A Compilation of December Emails...in other words, Spencer's mother is lame and got behind!

Dec 3, 2012

The streets of Mocorro

So, here i am ether suuuppperr  hungry or suuupppeerr  full!
theres really not an in between haha. every meal at  lunch the
members, whether awesome food or not the greatest, make so much so we
eat with force. and without fail i always feel obliged to have
seconds. this is how it goes usually, sometimes i cant talk with them
a whole lot because ive only been speaking portuguese for 3 months and
i dont understand absolutely everything so its great i just get to eat
my food without too much conversation. Elder Gomes loves to talk so he's
always talking at the dinner table. so i wind up eating my food always
faster than everyone else because im not busy talking and then here
comes the demand with out fail everytime, ELDER COME MAIS! haha and
since im a taylor what do i do? yup, eat more. but i love it. the
bishop took us to a chohascoria this week, the all you can eat meat
places, and i dont think ive ever had as big of a desire to munch on
just meat in my whole life. i ate soo much it was awesome! the bishop
and the family couldnt believe i could eat that much!  they were getting
a kick out of watching me eat and everytime the people came around
with meat it was an automatic, sim por favor. so i ate so much until
my jaw was tired of chewing haha too funny, even better i woke up the
next day and my jaw muscles literally were hurting when i would chew.
too good.

i saw my first person with the potó burn. remember that ant thing that
pees acid on you? ya it was gnarly.

one thing here i find super funny still is that people call all the
women, women. like theyll say hey women! or women do this! because in
portuguese you cant say like, can you make me a sandwhich? the
question here is make me a sandwhich? so its super funny. mulher is
women in portuguese and its right to call people like women or boy or
man in the command form. Mim faz um sandwhich, Mulher! haha make me a
sandwhich women! its too great ill have to forget about this structure
when i return back home if i dont wanna get slapped.

Elder Taylor and Elder Gomes

so i was just thinking this week about how much i love the temple and
really miss going through the temple. i realized how special it is and
how i really took advantage of all the opportunities of going to the
temple. it is such a specal place, and with the absence of the temple
right now i realize even more how truly special and sacred it is. we
have a temple so close to our house. i always knew this was a blessing
but never really realized this until now. the people in my area have
to travel 2 days by bus just to make it to the temple, and then 2 day
journey back home. just becuse they know the importance of the temple
they do it. such strong examples to me. i was just thinking how good
we have it having a temple less than 30 minutes away from our house
when we can drive in our nice comfy cars with AC and enjoy the view on
the way there and everything. what a blessing that is for us. i just
really encourage all of you to take advantage of this blessing. go to
the temple as often as you can, and when you go realize just how lucky
we have it and be that much more thankful to the Lord for him allowing
us to have His house so close.



Dec. 14, 2001

so you aksed me about my teaching pool this week, i figured theres not a better way to tell you all about it and fill you in than taking pictures with everyone and sending them to you. this week i pretty much taught animals on the street i found. ahh its a whole different world here as you can tell! i love it!! i hope you enjoy the pictures of my investigators. but really weve got a solid pool right now its great.

THE HORSE...

THE DONKEY...

 

THE GOATS...

THE KITTEN...

AND THE STRAY DOG!

youll like this. so this week we were teaching and just this huge cock roach was on the wall of this ladies house. haha she sees it and just doesnt do anythings, i think she was too lazy to get up and smash it or something. so we just keep on continuing the lesson. then i was talking, she just casually slipped off her shoe and grabed it in her hand, i didnt think anything of it. then all the sudden she smacks the wall with her shoe and the cock roach just drops half dead on the floor and the lady acts like nothing happend haha what?! ah it was the greatest. i sent you a picture of a cockroach in the house i found under my backpack. i dont know if you can tell how big it is but the thing was freaking huge. had to take a picture. this week i had a little chorrascoria of my own, made a ghetto little grill BBQ in the back and then roasted some good old chicken hearts on it. ah it was so good. 

