Hey family!

Sorry I'm writing so late. We went on a hike today as a zone (it was more of a nature walk). haha So we are on our drive back from our pday. Elder Read's asleep. Wake up! haha

Anyway, this week was awesome! What did we do this week Elder Read? ("Uh, we had zone conference"). We had zone conference. We had a new investigator at church yesterday. We spoke in church and we did a boss job. We were spitting fire from the pulpit. Especially Elder Read! I thought we were going to have to call the fire department.

We did a lot of service this week, especially for Toni. She's always calling us for service. What else happened? Oh yeah, ET happened this week, (emergency transfer) so Elder Packer has a new companion. ("Hi") Don't look back! He's driving so he can't look back. And there's Elder Packer ("Hey!") Yeah this week was really fun. We had some good sunshine this week so that was nice! ("Amen to that!") Yeah we had like 2 days of sunshine! And look at my skin! I'm getting pasty white and it's not good! My tan is gone! We've got to answer this call so we're leaving. Bye

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Hey Family!

Whats going on? I'm at the stake center playing some basketball. This week was awesome! This week we started out with Valentine's Day. That was interesting! We got flashed, that wasn't fun, haha but we had a lot of solid lessons with our investigators. Sara is progressing well toward her baptismal date, and we're starting to reserve the church for that, so we're getting excited for that! On Wednesday we went down and baptized one of Elder Read's converts he had in his last area, so we took the train down to Vancouver, so that was super fun. Other than that it was a really regular week. We've just been walking our tails off.

I'll show everybody what we do on P-days. We just come around and play basketball. Here's the zone. Let's go introduce you to some people...Say whats up ("He's a baller") You hear that? I'm a baller. We've got my Elder Hall here. This is the zone. We've got ping pong players, the zone leader Elder Davenport. Everybody's having fun. I'll go interview some more people. There's my dad, Elder Packer. Say hi to the family. ("Hi family"). We've got Elder Busiaca, Elder Block, and we've got the gaming crew. Then we've got Elder Astle. We've got Elder Brownly and that's pretty much the whole zone. Then we've got the sisters. You want to say hi? None of the sisters like to be in the videos. Anyway, don't do drugs, the church is true, and I love you all!

Tell Carter to get engaged. ("Who's Carter?") He's my older brother. He's got a girlfriend, and I don't think he realizes that he's probably not going to find another one. haha J/K Yeah put a ring on it quick! haha Um that's all we got. Thanks fam!

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Hey everyone!

 Happy Valentine's Day...... Well tomorrow but close enough! This week was crazy fun. Our Stake decided to change the Ward boundaries around and our mission president had told us of the changes that were going to happen like 2 weeks before they announced them to the ward members. We knew the changes were going to be really minor but for some reason all the member thought they were going to count off 1 2 1 2 on every other house just to break up the ward haha. So that made fast and testimony meeting pretty interesting last week, haha Everyone was going up to the pulpit to say goodbye because all of them thought they were going to be moved to a different ward when in all reality they only cut 2 streets out of the entire area. My favorite testimony by far was by Brother Madjeski. He realized how ridiculous everyone was being so he got up and said: " brothers and sisters this is ridiculous, the church is like McDonald’s, if you go get a Big Mac at the McDonald’s on 82nd and you go get a Big Mac at the McDonald’s on Division...... the Big Macs will be the exact same. Trust me, I've had them both"  haha I've never heard of that analogy before but it's so true!

Oh and Elder Packer got transferred back to Portland and he is now my District Leader! So we will be seeing each other at least twice a week now. He is in the Cherry Park Ward and because of the ward boundary changes, his area is now a little bigger than ours so we had to give him the car and we are back to walking! But it's all good. I love walking! We get to talk to a lot more people and get to know the area better.

Oh some people to be praying for are Sarah, Wayne, Idea and Luis. They are our main investigators right now and they are all trying to gain a relationship with our Father in Heaven so please be fasting and praying for them. Other than some solid lessons with those investors, nothing else really happened this week. Just a lot of finding and going to visit a lot of perspective elders.

Oh something crazy that happened at church yesterday, this guy came in the building like 10 min before sacrament meeting started and he started clapping his hands really loud to get everyone’s attention and then he yelled " I have been sent here by God to tell you all the Joseph Smith was a pervert" He was standing right in front of me when he yelled this so Brother Took and I, ( by the laying on of hands) showed him the door. Haha so that was a little different. Sorry I don't really have a miracle story this week but just know the church is true.

Love Elder Taysom  

Hey Everybody!

It Elder Taysom here. We are doing laundry right now in the apartment right now. This week was awesome. I'm sending a video again cuz I've got Taysom thumbs and I hate typing. This week was awesome! What would you say, Elder Read, was the best thing first?

"Um Zone Conference" says Elder Read.

Oh yeah, we had Zone Conference. President McAteer did an awesome job in coordinating that. It was a really good conference. He's doing Zone Conferences once a transfer, so we're going to have those a lot more often. And I REALLY like Zone Conferences.

Our investigators, Sara, Wayne, Donald, Rebecca, Kris, and Luis are all doing really good. They're all  of our investigators on date so keep them in your prayers cuz they need help. Sara moved her date up an entire month cuz she really wants to be baptized so she's shooting for March 8th now and she is doing awesome! We're really excited for her!

I never really talked about our temple trip. That was my bad. But we went to the temple. It's a BEAUTIFUL temple. It's awesome. We had a really good day. We went as a zone and it was a really good time. I definitely miss going to the temple. It was really fun.

One of the elders in our zone, a spanish elder, Elder Grasinger, is going home tomorrow. He's served his full 2 years and I'm going to miss him a lot!

We got transfer letters yesterday and I'm staying here for another 6 weeks. So me and Elder Read are going to be balling it up here in Sunnyside! My dad, Elder Packer, he's coming back to Portland. He's coming to area that's kind of close to our's. It's called Cherry Park, so I'll get to see him this Wednesday! So I'm excited to see Elder Packer again.

Oh yeah, we killed a cat. We were moving some hoarder guy, throwing away a bunch of crap, and we found a cat in his house and it ended up dying. We put it in a cage and then left it at a member's house. We were going to come pick it up the next day, but it died and all of his daughters went to go look and see the cat and it died an hour later, so all his daughters were crying. I felt really bad haha. Anyway, I've got to end the video cuz they can only be like 3 minutes long, so I'll see you guys later. Bye!

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

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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!:)