🔥/☔️/🚴🏽🚴🏽🚴🏽🚴🏽🚴🏽

¡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!

Transfers

This week has been muy crazy! Last time I emailed I didn't exactly
understand the consequences of that huge storm that happened. We have
done tons of service this week. I'm not really sure how much time I
have to write but here are some pictures.

Remember how I said someone had to be rescued by a boat last week?
This is the house. They had seven feet of water inside so they pretty
much lost everything. We pretty much salvaged what we could and ripped
out all of their sheetrock, cabinets, etc.

This is their tractor!

This is their truck!

Super crazy stuff.

Today we went to a trailer park in Brookshire that got owned. Everyone's ruined stuff was all thrown outside their houses and a bunch of garbage had washed in during the flood, so it was a mess. We filled up a giant dumpster which maybe got rid of 1/16th of it or so.

In other news, it turns out I'm getting transferred to a new area this week! I have no idea where it is, though, so I'll let y'all know next week.

I love you all, have a great week!

-Elder Taylor

The weather just got crazy around here

I don't know if y'all have heard about it but dang! Since last night
there has been a HUGE storm going on. Luckily we live on the second
floor of our apartment, and it's in Bellville which has a few more
hills than most of the Houston area, but we can't really go anywhere
today because most of the highways are at least partially flooded. One
of our members from Brookshire (closer to Houston) texted us and told
us there's a foot of water on the road over there. Another one called
us from New Ulm (lots of people have been checking on us lately) and
told us his daughter's house got flooded and she had to be rescued BY
A BOAT. The assistants to the president texted us and said make sure
all your valuables are off the floor if you live on the first floor of
an apt., don't do any unnecessary driving for the next 3 days, etc. so
yeah it's pretty insane. But as far as we know, every missionary in
the mission is fine, including us. We had a bit of a crazy drive home
last night but everything is okay.

Good and bad news: Mauro and Ana didn't get baptized on the 16th, but
fear not! They have had a hard time attending church and our mission
has certain requirements about how many times someone needs to attend
church before they can be baptized. (which is a good thing.) Their
work schedules have made things really hard these days. They are still
on track to be baptized on the 30th, though, and they still want it
super bad. The past few discussions with them have been really really
good.

Cool things are still happening. The other day a guy named Marcus
called us and said "hey, guys, I just found God and I want to hear
about your religion!" which was sweet because that almost never
happens. So we taught him a bit, and then his friend Jay showed up at
the very end and was like "dang it, I can't believe I missed it!!"
They were super stoked to hear about Mormonism. Jay told us he's
teaching a Bible study at the Blinn college campus in Sealy and he
wants us to come and teach it one day!! Which is awesome, but kinda
scary too. We'll see what happens.. It's even luckier because we are
trying to find public places to teach family history classes and the
college campus is probably the best place to do that around here. So
now we have that super valuable connection.

I hope everything is going well for you guys! I'm not exactly sure how
to end this email, haha, so there it is.

I love you all!

Elder Taylor

Quick update, we tried to leave Bellville and found this. So we might be trapped here for several days. The Brazos river has flooded like crazy and unfortunately it intersects every road connecting Bellville to the towns south of it. (Bellville is the northernmost town in our area.) good times!!

Smash that like button if you know how to week the email

Time is FLYING BY. I feel like this transfer just barely started, but
today is the first day of week 6. (Luckily we still have 2 weeks left
since it's a 7 week transfer.) I'm not really sure how I feel about it
especially because all the other missionaries in my district have been
out for a way long time. The end is in sight for all of them and they
seem pretty scared slash excited. (Except for me of course.)

Exciting news: Mauro (aka Mario for his American friends) and his wife
Ana, those investigators I talked about a couple of weeks ago, are
getting baptized this Saturday!! It's been a really amazing experience
to see them learn about the gospel. We were talking with Mauro last
night and following up with him a lot, just seeing how he feels about
everything, and man. It was awesome. He told us about how the past few
years have just been a huge transition for him (he is a former
alcoholic, he hit 1 year sober yesterday!!) and how converting to
Mormonism is just the next step in that transition. That's the thing
that makes me the most excited. Him and Ana understand all the
implications of being a Mormon and they want to do it. We will keep
working with them after the baptism, of course, but they will be such
a great addition to the branch.

Yep, pretty much all I have to say is that the Lord is blessing us
like mad crazy. I love teaching people the doctrines because it's made
me realize - the concepts of Mormonism resonate with what people
already know (naturally, it seems) about God. I used to worry back in
the MTC that I only believed the ideals of this church because they
SOUNDED so good. Who wouldn't want to believe in a God who gives
everyone an opportunity to be saved? who has a plan that balances
justice and mercy perfectly? etc., but I dunno. The feelings that you
get when you actually ask God about the Book of Mormon and things like
that, they really don't occur in any other place. I do think people
get emotions and the Spirit mixed up super often. But I can't deny it,
I wholeheartedly believe that religion - and particularly this
religion - is more than just a psychological crutch. It's so much more
than what exists in our minds.

There's the random thought for the day. I hope it all made sense.
Enjoy life, y'all.

- Elder Taylor