Baptism Day

Hello Family,

Greetings from.... La Hacienda! We got changes yesterday and it turns out I will stay here this change. However, my companion Elder Stradling already left for gelagetza today at 12. So right now I am with the other companionship that lives in the house waiting until my companion Elder Caudillo arrives around 10 PM. I know nothing about him yet, but I am really excited to meet him. Judging by his name though he is either from Mexico or some other spanish speaking country down here.
The week was pretty normal. Although, we did kind of have one baptism. It was Rafael, I think I told you about him. We started teaching him, but he lives outside the area and so we passed him to other missionaries, and he got baptized in their ward but is now living in our ward because his family kicked him out. He is really awesome and I know will be strong in the gospel. We were able to go to his baptism and I was able to take part in his confirmation. And he gave me a sweet tie haha. We continue working with Alfredo. He is progressing slowly, but progressing. He wants his family to take part in the lessons too and so hopefully they will accept listening to us and have as much excitement as he has. The good thing about people here in Mexico is that almost all will listen. The hard part is finding people who will act.

We are also working with a less active woman named Fatima. She was baptized a few years ago but has not bee nable to go because of her job. But she recently started going more and has invited us over to paint her house, have dinner, and we recently had a family home evening. She is really awesome and her son and mom are not members, and so we are working a little with them. But really our main focus will be Alfredo and his family. And it will also depend on how my new companion likes to work. All missionaries have a little different way of working. I am really excited for him to get here though and start the change. There is lots of work to be done here, and we will also be focusing this change on strengthening and uniting the members.

Last night we were at a members house (the members house where Rafael is living right now) and it started pouring rain. And so, trapped in the house, they invited us to dinner, and we had some chicken tortas (tortas are basically like sandwches but a little better) with hot chocolate haha. THeir hot chocolate here is really good, in fact I will try to send you some. Im thinking about getting a package together this change to send home. Any requests?
I love you guys. Your prayers and support sustain me often. I know that Christ lives and has completed all that His Father wanted Him to complete. Im so grateful to have this church restored in our days. I learn so much from it and will be forever grateful for all who have sacrificed so that I could have it in my life. Every sunday (every day, but especially Sunday) I learn so much. I feel so much the desire to be better. I know that by little decisions and little changes for the better, our lives can be blessed eternally. I love you all. Thank you!!! Let me know if there is anything you need from me.

Love, Elder Millet

Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Oaxaca

Hola Familia,

Buenas tardes de Oaxaca. Thank you for your email and that is a great picture of Shteve and Emerson. This week was good. We are now passing through what they call here Semana Santa (Holy week). There are all kinds of traditions and events going on. One of the most common is that people put giant tents out in the street and have a little altar to Jesus. They gather there and chat and I imagine that the more devoted ones pray and go to learn. There must be all kinds of things going out in the Isthmo, but here in the city it is a little more low key. Its very interesting being a missionary here, because 99.9% of the people already believe in Christ and God. Although their perceptions of them may be unknown or uncomplete, they do have at least some faith. It is hard for me to recall, because I really never paid too much attention (belief wise) outside of memebers in the states... but are there many who are believers in utah outside of members? Yesterday we just had a normal day. In church every class was based around the Atonement which was really cool. Then we had a really good lunch and visited a few people.

The week was good, a bit slow because of Semana Santa. Almost everyone is off of work and schools are all out until the 16th, and so a large portion is out on vacations and those who arent are at home having their fiestas. Needless to say it has been a bit hard to find people, but this week will be better. We had some of the young men of the ward go with us this week and it was really great to see their willingness. I remember I almost never saw the missionaries at home. Its great to be able to have that support here.
Today we went to the Centro to buy some ties and a guitar for one of the other missionaries. They have really nice ties here for about 3 bucks, and I bought 2. I also bought a capo for my little guitar and some guitar picks. While we were down there we saw this pretty tall white girl and she was standing next to a Oaxacan woman. I wanted to get a picture so bad to show the contrast haha it was really funny. The white girl was towering over the Oaxacan. There are lots of good things going on here and I am enjoying my time. My companion is Elder Caudillo and he is from Chetumal Chitanarro (not exactly sure on spelling) It is the state where Cuncan is. He lives about 3 hours away from it. Right now I am district leader and we are a district of 6. Its great I really like it. The members are awesome. They help us in what they can and always support us. We plan on having an activity of a war between the lamanites and nephites this Saturday so that should be fun and help us to be more united as a ward (and hopefully investigators)
This week I have been thinking a little bit about conference and the things that were said there. I am anxious to be able to act on those things and hope that chaui chaui (little by little in zapoteco- a dialect here) I can make those changes that I know I need to make. I have realized that change is hard but I love the opportunity and process of it. I love this church. I know that God lives and that Jesus Christ is our Savior. Prayer is real. I know that the Plan of Salvation is for every single one of us and that we are in such a crucial part of that Plan. How lucky we are to have what we have, and to really know the purpose of this life and especially the importance of families. I love you family, thank you for your example of faithfulness, love, and support. Hasta la otra semana.

