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I figure that at the current rate, I’ve got about 3 months to live. I say that not to scare any of you, but instead to inform you of something that happened yesterday. But first, I’ll explain some of the history. You see, about 2 months ago we got a flat tire on the car. About a month ago, someone hit our car while backing up. Yesterday, we were driving along a road when a man in the right lane suddenly decided to make a left turn… So he slammed into our right side. I just figure that at the current rate, with accidents of increasing severity occurring about once a month, that in about three months there will be a fatal one.

Anyway, that was pretty much just a long way of telling you that yesterday, on our way back to church (we had been there and then left to try to round up people to go), we got in an accident. It wasn’t anything major, though now our car will be out of commission for a few days, or perhaps significantly more if it costs more than $2000 (If it costs more than $2000, Church Headquarters has to approve the repairs). Anyway, it will make doing missionary work exciting, since I still can’t ride a bike and all of our work is about 4.5 miles from our apartment…

We ended up getting to church about 35 minutes late, with all the police reports and everything.

But yeah, other than that, this week was pretty great. There was a great Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting, for those of you who didn’t go. Though it didn’t really apply directly to us as missionaries, I learned some good stuff. After that meeting, we did about 3 hours of service for a member of the branch, helping them landscape their front yard. It was tricky because there was still a small pond in the middle from when it rained about a week ago (Remember how I said that Arizona soil doesn’t soak up water very well? Yeah, that’s why there was a pond).

As far as the work goes, however, it wasn’t horribly successful this week. I don’t know what it was, but there just didn’t seem to be many people available at any time of the day. But, hey, you can’t always have everything be perfect.

There was a lot that I thought about sharing as a thought this week, but it always seems to disappear when I’m actually at the computer ready to write it, so I’ll just write the first thing that comes to mind. This week I was re-reading one of Elder Scott’s talks from this last conference, and he mentions the relation of Faith and Character. I didn’t take much notice until I was reading (quite randomly) about ‘Boanerges’ in the Bible Dictionary, and it said that they were likely given that title because of their ‘strong character’. Anyway, so I went back and read about character in Elder Scott’s talk, and I thought that it was pretty stellar. As we build our faith, our character increases. As our character increases, out ability to strengthen our faith also increases. Anyway, I thought that it was pretty interesting.

Oh, another thing… In the training meeting, at the end, President Monson addressed everyone. It was quite the feeling when he began talking, I must say. There was definately a strong confirmation of him being the next prophet.

Anyway, that’s the news. So, yeah. Everybody have an awesome week! Oh, and pray that my pattern of crashes doesn’t continue. That would be bad.

Ok, so I have to admit that while we didn’t get to watch the Superbowl, we did get to watch Pres. Hinckley’s Funeral. It was pretty stellar. It’s kind of weird to think that he won’t be standing up to talk at conference now, though I must say that he went out in style. I really enjoyed hearing the remarks by everyone, and learning more about Pres. Hinckley’s life was very informative.

As far as the Superbowl, I’m sure that most of you know that it took place not far from here, in Glendale. As a matter of fact, when we climb Camelback, we can see the stadium. But yeah, stuff here was a bit interesting. Tons of stuff was going on in downtown Scottsdale, and there were more limos driving around than I believe that I’ve ever seen in my life. Other than that, we mostly just saw planes writing words in the sky, the Goodyear Blimp, and a bunch of Cadillacs with the Superbowl logo on the side driving around. All in all, it was just pretty interesting.

As far as missionary work goes, this week was pretty stellar. We found some more really good investigators and had one of the best lessons of my entire mission with some of them. Lots of the other new investigators from weeks past have started disappearing (probably mostly just avoiding us), but we’re especially excited about one couple that’s just stellar.

But yeah, this week was pretty exciting in just about every way you can think of, and we certainly enjoyed it. I am sorry, though, that I can’t think of many other details right now.

Since I can’t think of anything else, I’ll just close up. Suffice it to say, it was a good week.

I must admit that I was kind of surprised yesterday when we returned to our apartment and checked our messages, only to hear, “Elders, we’re calling to let you know that Pres. Hinkley passed away this evening.” Despite the small amount of surprise, however, I suppose that he had prepared us plenty by making us think that he was going to pass away earlier.

Anyway, I’ve heard that the news has had some good tributes to him and everything, and I hope that we’ll be able to find somewhere to watch his funeral. He’s a great man, needless to say.

Aside from that, not too much has been going on this week. We’ve, as always, been working hard, and it seems that we’re not the only ones. Satan has been doing the same. But despite that, we know that as we keep on working we’ll see some great success in the near future. Things are always hardest before the greatest successes.

