Thanksgiving Dinner for 4 nights and Counting

Did all of you have a good Thanksgiving? I sure did!

Let's do a day-by-day play-by-play.

Tuesday was pretty nice. We were going to have our usual weekly District Meeting, but the church building we normally meet in was having their carpets cleaned. Also, our zone leaders lost their keys to the other church building that we could have gone to, so instead of
District Meeting we ended up having District Eating. We went to this place called Johnny D's. Not too bad, but overpriced. There were a lot of missionaries there, and it was fun, though.

Elder Jackson and I have started teaching this short little black guy named Leotis. He's 69 years old and he's been singing blues and gospel music for a very long time. This guy is pretty funny. He's also very deaf, so teaching him is kinda hard. He's not completely deaf, but we have to repeat ourselves a handful of times before what we say actually reaches him. We've been wanting him to come to church, but I guess he is in very high demand and is always going to a different church every week so that he can sing for them. I haven't heard his singing yet, but I'm pretty sure it is A+.

Here's something interesting. We had a Seventy come to our mission about 5 or so weeks ago, as I'm sure you'll remember. He told us missionaries that we get what we look for, in terms of investigators. Like if you're looking for a man who can be a Priesthood holder, that's who you'll find. So Elder Jackson and I have been looking for black people. And guess what we've found? Black people. Cool, huh?

Wednesday I was on exchanges in my area, Sunset Hills, with Elder King, one of the quietest missionaries in the whole mission. I took it as a challenge to try to get him to speak as much as possible that day. I found out he is a Kingdom Hearts fan, which is one of my favorite video games, and that is what we talked about all day long. And he talked a lot. So I consider that a win. We did some alright work that day, not a lot of people wanted to talk to us because it was the day before Thanksgiving, but we made sure that all of our investigators were doing well for the holiday.

Now, Thanksgiving. That was super fun. We started off the day with a Turkey Bowl. We wanted it to start at 7 o'clock so me and my companion would be able to get in some decent playing time before we had to go to our breakfast appointment. A few missionaries made it at 7, but no one else came! At around 8 o'clock the rest of the missionaries in our zone, and a handful of members showed up. It was super fun and I actually got the ball passed to me a few times, which is rare, but we had to leave before the game ended. Ah well.

For breakfast we went over to the Johnson family's home with the other Johnson family and some other family from a different ward who I don't remember. There was tons of good food, lots of bacon and sausage and waffles and stuff. We played some Kinect Bowling, which I bowled a 127, for your information. We played basketball out back for a little while. At that time is around 1-2 so we went home to shower then headed off for dinner.

Dinner was with the awesome Berry family. There were a total of 25 people there. That was pretty fun too. Lots of cool people to talk to and lots of stuff going on. Don't worry; I got half of a pumpkin pie to take home, so I'm a pretty happy camper.

I don't have a big recollection of Friday. I know that morning I started doing Insanity. That's pretty tough stuff. We also went and helped the Nohs move out of their house. They are the people whose house we are going to be moving in to some time. At least I hope we are. It will be a big improvement over these apartments we are living in. I think we also taught Leotis again that day. He is a funny guy. I don't know how much he comprehends what we are saying. I say we are going to be reading from the Doctrine and Covenants and he's just says "Amen." He's funny.

Saturday kind of stunk. Elder Jackson sometimes doesn't want to do too much, so he just napped a lot. We played basketball in the morning with the zone, but we didn't do anything for a while. I finally got sick of it and said we were going to see a potential investigator. She wasn't home, but we talked with a different old woman for a while who was extremely nice. Then we had dinner with the Hansen family. That was so much fun! They are extremely funny people. I've got a picture of one of the kids that you HAVE to see.

Sunday was pretty alright. Church was church. Nothing too spectacular to write about, but I did end up having a good time, like I normally do.

Today has been fun. Since today is one of our zone leader's last p-day we had a fun time just playing basketball and volleyball and eating pizza and soda. I'm gonna miss that dude. He is actually my mission Grandpa. He trained my mission Mom, Elder Pettegrew, so I actually got serve around my Grandpa for a while. Cool, huh?

Anyway, that's kind of how my week has been. I've really enjoyed it. This is the last week of the transfer and I'm kind of freaking out about it. This transfer has absolutely flown by. I can't believe it. I also hit my six month mark on Friday, and that is crazy. 

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, I would please ask you to visit http://eldersagetaylor.blogspot.com/ . This is my new blog that my lovely mother set up for me!

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Now go, and be Golden,
Elder R. Sage Taylor

I like the one with Elder Jackson in the background. Pretty freaky.

One picture is of me with shades on.

This is a planner cover I've made.

This last one is one of the Hansen children. His hands are pretty messed up.

A Prelude to Thanksgiving

This week has been an alright one. Elder Jackson and I have made some progress in the investigator pool and have had fun doing it.

On Tuesday we had a good time at District Meeting. At the end Elder Nock, the other District Leader, had all of us missionaries blind fold ourselves with our ties. We were led one by one into the gym. We were told to stand on a barbell, we would be lifted up by two missionaries while our hands were on another person's shoulders, then jump. I didn't fall for the trick, but a couple of missionaries just fell back and bonked their heads on the floor. That looked like it hurt.

