New Address to Send Letters to ( Hint! Hint!)

Glad to hear you like my surprise letter! haha thought you would enjoy that. absolutely loved the email I got today! I'm so lucky to have you guys as my family. Like I said in my letter, I can't thank you guys enough. I see every day how lucky I am and I will only see more of it as I go out into the field. I'll tell you more about some stuff I learned about Joao Pessoa in a little. Love you guys so much and the support I have is just unreal so I appreciate it so much.

So i cant believe ive been here for like 8 weeks!! so crazy. i feel old and like i was born here, some new elder the other day asked if i was 24 haha crazy, must be the new scar i have over my eye. im excited to go out into the field and feel like a baby again.  every day is kinda on repeat so i do apologize for the boring letters. lets see what i did this week.. haha well i learned more portuguese, i read and studied all types of the gospel, i ate a bunch of food, i went to the bathroom, and i slept. oh and then i did it all over again! haha but i absolutely love it in here. Itl'll be bitter sweet to leave, im so excited though to go actually teach real people and be able to see that happiness and receive that joy from that. ahh so awesome. 

Because i leave in two weeks, i have a new adress people should send letters too. and i know if you really love me, like i know you all do, youll send me a nice letter. Dont be shy, especially if you dont know what to say, just say what your heart tells you haha.  the endereço is

Elder Spencer Paul Taylor

Brazil João Pessoa Mission

Rua Deputada José Mariz, 515

Tambauzinho

58042-020 João Pessoa - PB

Brazil

(To mail a letter to Spencer, an international stamp costs $1.05)

Dallan, i mean Elder Sheilds is here and safe! make sure you tell theyre family. every wednesday we get a new group of missionaries and they have to go to some meetings in this one room so today i went in there and popped my head in and checked up on him. i will for sure be catching up with him tonight. he looked so happy and truly looks like a studly missionary! hes gonna do so great, so fun to see him here. 

The weather is still about the same. Pretty hot but not like joao pessoa! its been raining every once in a while which is so great.

Guess who is getting mcdonalds later today!! this elder is! im having my teacher go and get me some. its gonna be unreal so all my fellow mcdonalds amigos out there i thought youd be happy for me. not sure if they have sweet and sour sauce though so that will be a huge downer if they dont but i guess ill live. id take sweet & sour sauce over water right now!

  

So about the Joao Pessoa! irmao Israel served there and he tells us stories all the time about it. so fun to hear and gets me so pumped. so basically the city is super wealthy, and has one area in the city which is where the AP's (assistants to the President of the mission) are so i wont be there. other than that it is a very very poor place. which im so happy for because that means humble happy poeple who are waiting to hear the word. plus got the good old favelas (ghetto) and what not there to add some excitement. cant wait. all the time i spent making fun of ryan and parker for having cold showers most likely, well that bit me in the butt because ill have only cold showers there. i wont be able to skype home so sorry about that momma but we'll live right? the bugs there are BIG. he said its common to see barota's (cockroaches) bigger than your name plaque haha so next time your at the river and see one, think about that. the people there are so friendly. half of them dont have teeth i guess but haha theyre all the same in God's eyes right? so that is how i will see them. they have a different accent of portuguese, kinda "hick" portuguese so basically its like ill be in the brazilian Blythe...SCORE! ill be super tan which will be wonderfull cause i feel like im in utah with how white i am right now, but ill be getting so much sun that i will have a tie tan line no joke! gosh im gonna be lookin good with like 4 different tan lines. haha seriously just aboslutely nothing but awesome things said about it there. im so stoked and i know that is where i am supposed to be. up in Natál there are nice beach areas too so i will be getting a perfect both worlds.

