Five Baptisms in Lomas de Solymar--Looking for more investigators!

Hey guys.

This week was absolutely crazy. I realize I say that all the time, but this time I actually mean it! haha! There are now officially 5 more members baptized into the Lomas de Solymar Ward. It's amazing to see how these people have all been prepared in their own way. I´ll give a small bio on each person.

Melany: She is the daughter of an inactive member of the church. But we didn't meet that way. She started talking with the missionaries about a close friend that lives next door. She is 15 years old, and is now really active in the Young Women's organization and has found quite a few friends in the class. She has very strong faith in Christ and really only wants to do the right thing. 

Gustavo: He just recently married a member who also just became active. He is really interested in religion. He was raised in a family where his father was a practicing Bandista leader. That's a religion that has a lot of interesting practices. They are like a melting pot of all different religions, plus native Brazilian religions, and believe in sacrifices to calm the evil spirits. This is all my understanding from what has been told to me since I've been here. Very often, especially near the holidays these people will put out sacrifices of chickens with popcorn chunks of potato and various liquids and oils spread around the corner of a street to appease the evil spirits.... anyways his dad at one time wanted to sacrifice him as a small child, but his mom wouldn't let him. And now he's learning super fast and has a wonderful testimony of Jesus as our Savior.

Ana Laura: Ana is the mother of the two children, Edgardo and Mateo. They're a very special family. She was an investigator about 2 years ago and never really progressed, so the other missionaries had to leave her. My companion and his companion before me found her while contacting at the bus stop. She invited them back over, but again didn't really want anything and was only being nice. The elders eventually came back one morning dressed in service clothes as a surprise and offered service until she gave in and let them help her. They worked there one morning, befriended the two boys and won the mothers heart. She is super awesome. She currently lives with her two boys and her mother. Her mother is a member who has been inactive for 60 years (we are still working with her). She is super awesome and has probably the  most genuine desires to follow Christ of almost anyone I've ever met. 

Edgardo: Edgardo is either 13 or 14, he is now super active with the young men, and actually had the Young Men's President baptize him. He also likes to come with us to perform service when he doesn't have school. An awesome kid!

Mateo when he is not being crazy

Mateo: Mateo is 8 yrs old. He is probably one of the most squirrelly kids you've ever met. He cracks me up. We just need to help him find more friends in the Primary, so that he will stay in class, so that way his Mom can stay in class. Sort of like Will. Will got a new teacher in Primary in January and had a hard time adjusting to the new teacher. His previous teacher had developed a great relationship with him and he was not ready for the change. It took a few weeks but now he is staying in his class the entire time. This week we have him promised to stay in class the whole 2 hours.

So now what... We just baptized all of our investigators, so we need to find more and retain the others by helping them be active and firm, I guess that's not the worst problem to have, haha! 

I love you guys

Élder Taylor

Selfie of the companionship on our way home from the marriage we went to. The marriages here are a lot like a Las Vegas ceremony. You sign some papers, the official says 30 words, kalazam! you're married. Like getting married at the DMV/BMV, I actually think that we might have been in a DMV/BMV.

Here are some photos Ben has taken with Flat Stanley for Will's 1st Grade Class

Greetings from the Coast!

Hola Familia

So my new area is super nice. It reminds me a lot of Duck Island, North Carolina, where we went on vacation, just not an island. We live rather close to the beach, less than a 7 min walk, so of course I had to take some pictures this morning to show you guys. It's super pretty!

Sorry! I got sand in my eye, and I didn't have a better picture!

The fields in front of the hills of sand, separating us from the ocean

The path to the beach

This is a normal road in my area. All the roads are sand roads. 
Super chill, vacation home style living here. 

We have to sweep the sand every day out of our house, It gets everywhere, haha!

My companion´s name is Élder Aguilera. He is from Viñas del Mar, Chile. He has an enormous personality. Like, you have no idea! I was afraid I wasn't going to get along with him at first, but we actually get along really well. 

He told me that his goal for this change was to not just get me talking more fluidly, but to get me a personality. Can you imagine someone saying that to you? I would have loved to see Ben's face when this was said! He told me that since were in a rather rich area you need a big personality to have any kind of success. 

Elder Aguilera

He´s right! We've been working on finding new people to teach. It's amazing how no one wants anything and he can just talk his way into their heart. I know stereotypes aren't good, but I've been told that the majority of Chileans are like that. Big personalities, fast talkers, and a little proud. He has a lot of characteristics that I would like to have, that I´ll be working on during this companionship.

