Dec 15 2010

Got my hair cut today by this Venezualen its short but awesome looking and she said I have a perfect nose. She was awesome and pretty cute!  I am sending the cd with pictures home today when i go to the post office. love you

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Taylor Jolly <taylor.jolly@myldsmail.net> wrote:

Hola, ok so apparently if family is ever in my mission I am allowed to go to lunch or dinner with them, it just cant be parents or girlfriends, so if any of the family besides you mom and dad are in the mission they can take me to lunch. Christmas morning I will probably call in the morning around 9-11 your time, somewhere in that time span. Sweet thanks, the money will go to good use. The church doesn't cover the cost of extra supplies beyond pamphlets and book of mormons so we have had to buy our investigators and new converts gospel principles, because the ward doesn't cover the cost of those either. Most people we are teaching now are on the brink of poverty. We are teaching a family who is living on $20 a day to pay for everything including bills, this is a family of 8. 

     Well it was a good week, although we had to say goodbye to our visa waiter companion. He got his visa to mexico and left last sat. He was awesome and we had so many connections with people we knew. B our recent convert got confirmed on sunday and his little brother now wants to be taught so we are going to begin teaching him this week. The mom has a job now and is working like 12 hrs a day, they have a house (basement) in salt lake that they will be moving into in the spring and things are just looking up for them. We are teaching a mom and her child, C and A. They are awesome and super receptive, they just have a hard time keeping commitments although they are reading the book of mormon and they really like church. They have a baptismal date set for dec 26th but it will probably have to be moved back about 2 weeks so we will have time to teach them all the lessons because her work schedule is crazy. She gave us a reference to her friend I, who wanted to meet with missionaries. We have taught him once but it was more like us answering questions because he was already like halfway through with the book of mormon when we met with him the first time. He said it seems like he has read this book because all the stuff sounds so familiar. He loves reading church stuff and has gone to Deseret book and bought several books by apostles and read them. He is excited about the church and wants to get baptized.  He pretty much knows all the lessons and doesnt have any really big doubts. E and his wife d are another one of our investigators. They had a baptismal date but we are going to push it back to jan 16th because all he does is agree with us but then wont keep commitements. M is tough to get a hold of because she has like 4 little kids and is always out at their activities but we are hoping to get her on date for jan 16th too. Then there is the R family, they are super awesome. We taught them the first lesson and invited them to ward activities and they went to some. They didnt come to church on sunday but they said they would come this sunday. This is a family of 8 that we got as a reference. Turns out the dad and the dads brother are memebers but inactive. They got baptized in mexico like 25 years ago but went inactive. They have 4 kids ages 11 to 15 and the mom and the grandma. They all are very receptive and the kids were reading the book of mormon before we even left. The next time when we came the kids brought out all the book of mormons we gave them, so there were 8 book of mormons on the table lol it was a cool sight. The dads brother has been looking for work for about a year and we hooked him up with a member who is high up in the business that this man want s to work in (granite and other materials) and so this member is going to contact all his friends to try and find him a job. We are trying to help them in everyway we can. The mom has an appt with pres. H to see what kind of help the branch can give. All 6 unbaptized members of the family are on date to be baptized jan 16th. 

    I have learned that missionary work is a lot more than just teaching lessons. We are invited into peoples homes not to teach lessons but to change lives. We offer what help we can and try to help them spiritually and physically. They become like family as we sit and learn together. Lol last night we were at R and A's and yep all of a sudden a huge plate of food was in front of me, and we had a dinner appt with an english family in like 20 min. I chowed down and was stuffed but decided to be a man and try a jalepeno. I took the whole jalepeno and stuck it all in my mouth. WOW mistake! it was hott, I downed my glass of soda and then opened my water bottle and drank the whole thing and my mouth was burning for about 15 min after that. We then drove to our other appt. ate pizza and brownies and rushed off to our teaching appt which was 30min after our dinner appt began. I decided i never want to eat again. Lol but being missionaries we get fed a lot of junk food, so yes mom I have been taking vitamins and I ate tuna fish, apple and a yogurt for lunch the other day. I have been trying to eat healthier. lol on sunday this Hawiian couple came by our house and gave us a huge tray of chicken turkey potatos and carrots and a whole beautiful apple pie that was hott!!! SOOOO good!!! Elder Holland is tomorrow and we have 8 more appts this week with people we will be teaching for the first time and referals to contact tonight. Although a lot of the referals we get from the english missionaries are just doors they knocked on where a spanish speaking person answered and the missionaries had no idea what the person said because they spoke spanish so they turn it to us as a referal. Work is busy, always tired but happy. Love you all and merry christmas

