MTC Update- Week 4 Letter

Here is the letter from Ben this week.

Great to hear from all of you guys!

The CCM is still chugging along. One thing I´ve been worried about this last week has been topping my last email. So, we ended up getting some kind of pasta dish on thanksgiving; "Not my usual, But nice." We had asked Ben if they would feed him anything like he might have on Thanksgiving—I guess not.

Funny story, I saw Sister Megan Passey on this devotional with Elder L. Tom Perry we watched from the Provo MTC. The camera zoomed in on her for about 3 seconds while the congregation was singing. I got an email from Megan Passey last week and she told me this “Don't believe him if he says that he saw me singing on a taped Provo MTC devotional. You know me, I don't sing :) Much less look happy all the time :) “ I bet it was neat seeing someone you know show up on the screen when you weren’t expecting it.

Congratulations to Dallin, one step closer to leaving for Kiribati. Dallin is Ben’s cousin and received his mission call to the Marshall Islands. He went home from BYU over the Thanksgiving break and did his endowments at the Manhattan temple in preparation for serving his mission. He reports to the Provo MTC on Dec 18^th.

So, not much happens at the CCM on the weekly basis. We had another group of Latinos leave this Tuesday. This next group coming in will actually be going to the same mission as me. It´s getting more and more real. I have a picture of my district with my Teacher Hno. Cristeche. He is going to miss the last two weeks of our stay at the CCM because he´s getting married. He was a great teacher and I've learned so much. The picture of his district will be below this letter.

It´s so weird that were starting to finish up at the CCM and in less than two weeks I´ll be in Uruguay, missing my family at Christmas time. We have sent Ben a couple of care packages—we will be missing him at Christmas time as well.

We are going out proselyting again this weekend in a new area, wish me luck!

I love you guys so much. It was absolutely fantastic seeing pictures of you. I love the one of Will. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We took some pictures on Thanksgiving. One of the pictures was a plate of our Thanksgiving meal with desserts that we made in honor of Ben (Justin ended up eating it the next day—what a great sacrifice on his part). The other picture we sent was of William eating the drumstick like a barbarian.

Ben's Thanksgiving plates

William eating his drumstick YUM!!

Oh almost forgot; my district organized a Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving, and we won against the other American Districts. I even played for a play (I think that´s what it's called). The fact that Ben even attempted to play football makes me smile. He was not the athletic type and got his coordination from me. His junior year of high school, Ben had to take gym class since they had stopped offering it in the summer and it was a required course. He was the only upperclassman in with Freshmen and of course he stands out because of how tall he is. When teams were getting picked for basketball, they grabbed him up first, not realizing that Ben does not do sports. As the year went on, poor Ben ended up being one of the last ones picked on a team because of his lack of skill in the various games.  I am happy that he played with his district and even enjoyed it. The Latino districts eventually kicked us off the field so they could play soccer.

Love you all so much, I wish you all the best. I´ll try to have some better stories for the next email, haha.

Nos Vemos, Les Extraño, Les Amo...

This came as a separate email—it was a PS

Also, I love all of you soooooo much.

I happened to  be awake when Ben started sending his string of emails and pictures, so I quickly sent him an email that  just said “Hi Ben—I love you!” I got this back in response:

Love you too so much! I´ve got to get off in 4 min.

Let everyone know that they mean the world to me.

Don’t forget Shai is getting baptized in a few days. Shai is one of Ben’s friends from school and she had been investigating the church on her own for a while before sharing the wonderful news with Ben and Jordan right before Ben left on his mission. I am so happy to hear that she is getting baptized. I imagine that this news has made Ben very happy.  Give her and Jordan a huge hug for me. If there are other friends at the baptism or at church ask Jordan if you should hug them for me. If she answers yes, give them a large hug and say it´s from Elder Taylor. I guess you guys are being warned that I will be handing out hugs from Ben when I see you.

Me with my District at the CCM

Me with Presidente and Hna. Openshaw, my CCM Mission President and his wife. They are great people. Presidente is a scriptorian and can tell you any citation with just reading the first 5 words of any verse. Hna. Openshaw is a sweet lady and bears one of the strongest testimonies on Joseph Smith I´ve ever heard. So glad to have them.

Ben in front of his new favorite temple in Argentina