He made it!!

Dear Families of our New Missionaries,

Sister Dayton and I wanted to take a brief moment to let you know that your son has arrived safely in our beloved mission in Barcelona Spain and we have had the privilege of getting acquainted with him.  He appears to be excited about his stewardship as an emissary of the Lord Jesus Christ and is ready to begin this great work.  How privileged we feel to have your missionary in Barcelona Spain.  We truly believe that these great young men and women are the finest fruits of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Thank you for loving,  nurturing, teaching  and supporting him as he begins this marvelous mission experience.  His goodness, virtue, high character, enthusiasm, and love of the Savior are truly inspiring.  As we shook his hand and looked into his eyes, we felt the aura of goodness emanating from him—his countenance and reflects his love of the Master.
We would encourage you to pray for him daily, write weekly letters or e-mails (use myldsmail.org) of support and encouragement, pray for his investigators, send scriptures or inspiring talks, and especially let him know how much you love him. 

Letters and packages may be sent to the mission home using this address.         

Spain Barcelona Mission

Calle Calatrava 10-12 bajos,

08017 Barcelona

Spain

We can assure you that we will do everything we can to take good care of your son while he serves under our stewardship.  Please feel free to contact us atmtdayton@ldschurch.org or debbie4@ldschurch.org if the need arises.  We feel confident that the Lord will pour out great blessings on you and your family while your son serves the Lord in this beautiful land.

With much love and appreciation,

President and Sister Dayton

Spain Barcelona Mission  

P.S. We hope you enjoy this picture of your son next to the flag of this wonderful country.

Picture from Taylor's Branch President & wife, the Dolman's

We received the following message and picture from Taylor's MTC Branch President and wife, the Dolman's - made us happy!!:

Hi This is Sister Doman My husband has been your missionaries branch pres. 

We just wanted to tell you what a wonderful missionary you have! 

They will be great! We love them. 

Happy Sunday :)

Michele Doman 




We also got to talk to Taylor this morning for over an hour!!  Awesome day!!

Week 5: MTC and the Spoken Word, Skype Lessons, and Sleep Talking

Hola Family!

How’s life back at home? This is the last p-day for me in the MTC so it's a little freaky to think I'll be in Spain next week. I did get my flight plans though. I have to wake up at 2:30 am on Monday(or should we say Sunday night) to get to the airport.. not excited for that, but at least there will be 7 other missionaries going to Barcelona!. We fly to Chicago, Frankfurt Germany before landing in Barcelona the next day, so long, but at least we get a glimpse of Germany along the way! We also get a 45 minute to an hour phone call home so that'll be cool too! Our whole district is just excited to get out in the field!

So one of the cool things that happened this week was that we had Lloyd Newell, aka the General Conference Voice, come and narrate our own version of Music and the Spoken Word with the choir and audience singing the songs. It was so cool, especially with over 1000 singers in the choir with me! The best song was How Firm a Foundation, which was powerful enough to both ruin our voices, and have Bro. Newell comment that it was by far the most powerful version of the song that he's heard before! Coming from him, that's awesome!

We also finished up teaching our investigators this week, Alan and Nicolla, so we sadly have no one to teach at the moment haha. We can only practice door approaches with the district, which gets interesting with a bunch of 18/19 year olds haha. But our teaching(for elder Pixton and I) is way better according to our teachers so that’s great! We also got to teach people in other countries over skype so that was fun too.

Another good story this week is about my sleep talking. As my family knows from staying in hotels, I talk a bunch so the MTC's no different. One of the elders in our room, Elder Fleming, sleeps pretty lightly so every morning I get the report on what was said the night before. So far the best quotes are "Ahhhh Snakes!!!","But it’s my last night being single", "Cerca de dios....", and many other interesting things. Oh well at least nights here aren't boring for the room haha. Plus one elder snores and my companion grunts randomly during the night so it’s like a chorus of drunken animals for anyone that hears us.

We also had an awesome final testimony meeting with both the districts leaving next week, President Doman, his wife, aunt and uncle who are in the MTC right now, and their recent RM daughter. Our two districts are super close so it was cool to hear all their testimonies too. I even found out this week that Hermana Shaw in that district lived in Snoqualmie and was a XC runner for MT Si, so it was crazy to find out that her team was at the Coed relays all those years!

Overall, it’s been a great week, and Its been awesome getting to know Elder Pixton and my district better before we all leave next week across the globe. Thanks for all the letters and emails here at the MTC, and I hope to hear from you all in Barcelona!

 Love and Miss you all!

 Elder Taylor Moulton

 Casual shadow pic with Elder Pixton, me and a few others

 Companion pic last Sunday

 Check out this awesome shirt I got!  I also got a haircut today too before I leave

 You know it's hot outside when.....

Lloyd Newell everyone!