 

Love,

Elder Jolly

OK so our mission christmas devotional is coming up soon and guess who is coming to talk to us. Jeffery R. Holland and his wife are coming to our christmas devotional. We also have a mission conference on new years eve and another apostle is coming but they wont tell us who yet. I imagine Elder Holland will have some harsh words for the mission lol he always does have harsh words when it comes to missionary work, but its only because it means so much to him. The baptism was great and doing it in spanish was not as hard as I thought. We had a nice turn out of about 30 people at the baptism. We just started teaching a family of 8 and they are really interested in the church. When we turned in our numbers last week to our district leader he told us that we didnt quite meet our goals, but our actuals still doubled every other companionship in the district, so the work is going good. We have 4 people on date for dec 26th and are planning on having 10 on date for jan 9th but we will see what happens because people still have their agency.  Lol we went and had family home evening with R and A on monday and there were like 20 other people there for FHE (family home evening) .  We asked what we can do to live the gospel better and R and A's son who is like 10 said, "Well if you have been coming to church for a long time and know its true then just get baptized". We all laughed for like 5 min because R and A have been investigators for about 18 months and know its true but are not baptized because of the divorce.  Our other investigators C and J are keeping their commitments and she really likes the church, she even called us the other day to give us a referal and it was a good referal! His name is I and he came to church and we are teaching him now too. Elder C our visa waiter in the trio got his visa and is leaving this sat. We took one of our investigator families to the Church's employment center to help the parent look for work. The man who helped us used to live on education hill in redmond. He served in the Eastern States Mission and guess who was his mission president...??? yep great grandpa. Small world! Last friday E.H. had the flu so me and Elder C went out to teach our investgators while E.H. stayed home with another elder. It was a cool experience because out of the 2 of us I speak spanish a lil better but neither of our spanish is amazing. We had an awesome time though and taught 2 lessons and came back home super happy. What stunk was that night the flu hit me once i got home and so I spent sat cooped up in bed and, but hey that is part of life and you take it in strides. Patience really is a virtue. We get to go to Temple Square this coming week to see the lights and I am crazy excited! West Jordan is awesome! We went to Kneader's bakery last wed (bakery my branch pres in the MTC owns) and I got a bacon turkey avocado sandwhich and it was AMAZING!!!!! best sandwhich I have ever had. While we were waiting for our sandwhiches a man came up and started talking to us and gave us $20 and said he wished he couldve bought our lunch. We went to Kneader's again today and as I pulled out my mission debit card a lady walked up and swiped it signed and said I had 3 missionary sons so I love missionaries and want to take care of them. And then she walked off. The members here are so nice. We do all our shopping at the walmart at Jordan Landing so its kind of close to the Lindeman's. Anyway I need to go because I need to finish my laundry and we have 3 lessons tonight. Love you all and stay close to the Lord.

 

Love,

Elder Jolly

Dec 1 2010

Howdie howdie,

 

Oh yea I totally forgot about stake conference. If the Stake Presidency gets changed let me know because I have to notify the mission president right away. I am glad to hear things are going well back home. Things have really really picked up in the past few days. We have contacted and set up appointments with about 8 new families and that is about a pool of 25 new investigators. We had 5 set appointments on monday alone. We have our first baptism coming up this sunday Dec 5th for B (12yrs). I will talk more about that one in a bit.

    Wednesday night we took B shopping and bought him a white shirt, slacks, belt tie and then later that night E.H and I went to payless and I bought him some black dress shoes.  We teach B 3 or 4 times a week. When we were walking home from payless that night we checked the temp outside and it was 12 degrees. It has been really cold here lately.

