Hey family!

Happy 4-20 and happy birthday to my second mom Sandi Imlay! Hope you all had a great week! So this week was just awesome! I got a new comp because my last comp broke his leg. So I am now with Elder Valentine and we have been doing great. 

We started the week out by going to visit a lot of less actives then towards the middle and end of the week we just tracted a bunch. We had an awesome lesson with our investigator Richard this week. He let us in finally and we went over the restoration. We then talked to him about the Book of Mormon and what it means if it's true. We then asked him "What would you do if you came to find out this book is true?" He said " Well I guess that would mean I would need to be baptized by that proper authority" so we challenged him to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it so I hope to be sending good news about Richard next week. 

Oh something cool we did today, our zone did a competition against all the other zones and we won so today we got an all day P day and we went with president to the beach! It was so awesome! We went to Cannon Beach and that's the beach where they filmed Goonies! It was so much fun and I'll make sure to send a bunch of pics. 

Well sorry this email isn't that long but I'm still loving it out here and I'll email y'all next week!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Wow what a week! haha This week was pretty crazy but fun. Elder Taylor and I started our week out by knocking on 1000 doors just trying to find someone to teach. We legit biked so much this week! Like my legs are getting so fit haha. But after knocking out like 3 apartment complexes we found Richard. He's like 55 and he has some form of cancer. He talked to us for a while and said he was really wondering what happens after this life and so we taught him a little bit about the plan of salvation and set up an appointment to come back. So I will keep you posted on Richard because he is super solid. Then towards the end of the week is when everything just went nuts.

So our investigator Tami, in my last area, got baptized last Saturday and they invited me back for that baptism. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a sec, but Elder Taylor and I were looking at all the bus schedules so we could bus down to Portland because we don't have a car. Anyway the baptism wasn't until 2:00 so we had time in the morning to bring our investigator Jonathan go play ultimate frisbee with the priests. So we went and we were having a grand time until Elder Taylor jumped to block a pass and came down on his ankle funny. So elder Taylor went down and his ankle swelled up really big so I drove him to the ER to get an X-ray and it turns out he spiral fractured his fibula. So now Elder Taylor has to go get a hard cast tomorrow for 3 months and he's not allowed to put any pressure on it. So yeah keep Elder Taylor in your prayers. I called President to let him know what was going on and he said Elder Taylor is probably going to be transferred to an area with a car so he can get around, so I might have a new comp the next time I email. But other than that the week was great.

I went to Tami's baptism and the spirit was so strong. It was so good to see her surrounded by the ward making her first covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ. It definitely got me in a good mood going into Easter Sunday! We should always remember Jesus Christ and it's something we covenant to do each week when we partake of the sacrament but it's nice to have a specific day to remember that our Savior completed the Father's preordained plan to redeem us from our fallen state. Knowing that Jesus Christ rose again and overcame death brings me so much peace and joy. Like it says in 2 Nephi 9:10 O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit."

I don't know about you but death and hell doesn't sound very fun to me haha. I know that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world and I love this Easter season that reminds us to keep our Savior in our thoughts and actions at all times. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Taysom

Hey everyone!

Hope you had a good week! Elder Taylor and I have been working hard in our new area. The work is a little slow here so we prayed and asked that we would find some new people to teach. We then knocked out like 2 apartment complexes and found 3 new people to teach and have return appointments with all of them.

We are also teaching a pair of twins that are doing awesome! The missionaries have been teaching them before I got here and they are on date for baptism for the 29th of this month. So we are so stoked for that as well! Oh and the weather here is just awesome! The sun finally started to show up here. We did have a crazy wind storm earlier in the week that blew a bunch of trees down, but other than that, the weather was great.

Oh so crazy story time...Elder Taylor and I were just knocking doors and this guy answered the door and started cussing us out, then he open the door and all of his little kids ran out the door at us and they were all naked! Elder Taylor and I just ran because we didn't wanna touch any of these naked kids and look like pedophiles! haha Then the guy called the cops and so Elder Taylor and I just biked back to the apartment as fast as we could.

Well that's all I got for this week the church it true and I love serving in the red white and blue!

Yo Yo Yo What's up everybody?

This is my new companion, Elder Taylor. He's from San Diego, California, so he's not perfect (he's not from Utah), but he's aight...JUST KIDDING, HE'S AWESOME! We've been hitting the pavement in Parker's Landing and this week was good.

We got a big challenge from our mission president to get a 20 percent increase in the work from last year and so we had some pretty big goals this week, but so far we've been hitting them! It's been really good. We found 5 new investigators, 5 Elder? ("7" says Elder Taylor), 7 new investigators here! The works really picking up. We're not sure how many of those 7 are solid, but we've met with a couple of them and one of them, Tiffany, is super awesome! She let us teach her the first lesson and we gave her an assignment in the book of mormon and she's got a young family so we're excited to teacher her! We've got Jonathon. We've been teaching Jonathon since before I got here, but he's awesome. How long have you been teaching him Elder Taylor? ("3 months" says Elder Taylor). And he's going good. How old is he? ("17) So we're excited for Jonathon. We invited him to watch the priesthood session and we're gonna follow up to see if he did because he had family over so he couldn't attend with us.

But Conference was the bomb! It's like the super bowl for missionaries! And Tommy Monson's like the quarterback! hahaha I'm just throwing out analogies here left and right. But conference was awesome! We had a lot of those investigators watch conference and we were really texting them and pushing them to watch it and so we've got to follow up this week and see if they did and what they got out of it. I always love conference! They focus a lot on missionary work so it definitely pumped us up.

We sent you a video of us on a hike today. We were on a raft. That was a real raft. We didn't fake it. We got permission from president. (smiling face, big eyes;) Anyway, this week was the bomb! I love you family. We're gonna get back to pday and hope you have a good week!

* videos won't open in safari, but should work great in Google, Explorer, Firefox, or any of the other internet browsers. Enjoy the goofiness of Elder Taysom!

These crazy elders sat on rocks next to the river to film this award worthy reenactment of river rafting!

Elder Taysom found this costume in the lost and found at the church.