Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a good week! I wanted to start off my letter this week by telling everyone this new theory I came up with the other day, I call it the tooth paste portal theory. I discovered this when I realized I've almost been using the same tube of toothpaste for a majority of my mission so far. And so I've come to realize that a tube of toothpaste actually has an endless supply of paste from another dimension and will never actually fully run out so long as each day you apply a slightly greater force on the tube forcing more paste from the other dimension and onto the brush. Trust me I've tested this theory.  I've had an empty tube for the last 2 weeks  and each day I've been able to squeeze an additional day out of the tube. It's truly amazing. I only hope to be in a history textbook one day haha.

Well this week was so fun! Our zone leaders started this new competition thing where everything we do counts as points, like getting members to lessons or putting someone on date for baptism.... things like that. Then at the end of the week, the companionship with the most points gets to go to lunch with President! So Elder Read and I have been working our butts off trying to talk to everyone we know and everyone we meet on the streets trying to get our investigators to progress. Well the motivation did us some good because we got 1st place in the zone competition. We put 5 people on date this week! Sarah and Wayne are preparing to be baptized on April 1st, Kris and Rebecca are preparing for July 8th and last but not least Leis is shooting for March 4th. (Just for you dal pal)...So I guess you could say we've had a good week haha! Oh and an update on Donald..... He has not yet received permission from the first presidency to get baptized but our mission president said it will take some time and to not give up hope! We showed Donald the movie called "How Rare a Possession" about DI Francesca and how he had to wait like 50 years to get baptized. Well he loved that movie and said "if DI Francesca can wait his whole life to get baptized I can wait 2 years"! So he's still doing awesome and we have talked to the bishop to get him a calling in the ward so he can get involved with the members and can make some friends and stay active in the ward long after the missionaries are gone. We are super pumped to work with all of our new investigators on date! Putting them on date it the easy part, showing them how to gain a relationship with God and wanting that relationship is the hard part.

It might sound to basic but what I've come to know is that we must first love our God " with all our heart might mind and strength" and if we do that first, any commandment ,calling or person cannot turn us away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! Simply because our relationship with our loving Heavenly Father is more important than anything else! Praying, reading our scriptures and coming to church are how we strengthen that relationship and following the commandments and fulfilling church callings is how we show our Father in Heaven that we value that relationship more than anything else. Well I'll step of the soapbox now and let ya’ll get back to your day haha!

Love, Elder Taysom

Hey Fam!

We’re over at our favorite member’s house. We’ve got Toni cooking for us. Say hi Toni.

“Hi…And I better his favorite!” (says Toni)

Haha she is our favorite! We love Toni! Right now we’re just eating dinner. Me and Elder Read have had a good week. We’ve been teaching a lot of people. We’ve made a lot of progress with Donald. He’s still wanting to be baptized. We hope to put some other people on date here either tonight or tomorrow night. Their names are Sara and David so be praying for them. We’re excited for them! Oh yeah, we went to the temple, that was awesome! We get to go every 6 months so that was our 6 month marker so that was awesome. It’s really pretty.

We had interviews with President. Love President, he’s awesome! We had zone meeting and I always love zone meeting. We have a really good zone here in Portland. Everybody wants to come to Portland. I’m trying to think what else… Oh we went ice skating last P-day. That’s kind of why we didn’t email, because there was no wifi there. But that was a lot of fun. I think I sent some pictures of that.

This Donald Trump thing is crazy! All of Portland is in riots I swear!

“You can tell them that my grandson and my son in law both are police officers and had their hands full Friday and Saturday” (says Toni)

Yeah so Toni’s got a grandson who is a police officer and he’s had his hands full the last couple of days because of it. We’ve got some interesting personalities here in Portland. Keep it weird.

Well that’s all from Elder Taysom. Love you all, bye

*This video wont open on safari, but will open with most other internet browsers.

Elder Taysom didn't send a main letter today but he did pass along these pics taken by a sister in his zone that had a new camera she wanted to try out. Conveniently, he had found room in his luggage for these props (hats and glasses) when he was packing up for his mission!:)

Hey everyone!

