Thought You Ought to Know

So there were a couple of cool things that were going on here in Redlands the past week. Let me tell you about them!

This past Wednesday I got to be on exchanges with Elder Redford in my ward. It was a pretty good day considering that we got to teach 5 lessons. Kind of a lot for one day in this area. We even taught our investigator Sebastian, who is awesome. We set a baptism date with him for the 19th of April. Hopefully we'll get to move that sooner. 

So on Saturday morning Elder Hevner and I were in our bedroom just singing songs pretty loudly when one of the other elders opened our door and said that we had people here. There were a couple of young men inside our house. I was pretty confused, and the reason was that we were told that we were going to have young men from Yucaipa come and spend the day with us, but my companion and I both forgot to write it down. We had Brother Schmeidel go around and do missionary work with us for a few hours. It ended up being pretty nice.

We also had a great zone conference on Friday! We had a ton of opportunities to learn more about how to be a great missionary. Elder Hevner and I, being zone leaders, had the opportunity to give a training during it as well. We tied our legs together like a three-legged race and showed the importance of Weekly Planning and Daily Planning working together. Totally above average. Everybody laughed, too, so all is well.

Hopefully next week I'll have the news that I'm staying in Redlands for another six weeks. That would be great, wouldn't it?

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Now go, and be Golden,

Elder R. Sage Taylo

What more can I say?

Birds, Temple, Bowling and Sandy. 

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Now go, and be Golden,

Elder R. Sage Taylor

Elder Hevner

At the Redlands Temple

If I Was a Young Warthog

Things are going well in the Lands of Red. If I had to compare how this past week went, to a candy bar then I would say that it was a Reese's Peanut Butter cup. The bold taste of chocolate with the subtle flavor of peanut butter.

Well, the good news for this week is that we found yet another new investigator. Her name is Lucia and she's pretty cool. Lucia is being adopted by a family in the ward. The hang-up that she has is that she wants to stay "Catholic" but she has no idea what that means. She has never really been taught about Christ or his gospel or anything, so we are starting at the very foundation. It's going to be great to teach her.

We had MLC this past Thursday. I enjoy going to those meetings. The other side of having those meetings is that we then have to train on the stuff we learned and the notes we took. So yesterday we had a great Zone Meeting. That was kinda funny at first because we went to the Center St. Building in Redlands, but the carpets were being cleaned, so all us missionaries got to go to the Pioneer Building instead.

After the meeting Elder Hevner and I were eating lunch and talking about our zone and we have come to the conclusion that our zone rocks. We have a bunch of great missionaries that are all cool and stuff. Hard workers, super funny, and just good folks.

The other day we were walking about and I actually talked to a couple of members in the ward that I haven't met yet! Weird, right? One was active and the other was not. Both were super nice people. I love that even though I've been here 6 months that there's still just a ton of missionary work to do.

Have a good week, my everybody! It's always good to know that people read my emails.


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

Here's a photo from Missionary Leadership Council. It's the meeting we as Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders go to once a month

Since I've Got the Resources

This will be another quick update. 

The first and best news is that we had a baptism on Saturday. I kinda forgot to tell all of you about it because it wasn't somebody that I was working with. Before we rearranged our area boundaries in the ward I was teaching Bobby, the one who got baptized. He's married to a member and had been coming to church for years. The missionaries had been teaching him for quite some time. After we rearranged the boundaries Elder Summerhays and Elder Weaver started teaching Bobby. And soon after that he came to realize that he needed to be baptized, it also helped that President Van Cott went with the missionaries to teach him a couple of times. It was all jim-dandy in the Pioneer ward. That was one of the biggest turnouts I've ever seen at a baptism. 

We found a new investigator this past week named Sebastian. Sebastian is awesome. He's 17 and has a bunch of friends at school who are LDS and he really just wants to be happier and come to know his Savior. He's a great kid. We will be teaching him again this week. I'm pretty stoked about that.

For those of you who will serve missions, being friends with your companion makes all the difference in the world. It's awesome that Elder Hevner and I knew each other before we were companions, because now all we do is work. We don't have to figure each other out and we don't fight and stuff either. We just get out and we work. It also helps that Elder Hevner is a boss, so no complaints there.

Next week we get to go to the temple. It's been 6 months or so since I've gotten to go, so I'm super excited! 

Have a good week, all!

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Now go, and be Golden,

Elder R. Sage Taylor

There was a baptism in the ward for Bobby, someone who has been investigating for many moons. Elder Summerhays and Elder Treanor were the ones teaching him, but I taught him back in the day when I was covering that little part of the ward. His step-son is the one who baptized him.

Elder Hevner really wanted to look classy, and yet comfortable. So he had shorts on with a suit. Styling!

These two pictures show how easy it is to make two guitars float.

 We're pretty good at it