A 40 day fast and the beach!

Well... It was another great week! Buuut I forgot my notes at home soooo I will have to try to use my memory which isn't usually very reliable.

Last P-day both Santa Rosa zones went to the beach. That was fun... LOTS of missionaries.

An Awesome army of missionaries serving the Santa Rosa Area

My beautiful companion and I at the beach where I feel most at home in the world.

Elder Taylor ( with the Canada shirt) being his same ole Goofy self!

Okay so for the last 2 weeks I have being getting hurt over and over again in the strangest ways.
It all started when I got a bee sting on my foot. Two p-days ago the zone all went to the park to play soccer and I thought it would be a great idea to play without shoes... Bad Idea. Before we even started I stepped on a bee. For the next few days my foot swelled up and got SUPER itchy. Then I started to get this weird migraine that came out of no where. I don't get head aches. Ever. And this one lasted a few days. Finally I called the mission nurse she said it sounded like I either needed to start wearing my glasses or up my prescription if I have already been wearing them. I decided to stop avoiding them and wear them for a few days straight to see if that helped... It did. My migraine disappeared. Now I just look like a nerd all the time. Then we were running in the morning and I tripped on the raised part of the sidewalk. I felt like I was 5 years old again with a big ol' scrape on my knee because I tripped. Our 9 year old investigator also scraped her knee and was able to sympathize with me. Take note that she is 9 and I am 21. Anyway it is in a dumb stop where it keeps ripping open over and over again and not healing. Then I got this super weird pain in my chest that hurt really really bad Sister Harper made me call the mission nurse to make sure I wasn't having a heart attack or something... I wasn't... She said it was some sort of really weird muscle cold. Then I woke up with a kink in my neck so bad that I couldn't move my head to the right at all and looked like a freak all day. which brings we to this morning. I woke up with a weird pain in my back that felt like a knot or something. It was perfectly manageable and no big deal until I went to lift my arm at the grocery store to take something off the shelf and the pain shot at me making it very uncomfortable for me to even be typing right now. I can't breath deep, I can't lift my arms very much, I can't move my head, turn my body, It hurts to sit, stand, and lay down... So yeah... I have an appointment with a chiropractor this afternoon. Woe is me.
Sister Harper and I think I should probably get life insurance... Or live in a bubble.

Aside from my misfortune, there have actually been miracles! Sister Harper and I started a 40 day purification fast where we wrote all of the things on a piece of paper that we want to purify ourselves from (remove from our lives for now like thinking about our futures, worrying about school etc.) as missionaries. Sister Buckner and I were going to do it but never got around to it, Sister Harper was ALL for it though. It has been a lot of work but rewarding. We started it with a 2 meal fast, and we are now on day 5 of the purification part. It's a challenge but we have seen little tender mercies come out of it and the spirit has been able to follow us more closely.  It seems like as soon as we decided to stop doing or thinking about certain things suddenly they are everywhere and inescapable without prayer. Prayer has definitely been my friend.

Sister Harper and I finally burned our list of things that we want to cleans ourselves of. We started our 40 day fast from then.

My favorite miracle this week was going to teach our 11 year old investigator. Her parents don't speak English and we have tried to get her to communicate to them for us but it hasn't been very good. We brought a member with us to the next lesson who speaks Spanish so she could talk to the parents for us. When we got to the door her mother answered and was less than happy to see us. Apparently she found out we were Mormon and not Catholic when she saw the Book of Mormon her daughter had. She told us that her daughter was no longer allowed to meet with us and that she wants her to be involved in the Catholic church. We were so sad. We got the idea to ask the member to communicate the idea of giving us a chance to share the same message with her that we have been sharing with her daughter to see what it is that we have been teaching and then to make her decision after. Somehow her heart softened and she said yes. We are so excited! Now her and her mom can learn together with the Spanish missionaries.

Well, time for me to go. Have a great week.

Sister Carter