I hope y'all had a good week, I know I did! This week was a little crazy with the weather down here, we got snow again and a lot of freezing rain. FREEZING RAIN IS THE WORST!!!!! The mission President doesn't want anyone out working when there's freezing rain, just to keep everyone safe. But it feels so counterproductive to just sit in the apartment for most of the day! Like yesterday they had to cancel church and the mission office texted us to stay indoors. I was super bummed because we had a lot of our investigators wanting to come to church this week, but hopefully we can get them there next week.

Oh some updates on some of our investigators, Robin is doing awesome. She has been asking a lot of questions and has been getting a lot of answers through reading specific chapters we give her each week. We moved her date back to January 27th just to give her more time to prepare before baptism. Oh and our new investigator Don is awesome! Haha I told you all a little bit about Don last week but  I love him so much I'm going to talk about him again this week. So when I first met Don I was with Elder Packer, we were out walking the streets trying to talk to everyone we passed by. We walked up to this bus stop next to our apartment and saw a random guy (Don) waiting for the next bus. Elder packer and I then tried to talk to him about the gospel, but he just replied "go away I’m catholic" then he got on the bus and left. Elder packer and I just went on with our day thinking we would probably never see that guy again. Well we were wrong. Don had lost his job that week and was franticly looking for another one. Well a week after that experience Don got introduced to the DI and got a job there. The cool thing about the DI is they have little Sunday school lessons for all their employees once a week so after Don had gone to a couple of these classes he asked to meet with the missionaries. So by this time Elder Packer had left and I got Elder Read. So Elder Read and I went over to Don’s house not knowing who this DI referral was. I thought someone was playing a prank on us because when Don answer the door I recognized him and knew he was the guy from the bus stop, but then he invited us in and we had a great first lesson and we invited him to read the Book of Mormon. He invited us back to teach him more, so we came back for the next lesson and he had read all through 2 Nephi, taught himself about the plan of salvation, and said he knew Joseph smith was a true prophet of God. We then asked him if he would be baptized on January 28th and he said yes.

That was almost 2 weeks ago and now Don has been through all the discussions because he has insisted on meeting 3 times per week. He is now trying to teach himself how to do family history so after he is baptized he can take his dad’s name to the temple and do baptisms for the dead. Don has accepted our invitations to live the word of wisdom, law of chastity and all the other commandments including tithing!

Well that's all I got for this week! I love you all so much. I know this gospel is truly for everyone. I know that if we are honestly seeking for truth with an open hear and willingness to ACT UPON any promoting we may receive, he will answer you. It's quoted over 700 times in the Scriptures, "seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you." All of these are action words. So act:)

love, Elder Taysom

Oh and PS the picture of the poem..... Don wrote that for Elder Read and I and then he framed it and gave it to us as a gift❤

"Hello Everybody! We started this new video thing cuz my new companion told me about it. So I kinda got lazy typing so I just make a video and send it. So this week was awesome. I got Elder Read. Tell them who you are."

"I'm Elder Read. I have been on my mission for about 14 months. I'm enjoying it and I get to spend a little bit with your son/brother (whoever this is going to). I get to bust him into mission life. So it should be fun. I'm from Layton, UT, so up north, a little different from down south. But yeah, that's a little about me."

"And he's a stud. He didn't tell you that. This week was awesome. The first day Elder Read got here in Portland, in Sunnyside, we were going to an investigator's house, and Elder Read got bit by a dog. Show them your leg. So he got bit by a dog, and I don't know if you can tell, but it just latched onto him his first day here in Sunnyside. Just a flesh wound. So yeah that's how Elder Read's first day was here in Sunnyside."

"It's Portland, it's weird."

"And this week was super solid. We went and taught a new investigator we have. His name is Don Zimmerman and we love Don!

"He's awesome! Super solid."

"So we met him through a DI referral, he works at the DI, and they referred him over to him, and we've been teaching him. He's accepted baptism, January 28th, and we're super pumped! That's gonna be exciting. And we're gonna go to the temple here soon cuz it's Christmas time and we get to go every 6 months, so we're pumped for those two and it's been a good week. We've been going around to a lot of less actives trying to clear up their records cuz Elder Read is a pro. He's been out over a year so he's teaching me how it's done. Yeah, we're having a good time here in Sunnyside."

"Me and Elder Read went and picked him up a hammock today. I brought him to the light side! We're having a good time. We've been slacking on morning workouts but its big anyways (flexing arms:), but we'll pick that up soon."

"It was good to see you all on Christmas and I loved all your faces. Hope you had a happy New Year.
Bye!"