Happy 4th of July!

Here  are some pictures from last week. Higher quantity = lower quality..

1 We found some cool alien shades at the Church while we were planning.

2 A final picture with President and Sister Mortensen. I'll miss those guys!! Too bad I botched it in the picture..

3 classy tracting picture

🌳

HEY y'all!!!

I hope life is going great for everyone! As I mentioned last week I got transferred! I sure miss College Station, but now I'm actually back in the Cypress Zone! This time I'm in the White Oak Ward and wow! Things are going great! My companion is named Elder Christensen and he is a stud! We saw a lot of miracles this week and we are so excited for the coming few months. There is so much work to do in this ward. I don't know if I have ever been so busy on my mission, and it feels great. In some ways it has been a little overwhelming to see how much needs to be done (for example, it was a little stressful when I found out there are more than 100 prospective Elders in the ward haha.) But we are taking things one step at a time and chipping away at it!

I am still trying to get to know the ward, investigators, etc. but I'm happy to be here. I don't have a whole ton to say this week but let me know if you have any questions!

Love y'all!

Elder Taylor

Always & forevermore: Cypress!

Well, we got transfer calls last night and I found out I'm out of
here. I LOVE Cypress. I can't even explain to y'all how much I'm going
to miss this place. But I'm really excited for the next step in my
mission. In this area the Lord refined me like crazy. He taught me so
much. Just like Sealy i feel like Cypress has completely changed me.
It has changed the course of my life for the better. I can't wait to
see all the change that happens wherever I'm going next because the
Lord has shown me here just how much I have that needs to change. I'm
so grateful for the time I have spent here and just for the
opportunity it was to learn and grow. I hope y'all are doing great
with school starting and everything; I don't have a whole lot else to

say besides those generalities so I'll just send some pictures. 🙌

This dude was a great companion.

Legendary Cy-Fair District at the temple. #nofilter just kidding.

Love these guys.

✌🏻✌🏼✌🏽✌🏾✌🏿

Hey y'all!

This week was awesome! Honestly, it was probably the best week I've
had in Cypress so far. Texas is the BOMB!! Also there has been a
little bit of crazy weather over the past couple days with some minor
flooding, nothing like what happened a couple months back though!
Definitely nothing our bikes can't handle. 🤘 (biking in the rain
actually isn't too bad. It's like taking a hot shower, just in your
clothes. And on a bike.) overall I'm pretty wiped out. That's nothing
new though.

We had a super sweet zone conference on Thursday! President Mortensen
pretty much calls the whole mission to repentance every zone
conference. He says it's not that we're doing bad, but he knows we're
doing great, he just wants us to do even better. The mission has
actually baptized more people in the past two months than it has in
ANY two months in its history. Every time I leave a zone conference it
kind of gives me a fresh view of the area I am serving in. I guess
that means I am repenting!

The members of the Cypress Ward are awesome!! Every week I'm more
impressed with how good they are at missionary work and how badly they
want to do it. Plus, they are just super fun people to be around. This
week we found a couple way solid people to teach. For example Mike is
the boyfriend of one of our members and he is way into scouts and
pretty much hangs out with Mormons all the time! He's totally gonna
get baptized! Haha. Also, at our dinner appointment on Sunday the
members we had dinner with invited 3 other member families over and 2
families who were members of other churches, at the end we shared a
message with them and it was sick! The Spirit was super strong. I have
never had the opportunity to teach a lesson to 25+ people before so
that was a pretty sweet experience. (Along with just incredible
missionary work from the members!)

Miracles are happening every day here. We just need to have the eyes
to see them.

Love y'all! Have a great week!

Elder Taylor

Here are some pictures:

The Cypress Zone! Aka the best zone!!

Love these guys........

We also had a tie-dye water balloon fight for Pday last week. It was pretty chill. This is the before.

After!

August...

One tie July is OVER!! Thank goodness...

It's been a really weird week, but really good too. We are working as
hard or harder than ever especially on the weekends when we bike for
around 6 hours a day visiting people and tracting etc. in the Heat.

The main weird thing that happened was that our fool district leader
pranked us by putting twenty-two toads in the bathtub at our
apartment. It was a joy to return home from district meeting to find
that. Yes it is very impressive that he pulled it off. I hate though.

Also on Tuesday we biked over to our church building (which is six
miles away.. it feels pretty far) since we left our dinner calendar
there. When we went to leave it was pouring rain Texas style. We biked
home anyway. It was pretty much like biking in the shower, it was
awesome.

I don't really know what else to say. I'm still alive but super
exhausted. Have a swell week y'all!

Here are some pictures and videos.

Always and forevermore: Cypress!

Frogs.

This email was brought to you by Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning

Yo.

It's been a good couple weeks. Texas is super hot but once you just
accept that you're going to sweat a ton it's fine. I actually love
biking nowadays.

We did a couple service projects which involved hammers, weeding and
being outside in general. I've never sweat so much in my life. It's
pretty chill.

Transfer calls came and Elder Mecham and I are both staying! I have a
great feeling about this next transfer. It finally feels like I am
getting into the groove of things and learning how to be effective in
this area (along with just being a self-driven missionary and person).
One transfer after this one, though, Elder Mecham goes home so he's
getting pretty trunky. I keep him in shape though. Haha

Speaking of in shape we lift weights for an hour every morning which
is more than I ever have in my life. It feels so good. We also eat a
half gallon to a gallon of blue bell every week though which is not
the best.

