Experiences Elder Taylor had the first two weeks in November

This is a picture of Travis and Shaes kids. Doesn't the boy look somewhat like little Jarret??

This is me mowing the Mckinnies (image 537) lawn with a lawnmower where both the wheels are about to fall off and the pull string cord is busted. Almost as bad as our lawn mower at home!

Me and my companion getting home from a bike ride and we were like sweating so bad it was like a sauna in our room so we had to go outside.

This is a picture of me and my protein sandwhich that I made. (lunch meat, peanutt butter, cream cheese, tuna fish, mustard, cheddar cheese, and mayo) it was very very delicious as you can tell :)

Dear Family,

So this week has been a really trying week, but it has also been a week to remember that has strengthened my testimony tremendously. So One of our solid investigators who we have been seeing for about three weeks now is at a time in her life where she could become an amazing member of the church, or she could turn down the wrong path. Her and her boyfriend have been fighting a lot lately and she says that she isn't happy (she said that the only time that she is happy is when we come to visit her and talk about the gospel) So I called her to try to set up a ride for her for stake conference and her boyfriend answered the phone, and he was not happy.... at all... with us. So I spent the next three minutes getting my bum chewed out and he said a lot of choice words, and It really hurt. But then I right as he hung up I was only worried about one person, this dear sister. I wish that I could just like tell this whole story to you all but I can't, because its hard to all put into writing, but we went over there that night and she was as strong as ever and she said that she was wanting to move out. But one thing is that we have never given her any advice, the whole reason why her and her boy friend have been fighting she says is because she is finding happiness and he isn't. So we have been blessed and reassured that this gospel really does bring joy and peace to everyone in this life.

Another amazing extreme that we have been blessed to see that this gospel brings is marriage. A couple who have been living together for a very long time now got married on Saturday and it is allowing them to be one step closer to baptism. We are really hoping that they follow through with baptism.

Also something else that is cool and that every missionary dreams about, is as we were riding our bikes I hear someone yell at us, (at first I was not wanting to stop because usually when that happens someone is wanting to bible bash us because we are down in the bible belt) and so we went over to him and he asks us for a book of Mormon and wants to set up a time when we can come over and talk to him about the book of Mormon. Me and my companion were just like dumbfounded. But he recovered more quicker than I because that is the first time that has happened to me. So that was a fun experience.

Lets see another funny but amazing experience that we had was last night my companion and I were just kind of toying around on our bikes because it was about 8:40 and we aren't supposed to go into our apartment until 9:00 and so we went into the parking lot and started to like try and pop wheelies and all that fun stuff and so as we were doing that, I hear someone laughing at us and I turn around and there is a man walking straight towards us. It turns out that he is a 7 day adventurous and he is interested in learning about the Book of Mormon and that he wants to have a study session this Saturday, I don't how serious he is about joining the church, but I know that we were supposed to be toying around in the parking lot (no matter how funny that seems) and that we found him for a reason. I'll try to keep you all updated but LOVE you family!!!

One of the benefits of being a missionary is making use of study time. Elder Taylor has come to love and appreciate the time he has to gain a better understanding of gosple principals.

The reason that I have been studying faith is because first off, it is the first principal of the gospel, and second I have been lacking the faith of bringing our investigators to church. I have all of the faith in the world to find the new investigators and that category is awesome, we are actually leading the mission in new investigators per week in our zone. But like I said I have been lacking the faith when it comes to the waters of baptism. Most of the solids that I talked about earlier have either stopped progressing or have dropped us. It was really hard because it just breaks my heart when I get so jazzed up about someone coming to church and then they don't show up, and naturally that is the block that stops me from having faith that they will show up and then eventually baptism. I needed to know how to overcome this natural man of mine and so I thought what better way to get more faith than to study faith inside and out. And so I have been studying faith more and more. And this week we had four investigators set on coming to church, but only one showed up. So even though I was still disappointed, The lord showed me how to plant that seed of hope (which leads to faith) that the investigators will go through on their word. It really helped to boost my faith, and I love it sooo much!!!