also saw a girnormous egg! It was like the size of a softball, or maybe bigger! 

Every white thread has to be woven through the mechanism one-by-one and tied at the end of a wooden pole. Then, to make the fabric, the colors are woven in different patterns back and forth between the white thread. It's super complex!

                                                          A finished huipil (pronounced like: wee-peel)

We gave some service to a member at her house. They gave us dried corn on the cob to take off the kernels. In Spanish, they say 'desgranar' or to de-grain.

                                                                                I'm basically a pro at this now.

                                                   'Together we rescue Guatemala' on a road to a village called Las Barrancas

This was the big white bird that was wanting all the attention. I couldn't get a picture with all of its feathers extended. This bird was attacking all of the others in there.

This was the second biggest bird we saw. It kept on running away from the white bird.

Anyways, thats all I have for this week. Thank you as always for your prayers for the missionaries. The blessings always are received.

Adios! Jesus te ama!

Elder Taylor

True Conversion

HOLAAA!

Hope you all are having a fantastic week. This past went really well for us. We started it off with a zone conference in San Marcos. Presidente and Hermana Goodman came and spoke with us, along with one of the counselors of the mission and his wife, Presidente and Hermana Alvarado. We are very focused on having the Spirit in our lessons and teaching in the Savior's way. We feel spiritually edified and ready for anything!

The most special part of the week was the baptism that took place on Saturday. It was the baptism of Mari and her kids, Robin (17), Karina (13), and Cristian (11). There was definitley something different about this baptism. The Spirit was especially strong in the baptismal service. The members did a great job of preparing the service and were all very supportive. They even prepared choir numbers for the baptism! A little over 70 people arrived at the baptismal service. It was amazing. Mari chose to be baptized last so that she could watch her three children be baptized. It was so special. She couldn't stop tearing up. It's hard to explain the feelings that you receive in moments like these. It feels so good to be able to make that difference in someone's life. 

                                                                                Zona San Marcos/San Pedro

Me and my comp in a place called Vista Hermosa (Beautiful View)

                                                           Love this picture 

                                                           That's it for now. Blessings! Jesus te ama.

                                                            Elder Taylor

Chamac: Land of Miracles

Hola Everybody!

This past week we have been working super hard! Last week we put a goal that we were going to contact and extend 100 invitations to church in the whole week and we surpassed our goal! I can be hard at times to talk with everyone because its easy to get distracted or tired, but my companion is very good at opening his mouth and speaking with everyone. I'm definitely a little more introverted. He is definitely a good companion for me. Right now we have been trying to get to know some new places. We went to a village called Las Barrancas last week where we found some people who had never seen, or heard of missionaries before. It's kind of fun going to places where the missionaries have never worked. This week we are going to visit a village called Santa Irene. The missionaries have worked there before, but not a lot. Hopefully we find another golden family! 

On Saturday, we visited Mari and her family. They were very excited to recieve us. Our District Leader, Elder Preciado, came with us to do the baptismal interviews and now everything is ready for this Saturday. The family is very excited to take this step. As of now, the four who are going to be baptized are Mari, and her three kids, Robin, Karina, and Cristian. Mari's husband doesn't really want anything to do with us for the moment, but we know that his time will come. 

The members of the Chamac ward are especially excited for this baptism. It will be the first baptism of the year, which is a great way to start. Before the baptism of Julio in December, the ward hadn't seen a convert baptism in almost 2 years (apart from a 9 year old who is the son of a member that used to be inactive). I remember hearing in Julio's baptism, a sister saying, ''This is so special. This never happens here.'' It honestly was kind of sad to hear that, but I know that the Lord has blessed us with miracles because of faith. Your prayers are what brought this miracle to these people.

 

                                                          Elder Cook, Elder Taylor, Robin, Karina, Cristian, and Mari

                                                          That's all I have for now. I hope you all have a blessed week! 

                                                         Jesús te ama. 

                                                         Elder Taylor

Muy Alto!

Hola Everyone!!

Hope everyone is doing well. We are having a great time here in San Antonio and Chamac and we feel so blessed by our Heavenly Father for the miracles we are seeing in our areas. This last week Mari attended again with her children, and this time her 17-year-old son, Robin, attended with them! We pushed their baptismal date to the 18th of this month because they wanted a little more time to prepare their baptismal service. This family is so PILAS. Mari has already downloaded LDS Gospel Library on her phone and she is teaching herself the hymns! I am so happy for this family. This will definitely be one of the most memorable convert-stories of my mission, especially since Chamac has been my most difficult area in the whole mission. It is amazing how the Lord prepares people to enter into his fold. The only thing my new companion and I are focused on now is strict obedience. Obedience brings so many blessings! 

My new companion is Elder Cook. He is from Mesa, Arizona and is super chill. We get along really well. He is very obedient, which I admire a lot. It is so much easier to get along with obedient missionaries. He is also way taller than me (6 ft. 5). It's funny because all of the people here in our area just stare at him. I don't think that they are very used to seeing tall white people.  I also love that he is not afraid to talk to anyone! He talks with everybody in the street, even though he hasn't mastered the language. It's not common for new missionaries to be so outgoing in their first week! 

This month, as a mission we are focusing our studies on The Living Christ, so we are studying a lot about the Savior. I personally have been studying the beginning of 3 Nephi, where it speaks about the birth of Jesus Christ, and after, about the war between the Gadianton robbers and the Nefites. After the Nephites were able to protect their lands and people, many of them started to fall away from their beliefs and the church due to their pride. Pride is where all iniquity starts. We had an interesting class in Sunday School yesterday with the young men and young women in San Antonio. The teacher spoke about Moses and serpent on his staff. The question she asked was,¨Can Jesus Christ be compared to a serpent?¨ In the beginning all of the youth began to say 'no', obviously because of the common knowledge that a serpent is always comparable to the adversary. In this case, however, we learned that the serpent on the staff of Moses is a symbol of the sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ. In this story, the people were suffering many sicknesses and trials, and Moses told them all they had to do was just look at the serpent. Many people looked, and were aleviated. However, a large portion of the people there were so prideful that they didn't even bother to just turn around and look. Even though it was a simple act, their pride brought upon them their own condemnation. 

I can't even imagine what it would have been like to have witnessed the signs of the birth of Jesus Christ and only about 30 years later be denying the church like the Nephites. Their pride grew so much that their judges and high priests began to secretly assasinatethe prophets when they called them to repentance. For lack of a better phrase, it just goes to show that seeing miracles doesn't persuade people if they don't have faith first. 

Let us all press forward in faith!

Elder Cook and me! 6'5 vs. 5'11

Heavenly Father loves us so much.

                                                                        I decorated a little for my new comp   

                                                                    Here we are in an Internet café in San Pedro. In the moment! 

                                                                    Have a wonderful week. Jesus te ama!

                                                                    Elder Taylor