Cajun food is so good.

It's crazy, you'd think you learn the most on your mission when you're
being trained but you really learn about the same amount every
transfer. I guess you really never stop training.

It seems like way crazy things are happening in the world today
especially affecting missionaries in Russia and shootings in Dallas
and stuff in the Middle East, but we're super isolated from all the
political arguing that I guess is going on. It's kinda nice but mainly
super weird.

It's been super exciting to hear about all of my friends who have
received mission calls in the past couple months! I can't wait to hear
about the great things that come from those missions.

Anyway I guess in general Texas really is the best state, the Lord is
really good, life is really great and all that stuff. I'm going to be
such a different person when I get home, hopefully it'll be a good
change. I'm so stoked to date again but I need to not think about that
now I guess. Hahaha.

Have a great week! Love y'all.

-Elder Taylor

Pictures!

District meeting

The cowboy boots he bought with his birthday money!

Zone Conference (Cypress Building)

Houston temple during flooding

🔥/☔️/🚴🏽🚴🏽🚴🏽🚴🏽🚴🏽

¡Hola Elder Taylor! ¿Qué pasó? Oh well thanks for asking! This week
has been a pretty good one. I got a new companion, his name is Elder
Mecham & he's from SLC and somehow he's yet another SWEET companion. I
honestly would never tell you guys if I got a comp who I hated, but
the truth is for some reason I've been super blessed with them so far.

Besides when it's raining, Cypress is super hot. It's been in the 90s
pretty much all week. Along with the humidity (+biking everywhere)
that tends to lead to... sweat. Ah, it's a fun time. The nicest thing
about a bike area though is that you can eat anything and it literally
doesn't matter.

The week actually went pretty well as far as the work goes. Taking
over the area is a little scary, especially after just one transfer in
it, but there are definitely worse things that could happen. Mainly I
just don't know what I'm doing and yet things work out somehow. The
Lord is merciful. I've been thinking that a lot this week haha.

Oh yeah and I also got to reach the fat age of 19 this very day! It
feels the exact same as being 18 but I guess / hope I've matured a bit
in the past year. If I'm honest. It's nice to be able to say though.

I don't really know what else to say but I'm honestly pretty stoked
for this transfer. Things are really looking up in Cypress.

Have a great week! Love y'all!

-Elder Taylor

Suburban War

Hey y'all! It's been a bit of a long time since I last wrote so I
figured I ought to get on it. This was a pretty sweet week though! It
rained pretty heavily all week which made it kinda hard to bike to
places, so, not gonna lie, in that way this week felt kinda
unproductive. Luckily the Cypress Ward has sweet members who helped us
out a ton this week with rides etc. so somehow we taught a lot of
lessons?

One of the members we took to a couple lessons this week was named
Brother Calder. Along the way we got talking about music a bit and I
found out, not only does he have EXCELLENT taste in music but he was
one of the original Aquabats!!! I was so stoked when I found out about
that! He's pretty much a normal guy but after learning that he's
pretty much a celebrity to me. He told us about the Mormon shoegaze
scene that actually existed in the nineties, boy I wish I could've
been part of that.

Oh and we went to the temple this week! It was pretty swell, that's
about all I have to say about it haha.

Well, we got transfer calls this week and turns out Elder Whitaker is
leaving already! Well.. He's been in the Cypress zone his entire
mission so far so he's pretty excited about it haha. I'm a little
nervous to take over the area but it should be fine. I'll miss that
guy though, we ended up being pretty good friends.

Life is good in the mission. Yep I'm still alive as usual. Love yall!
Have a great week!

-Elder Taylor

Here's a week for ya

Life is good.

We bike a lot and I'm so much skinnier than I need to be. Yet, we eat
infinite amounts of food??

We're staying busy but it's really hard to find investigators in this
area. Everyone is super rich here. It's super beautiful but they don't
like missionaries much.. haha. But the work is progressing, just way
slowly.

This area of Houston is pretty much just endless suburbs forever.
There's some main roads you can follow but other than that no way to
find your way around

Also it's getting so hot. We've had consistent 90 degree weather all
week (besides rainy days). Woo hoo!!

Here's a couple pictures. :)

Hope y'all have a good week!!

Elder Taylor

One More Thing.

I thought I would share this awesome quote from D. Todd Christofferson!

"All of us can meet God's high expectations, however great or small
our capacity and talent may be. Moroni affirms, "If ye shall deny
yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind,
and strength, then is [God's] grace sufficient for you, that by his
grace ye may be perfect in Christ." It is a diligent, devoted effort
on our part that calls forth this empowering and enabling grace, an
effort that certainly includes submission to God's chastening hand and
sincere, unqualified repentance. Let us pray for His love-inspired
correction."

-Elder Taylor

Time to become a sweat factory

Well, transfers happened and now that it's starting to get super hot I
guess it was the perfect time for me to get moved to a bike area! I am
in the Cypress Ward now and boy! It's like a whole different country
from Sealy. It's a suburb of Houston (aka the least biker friendly
city on earth) in the northwest area.

A couple things:

-everyone is so rich. (especially after being in Sealy.)

-the ward is pretty much like a Utah ward. It's weird. Awesome members though.

-biking is kinda exhausting. and sweaty.

-my new comp's name is Elder Whitaker. He's a pretty nice guy from
Utah who loves basketball.

-I miss Sealy. Haha.

I don't really know what else to say so let me know if y'all have any
questions. Have a good week!