Truthfully, there’s not much to say this week. We had a lot of rain yesterday. Actually, it rained the whole day. That was pretty neat. We also ate dinner last night in the house of the High Councilman in charge of our Branch, who is a corporate lawyer. His house was probably the biggest that I have been in during my entire mission. It was pretty cool.

But yeah, I’m not so sure that I really have much else to say. So, I’m going to go ahead and finish up. I know it’s short, but if I can’t think of more to say, there’s no point in me sitting here writing more and more about nothing. So, yeah. I’ll just finish up with a thought.

3 Nephi 18 is a great chapter about the Sacrament. I read it this week in an attempt to find some way to help people go to church. I really enjoyed verses 12 and 13, which talk about building on the rock, and how partaking of the Sacrament is a huge part of that. I liked it especially much because my favorite scripture is Helaman 5:12, which talks about us building upon the rock as well. Anyway, it was pretty cool. So, yeah. Turns out going to church is important.

Have a great week!

I’d like to tell you a little bit about this wonderful thing called a “Mission Tour.” For those of you who don’t already know, it’s this thing where a General Authority visits each mission to help them to be more effective. As you may have guessed, we had one recently. As a matter of fact, it was yesterday. That’s why we’re doing email today.

Anyway, it was great, and it made me rather sad that I missed the one last year. It really got us excited about working harder and whatnot, plus we discussed some pretty deep doctrine. (I always enjoy that)

Other than that, the rest of the week was pretty awesome. We went to hike Camelback Mountain this morning, and it proved to be much easier with an inhaler, though still rather difficult. This time we also went with a group of other missionaries, so obviously we had to spend quite a bit of time at the top taking completely random pictures. (Sorry I don’t have any…. My camera was out of batteries)

The work is going well, though it turns out that 4 of our most promising investigators (both couples) aren’t married, so we have to help them to get married before they can be baptized. But it’s still going well. Lots of people are also afraid of the law, since the Sheriff’s office is starting to do random raids and traffic stops with the goal of deporting as many people as possible. So, yeah… That’s exciting, but so far it hasn’t really affected us that much.

In other news, this part of Arizona remains completely snowless. Yeah, not much of a surprise, to tell the truth. I’m only sad because I’ve heard that Utah is getting tons… I wish they could send some my way.

Anyway, I’m shorter on time today, so I’m going to go ahead and close it up, though I’d like to share a little thought… This week in church someone shared this quote from an Apostle: (Sorry, I’m going to have to translate it, so it probably won’t be exact, but I’ll do my best.)

“In order to accomplish things that have never been accomplished, we have to do things that have never before been done.” That’s quite the statement, I have to say. It’s so obvious, and yet as we apply that in our lives, we’ll be able to work harder toward our goals and accomplish them.

Anyway, everybody have an awesome week!

In other words, “The Queen of the Mexicans.” That’s a completely random picture, but I figured that I’d include it so that you know one of the problems that we have to overcome with Mexicans. They worship the Virgin Mary… It’s always confusing for them when we tell them that we shouldn’t worship ‘la virgen’.

Anyway, this week has been great. We got transfer news, and both my companion and I are staying here for the next six weeks. I was rather relieved to know that I’ll get to stay here a bit longer, as we’re likely going to be having 4-5 baptisms here this transfer. The work is going well, and it seems to be improving overall in the area that we’re in.

As far as the law goes, it hasn’t really made much of a difference in our area as of yet. Well, ok… There was one member that was deported, so that’s sad, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now. It doesn’t seem to me that the county is really putting forth much effort in enforcing it, so it works out well for the Lord’s work.

Three days this week were spent on exchanges, because we needed to finish them all up before the transfer ended. So, that was exciting, as well. That meant that I got to be in an even more central part of Scottsdale for awhile, where I snapped the wonderful picture that you see on the left. (What can I say? Life is ever so rough here…)

I had a lovely spiritual thought all ready for today, but I seem to have forgotten the scriptural reference for it right now… So, I’m sorry… I’ll share another one from this week, though. I really liked it. It talks about tribulations and difficulties. It’s Romans 5:3-5. I especially like how it says that we glory in tribulations. That’s an interesting way to put that… We glory in them. Though they’re difficult, we know that we’ll come out of them stronger, more prepared to face whatever other trials are ahead of us.

So, yeah… That’s it. Everybody have an amazing week!

While I admit that I’m not very good for setting resolutions at each new year, I propose that you should all set a new resolution for this year. I’ve noticed that since a few weeks before Christmas, the number of emails that I have received has decreased at an incredible rate. In light of that, I would ask that you consider putting among your resolutions, “Write Elder Taylor more often, preferrably every week.”