Elder Millet

Remembering a Year Ago....

Another flying week in the Land of Miracles. I have passed a year by, and can't believe it.

We have been working with lots of new people who seem to be interested this week. We did some street contacting and have found some really cool people. We helped a girl fill up her water tub for washing clothes with water out of a giant well, and contacted her. She is really awesome and her sister also lives with her. We taught them about the Restauration of the Gospel and they understood really well. We left them 3 Nephi 11 to read and went back a few days later. We asked them if they read and they said yes and continued to explain it in really deep detail. I think they understood it better than I have understood haha. It was really a great feeling to have someone with the desire to learn and actually completing with their commitments. The only bummer is that they are out of town for 3 weeks in vacations...

Also we have another investigator, Alfredo (the one I told you about with the really great mustache) who is progressing. He went to the priesthood session of conference with us and both on Sunday. He is really awesome and we hope that his whole family will feel the same desire to learn as he feels.

Haha yeah I remember the festival of colors. Within a year I will be covered in chalk once again...

Our chapel that we attend to is the stakecenter of the Mitla stake and so we were able to watch all sessions of conference in our own chapel. And the 3 sessions on Saturday we were able to watch in english. It was really really awesome. There were some great talks and a great spirit was felt. Now we must go back over our notes, re watch it, and study the Liahona when it comes out, all the while having a spirit of prayer to be enlightened. We should all put goals according to what we feel, and like was said in conference, Act Now.

I felt very grateful during conference for everything that I have been given, but more than anything, for friends and family that love and support me. I feel your love. I hope you all know how much I look up to you and love you. Thanks for everything you do.

Love,

Elder Millet

Moving week in Oaxaca...Fun, Fun

Pues, good week. Elder Stradling and I have been working well. We recently had to pass one of our baptisms because he lives outside of the area. It was really the first person in my mission that I actually started to teach and is going to get baptised. Oh well. I did a few baptismal interviews on saturday and all 3 were baptized yesterday. Tomorrow 2 new elders will come into the area and we will be splitting the area. But, Elder Stradling and I will stay companions for at least the next 3 weeks. We spent a good part of the week looking for a house, because our contract ends this Thursday and the owner wants to sell the house so we need to move out. We finally found a good one, but are just waiting for the permission of President Leyva to get the contract done and get moved in. The house is right across the street from the house we live in right now.

Elder Stradling said something this week that really sums of the difference of the living style between here in Mexico and in the states. He said that people here work to live, but people in the states work to vacation. Haha. Although not true in all situations, I think it sums it up really well.

The work is good here in Oaxaca. A little slow for the time being but we plan on working hard this week. This Saturday Elder Richard G. Scott will be visiting the mission for a conference with all the misionaries, and Sunday he will be presiding the Stake Conference. Out of all of Oaxaca, he chose to come to our stake. Its really awesome and Im really looking forward to it. Although, most members say that he's coming to planch us (planchar is a verb that means both iron like to iron clothes, but in this sense means to bash or rail) haha.
Thank you for your prayers, testimonies, and faithfulness. I love you all and am continually grateful for your love and support.

Crazy hot in Mexico!

I think I have been continually sweating for about 2 months now.This week was good. It was the first week with Elder Prince. We get along pretty well, no serious disagreements or anything like that. He has been in the mission 5 months and speaks spanish really well. We have been teaching the same investigators we had last change and havent seen much improvement lately so we may need to leave them for a while because there could be other people who are prepared. We have also been visiting with a lot of less active and non active members. There are tons and they are really awesome, I just dont understand a lot of the time their reasons for not going to church. But everyone is different and has their own challeneges, now our challenge as missionaries is to help these members get back. I dont know if you all noticed, but in conference the scripture 1 Timothy 4:12 was used 3 or 4 times. My companion realized that and we have been sharing that scripture with all the members that didnt go to conference. It talks about our responsibility as members to be examples to everyone in everything we do. The church really is much different from the world and as time goes on the seperation between the 2 becomes larger and larger. As long as we are living faithfully, people will notice, they will wonder, and many will want what we have.

