Mission Leadership Training & Zone Conference

This is Ben's letter from June 8, 2015

Hola Familia.

That`s amazing. Congratulations JT on your mission call to Yekatrinburg Russia. Start preparing now. I would imagine learning the alphabet a little beforehand would help. 

I looked on LDS maps and it looks like his entire mission is composed of 8 mission branches. (Not even a district)  That´s going to be an amazing experience. He´s going to get to know everyone really, really well. Talk about establishing Zion.

So he´ll be learning Russian. That´s awesome.

Literally almost exactly two years after I left. That´s super awesome. Well start preparing and take care. You might want to start attending the classes in gospel principles; I would imagine you would be giving your fair share of gospel principle classes in these next two years or so.

My week was great. We had the Mission Leadership Council. We talked a lot about working with the ward leaders, and improving our own personal efforts in finding people to teach. We were there all day, then at 7pm we went to the temple for an endowment session. Following the endowment session we then stayed the night in the temple hostal we then returned home. We are planning the Zone Conference we are going to give tomorrow. We are going to talk about two main subjects that we felt really strongly we need to talk about. 

My companion will be talking about the parable of the nobleman from D&C 101: with that he will be talking about "all the strength of my house" comparing it to the work we should be doing withe the members and missionaries all together.

I will be talking about our "own initiative" (iniciativa propia, it sounds a lot better in Spanish) I will talk about how in all things we do we shouldn´t wait for other to act before we take the initiative to do something. Our goal as a stake and as a zone is to work as much as possible with the members, but just because they aren´t participating doesn´t give us excuse to not give all we have to find and teach people.

I continue in Belloni (Bay Show Nee), and am still with elder Torres. I have been looking at the little slips of paper. They´re great. I continue looking at them when every I´m down. I don´t look at them every day because I get a little un focused, jokingly my companions call it my trunky cup.

Well I Love you all alot. Take care.

Élder Benjamin Taylor

Training for Mission Leaders and a Miracle

This is Ben's letter from May 25, 2015

Good to hear that everyone is doing well. I am doing very well. Good to hear that everyone is keeping busy. This week went by so fast. It seems like just yesterday I was writing you all.

This week my companion and I had a meeting with all of the ward mission leaders in the stake and the Stake President. We gave an hour-long training of how we were going to work as a stake and mission. Unfortunately many of them had no idea what their calling required and were just making sure the missionaries had lunch every day, and directing the baptismal services. Everyone seemed really excited now that they understand their importance in the success of the wards missionary work.

This week my companion and I have continued praying for the members so that they can find friends family members and neighbors that they can share the gospel with. Like I´ve said the last few weeks, it´s been difficult actually see the fruits we´ve been hoping to see, but this Sunday we got to see an amazing miracle.

About a month ago a member from Melo came to our ward for a few weeks because he was going through some medical treatments for his lung cancer. He was an amazing man with a very strong faith. While he was here, he started sharing with his daughter and granddaughter. He asked for our number because he said he was preparing some references for us, and wanted to be able to contact us when he was ready for us to pass by. He never called, but his daughter decided Saturday night that she was going to go to church the following morning.

She is going through a lot of trials as a single mother with a 10 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. She (her name is Laura) came to all three hours and had a wonderful experience. She met a lot of great people that wanted to help her and get to know her. After church we had a charla with her and her two children in the home of her next-door neighbors who are active members. She was extremely content with everything and has decided to investigate even more of the gospel.

I am doing well and safe,

Take care.

Élder Benjamin Taylor

Finding People-Don't Lose Hope!

This is Ben's letter from May 18, 2105

Hola Familia,

Good to hear that everyone is doing well. I´m doing just fine. It was a good week. My companion, Élder Torres, and I had a meeting with the Stake President this week to talk about the progress of the mission efforts of each ward. We realized that the Ward Mission Leaders in each respective ward and branch, for a lack of training, had no Idea what they are supposed to be doing. So based off of the Worldwide Training materials from Hastening the Work of Salvation, my companion and I along with the Stake President are going to give training for the Ward Mission Leaders and explain the importance of their role in coordinating the efforts between the members, ward council, and missionaries.

To help with this overall goal we have of coordinating the efforts we are planning on the Ward Mission Leaders having contact by phone at least 3 times in the week where they will be informed of the work the missionaries are doing and how the ward can help, and the missionaries will know what efforts the ward is making and what it is that the missionaries can do to help.

This week we got to see some of the fruits of working with the members. I had a really cool experience I wanted to share with you.