That said, we’ll get on to the news. This week has been pretty exciting, so I’ll go ahead and tell you one of the most exciting things that happened. On Friday night we were teaching a new investigator that we have tried to teach many times. This investigator lives in a very small apartment complex where the majority of the tenants are members, not just of the church, but of our Spanish Branch. That’s a rare occurance outside of Mesa, but it is the case.

Approximately 5 minutes in to the lesson, there was a knock at the door. Upon opening the door, we realized that it was one of the members that lived in the complex. She said, “Are the missionaries here?”

We responded, “Yeah, we’re here.”

She turned her head to look at us and said, “Elders, I have bad news.” We looked kind of interested, and she continued, “I hit your car.”

Anyway, because we had just started the lesson, we asked her if we could finish the lesson, and she said that we could. So, we finished the lesson (which was very good), and went out to survey the damage. It wasn’t horribly serious (sadly I didn’t get a picture), but it made for an interesting weekend, as the driver’s door wouldn’t open, so every time that we got in and out, whoever was driving had to climb across from the passenger’s side. In a small Toyota Corolla, that’s tricky. Anyway, one of the counselors in the Phoenix Mission Presidency (who I suppose owns a body shop) took the car this morning.

Also, as I’m sure all of you know, this week we had a concert down at the temple. To let you all know, we did manage to fit all of the missionaries on the stage, though it was an awfully tight squeeze. I don’t know how the whole thing sounded, because I couldn’t really hear anything but the tone-deaf elder behind me, but I suppose that it was pretty good. If nothing else, it was a very, very entertaining experience. Since there were so many missionaries there, we had a jolly good time socializing afterwards. After that we took a quick trip to the house of the family that had us over for Christmas, and they had a little party going, though they obviously kicked us out early because of our lovely curfew. But it was a very fun night, I have to admit.

This week was spectacular as far as the works goes, as we found some amazing new investigators, one of whom apparently bore a powerful testimony yesterday in Relief Society about the Prophet and the Book of Mormon. That was especially good to hear when we had only taught her once, the day before.

So far, the new law and everything hasn’t directly made a difference in our work, though there are several people planning to move away within the next few weeks. We’ll have to see what happens in the long run. But for now, all is well.

Oh, a random other bit of news… This week we turned off the heater and turned on the air conditioner… Freaky.

First off in the news, on the night of Christmas Eve, the missionaries from the Camelback 2nd Branch joined together in a collaborative effort to create the most amazing Gingerbread Train ever. The inspiration came from hundreds of Mexican-modified cars. Though it may not be very clear from the photograph, it included a spoiler, flame job, custom rims, and (just for good measure) rocket launchers. While we admit that rocket launchers are a rare occurence on Mexican vehicles, we felt that it contributed to the coolness of the train.

As you may have guessed, we had a very enjoyable Christmas. We spent the majority of the day at the Clydes’ house, where we participated in configuring (though not playing) their new Wii, solving Rubik’s Cubes (at which I am now rather decent), and playing Monopoly. On top of that, we called our families, which always is a very enjoyale experience.

In completely unrelated news, we turned on the heater in our apartment for the very first time on the morning of the 29th. It probably would have made for a better story had we not turned it on, but it was a bit chilly, so we did. It hadn’t been turned on for such a long time that it shot out a bit of smoke which, naturally, caused our smoke detector to alarm.

The rest of the week was also very enjoyable. We found several very promising new investigators, and we’re pretty excited about how the work is progressing right now.

We also had our interviews with the mission president, and I talked with him about the whole situation with the law. He said that he sincerely believes that nothing major will happen. He says that it’s likely that the Hispanic population will panic, but that in the end the state will realize what a huge impact it has on the economy. With that, they will discontinue enforcing the law.

Anyway, yeah. That’s most of the news. It’s been pretty exciting. We’re also going to sing at the Temple lights tonight, which is going to be stellar. It’s a good way to celebrate the new year, I have to say. I’ll see if I can’t get a picture of it, because it will be interesting to see the attempts to fit 140 missionaries on the small stage behind the Visitors’ Center.

But yeah, that’s it for the news. Everybody have an amazing week and a Happy New Year!

Well, here’s me, wishing all of you very, very Merry Christmases. I’m enjoying myself here in Arizona, though it’s still not quite cold enough for snow. For some reason (maybe statistics, maybe the current weather), I doubt that I’ll be having a White Christmas. Though I don’t know, the sun is just about bright enough to make everything white.

Anyway, back to the news. First off, the man next to me at the computers is (I suppose) listening to music. He keeps on undulating back and forth, and because it’s just in the corner of my eye, it’s kind of distracting.. Well, ok, it’s really distracting.

Sorry, I got off topic. This week has been pretty good. We’ve kept pretty busy, though for a couple of days my companion was rather sick, so that kind of put a damper on the work. Despite that, however, it was rather fun.

