Elder Scott Taylor: HELLO, UTAH! (And Argentina, Mexico, Idaho, and anywhere else this email goes!)

February 24, 2014

What is is, YO?

This week was fantastic. We had a baptism. A BAPTISM! Toni got baptized on Thursday and it was awesome! I had the privilege of speaking at it and talked about what it means to be baptized. It was cool. Salt Lake has cracked down on how things are supposed to go. They have had meetings and referred everything back to the handbooks. A big part of the hastening of the work is getting back to the basics. Convert baptisms have a very specific schedule that they are supposed to follow. Part of it is that the talks are supposed to be no longer than 5 minutes. So, it was cool to do that. you say what's important and don't ramble. And, her baptism was awesome! Do you know who Debbie West Coon is? She's an LDS singer from Gilbert with a couple of CD's. Anyway, she is how Toni came in contact with the Church. Toni met her at the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple and Debbie told Toni that she would sing at her baptism. And that she did! It was the (second) best part! (obviously the actual baptism has to be the best part.)

So, Saturday we had a lesson with one of our "eternigators." Well, it went really well. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He also didn't quite know how to pray, so he asked us to teach him that. He also didn't kow what Atonement meant, so it was super cool to talk about that. Anyway, at the end we invited him to be baptized and he said yes! So we extended a date. And he said no! He has some things he wants to take care of first and has some goals of when he wants to do that. And, he says he wouldn't be ready yet. It was hard, but I understand. Well, the real fun then came at Ward Council the next day. We told them what happened. Well, one of our members got on our case pretty hard. he was not too happy that we tried to "push him" into a date. He told us, "I remember when i was a missionary too and tried to rush things. You need to not do missionary things with him and go outside the bos." And h was chewin us out. Well, here's the awesome part. He was kind of eyeing me down the whole time, so I stopped him and told him that this was a day that we had prayed and planned for. That we know we were supposed to extend the commitment. And then we had everyone else in the ward council back us up. It was just nice to have ward members really know what our job is and have trust in us.

So, those are the grand happenings of Casa Grande. GUESS WHAT!! This Sunday we don't have Church. Why? Because it's the Temple dedication. Ha ha. When they first announced when the dedication would be, I was thinkin - "that'd be kinda cool, but I'll be long gone to Brazil by then." HAHA boys was I wrong! Yesterday was four months here in good ole Casa Grande. And I'll be here 6 more weeks! We had transfer calls yesterday and I will stay here with Elder Andra.

Well fools, I love you all. Sounds like you all are having fun. And staying busy. That's good - stay out of trouble.

Eu sei que esta igreja e verdadeira! woohoo!!!!!!!!!

Com muito amor! Elder Scott Jack Taylor