May 6th

Captain Moroni, AKA Elder Taylor

Recent Baptism

So to be completely honest, I am having a hard remembering what we did this last week. The mission truly does seem like the days feel like years, the weeks feel like months, the months feel like weeks, and the years feel like days. No we didn't have a baptism this last week, but we are starting to gear up for some future success. If things go great we could have 4 baptisms at the first of June. But if not there will be at least 8 baptisms coming up in the next 4 months that Elder Anderson and I found and started teaching. We have 6 investigators in our teaching pool are really progressing well, and two other gators are having a hard time reading and stuff, but they have felt the spirit and want more of it. You can just tell the look that they have in their eyes when we come over. They want more, they just aren't quite willing to act on it yet, but they will.

So let me tell you a story that has been going on for about a month now. Its about an Inactive part-member family. A little bit of background on this family is that he grew up Mormon and he fell away at like 16. So he went off to the Army at 18 and he has had to go through two deployments to Afghanistan and through it all, he has lost all but a little strand of faith and he really doesn't want anything to do with God. He married his wife who is catholic and they have four sons. So here is where we come into the picture. We knocked on his door and did our little approach and he told us that he used to be Mormon but he politely told us that he doesn't want to have anything to do with us. So I asked if we could at least leave the Savior's peace and blessing on his home through prayer. So he agreed. We said the prayer and afterwards we offered to do any service that he needs and I could tell that flipped a small switch in his head. He declined and so we left.... but we came back to him and his family again, and again, and again. The first few times were a bit rough because they didn't really know why we kept showing up and so it was a little awkward, but the more we came back the more he started opening up. His wife was down right closed off to us, but this last time we stopped by his wife was sitting out in the garage and we had a really good talk with her, she invited us in. We helped him with some of his plumbing, and it was cool afterwards they asked us to teach their kids... So we are now teaching their kids, and she is even somewhat interested. So good things are coming from them as well.

It was funny while we were doing the plumbing he started to cut some of the pipe with an electric blade and it started to shake a lot, so he asked me to hold the above and below where he was cutting, and I did. As he cut through the first bit of pipe there was still water in it, and it squirted me right in the face. He looked at me and asked if I was good I nodded and so he went to town on the pipe. It was awesome my arms were vibrating hardcore and water was spraying me in the face... I had a flash back of getting drug behind Coach Andersons boat having water splash me in the face.

Well I love you family!

Elder Taylor