If you dont already do it, I suggest sharing your testimonies to each other. Its something we do as companions a lot and it really helps.


The temple President from Oaxaca came to our ward this week and talked about the importance of temples. He was saying how blessed the people here are because they only have to take a 6 hour bus ride to the temple. How much more blessed are we in Utah to be able to drive 20 minutes to the temple? He was also saying how going to the temple is the best preparation we can possibly make for the second coming.

Love Elder Millet

New area of Zicatela

Elder Millet is now serving the city of Zicatela which is located on the pacific ocean side of Oaxaca. His companion is Elder Maldonado who is from Mexico and is really awesome. He is the most dedicated missionary
Taylor has ever had. They are taking 40 minute taxi rides to meet with investigators and walking hours through the forest to get to some of the houses. It is so awesome here...we usually have to ride a camioneta (truck with benches in the back) to get to our area, it's about 20-30 minutes walking distance from our house. And every time we take one of those we can relax for 5 minutes and look out at the ocean, it is so beautiful! The majority of our area if filled with condensed forest and we take paths to get to the casa's and sometimes we even have to cross little rivers, it is so cool. We have been busy teaching the investigators that the other missionaries already had before we came, and we found 10 new investigators this week. They are all doing well and progressing with plan to be baptized soon. We had some really awesome things happen to us this week and every night we are dead tired from running around and climbing the crazy streets here. Last night we were a little off schedule and were late to an appointment by about 2 hours, haha, and on the way to it we saw some people removing some dirt and so we went to help them. After helping them for a while we eventually got to talking about the church. It was a man and woman both about 50 years old. We finished helping them and they invited us to sit down and talk. So we taught them a lesson and they seemed interested. Towards the end of the lesson we saw the investigator who was our appointment walking our way, and we thought he was going to walk past because we though his house was farther up the road. But he walked to the house we were in and it turns out that those people were his parents, It was pretty crazy. The ward here is good there are a few really strong members and about 50 active members, out of 400 total members in the branch. Here in our area there is a couple missionary companionship, Hermana and Elder Velasquez. We get to work with them about once a week and they really help us out. It is really great to be here and see the humble circumstances of some of the people here and the pure love they have toward us. Elder Maldonado and I are both inexperienced, he has 2 months in the mission and I have 5, but we are learning a lot. We get to do all kinds of service and feel like that is one of the best ways to gain the confidence of people. Tell everyone thanks
for there support, prayers and letters.
Love, Elder Millet

Finally in the Mission Field

Hello everyone. This week has been pretty crazy. The flights were good, it was great to talk to everyone. Sometimes I forget that people are still at home living normal lives. Anyways, it was great talking to you. Then from the airport in Oaxaca we rode a couple of vans to Burger King which is right across from the temple. Then we went to the mission home. Then slept there it was scorching hot (and is every single night). Then the next day we pretty much did nothing they talked to us about lots of stuff in spanish that I didn´t understand that´s about it. Then we went to a restaurant buffet style place its supposedly like the best place to eat. It was alright till I threw up. Haha but I haven´t gotten sick since so that´s good. Then that night I rode a bus with 2 other Elders to Ixtapec. It was like a 6 hour bus ride but I took a dramamine before cause everyone warned me that I would get sick cause the roads are so windy. It was good though then we arrived here in Ixtapec at about 1 AM. Then the zone leaders picked me up, then I slept at their house that night. Then the next morning after taking my first bucket shower ever we went to zone conference and I met up with my Comp. Elder Lopez. He is from Monterrey Mexico. He is a really hard worker and a good teacher and he speaks english too which is great for when I cançt say it in spanish I can just ask him.