The ward: The ward is super awesome! They are all super behind the missionary work here. The youth program is huge! There are 12-15 Young Women and 10-12 Young Men. And also almost 2 to 3 times we have family home evenings with members where they invite investigators. The ward is super supportive!!

Yesterday, I got to give an introduction of myself to the ward. Then, the Bishop came up to me 3 minutes before sacrament meeting started and asked me to give a talk--a 10 min talk on Diligence. 

Somehow it worked. I don't know how focused on diligence it was, but it was good. I talked about diligence in our personal lives (scripture study), family lives (diligently raising our children in righteousness; luckily I had a copy of Family: a Proclamation, with me), then I talked about our external lives (callings, missionary work, etc.). I some how worked that into an 8 minute talk. Miracles exist! haha!(Remember this is in a foreign language, and I had to think of all this off the top of my head.)

With regard to Flat Stanley, I received him today. I just opened it today so I haven't gotten to take any pictures yet. I´ll find something super Uruguayo (Pronounced oor-uh-gwyshz-o). William is in first grade, and his class recently read the book about a kid named Stanley who got flattened in an accident, so his family took advantage of his new shape and sent him in the mail all over the place. All the kids in Will's class were asked to send their flat person to somebody and then send him back with photos. The class is going to track on the map where all of their flat people have gone. We sent one to Connecticut to Uncle Jim & Aunt Cheryl for opportunities to be found there including photo ops with their pet pig. We also got an extra flat person to send to Ben, so he could take some pictures that would be unique to Uruguay. I am interested to see what Ben comes up with and how he explains to the investigators or ward members what Flat Stanley is and why he is including him in pictures.

The house I live in is super nice. It's a little cottage thing behind the house of a member. It's just me and Elder Aguilera, so it's not that big.

With regard to your questions, "do you have enough food?" and "are you starving?", etc. The answer is I have plenty of food and no, I am not starving. I am eating so much! i just lost some weight. Walking most places is probably causing the weight loss. It sounds like we have no need to worry when we look at the photos and see that Ben is slimmer than when he left. He looks happy and healthy!

Love you guys!

Élder Taylor

PS:  we are teaching, 

Ana Laura

Eduardo

Mateo

Those three are a family

Gustavo and Melany.

Prayers are appreciated on their behalf.

My last zone in Maroñas

Ben is getting transferred!

 Hola Familia

I hope everything is going well back home. Everything is going super well here. This week was strange, we had a lot of baptismal interviews, service projects, stake activity, meetings... and we also got changes for this next transfer!!!!

We had a service project with Hermano Castro. He had a house out back that he needed help removing the roof (by roof I mean corrugated metal sheets, what all the roofs here are made of). Then afterwards we had an asado (roast or BBQ) with him. It was super awesome, and we had a few missionary experiences with some family members of his that aren't members. He cooked beef, a few different types of sausage, one was pork and another type of blood-sausage. It was super good!!!

Normal/typical asado

pday activity earlier today, Asado at "the other elders we live with"´s Ward mission leader´s house,

youre gonna need to fix that last sentence, I have no idea how to say things anymore.

This made me laugh. Getting better at the language and not speaking english anymore is making it harder for Ben to write letters to us. Here is what I think he meant to say 

"Here is a picture from our PDay activity earlier today. It was an Asado (BBQ) at the house of the Ward Mission leader for the other set of elders they share a home with. You can see both sets of elders in the picture below.

At the asado, there´s always some kind of salad, rice, and potato salad kind of dish. the meat isn't seasoned very strongly. It almost always has some kind of chimichurri (a piquant sause or marinade traditionally used on grilled meat, typically containing parsley, garlic, vinegar, olive oil and flakes of chili pepper) afterwards to put on it. The meat is always super fatty so that's where most of the flavor comes from.

Then after, we had our stake activity. The missionaries of the Maroñas stake put on an "International Night." 

It was very successful. We had 4 less actives and 2 investigators show up. Our stake had over 8 distinct countries represented that got to present something to do with the culture of their home country. 

Since there are so many missionaries from the US we decided to share something from our states. I shared about Snow, Corn, and The Indy 500. Everyone was super interested in the racing aspect. 

Afterwards we had food. I got volunteered to make the American food. I didn't have time or the patience or the money to buy the ingredients for something so I just made Pigs in a Blanket with hot dogs and pre-made empanada wrappers. It worked out pretty well. It certainly wasn´t the same as croissant roils, but it was good none the less. All the Uruguayans really loved them, and were all asking me what this food was called, Some things don't translate super well. It was really funny, because they already don't think I know what I'm saying most of the time anyways, and then when I say something like that, they get super confused. 