My thoughts are totally unorganized today, for no apparent reason. Anyway, we set a baptismal date last night with a man named Hector. He’s been investigating for about a year now, and he’s finally going to be baptized because his divorce has been finalized, so he can get married, which in turn means that he can get baptized. We’re pretty excited about that. He’s had a testimony for a long time, and though he always comes up with hard-to-answer questions, he knows it’s true. I’m pretty sure that he just likes giving us a hard time.

Oh, yeah… Some bad news this week… The Arizona law about the employing illegals has survived all opposing law suits. So, it’s now a sure thing that it will go into effect at the first of the year. It will be interesting to see what happens.

We also have an extremely exciting Christmas planned, with all three meals of the day being provided. Actually, two of them are with the same family, but they’re about the most awesome family ever. I think that I’ve mentioned them before, anyway. They’re going to her entire family over there, which includes one of the counselors in the General Relief Society Presidency. That should be exciting.

Anyway, other than that, there’s just quite a bit of exciting stuff going on. Mostly, though, I’m too lazy to write about all of it. Well, have an amazingly Merry Christmas!

P. S. Pray for snow, please.

My goodness. I do enjoy the Christmas season, I must admit. I do have to say, however, that it’s not really like Christmas if there aren’t certain qualifications: It must be cold, there must be snow, and one must be with one’s family.

Apart from those certain qualifications (which are not currently met for me), this has been a great time of the year thus far. We’ve had quite a bit of success this past week, as well. We’ve been looking hard for new people to teach, and this week we made some great advances in that field. We’ve also gone several times in the past couple of weeks to the Christmas lights at the Temple, which are superb.

Pretty much what I’m trying to say is that I’m really enjoying myself right now. We’ve got some great plans set up for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well. We’ve been invited over to several amazing members’ houses to spend part of the day on Christmas, so we’re pretty excited about all of that. Plus, we had an amazingly spiritual fireside last night. That was amazing.

Completely on the other side of things, however, is something looming over our heads. The State of Arizona has passed a law that goes in to effect at the first of the year. This law imposes tens of thousands of dollars of fines on any company found to be employing illegal immigrants on the first offence. On the second offence, said company loses its business license. Needless to say, that’s a price that no company can pay (small or large).

What does that mean for us? Well, we’re not sure. But if it works out how the state wants it to work, that means that round about 90% of our investigators will be left without work and will have to seek employment elsewhere. So, they’ll be leaving. That means that we’ll be left with, more or less, 10% of the current hispanics. That will make it awfully hard to do missionary work among them.

The point is that we’re not sure exactly what’s going to be happening, but it appears that the situation will be changing drastically for the Spanish-speaking missionaries in all of Arizona. But we’ll have to see.

But we don’t let that ruin the Christmas spirit, either. It’s too enjoyable time of the year to let that make us all worried. I’m mostly just saying that we should pray that we can keep some hispanics to teach here. That would make our lives much better.

Anyway, everybody have an amazing week! I think that the library’s open on Christmas Eve, so if it is, I’ll send the next update then. If it’s not, then we’ll talk to you next Wednesday! Enjoy!

Wowee… This week has been just about superb. First off, we had transfers. That was good fun. I’m enjoying having a new companion, despite the fact that he snores, and I can’t complain about the other new elder in the district.

I don’t know if I mentioned this, but before we had an elder here who is a pathological liar… Don’t ask me how that works with being a missionary, but such was the case. So, yeah… On top of that, well, let’s just say that he didn’t have much support from the members in their wards. Anyway, to make a long story short, he was sent to the absolute furthest place from here… 5 hours away. And now, the work is taking off in that area.. So, I’m pretty excited. Plus, the new elder is really cool, so we go over to their apartment complex at lunch and whatnot to play pool.

Other than that, we mostly just took lots of trips to the Christmas Lights at the Visitors’ Center, which were all reasonably enjoyable. Except that last night, while looking for a sister missionary that has a picture to give to me, I asked, “Where is Sister so-and-so?”

Surprisingly, the response was, “Oh, she’s in the hospital.” So, yeah… That was pretty exciting. Apparently she fell off her bike yesterday and hit her head. (Don’t worry, she’s doing ok… She should be back at the Visitors’ Center soon) So, yeah. I suppose that I’ll need to wait awhile to get my picture.

The work goes well, too. We’re pretty excited about this transfer. Even though we don’t currently have any baptismal dates lined up, there are some investigators that are getting pretty close. That, and we know that with plenty of prayer, we’ll be blessed with people that are prepared.

Other than that, there’s not too much going on. I mean, there’s plenty of exciting stuff that I could write about, but it would most likely just bore you all, because it’s probably only exciting for me.

Anyway, I hope that you all have an awesome week!