So I am in Ixtapec. It is a relatively new area to the mission and the last missionaries that were here didn't leave any leads so we had to start from scratch. We have been going around to members´ houses and meeting them and getting references. We got 14 references this week which is really good. The members all seem really cool except the thing about being here and not being able to understand is that everyone sounds the same and says the same things haha. But they seem nice and try to help me with my spanish. The food is good its almost always a piece of meat that is really thin and dry and cold with refried beans and either rice or this macaroni pasta stuff. It´s Not too bad, not good, but not bad. We actually have had a few really good meals, I guarantee mom and dad you would be jealous of some of the tacos we have had. Along with every single meal there is always a fresh huge stack of corn tortillas and I know how dad loves those. And there are always avocados and no joke the worlds best mangos. I wish I could somehow send you some for Spoon Me then business would skyrocket. The area is real hot. I have no idea what it is degree-wise but I would guess around 90 but with humidity too, and we are walking all day long. There is never a time when I am not sweating. But I am getting used to it. The people all live in shacks. Well, we in the US of A would call them shacks. Almost every house has dirt floors and just torn up walls and every house is crazy messy. I will send pictures of our apartment just as an example... sometime. And ours is really clean compared to others. Ours is filthy. We had a few lessons this week but like I said, we were talking to members most of the time. We were talking to one member who just had a son-in-law pass away it was really sad she started crying while we were talking to her. I couldn´t understand at the time what she was talking about but afterwards my comp told me. My most commonly used question by far is Qué Pasó(what happened). We will sit in a lesson for like 1 hour and I will act like I know what´s going on and smile and whatnot, then right when we leave the house i say Qué Pasó? Haha I bet it´s frustrating for my companion but he is being patient and good thing he is a great teacher. He told me that during one of our lessons the lady told me that I had eyes like Jesus haha so that´s the best spanish compliment I´ve had in my life.

Yesterday we were at one of the churchs (we are in 2 wards) and I was kinda sleeping a tiny bit for just like 1 minute and I looked up and 4 people were staring at me and I looked to the side and there is a guy who knows some english (he is a really funny guy) and he wrote on a piece of paper ¨Do Not Sleep. ¡Please!.¨ Haha it was pretty embarassing but come on give a guy a break. But now I can´t sleep at church even for 2 minutes.

I am happy to be hear, I know it is for the right reason. I look forward to the time when I am better with the language.

Adios

P-Day at the Temple

Routine Changes at the MTC for Taylor

hey family/friends i have some news. my p day has changed from fridays to tuesdays. they are starting a new program here and so our entire schedule changed yesterday. so, from now on be expecting emails on tuesdays. mom, thank you so much for all the food/snacks you have been sending, but i have tons saved up now so dont send as much. im not saying don't send food- cause i would be crazy if i said that- but just don't send lots of little candy and chips and stuff. i have enough to last me a while cause everyone that leaves here always leaves their food so i have all the food you have sent plus everything from those guys. today one of the elders (elder luker) in our district left to the peru mtc. me and elder piereder were the only 2 in our room (and theres 4 beds) so now elder memmott (mammoth, used to be elder lukers companion) is in a 3 some with me and piereder. its really cool im happy we have a 3 some now cause if i get sick of one of them i just talk to the other more haha. but they are both good guys and i dont have a problem with either of them. just as a reminder, cause i really wanna hear about them, could you send the past 2 emails from john, shaun, and carter. just print them off and send them in a letter cause if you email them to me i wont have time to write emails. things are crazy here again since they changed the schedule. also, in the cafeteria they are re-doing all the tile on one side so only one side is open for meals so there is always a HUGE line. the class schedule has changed so pretty much everything is exactly laid out for us. we used to have something called mdt which stands for missionary directed time where you would kinda choose what you want to do, but now the whole schedule is planned. it has a bigger focus on language, and then theres about an hour each of personal and companionship study. also, we have to wake up at 6 now. its insane. on thursdays we have a service project at 6:05... i cant imagine anything more opposite of what i am used to than waking up at 6 am to go do service. but its not too bad, when we do service we get to wear normal people clothes and sometimes we get to wear cool ghost buster vacuums (vaccums?) pdays rock cause we get to go to the temple and eat breakfast there... its so good. i always get biscuits and gravy and chocolate milk. mom, no one in the world can beat your cooking, thats the truth, but the temple is pretty close. i havent weighed myself here but im pretty sure im gaining weight... seeing as all we do all day is sit and eat. how are things at home? my times is up, i will talk to you soon. i love you guys and miss you.

MTC at last

Today has been a really crazy day. The first thing I did was go through tons of different check points. They are really efficient here. Then we went to our lass and had introductions and expectations and just talked for about 2 hours. I love our teacher, she seems really cool and spiritual. She just returned home form a mission 6 months ago. There are 9 Elders in my district. 5 of us are going to Oaxaca. The others are going to Peru and I think Bolivia. My companions name is Elder Pederer, he is from Canada. He is awesome and we get along well. He wasn't sure he wanted to serve a mission when he was 19 and so he waited 2 years. He is now 21, has a strong testimony and is ready to serve. We went to dinner where I saw Brett Grant and John! It was the highlight of the day. We went to a meeting with all new missionaries and the MTC President talked to us. We then had a role play session where investigators (actors) came and we were told to listen to them and find their needs. It was great! One thing is "I can't chew gum!" Oh, well.