This week we also made my very first Empanadas (a Spanish or Latin American pastry turnover filled with a variety of savory ingredients and baked or fried).  Apparently it´s like a huge stepping stone/right of passage here for missionaries. 

We went to the store one day when we didn't have lunch and got all the stuff. It was super simple, just ground beef, onion, boiled eggs, green pepper, Empanada crusts, and hot oil. This is definitely a food I'm going to make back home.

Now the good stuff:

Transfers! So last night we got the call from the Zone Leaders. 

Elder Ve'e is... staying in Libia.
Elder Taylor is... Going To... Zone "La Costa(The Cost)" in the area "Lomas de Solymar (Banks of The Sun-and-Sea)." 

So my next area is going to be up on the coast of Uruguay (if you look real close to Uruguay on a map, there are a few islands east of Montevideo, then you look directly north of those islands and that's my area). I have no idea exactly what it is like there, but I'm super excited. I've heard that the coast is a very beautiful area though.

The Yellow Box is approximately where Ben is right now. The marker by the word Ciudad de la Costa is the area I think Ben will be getting transferred to.

My new companion is named Élder Aguilera. I've been asking around about who he is, but no one really knows. Some one said he might be from Chile. I guess we'll just see tomorrow in cambios (transfers).

I think if you want to look up my city online, it's called Lomas de Solymar, Uruguay.

Also, it's also starting to get cold here. Yay! We've had a couple days were I've actually worn a sweater, Whoo hoo!

I love you guys! Thanks for all the pictures. I hope everything continues well back home.

With Love

-Élder Taylor

This is the street that Ben lives on and is what the area looks like where he has been serving.

Hola Familia-More Photos!

We got lots of photos from Ben this week. His letter was fairly short, but all of the photos and explanations made up for it. It is great to see him so happy and loving Uruguay and the people!

Just another great week in South America. I took a ton of pictures this week, I'll send as many as I can. This first one is me and Élder Ve'e wearing Lava-lavas in the house for fun (remember that his family is from Samoa). I think Ben looks pretty good in his :)

All the people have giant paragalas (I dont know if thats the name). It is these grapes and their vines that they use for shade. Almost no one actually eats them, so we always ask if we can take some right before they go bad. I looked online and found that the most common variety of grapes in Uruguay is Tannat, which is used for wine making. These look like them.

P-day activity: Me, Élder Ve'e, Élder Lord, Élder Lambert, Hermano Castro (white shirt), and Hermano Agustín (black and white shirt)

Hermano Castro and I at the P-Day activity. We played fútbol, football, and basketball. I actually enjoyed it! (If you know Ben, you know that before going on his mission, you would never find him playing any sport--he was all about music. It is so good to see him embracing the activities available with the other Elders and members of the Ward and "enjoying it".)
This week was crazy. It was fun though. I don't have as much time as normal to send emails, but I hope you enjoy the photos.

This week started Carnaval. We aren't allowed to go to the actual festival area in our town to do contacts or anything, and almost all the people are either at carnaval, or out visiting family.

We're having a little bit of a hard time finding people to talk to. This week we also got to do some service with the Élder's quorum. An hermano (brother) is building a house for his son-in-law, who just had a grave accident.  We went and pretty much worked with concrete all day. Remember that there are not houses made of wood here. Only concrete. They made all the walls out of concrete then they chizzle out holes to put the windows. This was my job all day, I chizzled out window holes in the size they wanted.

It was crazy. I was covered in so much dust from the cement. This week was awesome! Sorry I don't have more time to email, but just know I love you guys so much. I'm learning so much.

P.S. This week my goal is to have an English fast. Hopefuly I'll have the Self-discipline to do it all week, Haha. It's not very fun, and not very easy but it's something I know I need to do if I want to improve. I understand everything (96%), no I just need to work on the whole talking part. 

P.P.S. This last week I finished the Book of Mormon in Spanish for the first time. I started about 4 weeks into the CCM. I didn't really understand anything until I got to 3 Nephi, but hey, now I get it! and I´m excited to start over again to get even more. 

Love you guys,

Élder Taylor

Conference earlier this week in the chapel at the Uruguay Montevideo Misión. It was super informative and very helpful. We had it with our substitute Mission President and his wife, Pres. Etchegaray (they are native Uruguayos, and I think he is either an Area Seventy or was in the past). We learned a lot about retention and working with the ward.

