Getting Transferred to the interior of Uruguay

This is Ben's letter from June 16, 2015

Hola Familia. Como están

So I´ve been doing great, good to hear that everyone is doing so well at home. I´m going to spend a little bit of time sending some photos from this change since it´s been a long time since I´ve sent any photos back home.

Tomorrow we received the transfers from this change. I am going to the branch Estación in the district of Florida. It is in the interior and is from what I understand a fairly small district, but has had plans for a while to convert into a stake. I am going to be with Élder Leite (pronounced Lay-chee). He´s from Brazil and is about 3 or 4 changes younger in the mission than me. My companion, Élder Torres is going to stay here with the other Élder Taylor (from my group). 

I was looking back on my time here in the stake and I´m pretty proud of the things that have happened here as a stake. The system we´ve put in place of working more closely between the members and the local leaders I hope will help the future generations of missionaries in the manner that the Lord wants us to work.

This last weekend we had an activity called "Por Esto Creo", which is basically the activity we used to do in our stake called "Why I Believe" (I don´t know if they still do it any more). We did it and invited 4 people to tell their conversion stories.

1) Katty from los ceibos who is a recent convert from the last two weeks shared how meeting the gospel could change her life and the life of her 3 children who also got baptized with her.

2) Élder Rudy Diaz shared his conversion story of how he was able to join the church even though at the beginning his family was not interested in him joining.

3) María Fiuri from Belloni shared her story of how she could return to the church after 5 years of inactivity, she is now blind and the 5 years before she, over time began to lose faith in god, but since then has returned and is now is preparing to enter in the temple to receive her endowment.

4) Gina Pitta the mother of the stake president who has raised her children in the church even though her husband is not a member. She shared how living the gospel to the best of her ability has blessed her life with 3 children who are all active, married, and sealed members of the church.

It was amazing to hear these stories. I really enjoyed hearing from them. The stake decided that they want to do the activity once every 6 weeks from now on. 

I´m doing well and am super excited to go to Florida, 

Love you,

Élder Benjamin Taylor

Three Valuable Lessons Learned & Saying Good Bye to Elder Munoz

Here is the letter that Ben sent on 7/12/14. Sorry for posting it so late, but there was lots of photos and not a lot of time available to get it all up. Enjoy!

Hola!
I'm so happy to hear that everything is going well back home. Congrats Will on the fish, and for keeping up with the tradition!! 

As you can tell from the pictures, William caught his first fish all by himself. 

We have a family tradition that you must kiss the first fish you catch before you release it back into the water. William did not want to kiss the fish, but once we told him the Ben, Justin and Lily as well as all of his older cousins had done the same thing, he decided to go for it. 

That's a shame that Mrs. Cumberworth retired, she was the best, but I'm sure Justin will still enjoy the class. Justin was upset that for his AP English class he had to read a 600 page book and write a report as well as take a test from another book all before the summer was over. I guess the new teacher just wants to get a head start on the school year. Ben took the same class from a teacher who just retired and did not have any summer homework. Got to love a new teacher who is excited to teach lots of new things & challenge her students.

This week has been good. I made a mistake when depositing a check. I forgot to endorse it on the back, so a large majority of our time was taken up going to Ciudad Vieja to the central banks to clear up the problem. 

There was a lot of confusion because President Cook is the person responsible for the account, but the check was deposited by me. It required about 5 trips to 3 different banks, a thumb print and a copy of my passport just to release the check from the bank to the person that I had sent it to. From there we had to take it to City Bank (where the mission's account is) to have the block taken off the check. The president had to sign a piece of paper authorizing me to endorse it after having been blocked, unblocked and signed by the whole world. It all worked out in the end but it taught me three valuable lessons:

1) Never forget to endorse a check and then deposit it in a foreign bank under another name

2) Have patience with yourself; there are almost no problems without a solution. The ones that don't have a solution aren't worth stressing out about because there is no solution.

3) Make sure you are complete with every detail, no matter how small and simple it may seem. 

The source of all of Ben's headaches this week--one of the 47 checks he prepared and deposited this week to pay the rent for the appartments this month.

This really is something that I would like to carry away from this experience. Every little thing that our parents have ever taught us, the Sunday School answers (read the scriptures, pray, go to church) are all seemingly small and easily omitted steps in our everyday lives, but in the grand eternal perspective, these are the three pillars that support our divine purpose here on earth. 

It reminds me of the talk by President Gordon B. Hinkley entitled  "Switches in Your Life"

"Many years ago I worked in the head office of one of our railroads. One day I received a telephone call from my counterpart in Newark, New Jersey, who said that a passenger train had arrived without its baggage car. The patrons were angry.