Both my teachers here will be life long friends for sure. they are so special to me and just truly have touched me. So cool, the book of mormon has the answers to all questions of the soul and is truly just amazing. like joseph smith said, it is the most true book on the earth. i have gained such a stong testimony of the book of mormon now. every chapter is absolutely beautiful and if you feast in them you can apply something to your life. cant wait to bring this book to all the peoples lives i can in brazil. the people down here are so easy to love. they are some of the nicest and just good people ive ever met. i love them so much, cant wait to get out in the field and gain an even greater love, especially when i can understand everything theyre saying haha. i love portuguese so much, its a beautiful language and i never thought id say this but i am so stoked every morning waking up knowing that i get to go study more and learn more about portuguese and the gospel. haha im sorry mom ive turned into a nerd now, but an extremely happy nerd.  The church is so true, love it so much, so grateful for the blessings i have from being apart of it.

love you all so much, have an awesome week. i hope all of your wildest dreams come true,

 Elder Taylor

ps thank the oniels for writing me, theyve written me twice! so nice of them. and tell grandma and grandpa i love them a bunch, be sure to thank them for the letter even in theyre crazy buzy lives.

hey you wanna send me robbies adress please! i wanna talk to him and hear how things are.

Cookies, Shake and more Mango!

Just another same old week here in the awesome ctm! life is so great. happy to hear dallans coming next week! so crazy! im excited to share my knowledge with him, he will kill it down here. so excited for him.

I got my first hair cut and its been so toasty down here i figured id just cut it off, for the first time in my life i got a buzz! okay i almost did but then realized i didn't want to scare people off. haha the guy did a super good job.

Cookies at Mr. Cheney's!

I'm basically in a food coma right now because of you mom. thanks so much for your package i munched so hard its awesome. i just have a sugar buzz going on from the cookies and the shake. so thank you so much! i think the lady will send you a picture of me with my stuff but I look super gross in it so be like Jesus and dont judge me please! and i am butt white too so no laughing! i havent seen the sun for 7 weeks! Even my teachers are making fun of me now because i was dark when I got in and now they mess with me because they know it bugs the heck out of me how I look like im a white utah ghost.

I still love the food. Ah we got more mango yesterday! it was unreal again! haha i promise ive gotten smarter, but even though i knew what would happen if i ate the same amount of mango as i did last week...I did it anyways. But was it worth it... without a doubt. If the mango in Joao Pessoa is as good as it is here, looks like ill be here 2 years with constant diharia! haha but hey itll be so worth it. That stuff is soo good.

So ive finally got a good story where i felt so dumb with mixing up the portuguese words. I was in the middle of a lesson and it was like a spiritual part teaching the investigator and I was saying the 1st vision off the top of my head. Then i made just a tiny mistake. i was at the the part where it says, i saw two person personages who's BRIGHTNESS and glory.. blah blah blah. So im feeling all good about this lesson, with reciting the 1st vision with ease and all of a sudden my investigator starts just dying trying to hold in this big laugh. i imediately knew what i said. So instead of saying brightness, i said  'dirtyness' haha oops! I said "suja" instead of "cuja". I promise i wont be making that mistake again haha

  

So conference was absolutely amazing!!! Every single talk was straight up related to me and missionary work. it makes me bummed because i know if i appriciated it every year as i did this time, i could have gotten so much more out of it always. Literally it was just music to my ears and im sure yours too every second. it went by way too fast. the spirit was so strong and it really just made my testimony of prophets so much stronger. how awesome is it that we have a living prophet here on the earth today to lead and guide our church, straight from God himself. we are the only church on the earth who has this special gift. Conference really made me feel linked to you guys back home. knowing we were listening at the same time (not sure if you guys watched it all on time)  I really felt your  love and all the talks on family just made me realize how absolutely lucky i am to have all you guys and support back home. My testimony has grown so much. this church is so true, so simple, so right, so powerful and brings so much true joy to our lives. the coolest thing about it is the more we try to live the gospel by following in the footstepts of Christ, which makes us much better people and so much happier, we are getting blessed more than we every will realize. How lucky are we! And Heavenly father wants every one of his children to have it. He loves everyone so much, and wants us to have this gospel which will bring happiness to our lives and eventually lead us back to him in heaven for the ultimate girt of eternal life. all this is found in the Book of Mormon which is amazing. One of the coolest things about the book of mormon is how just because i can testify of the truthfullness of it, you dont have to take my word for it. You can come to know this for yourselves as we are promised in Morono 10:3-5. I've never been so constantly happy in my life, as good as my life has always been. it just really shows how powerful this gospel of Jesus Christ is.