The chapel where the Mission offices are

Super Busy Week-Another Baptism!

Hola familia,

This week was fantastic. We were super busy... Like I had no idea how busy a person could be. Wow... 

We participated in another baptism this week. Her name is Nobelia. She has been taking the charlas for about 3 months and has only really been waiting to get married so she could get baptized. She got married this Thursday, then was baptized Sunday in the morning. We were afraid that no one was going to show up since it was so early, but we actually had to move the congregation to the chapel for all the talks because there were more than 30 people. She said she felt very welcome to have so many people there. I was extremely proud of my ward for all they did to help. 

They pronounce Nobelia like Novelia, in case you were wondering.

                   Her and her Husband (member) Hector Re

 Then Élder Ve'e had to give 3 other baptismal interviews so we were on the bus at least 2 hrs almost every day. Then the branch in our district (Prosperidad) had a minor emergency; their church didn't have water to fill the baptismal font. We had just finished draining our font in our building after church when we got a call from the other branch president asking us to fill the font for them because they have a baptism planned in 5 hrs. Because of the water pressure it can take about 8 hrs to fill the pila (font). We ran over to the church and began filling it. The family that was getting baptized arrived for the baptism and the font had sufficiend (cold) water to baptize. It was a super awesome experience and we were able to invite some of our members and investigators and we almost doubled the attendance of the baptismal service. It was a super stressful experience. Thankfully we had the members there to help.

One thing I've learned since I've been out here is that missionaries without the ward members behind them; finding them people to teach, opportunities to serve, taking them to less actives, etc... are destined to wander the street, talking to people who don't want to talk to them. 

On the newsletter that the mission sends out every week it has a list of the baptisms for the week and month. 78% of the baptisms that we had this last week were references from members, 13% were part member families, and the rest were street contacts. I don't mean to say that those people found in street contacts aren't valuable, that's not where the success comes from. Not to mention, the probability of retention of these converts is far higher than that of someone joining the church without a friend. 

We had a broadcast from Argentina with President Ballard, from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He talked about member missionary work, with respect to the missionaries. One quote that I think he quoted from someone else was "If we do what we've always done, we'll get what we always got." He related this to the large surge in missionary service to 86,000 missionaries. That means that what we were doing to support the missionaries before the influx of missionaries, will only yield the same results as before the influx of missionaries. 

I love you guys. I loved your emails this week. Record breaking snow, that's awesome. I hope everyone stays safe. Love you guys so much!!!!!

Élder Taylor

We had intercambios
I went with Elder Torres, the missionary on the far left

Pictures, Pictures and More Pictures--the new camera works!!!

So, it´s P-day again. I received the package with the camera and fudge. 

Ben at the Internet Cafe with his companion next to him and the other Elders he lives with on the computers behind him. His camera works! His comment on the computer he was using was that it was as old as he was and this picture took 7 minutes to upload. He sent us 10 pictures this week, so it must have taken most of his time. He also reassured me that he would be getting a haircut today but has been unable to get one for the last week due to street fairs that were going on that caused many places to be closed.

Thank you guys so much. Now that I have a camera I'm gonna send some pictures of some of the stuff that's a little different with Uruguay that I've been waiting to share. 

So, lets start with the money.  

In the picture I have the 1,000, 200, 100, 50 and 20 peso bills. There is a 500 peso bill, but I didn't have one. They're really colorful and look really cool (20 pesos is about a dollar here).

Then there are the coins.  

The biggest coin that I normally have is 10 pesos. We take the bus at least 3 times a day, and it cost's from 12-21 pesos depending on where you go. Thankfully it's reimbursable.

Next is a picture of our keys. 

Everything here is behind 3-4 locks and all the keys look like these. They're really big. When I first saw them I didn't think they were real. So, our house has 4 locks you need to undo to enter. One for the outer gates, two for the gate outside the door and one for the door. Don't worry, it doesn't mean I live in a dangerous part of town, everyone is just very cautious. One time our keys got taken while at a coat check in our supermarket so we had to run home and wait for a locksmith to change the combination on all of our locks. That was a crazy day!

Next we have milk in a bag. 

It's something I don't think I'll ever understand. You cannot simply buy milk in a carton, bottle, can... It's in a plastic bag. Then you have to put the bag in a tiny pitcher thing to pour it out. That was probably one of the first big culture shocks, the milk.