     Thanksgiving day we went over to a members house R and A and read the scriptures with them. They are an elderly couple and cant see very well so we read with them occasionally. We read the story of Ammon and talked about the power of the Spirit. R and A live with their kids who all have kids, so we set up an appointment to teach one of her daughthers on monday. After about an hour a couples missionary came over to teach them english. At 3pm we taught B the Plan of Salvation. It was a great lesson and everybody was edifided, especially the mom who is coming back after being inactive for 13 years. We got the car back and it has been a nice blessing with the cold weather.

     Friday, we had zone conference all morning and we got a new companion Elder C (E.C.) who is waiting on his visa to mexico, so we are now a trio. We visited less actives in the afternoon and knocked a few doors. Then we headed off to our 2 dinner appointments. Yes two! At the second one there were a lot of guests over and so being missionaries we made the rounds talking to everyone and getting to know them and we set up an appointment to teach a family of 5.  Afterwards I was completely stuffed and tired but we still have more appointments to go to. It was a long hard fought day but we found 2 new families to teach and we retired to bed happy.

    Saturday, E.H. was sick but we couldnt let that stop us so we went out and got to work. We taught Brian at 3pm and then tracted for a bit. At 5pm we had a really weird but cool experience. We had an appointment with a new investigator L and N. We get there and they have family over, turns out the family are members. L and N are Catholic. We had a very nice discusion for about an hour an answered the husbands questions and I left with my testimony about missionary work and the blessing the gospel is on families. AND we got a return appointment. We tracted for about an hour after and then returned home early because E.H. was pretty sick. Sometimes when teaching the gospel you have to be pretty blunt with people and I heard a quote by Jeffery R. Holland that puts things pretty simply. "We aren't BurgerKing, we are not going to do it (missionary work) your way, and we are not going to hold the pickles."

   Sunday, we woke up to about a foot of snow on the ground and it was still snowing hard. We had ward correlation meeting at 10 and Branch council at 10:30am. I am still not used to driving in the snow but I am getting pretty good at it. I have learned how to pull of a fish tail and how to pull out of sliding when you lose traction going around a corner. Sometimes we practice in the parking lot. Only practice :) L and B came to church today and there was a lady and her son there that we didnt know so we introduced ourselves after sacrament meeting and it turns out she had heard about the church from a friend at work and really liked how it sounded so she came to check it out. We set up an appt to teach her and her son and we took her to Gospel Principles class with L.  After church we taught B and L and talked about his baptism and started to set up the baptismal program. To my great surprise he asked me to baptize him, so this sunday not only will I be having my first baptism since I got out in the field 2 weeks ago but I will be doing the baptism. This surprised me because my spanish is still a work in progress and I thought he had a closer connection to E.H. but wow I was touched. We went home early again because E.H. was on his death bed and had a fever.

     Monday, E.H. is doing better which is good because we had 5 appts. We taught R and A daughter at 11am and committed her to be baptized on Dec. 26th. We taught 5 other lessons today and the work stayed busy. All lessons we got return appts to teach more.

    Tuesday, we had a good day. We found lots of new people and recieved 2 referals and have another list of referals to pick up at the mission office tomorrow with about 10 referals on it. We were supposed to teach B and L at 5pm but when they got to the church their car was smoking, so we popped the hood and did some work on it and filled up the coolant because it was empty and by the time we finished it was 6pm and we had another appt to go to. We also taught L and she is very interested and wants to come to church. We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and shared a brief message amd set a return appt. We have given out about 15 Book of Mormons this week and need to order more. We returned home at 9 exaughsted!!!! We have about 2 1/2 feet of snow in the back yard and our driveway is a tunnel from shoveling all the snow out of the way so we can get the car out. The main roads are dry but the back roads are completely covered in packed snow. 

     This week was great and Elder C adds excitement to the work and more energy. We are hoping to have 12 people on date by sunday and it looks very possible. I have come to love the people I teach and the culture. I am actually starting to love the spicy food although it still makes my lips and tounge burn for hours lol. I love you all and wish you all a merry Christmas! Oh and by the way, the Church is soooo true! Just take a look and you will see, how the church can bless you for eternity. Yep that rhymes. Love ya

 

Love, 

Elder Jolly