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Hey y'all!

It's been a pretty long while since I sent out a group email, so I
figured it was about time..

-Things have been going great in Morton Ranch! I think when I first
got here I mentioned Alyssa and Laura, the twins who were going to get
baptized on the 8th.. Well, they got baptized!! It was pretty sweet!

-It was actually COLD this week. What the heck... Now that winter is
coming, I've realized I don't miss the cold that much. Or the dry air
in Utah. Humidity is the best! Sort of.

-My good friend Elder Mattson got transferred up to Spring and he's
doing swell in a car up there! I'm pretty jealous, but I got the
privilege of killing the legendary Elder Jonathon Evans. (For those of
you who may be less familiar with missionary slang, when you end the
mission, you die. So when you are companions with someone who is
dying, you are killing them.) The transfer with Elder Mattson was
pretty pure. I'll miss him! But, we are killing it down here in Morton
Ranch so I'm pretty happy!

-A lot of things "clicked" for me in this past month or so. We got to
have Elder Echo Hawk from the Seventy do a mission tour and he spoke
to us. He bore a really powerful testimony of the Apostles and the
inspiration that goes into their daily lives, especially when they are
choosing where to assign missionaries. It was one of the most
spiritual experiences of my mission. For those of you who may not
know, Houston was honestly the last place I expected to serve my
mission. Throughout my mission I have had a lot of experiences that
helped me to see why I needed to serve here and around these specific
people, and when Elder Echo Hawk spoke to us everything just came full
circle for me. I'm so grateful for the chance I have to know - for
sure - that this is where I am supposed to be in my life at this
moment. I'm so glad I got called to Houston; there's nowhere else I
would rather have served my mission. 🏋

Another thing that was really forced into perspective for me in just
the past week was how much I have to rely on God in order for anything
to actually happen with the mission work. When you look at how many
people you are in the area as well as the demographics the odds
against you finding someone to teach and baptize are pretty
staggering. But God knows where those people are. It's so necessary to
rely on Him for finding them. To all my lads on missions, as well of
any of y'all who are feeling missionary minded at the moment, I can
guarantee you that the more you learn to rely on the Lord, the more
success you will have. It's something I am still learning to do but as
we have made a special effort to do that this week we've seen so many
CRAZY miracles going on. It's been awesome.

I can't believe my year-mark is coming up on December 2nd. So much has
changed for me in this past year. I feel like so much of my mission so
far has been spent just figuring things out, who i am, what I am
supposed to do here, etc. but now.. I know who I am and I'm ready to
go all in. I'm excited to get home in a little more than a year and
for y'all to see if I have changed as much as I think I have.

Thanks for all the love and support! Love y'all. ✌🏿️

-Elder Taylor

How awesome was conference?!?

(Sometimes we ask Brooks questions and he answers them. Here's this week's!)

Mom - How are your clothes holding up? Are your shoes getting worn? Do you need anything sent out to you?

My clothes are handling everything pretty well considering what I put them through. My brown Rockports don't really have any tread left on them so they'll probably have some solid holes by the end of the mission. It's pretty sweet. I don't really need anything shipped out.

Savannah - What was one of your favorite talks from Conference and why?

One of my favorite talks was the one on the Plan of Salvation by Dieter F. Uchtdorf because it was the first talk and I was wide awake for it. It also totally applied to me because I take a lot of things about the gospel for granted, even on a mission. We don't really comprehend how life-changing that knowledge is until we talk with people who don't have it.

Lucas - What is the strangest thing that has happened to you so far?

The tracting experiences I told Dad about last week were super weird, but something really crazy happened this week. We were tracting this trailer park where no one spoke English, and on the way back, we walked by this lady who was carrying one of those trapezoid-ish shaped landscaping stones. She threw it at a car, and it didn't do any damage, so I was wondering if it was on accident, but then she picked it up again and smashed the windshield of the car super hard. So basically she went about destroying the windows of this car, and as we were on our way out, her neighbor (who presumably was the owner of the car) came out of her trailer and started yelling at her. That was pretty intense.

Eli - What do you miss about home?

Not that much, honestly. I miss y'all, and I miss music and most of my friends (heh heh), but I actually like Texas a lot. I've made some really really good friends out here too.

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Mom - Tell us about your companion.

Mom - Elder Mattson is pretty awesome. Honestly, when I first met him I thought he just cared about being "cool" or "chill" more than actually doing the work but it turns out he's a super solid missionary. He's really driven to work hard and honestly he has been one of the boldest companions I've been with. He is half Puerto Rican and is super proud of that even though he's from Lehi. Every time we talk to someone who turns out to be Puerto Rican he just loves them and talks to them about it forever. He also likes Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club so we have that in common. He's a really genuine and good person, he's ridiculously passionate and pretty crazy, but I like him.

Savannah - What is your favorite flavor of Blue Bunny ice cream?

Savannah - I assume you're referring to Blue Bell, since that's the one that's unique to Texas? Blue Bell is phenomenal. I would have to say my favorite flavor is Cookie Two Step, which is cookie dough and cookies and creme combined. It sounds weird at first but when you actually try it it's so good. That's the only flavor I have been able to eat a half gallon of in four days. Too bad y'all will never get to try it. :)

Lucas - Has there been a time so far when you felt scared?

Lucas - I don't really get scared of things any more. We are generally in really safe areas and I'm not really scared to talk to people. It can be kind of scary to go into a lesson knowing that this person's conversion can really depend on what you say and how well you follow the Spirit. I wouldn't say it's really scary though, it just makes me feel really responsible. Back in Sealy there were some really ghetto areas but I never felt very unsafe. The only time i have felt really scared is when we were in this city called Eagle Lake looking for prospective elders and one of them was supposed to live in this house that was totally abandoned and falling apart. We knocked the door at like 8:45 at night too so that was pretty sketch. Other than that I can't really think of anything.

Eli - How many ties do you have and which one is your favorite?

Eli - My ties have multiplied a lot. I think I have around 35 right now. My favorite one is the floral tie that you can see me wearing in a lot of pictures I have sent. I got that one for free from a 60-year-old gay man in Cypress. It's pretty sweet.

Katy

Hey y'all.

Things are going great! I got transferred down to a ward called Morton
Ranch in Katy. It's a brand new ward that was created about one
transfer before I got there. Basically it's a part of 3 different
wards that all got split off and combined. The work was already going
really well when I got here so that was pretty exciting to see. We
have two baptismal dates named Alyssa and Laura who are gonna get
baptized on October 1 so I'm pretty stoked about that!! Oh, and it's
another bike area so it's a lot of the same old sweatiness and rain.
Gotta love that Houston weather. 😊

My new address is 2000 Westborough Drive, Katy, TX 77449. Write me letters! 💌

Oh, and this my new companion. His name is Elder Mattson and he's from
Lehi, Utah! #puertoricanpride

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.