A Week of Surprises!

I would  just like to say sorry to everyone to the lame letter last week! I hope this one will be a lot better!!!

1. First off this transfer is going to be hard! Not because we are whitewashing! or in a super huge area! BUT CAUSE my comp is a diabetic! So with that he always has candy! And because he always has candy I have candy! So my work outs have gone down and the amount of junk has gone way up!  It is pretty funny actually I have eaten more lollipops and suckers in the last 3 weeks than my whole life! So that is something I'm trying to work on ! Eat healthy!!! Let;s hope it works, but I doubt it....

2 The other day we were off biking around in a smaller satellite city in our area. As we started to bike, a lady pulled out of a parking lot and pulled right next to us. Usually when this happens it is a bad thing.. so I was a little worried that Elder Milne was about to get into a nice Bible bash! The lady rolled down the window and told us to go into smokQuess that we were in front of! She ended up owning the restaurant and had a cousin that was a member of the church and had gone on a mission! She missed her cousin so much so she decided to help us out and buy us lunch! That day we were driving with the other missionaries in the area and they had biked the other way! So they were surprised when we showed up an hour later with full stomachs and a box of leftovers! 

3. So last week I complained it was cold but I lied! It turned out a real cold front came through and man was it cold! One day we biked to a city, Excel, nearby, which was about 7 miles. We left in long sleeve shirts cause it was in the 60's by the time we had made the ride it was in the 50's with about 15 degree windchill! Oh man that was no fun, it was a cold few days! It is crazy how cold it can get with the moisture in the air! It will bite right to the bone! But today its 75 and sunny! Just the funny weather in the south!

4. That night we had biked out to that city, Excel, it was about 5:30 the sun was down and it was freezing! We found a family that lived in the area and was that a relief! We went into the warm house and talked for a while! The mom called us silly for not bring jackets! So we haven't forgotten them since that! That was when we heard about the Typhoon in the Philippines! That was scary hearing about how the missionaries were still scattered all over the place! So my thoughts and prayers go out to them because i know if i was out there my mom would have swam out there and fought off some sharks if i was a missing missionary! So i hope they have all been found by now! Scary stuff! instead of those members making us bike back in the now 30's with 20 degree wind chill they gave us a ride home! Oh how great it is to have friends!

5. Kenny Roy Johnson is our ward mission leader and he is as country as a man can get! He has a 7th grade education but you could never really tell that if you didn't ask. He is just a poor old country boy that loves hunting. He goes down to farms and hunts wild boar for a living! Coolest kind of pest control i have ever heard about! But the only thing he loves more than hunting is the gospel! He is awesome. After church he took us to go see a bunch of the ward. He drove his beat up hunting truck that had at the very least 3 guns we could see! Much less than those that we could not! He was just a fun guy that showed us where he grew up and how much it had meant to him to grow up out in the sticks! They don't come much nicer than Kenny Roy. His joke is this, "in the bible you know john in the wilderness. well I'm a john-son in the wilderness" 

6. Jason and Dale Johnson ( the main family in the branch is Johnson if you haven't caught on yet!) They are an awesome family that we had lunch with the other night. Jason was less active from 16 to 40 which was just 2 years ago. He said he was just doing bad stuff with bad people and one day Kenny Roy gave him a talk and told him he needed to do his work and preside over his family, and like that he changed! The Jason today is impossible to look at and see what he said he was! It is amazing, he has to be the strongest member in the ward and most likely the next Branch president! He is just awesome and in the last 2 years he has baptized about 10 of his grandchildren and a bunch of them live with them! It is amazing, he treats those kids like they are his own and most of them are his step-grand youngins. He is just a great guy and his wife made us a turkey for lunch just cause we came over! 

7. Joe Gregson is a member of the branch that had a really bad accident. They were doing some country engineering and he fell 20 feet right on his back off a fork lift. The whole ward says the only reason he is alive is because the second it happened he got a blessing! He is in pretty bad shape, he broke his back in 2 places and all his ribs, but he is still alive. He is a great guy right now though, he is just sad because he thinks he will never be able to do what he used to! It is really sad seeing a man so outdoorsmen being confined to a recliner is really tough on him. But it is amazing that in 3 weeks he as come so far so that is a blessing for Joe.

8. The other day we were out trying to find people that had been taught 3 years ago and stumbled across a nice lady. She was so excited when we told her about the Book of Mormon and all, she even told us to visit all her friends who were also very receptive! It was just so great seeing how be talking to one person you can meet a bunch of people that are really open! It was a blessin for us when we have no one to teach right now.

9. So yesterday we got to church and about 5 minutes before sacrament started I was told I was speaking. The person who was supposed to speak and his back up both were sick. So I had 5 minutes to prepare a talk! So I went by the spirit and gave a 20 minute talk on covenants! it is amazing, I could have never done that before my mission but now I did it easy! It is a blessing to see how confident I now am and how well I know the gospel. I was throwing out scriptures and stories like crazy, it shocked me. I'm grateful for that experience no matter how nervous i was!

10. I'll end with a quote I love by Ezra Taft Benson about Jesus Christ and how He makes us better. " The Lord works inside out. The world works outside in. The world would take the people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of the people and they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment, Christ changes men who then change their environment. The world would mold human behavior but Christ can change the human nature" Christ wants us to change! That is the great thing about him!

Love you all and praying for you,

Elder Taylor 

PHOTOS: 

1. One cold night looking out over a dark cotton filed! field is white already to harvest and the hour of darkness where no labor can be performed is close at hand! Jacob 5 :71 best describes this picture

2. The nelsons, an awesome less active family I love in Marianna! 

3. Me and Elder Milne!

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