28: summer's on!

zone conference:



contemplating the 'hit':



execution:



a temple trip:



tay's new apartment:



Hey Guys,

Im excited for you guys to be on summer break. thats always exciting. sorry about the pic cd. i dont really know what happened. im going to see what i can do about it. the machines at walgreens are more difficult to work with and i dont know if we will have time to figure it out today. but deffinately next week i will send out a new one. really sorry about that guys. i do still have the pics on the memory card.


the new ward is feeding us the same as Foothill. we have been having dinner with investigators alot actually. i have had 3 dinners with investigating families since i got here and we have at least two more in the next week or so. living in an apartment has been the same as living in a house except we have more privacy which is nice. i would deffinately rather live at the gardner's but i dont think the leaver's ever really liked me that much. for packages, it doesnt actually have to be a package, i just really enjoy getting pictures from you guys.



i do enjoy getting to be biking missionaries. well, we were bike missionaries. saturday E Gibbons bike kind of exploded. the derailer caught in the spokes of his bike and that was it. we were really lucky that we were riding really slow so E Gibbons didnt crash. now we are back to on foot. zone conference was all about baptism and getting investigators to church. i really enjoyed it and feel like i learned alot. i also got to sit with E Haupt at lunch and talk about Foothill. by the time i am done in this area i will probably have been in this zone longer than anybody else by at least 4 months. i had forgotten that i had left some super crappy ties for E Haupt's new kid and not expected to ever hear about it again thinking that i would be transferred to somewhere south in the mission but i did hear about it. it was kind of funny. the baptism date is still on. paige's mom sits in on our lessons so i dont really know what she thinks. she always makes sure that paige understands the implications of what we tell her. the other investigators are doing well. we had 5 investigators at church. we are going to have to start planning people for them to sit with. next week we are going for seven. we also plan to have 2 more dates by next week. dianne has announced that she wants to be a member of the church. she is chris elliott's mom. our lesson in gospel essentials kind of got turned into a deep doctrine discussion somehow but she decided because of it that she believes what we do. i am kind of worried about the implications for a couple of our other investigators though. we had some cool experiences this week. this lady that we taught outside the california pizza kitchen the first night i got here stopped us on the side of the road the other night. she said that we had really gotten her thinking and that she would like to meet with us. we set an appointment for tommorow night. we also checked on a guy from the potential sheets in the area book. he asked us some basic questions like "why do we need another witness?" and "how do you know that what you are saying is true?" then his friend pulled into his driveway right next to us and started trying to lay into us. he told us bogus stuff like you cant trust how you feel and that the Prophet and Apostles make tons of money off us and that we are trying to earn our way to heaven apart from Jesus Christ. mostly we just let him talk for a minute until he told me that i had to feel like something was missing. i told him that i didnt and he told me that i was only out here because my parents were mormon and that i was trying to earn respect and entrance to heaven. it kind of pushed me over the edge. i told him that he could not tell me what i knew and that it was cowardly to try to say things like that when he had no evidence. he then tried to tell me again that i was just trying to earn heaven and that it was all by grace and so i asked him what i could do to find this grace. he told me that i needed to renounce mormonism and pray to be saved. i made him aware that doing anything like that is a "work" and that he was confused. we invited him to read the Book of Mormon to learn for himself that it was true and that if he wouldnt then we were done talking to him because talking further would be a waste of time. while we were walking away tony said that he would like us to come back but we were leaving his friend who was quite angry at this point so we didnt get to set an appointment. i never write about experiences with bashers but i feel like i was given the words to say in this instance for tony's sake so it was neat. i also had another cool experience with planning. we had planned to tract this street (but we were planning to have bikes). because we did not we had to walk there and on the way we realized that between the time walking there and the time it would take to walk to our next thing we would only have time to knock one or two doors. we decided to follow our plans and we only got to talk to one guy but we set an appointment with him for wednesday. it would be cool if he turns out to be solid because its cool when things like that happen.


sounds like you had a good week. hope you guys are doing well.

to the people:

by the way i forgot to tell you that E Gibbons is from bangkok, thailand. his dad is stationed there in the army. his dad is a virologist.

To Grandma:

it sure would be fun to take a family trip out here someday. i would be all for it. i had no idea that candice and andy had moved so much. thats exciting about the trip to texas! you will have to let me know how everything goes out there.


To Grandpa:

i certainly do enjoy being in charge. i didnt think that it would really be very much different but i didnt realize my responsibility to set the tone for our companionship. in my interview at zone conference President Brady asked me how i liked it and i told him that it had made me realize what great leaders and planners my first two companions were for me and that i need to strive to be as good as they were. i sure am loving the new feel to the mission. i hadnt realized that it would be different. i just thought that there were duplicates of Foothill everywhere. i feel like i can help this area become fantastic and that greatness is really close here.

mom: by the way, thank you for sean's address and the info about the ward and my friends back home. i am glad that things are going well and i am so impressed that you get right in there and make friends with people like Kady. by the way hearing about the quartet singing 'i know my redeemer lives'... did i ever tell you that while i was at the gardners i learned how to play that out of the normal hymn book and about 5 or 6 other hymns on my lunch breaks at the gardners? it only took like 15 mins a day for a couple months. i want to get better at piano when i get home. i love getting your emails and your updates.


Love your favorite missionary,

Elder Taylor Barron