million dollar answer, letter 15

note from mom:

i know that sometimes i don't immediately post tay's letters. it's odd to me that i just can't make myself do it...and i think i finally realized why... i just want his news and thoughts to be solely mine for a bit!

anyway- i'm sharing this morning!

i titled his email, the million dollar question and he replied likewise...lol

Hey Mom,

sorry about swadhi and getting sick and all that. i know that its a bummer when things fall through. believe me i do. just know that if she wants to see you then it will happen.

i am glad to hear that emily's party went so well. im glad she has good friends. high school is hard, sometimes harder than being a missionary because of the lack of direction. i was reading in mosiah 1 this morning and one of the last verses talks about the leahona being passed from King Benjamin to Mosiah among other things and it talked about how the leahona was a guide and a direction when they were righteous. isnt life always like that? when you know what you are about usually you have a better idea where you should be going as well.

So last week we went to our meeting and it is always really neat to be in a room full of Elders and Sisters. Sometimes the world can get you down when you face rejection and people tell me why im wrong all the time but it is so refreshing to be in a room full of people on your side.

My new companion's name is Elder Haupt from South Jordan, Utah. had to know that i would get one from Utah eventually. (Phoentical: HOW pt) He has been out for six months so it has been fun telling people that we have 9 months together and seeing the reaction people have. usually when asked he tells how long he has been out first so that people assume that he is the jr comp and then when they expect me to say like 18 months or something i tell them that im even younger. but he is such a good missionary and hard worker. we dont take breaks, we have been working as hard as possible from 6:30 wake up to 10:00 at night every day. we have seen the results in our new investigators this week.

taught jose the first lesson wed. picked up a lady named celest who is really interested, a man named Frank who is a former investigator and a man named Laregues.

by the way i could not be more happy with E Haupt so dont worry about that. still at the gardners too. actually E Haupt was trained at the mtc by the gardners son, Tyler. so the gardners were excited about that. he is just like me in that we both were saying before transfers, i hope i dont get a pile so that i wont be able to work as hard as i want to.

had some good lessons this week. wednesday our lesson with jose was fantastic. he said when we followed up later that he was excited because never in his life before had he been directed to the scriptures and to prayer before like we were asking him to do.

nadre, the crazy guy loves E Haupt and we had actually a pretty good discussion on prayer and he invited us back specifically to give him a spiritual thought which is a way good sign and progress for him.

Had a good lesson with Larry Gomez in which he commited to read his scriptures every day and pray about it and so far he has. he also was at church again but had to leave because of his little kids. he has a newborn and a one year old so you cant really condemn him for that. hes trying.

For the Philledelphias (ken and terry) ken is working 20 hour days like every day so it was really cool when we found them. we had a guy from our ward out with us that thurs night so we were driving to the philledelphias. the street is really long and for whatever reason we just could not find a parking spot. we probably tried for 10 minutes before we found one and got to the house. so we finally got there and were just about to leave because nobody was there when ken and terry both pulled up seperately. i know the Lord wanted us to see them and we set another appointment for this friday. it was a neat experience seeing the hand of the Lord.

had a good lesson with Gil which also was pretty neat. we planned to teach him about sabbath day observance which we have held back on but now Gil knows the BOM is true so we decided to let him know that he would have to make a way to go to church. i was really nervous about it all and we wanted a member there but we didnt know who to take. i just rifled through the ward directory and looked through the pages and one of the members names stuck out to me. i knew that was who the Lord wanted with us. so we were at the lesson and who knew this but the member we brought with us had the coolest story about saving for his mission after his conversion and not working on sunday. also him and gil connected really well. it was cool to see the direct result of a Spiritual prompting. we commited gil to pray to find a way to get sundays off. we'll see what happens.

Megan got back sat night and we saw her sunday. we had a really good lesson on how to recieve revelation and know that God is in the Spiritual feelings that she can receive. we commited her to go to church with a question in mind and promised her that it would be answered. i know if she goes it will be.

ill send another email in a second with some pics and responses.
Love your favorite missionary,

Elder Taylor Barron

a note from me...i didn't receive the follow up email so i don't know what happened. stay tuned for an update next week!