 
Wednesday I was on exchanges with Elder Williamson in my area. That was a weird day. Elder Williamson is not what you would call a talker. He just kind of answers with one word and doesn't find humor in anything. I think that is the least I've talked on any given day my
entire mission. We did lots of good tracting, he even found us a pretty good investigator, but it was an odd day. We set a baptism date with a guy, too.

Dang it! The computer is going to kick me off in five minutes, so here's the skinny. Elder C. Scott Grow of the Seventy told us that we find the investigators that we are looking for. Elder Jackson and I have been looking for black people to teach, so we have found some. We've got 3 black investigators and quite a few potentials. I thought that was interesting, so I wanted to tell you.

I wish there was more time for me to tell all of you about my beautiful week. The long and the short of it is that it was good. We even had a really weird experience that I was hoping to tell all of you. It involved us tracting into a drunk woman and then she was crazy. We left really quickly. She even gave us a pocket bible.

I love you all! Happy Thanksgiving!

--
Now go, and be Golden,
Elder R. Sage Taylor

About time I've sent you some pictures, right?

The Catholic one speaks for itself. Found that tracting.

Here I am with Elder Smith, and Rob and Kim Erickson. When we went to he DeLanes' baptism we had dinner at their house, Elders Smith and Clark and me. That was a super fun time

Here are a couple of pictures are of the DeLanes' baptism. There were quite a few missionaries that taught them in the length of their conversions. That was a cool time, too.

Elder Brandley left his glasses at our apartment when he was on exchanges, so I took the opportunity to take a picture with them on!

I'm play EJ's guitar. Yup. A guitar.

Apple Valley Sunset

I saw an owl then took a picture of it.

Josh Andrew's baptism. That was cool.

House Cleaing. Enough Said.

We've been having kind of an ant problem. I'm kind of freaking out about it. I bought some ANT KILLER today! I'm excited.

  Elder Jackson and me. I'm the one in the ugly green tie.

I've Spent Two Weeks in Apple Valley and Have Seen No Apples

I'm sending my delicious weekly email on Wednesday this week because we got to go to the Redlands Temple today! Super exciting. Then we had Cafe Rio for lunch. I am a super happy missionary right now.

Last Tuesday was my 5 month mark! Goodness gracious. I have been out for a while, but it still feels like nothing compared to the 19 months still have to go. I'm having trouble remembering what happened each day this week, so I'm going to give you the highlights reel instead!

Elder Jackson and I have found two new investigators so far. The first one is Tramone, a big ol' black guy that really likes to smoke weed. I think we will be dropping him soon, but he is super funny. I don't really want to tell ya'll about the things that he has told Elder Jackson and me that we should do about life, but suffice it to say that we think he was in a gang at one point and he talks about stuff like that. He's a pretty good guy though.

The other is Andre, who is also big and black. He seems super prepared to hear the gospel. He stays at home to take care of his mom who has two broken hips, so that's the only thing that is keeping him from coming to church and really progressing in the gospel. On the first lesson, as usual, we extended an invitation to be baptized. He told us that he has already been baptized. We retaught the thing about us having the only authority on earth to baptize and he accepted it
without hesitation. I am excited to teach this guy.

Halloween was alright. We really didn't do much. In the middle of the day we had interviews with our mission president, so that took up some time. We also needed to be home by 6 o'clock, so we watched a pretty great movie called 17 Miracles. If you haven't seen it, I would encourage you to do so. Super inspiring and really well made.

Elder Jackson and I tracted some apartments, that's where we found Andre and Tramone. We also found 3 lost members, each in a different apartment. Apartments are where it's at! We had a ton of contacts that day just because of Elder Jackson's great idea to tract those complexes. Total gold mines.

Monday, as in two days ago, we worked all day long, pretty much non-stop. We only took one break for lunch and didn't even see any members and tried to get tons of work done. The sad thing is that we don't have any numbers to show for it! Everybody we tried to see wasn't home and some missionaries who found some potential investigators in the past wrote down a ton of wrong addresses, like the addresses didn't even exist! How frustrating. I was super tired
that day because we got lots of biking in. AND I'm looking pretty tan.
Nice, huh?

Now for a funny story. We were out biking at night sometime this past week, when there came a huge white husky right up to Elder Jackson's bike. We were both terrified and stayed very still. It just stared at my companion's bike for a minute or two then decided to walk off a little ways. When it was a reasonable distance away, Elder Jackson started pedaling away then the dog started chase him! He kicked it in the face and kept riding. It stopped, but the bad thing was that I was behind Elder Jackson so when the dog stopped going after him it started to try to get me! I was so scared. It actually snapped at my leg, but didn't get me. I was way scared during the event, but looking back, it wasn't that bad.

Probably the only down-side to being in Apple Valley is that the dinners just aren't as good. I eat more, which is weird, but I don't enjoy it as much. No one out here knows how to make gravy, either.
People do make good Mexican food, and not good Mexican food.

Hmm. I just want to say that I love all of your beautiful faces. Stay chaste.

Now go, and be Golden,
Elder R. Sage Taylor