BBQ'd Chicken Hearts

The ghetto BBQ

Dino- The winner of the piggy back ride contest

                                                              

also a picture with a kid giving me a piggyback is the champion for who could give me the piggy back for the longest way out of the kids here. hes 17 and helps a ton with the missionaries its great. they all love that i weigh a lot (at least of here) 

The cockroach found under his backpack...

i hope it feels like chirstmas time for you guys because it sure doesnt down here! haha one thing for sure is that the people down here have never heard the song, 'dreaming of a white christmas' or whatever its called. haha they think its cold enough to snow when its 100 outside. so great. so far we had one day that was somewhat overcast, and gosh it was great! im lucky though because i dont sweat to much, never really have, but like elder gomes and other people are just like walking sweat balls. 

so a cool little story for my favorite people back home.. so as you know the people are on their big temple trip right now down to the recife temple. which ya like i talked about last week is a huge sacrifice for them. Dino, (the same kid i sent a picture with a piggy back) is a recent convert of like 2 months. he wanted to go to the temple so bad. so hes been working and selling some stuff trying to get enough money to pay for the tempe trip. hes been saving up money and everything was going well! this week i was buying some grosseries, and was gonna buy a pen drive to put some stuff on. i got a feeling just to not buy the pen drive or some of the more deserty type of food and just to keep my money. i didnt think anything of it i just figured it was less work to have to walk around and buy the stuff anyways. so i didnt buy that stuff and saved my money to spend for next week. Dino, the hour before they left for the temple, came looking for us to talk to us in a rush. we luckly ran into him and he said that the person he worked for couldnt pay him until the next week and this leaving that he couldnt go to the temple because he didnt have enough money to pay for the passage. he didnt know what to do, nobody had the money to lend to him until he got payed. but what do you know, the exact amount of money i budgeted and saved was the exact amount of money that he needed to pay for the passage. so i gladly lent him the money because the temple is was more important that anything i needed at the time. so the people just got back. Dino absolutely loved the temple, and the coolest part of all was that he got to baptise his dad who had passed away a couple years ago and needless to say had an awesome experience with that. how happy i am to have been an instument to getting him to the temple. the Lord will always bless us and help us out if we give it our all. 

love you all a bunch, until monday! 

love your animal teaching Elder

"Hey... save me a piece of that corn!"

Dec. 18, 2012
only 2 ish days after my last email so i have to say im sorry if its boring because not a whole lot happened in the past two days. my teaching pool of animals almost all fell through, such a bust but hey everywhere you look theres a new animal waiting to be preached to and hear the wonderful gospel. haha thats a little half metaphor for you guys.


i have a conference tomorrow so i possibly will recieve packages and stuff which would be great. i cant believe its seriously almost chirstmas time! doesnt feel like it at all. but, feliz natal nevertheless. haha whats worse than actually being home and listening to music blasting in our house is music here translated into portuguese about christmas and snow and stuff. they shouldnt be allowed to talk about cold here!  tell trav and jen and baby ford i love them.  and speaking of conference, we get to play basketball and wait for it... PING PONG too!! haha you better believe ill be living on that table. ive been dying for some type of competiveness lately so this will be great.

so a cool little addition to the story with dino. they returned from the temple and everything and he was just lighted up because of how awesome it was. it was so fun to see him so happy and stoked about how awesome the temple is. so like i said, he baptised his dad who passed away. he said as soon as he went into the bathroom to change out of the baptismal clothes, he just broke down and started crying a bunch because he had just the biggest feeling of that his dad was super happy and close to him. so for sure i think that was a manifestation that his dad excepted the baptism. truly a wonderful ordinance, doing temple work for our ancestors. its our big resposabilitly to do this too, just imagine the joy of the people who have passed that are waiting for this ordenance, like dino's dad, to be performed for them so they can injoy the blessings of the gospel.

a general conference talk yesterday i listened to was so great. you all can listen to it and enjoy the wonderful message as this wonderful time of christmas is coming. it was the 4th session of the october 3rd 2010 conference, and the talk by President Monson on gratitude. 

sorry for the short email today! i hope all is well still. so only like one more week till i get to talk to my favorite people! im so stoked. so some wonderfull things worked out and i think youll be a little happy to here of who gets to skype you guys!!!!  this elder!!! i cant wait.
eu amo voces mais que sabem,

Elder Taylor