We discovered that the train had been properly made up in Oakland, California, and properly delivered to St. Louis, from which station it was to be carried to its destination on the east coast. But in the St. Louis yards, a thoughtless switchman had moved a piece of steel just three inches.

That piece of steel was a switch point, and the car that should have been in Newark, New Jersey, was in New Orleans, Louisiana, thirteen hundred miles away.

So it is with our lives—"

 https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1972/10/watch-the-switches-in-your-life?lang=eng

Here we learn that these small moments are critical for us. I'm grateful for the learning experiences that the Lord offers me. I plan on looking more at the details in life. My studies, my attitudes, how I can better represent the Savior in every moment. He himself, the Savior of the whole human family, took time to heal the one, took time to let the children come unto him, took time to think of every single one of us in the Garden of Gethsemane.

I was honestly frustrated beyond belief every time I was missing another signature or stamp, but I'm glad for having received this experience to teach me the importance of the little things in every aspect of our life.

So outside of that we also had a going away party/Family Home Evening with some of the recent converts in the ward for Élder Muñoz.

Romina and Carla made the snacks and a poster (with pictures they stole from my blog and from Élder Muñoz´s Facebook)

Hermano Pablo (the bald one) made some Tortilla de Papas (it's basically cubed potatoes with a bunch of onion and pepper cooked all together in a pan then you take it off of the heat and pour in a bunch of beaten eggs and cheese and bake everything in the same pan until it´s all solid.

Édler Muñoz was invited to share the lesson.

It was a great night and a great opportunity to say goodbye (he has been here for 6 months).

Hermano Fernano was also there, he´s the recent convert of Élder Gallagher and Quezada.

Well, I love you all!

Send everyone back home a big hug from me.

Élder Benjamin Taylor

Open House-Goodbye Ben!

We held Ben's Open House on Saturday, November 2nd. We appreciate all who came by to wish Ben well on his mission.

We will miss Ben here at home for the next 24 months, but know that he is where the Lord wants him to be, doing what the Lord wants him to do.
We love you Ben!

Tech Support-Last Chance

Ben got set apart as an Elder by President Cowley last night. While waiting for President Cowley to arrive, Ben helped his Grandma Kathy with some last chance technical support on her iPhone and Kindle Fire. Justin is going to have some big shoes to fill to keep us all up and going on our phones and computers.

Helping his Grammy one last time

Spring Break 2013

Over Spring Break this year, we decided to do college visits and site seeing. Ben will be leaving on his mission November 2013 and Justin will be leaving summer of 2015, possibly before Ben gets home. This was our last opportunity to take both boys at the same time.
We took the I-80 route on the way to Salt Lake City. It was a long drive--especially Nebraska. We have some lovely panoramic shots of the endless fields.

Nebraska-in all it's glory

We did find an amazing truckstop on our way west with 5 semi's inside the building and several had trailers attached just for display purposes. It was enormous!

Once we arrived in Salt Lake City, we went exploring.

On Sunday, we were able to attend Music and the Spoken Word, which was held in the tabernacle. It was amazing!

We went to church in the Joseph Smith Memorial building with my Uncle Edgar and his wife Kathy who were serving a mission in the Church Office building doing genealogy research.

Chapel of Joseph Smith Memorial Building

We were able to tour BYU in Provo with Reid Taylor as our tour guide and host. We were also able to go to Rexburg and visit BYU Idaho as well as spend some time with Jacob & Nia Turner.

On our way back home, we took I-90. We stopped in the mountains of Wyoming, the Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument, Devil's Peak Devil's Tower and more on our way home.

It was quite the adventure for our family and a great way to spend time with our two oldest boys.

Ben will be attending BYU Idaho when he gets home from his mission.

Christmas Traditions-One Last Time With Ben

It is our family tradition each year to put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Ben is leaving on November 6th, so we had an early Thanksgiving with the Taylor's on Sunday. In keeping with tradition and because Monday was the day after our Thanksgiving, we put up the Christmas tree one last time with Ben.

About 10 years ago, Ben and I added to this tradition--we started watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding while setting up and decorating the tree. The first time we did this, we had just gotten the movie and wanted to watch it, but somehow this tradition carried on year after year. This movie has nothing to do with Christmas but it is just a good, funny movie where our entire family can practice our Greek accent, we get to yell "Opa" and laugh about how many ways you can use Windex.

Here is the result of our efforts:

I am so glad that we were able to do this with Ben before he left. Although we did not exchange any gifts--those will be sent to the mission office since he will be arriving from the Argentina MTC to Uruguay a few days before Christmas--it was a fun and relaxing evening with the entire family.

Ben has great confidence in my blogging abilities, so hopefully I will be able to make it work right for the duration of his mission. I hope you enjoy the next 24 months!

Shawna Taylor