Next we have our house. 

It's one of the nicest houses in the mission, except for the the sister's houses. It has an upstairs room, a bedroom, study room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen, a tiny lawn, and  garage-shelter place where we hang up our laundry to dry. 

The other elders that I live with: Elder Ve´e from California (the left), Elder Romero from Ecuador (the right), and Elder Melgarejo Paraguay (Bottom)

We are currently fighting a wicked case of cockroaches. (This should be interesting--obviously we have never had them in our home and I am sure this is a new experience for Ben) We have taken all of our food that isn't in the fridge and put them in big ziplock bags and put them in a tote in the other room. We clean every dish twice-before we eat and after we eat. We've gone through almost 2 full cans of spray; I'm proud to say the worst is almost over.

So, this week was pretty awesome. We have a baptism planned for this coming Sunday. Her name is Nobelia. She is getting married to another member this coming Thursday, so she can get baptized. It´s been awesome to see her desire to get baptized. She's gonna be a great addition to the congregation. The baptism has changed dates 3 times because the stake keeps calling different meetings after we plan her baptism, and we need members of the bishopric there at the baptism. She's been a good sport about all the changes, and is rather unaffected, and keeps saying "Ni importa, Si todavía puedo bautizar me" when we change the date. (Doesn't matter as long as I can get baptized)

Libia Ward building

I hope you enjoy the pictures. Send me any question you have about the culture, my life, so on... (benjamint@myldsmail.net)

I love you guys so much, thanks for all your support!

Con Cariño (With Love)

Élder Taylor

Last week Ben was able to attend the temple with the Elders and Sisters from his Zone. It was a great day. Here is all of them from the Maronas Zone. Ben is in the back row, 2nd from the left.

Hola Familia. I didn´t die. Don't worry--Letter 2 Days Late!

Ben's letter did not arrive until Wednesday this week. John and I were both checking our emails frequently Monday and Tuesday anxious for his letter. I am happy he had the opportunity to go to the temple and think that is a great excuse for his PDay being delayed.

Hola familia,

Sorry it took so long to email you. We found out last Friday that we were going to the Temple today. Today was super awesome! We woke up about 30 minutes early to catch the omnibus, to take another omnibus, to take another omnibus, to bring us to the Temple, which is in a part of Montevideo called Carasco, so we could catch the 9:00 am endowment session. It was super awesome and relaxing. But now P-day is Today (Wednesday) for this week. 

I received your package. I actually just got it about 30 minutes ago and haven't had the opportunity to open it. But it looks completely intact. (This is the package with peanut butter fudge, drink mixes and most importantly his replacement camera. I hope we will have more pictures soon!)

I have really enjoyed this last week. It has rained every single day and the members say it could rain another 5 days or so. It's sorta funny, when it rains, since that almost no one has a car you can walk on the street for 30 minutes and only see one person. 

This week we have been working with someone who has been investigating the church for almost a year and a half. His name is Juan Carlos; He is about 45-50 ish and lives in the fondo (back of a house; almost all houses here go back 2 or 3 more from the front) of his sister´s house (her and her husband are members). They´re awesome and are always willing to sit in on our charlas. He tells us that he has the desire to be baptized, and he has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ, but his lack of confidence is keeping him from "Pulling the Trigger." We are praying so much for him, and passing by him every night to leave him something to read and to remind him to pray. If everything continues like this, I think that he will arive to his decision soon.

One thing that we have been doing with all the members that we pass by is sharing some scriptures about prayer or missionary work, and then we leave them with a list of 2 or 3 names of investigators. We share that praying for our investigators is a way that all members can be contributing to the missionary work in their own ward. We tell them a little of the people's background, what their main need is and ask them to include these people in their prayers. This has been the most successful forms of animating the members to do missionary work. We have already had a few members call us back a few days later and ask how "So and so is", "Is there anything more I can do to help", "I have a friend that I would like for you to pass by to see if you could help her."

I wish I would have understood the power of prayer better before I got on my mission. I've really been trying to make my prayers more sincere, more focused, and less selfish; It has completely changed my relationship with my Heavenly Father. Thanking more has made me a lot more aware of my blessings, and when I do ask, asking more about our investigators has made a huge difference.

Well sorry if you guys worried a lot. I love you guys a lot.

¡Les Amo!

-Élder Taylor

Ben in front of the Montevideo Temple

Ben & Elder Ve'e at the Montevideo Temple

Montevideo Temple