Elder Justin Taylor: Blessings of the Lord

This last week was wonderful.

We broke records… literally. We worked our butts off and beat our numbers from last week. We taught ALL member present lessons this week which was 15 of them and 14 less active member lessons and 11 new investigators we found to teach!! Sorry if none of that made sense and was pointless to you but that doesn’t usually happen. I don’t know why the Lord has blessed us so much with so much success. AGAIN I say all of this humbly, because I truly am humbled by it. I’m in awe and wonder right now.

Why would we be so blessed with so many amazing people to teach and with so much success? I feel unworthy of it. I still feel I’m not giving my best or my all. I feel I’m not being as consecrated as I could be as a missionary. I have SO MUCH more to improve on. I pondered this and this is my conclusion to it. On the back of my planner I have 2 quotes written on it that I look at every day. 1^st is by Michael Jordan (of course) …

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it to happen, others make it happen”.

The 2^nd is by Bob Marley “you never know how strong you are... until being strong is your only choice”.

These both apply to me. My attitude is exactly like both of these. If I want to have the most success out of any missionary in the world I will make it happen. If the only way to help people into the waters of baptism is by having members come with us to teach and fellowship these people I will make it happen. Sitting down and giving up isn’t in my book. I’ve had to go out of my comfort zone; I’ve had to stretch ways I didn’t think was possible to achieve the impossible... to believe that miracles happen with faith. Just like the 2^nd quote says ... I had to choose to be strong while I was tested through tremendously hard trials. I’m not nearly as strong as I should or want to be but the SAVIOR has made me stronger through His Enabling Power of the Atonement. Through Christ he can “make bad men good and good men better”. I have been trying to implement this into my daily prayers and study.

To look for ways to improve and that if I want something to happen that I need to

1^st have hope,

2^nd then have faith in it,

3^rd WORK for it,

4^th then see the fruits of my labor afterwards.

We had 5 Investigator’s come to church yesterday... 2 families and one single lady. Oh how great is my joy to see them in the Lord's true Church feeling the Spirit and feeling the love from all of the other saints around them. I hope that if any of you find things in your life that don’t seem achievable that you will use the steps I’ve given (that have worked for me personally) and apply them and just wait and see what comes of it!

I testify of that because I experienced it firsthand. I saw miracles happen. I saw goals that I’ve set be exceeded, all because of a Loving Heavenly Father blessing us and His children because of our desire to help those in darkness.

I talked to Elder Schneider, my last companion, and he asked about the work we have been doing and if the people are progressing towards baptism. He was SO happy to know how much the Lord is blessing this area. When I got here there was only 7 people on the board and Elder Schneider found more than half of those before I got there. Now we have 2 full boards, we might even need to get another one. I KNOW that there are always people who are ready and open to hear the Gospel but it’s our jobs to not give up and keep inviting people.

I miss and love you all. Thanks for all the support and love.

Yours truly,

Elder Taylor

The Coolest BYU basketball shirt ever! I swear I had the same shirt when I was a lil' kid

The Butterflied family made this bread and applied ANTS . I taught about "Automatic Negative Thoughts"... you've gotta stomp them out. haha Sister Miller taught us that in zone conf.