I love you all so much. Read the Book of Mormon everyday, whether it be just one chapter.

Love your favorite son! (yea morgan and luke im claiming favorite right now)

Elder Spencer Taylor

Your Brazilian Son

Holy cow i am so excited for morgan and whitney!!! (we just told him that we found out that Morgan and Whitney are having a baby boy and his name will be Brox Walker Taylor) That litterally just made me so happy. i cant belive i wont be there to see him but thats what pictures are for and what not. im so happy for them! how awesome will that be. and what a sweet name!! the kids gonna be a stud just make sure he knows uncle spencer. so happy for everything happening in their lives. 

Elder Norton(a friend from BYU lacrosse team) is on my floor so its way fun to be with him here. He's a good kid. he'll do great. just in case you dont belive that im happy here, the first thing he said after we hugged was holy cow you look so happy! and i can for sure agree with him. its so great.

This was such a good week, portuguese wise and everything else. food was so good and yesterday they freaking had mango here!! unreal how good it was! theyve never had mango here before, i munched so hard. but i never knew what would happen if you eat too much mango.. well i for sure know what happens now! haha so worth it though.

Mom i feel for you after all these years of doing my laundry and saying "dont throw your sweaty gross socks down the shoot inside out!" haha i absolutely hate flipping the socks around after i do laundry so i just have to appologize to you and say im sorry i never listened to you. mom always knows best!

Some things are still the same as they were at home. I still toot a ton and i still have my weird laugh. people all the time compliment my laugh just like at home. haha even if things arent funny theyll just laugh because of how ridiculous i sound. i know all you guys were worried id pick up some weird portuguese laugh but dont worry i've still got mine. and some of the brazillians call me "bomber man" haha in portuguese meaning basically "farter man" because just like at home, i just have to rip one all the time. it must be the altitude.. right?

Today we were out eating and this sister missionary was wondering how to prononce the word 'coco' which is two words depending on where you put the emphasis in the word. haha it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. i told her the wrong way to say it, so instead of ordering a coconut burger, she ordered a poop burger hahah i was absolutely dying and so was the waiter and the other poeple who knew what that meant. way too funny, i had to capitalize on the situation.

so yea this week was our half way point in being here in the CTM. absolutely nuts how fast it is already going. the days are like slurred together and all of a sudden its been a week... its crazy. but anyways, for our half way mark i tied a tie that only came down half way down my shirt. and you better believe i went all out with a good old middle part all day. haha and everyone knows how awesome a middle part would look on me cause it really compliments my forehead. so basically i looked muito lindo all day. you gotta get creative in here sometimes, it is what you make it here! our district has all been doing the p90x workouts and its so funny. all shapes and sizes doing it and i love it. Also getting creative, i took the matress frame off the bed and benched some of my elders here while they layed on it. im super sore i feel like such a girl but it was a good time.

so this week was such a good week spiritually too. putting in the extra effort really has helped and i can feel and see the blessings that come from working as hard as you can. some of our favorite braseitos left this week which was so sad. but so awesome, the night before they left we had an awesome devotional. hymns, spiritual thought, testimonies and all the good stuff it was so great to do this the spirit was so strong. these brasilians are such studs!

This week we were teaching a fake investigator with probably 8 people in a group. i had a feeling to share a certain scripture and change the direction of where the group was taking the lesson, but an older elder was talking and i just let him keep talking and went that direction, not listenening to the prompting i recieved. once the lesson was over, the random person then explained that we took the lesson the wrong way and how we shoulda taken the lesson a different way to really find the problem of why he wouldnt go to church. it was exactly the direction i was prompted to take the lesson and he even shared to scripture i felt i needed to share. i felt awful thinking i didnt listen to the holy ghost telling me what to do. you better belive from now on i will abide by every promptig i get, for the holy ghost will tell you all things which ye should do.

i love you guys all so much, hope everythings wonderfull at home! this church is so true and i absolutely could not be happier, the Lord blesses and helps you so much in all you do if you keep his commandments and do what is right. he wants us to be happy more than anything and he has given us a way to make us more happy than anything worldly can, which is this wonderfull gospel. love you all a bunch!

Love
 Elder 'bomber man' Taylor