Saturday night, after having passed-by and called almost every investigator we had we were rather desesperado because we honestly weren’t expecting anyone in church the following day. I had this feeling that there was a member that was going to bring someone, or someone that needed to bring someone and I told my companion. We started to think of different members that we could call, to invite them to invite someone to church. From the list we made no one answered. That night when we prayed, like always we prayed for the members to have missionary experiences and specifically that the members could invite someone to church.

We left that morning to go search for some people; they were all sleeping and didn´t open. We went back to church for the last part of Elders Quorum, then decided to leave again; again with no results.

But about 5 minutes after we get back, two people arrive, a less active Hermana and her son that a member had invited to come.

The came to the last two hours (principios del evangelio (Sunday School) and la Sacramental). The son (non member) accepted us to go visit him tomorrow. I´m super excited to get to know them better. Honestly these last few weeks have been a bit rough. We had been finding very few people and the few people we were finding after the second visit didn´t want anything.

While we wait on the results of our work with the members we still feel the urgency to find more people to teach. Elder Torres and I have put some personal plans and goals to find more people to teach, so I´m excited for this following week.

I´m doing great, loving the ward. The members keep surprising me with their disposition to work.

Well Love you all,

Élder Benjamin Taylor

Looking for people to teach-Members need to help

This is Ben's letter from May 11, 2015

It was great to see you yesterday. I can´t believe that I had forgotten about Skype. That was crazy. Sorry for any worry I might have caused you.

I’m doing great, we pretty much talked about how I was in good detail.

This Sunday was a little rough because of the elections. We had to travel to the chapel in Toledo (the chapple that is closest to us.) So as far as we know we were some of the only members from the ward that went. There were a few others that were going to go to the chapple in Bº 12 (outside of our mission so we couldn´t go).

A few days ago our only progressing investigator decided she didn´t want to learn any more so we´ve been trying to find other people to teach. We are still wanting with all our heart to find through member references and are doing our best to ask all the recent converts and Less actives for references also and invite their family members to listen when we see them, but we are not consistently receiving to the point that we are kept busy with just these people.

Elder Torres and I are elaborating a plan where we will work more with the Ward Mission Leaders from each ward/branch. We want to try to increase the frequency of contact the missionaries are having with them so that they can help animate the members to participate also.

Let me know when I need to start worrying about classes and rooming and stuff like that.

That´s pretty awesome that Will wants to start running. Maybe you can get some pointers from the Hammond’s. Try to maintain that desire in him. I don´t think I ever had that desire..... EVER.

I am doing well. I am super excited to keep working with my companion. We are constantly talking about how to improve the missionary work of the stake and zone.

Some of those sayings I told JT were He can share them in his class if he wants to.

Uruguayan Phrases

¡¿¡Viste!?!-- Right!?! / ya know!?!

No estamos tirando manteca al techo-- we´re not wasting our money on nonsense/ we´re trying to be frugal

estamos llevándola-- we´re perservering through life (even though It´s difficult)

When you say thank you, they respond "¡No!"

Si te digo, te miento-- If i were to tell you (something), I would be lying

No Podés-- No, you can´t do that!! (Basically "don´t be that guy")

Cayate Vos(pronounced Ca-shÁ-te Voh)-- shut up!

Well I love you lots.

Thank care!!

New Companion-Elder Torres from Peru

Letter from Ben on May 5, 2015

Hola Familia,

How are you all? Good I hope. It is great to hear from you.

This week was awesome! We have changes tomorrow. My companion is Valiente and is going home this Thursday. It's been crazy to think about. I've never been with a valiente before. I'm inheriting a lot of clothes and stuff he doesn't want to take home. Today we got to go to the temple with Élder Hobb's converts to see them receive their endowment and then be sealed. It was a beautiful experience!

The work is going well here in Belloni. We have started to find some people that really look like they could progress. I am going to be staying here another change with Élder Torres. He is from Perú and has been in the offices as Executive Secretary and is just now leaving.

This next week is going to be a little complicated for church because the individual departments (basically the same thing as a state) is going to be having elections for their respective governors. So the government is using all of the church buildings in the stake except for 2 smaller chapels that are really far away and in the middle of nowhere). So we're going to see what we can do to get people to church this week.....

That's really cool that dad is getting to work with that person from Brazil. (John has a Speaking Partner assigned to him for the Pathways program. They Skype once a week for 30 minutes to work on speaking English). I'm sure that will help him a lot not only to improve his English but by improving his English it can significantly improve his prospects of getting higher paying jobs. I love being with Latin-American companions and helping them learn English. My Spanish also improves a lot when I'm with them. Así que, ¡Aprovéchate Papá!

Also really cool to hear that update on the temple. I'm super excited to go to the temple in Indiana. So cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well this cyber café is really ,really slow and I've had to start over like 3 times. Take care!

Love you all lots. Take care!

Élder Benjamin Taylor