Week 4 MTC - Jeffrey R. Holland, Thunderstorms, and Egg Rolls!

Hola Familia and Amigos!

It’s been a crazy week here at the MTC! There's been crazy thunder and rain here the last few days, so it’s felt like Seattle. The rain was so hard though that you couldn't see out the windows by the track haha, it was a downpour. But the hard thing this week was speaking Spanish. We spent the last two days in Solo Espanol(aka no English :() so it was a little harder to communicate with the rest of the group haha. At the end it was funny since I was speaking full on spanglish to Elder Pixton (like "Yo puedo do this!"), so that was entertaining haha. But it’s helping our language skills so that’s what counts!

So one of my favorite talks this week was by Elder Holland (it was a recording we watched Sunday night... but oh well). He talked about keeping our greenie fire going and being the best possible missionaries we could be. He also was pretty funny when he talked about the authors of the missionary handbook drinking pickle juice and being angry when they wrote it(in a sarcastic way of course).

But a cool thing that happened this week was that Elder Brett Babbel from the LW ward, and my seminary class, showed up as part of our zones new district! He's like two doors down from us too so that's awesome! We also ran 4 miles out on the field, since he's the only one in the zone who likes running besides me.

Another good story this week was about Alan our investigator. During our lesson, about the commandments, he talked about this party he was going to with alcohol and stuff(in a very no subtle way haha(I love it when investigators needs are obvious)). So when we asked him during the lesson on the Word of Wisdom what he had problems with, he went down the list, including illegal drugs of things he does. So that made committing him hard since he did these with his friends, but hopefully he followed through for our next lesson!

Anyways, the MTC is going great! The foods great, especially the egg rolls(they are like brown logs of joy!), as long as you eat the right things(An elder in our district had a bad experience with that haha). We also did initiatories today at the temple, so that was a cool experience too.

Thanks for all the letters, and send more if you can, only 12 days left here in Provo until Barcelona!

Love and miss you all!

-- 

Elder Taylor Moulton

Barcelona Spain Mission

 Solo pic in front of the temple

 It actually rains here!

 Don't know if this needs a caption haha

Twinning with Elder Jones

Week 3 at the MTC - Sickness, Alien Jello, and our first Investigator to Commit to be Baptized!

Hola Family and Friends!

Crazy enough, yesterday was the halfway point for me at the MTC, dang these weeks are flying by! This week was hard though because everyone in our district, and most of our zone were fighting things like pink eye, the flu, laryngitis, and lots of coughs, so being so close together for class was a little uncomfortable(I only got a cough thankfully). But the good news is that Elder Pixton and I committed Nicola(our teacher acting as an investigator) to baptism, which was awesome because she was a super anti-religious person when we first met her! Our goal is to do the same for Alan(TRC volunteer, so he may or may not be a member, since they don't tell us) and Sergio, our other investigators, by the end of the week.

Another cool thing this week was teaching Spanish members. We had this cool old guy named Hermano Grittiths(I couldn't pronounce it for some reason haha), who served in Uruguay and the Air force, and told us this awesome story of him being healed by a priesthood blessing when he got either polio or meningitis(or could be both...the days are long here so I totally forgot). We also talked to a temporarily returned missionary who broke his back when he fell off a chapel roof he was working on in Peru(crazy but true haha). Overall it was just cool for a change to teach people who want to talk about the gospel.

So some of you asked about my schedule here at the MTC so here it goes:

6:30- I wake up, roll over so I can try to say a prayer without falling asleep again, and get ready for the day

7:15-Breakfast, where I usually eat blueberry bagels and some oatmeal and juice(Apparently the orange juice is messed up here, but nothings happened yet so I guess its safe).

7:45 Class with Hermana Savage until lunch, we usually practice lessons and spanish

12:20 to 3:20 Study time, with an hour for personal, companion and language study(funny story about that, the other day I fell asleep on accident during personal study, and when I woke up I fell forward and knocked my books off the table haha, luckily I'm usually good at staying awake)

3:20 to 4:20 Gym time, I usually play either BBall or sand volleyball with the district, or run around the tiny track here(I miss Washington trails :/)

4:50 Dinner

5:30 to 9 Class with Hermano Ostler(Who’s from Olympia I found out)

9-9:30 Planning for tomorrow, or doing DL interviews with the elders in the district

9:30 to 10:30 Brushing teeth/and goofing around with other people in zone and on our floor before bed.

So yea, pretty crazy days here haha. Ok to explain the Alien jello, one day last week I was talking with Elder Mair (he's from Heber, and sorta has the body type of a smaller hulk, he's pretty huge from wrestling) when he tried to eat his jello he got for lunch. It was so dense though that we ended up bouncing grapes off of it into a bowl, and testing to see how high you could drop it without it breaking, which it never did. Basically, now I stay away from the Jello unless I want to hit someone with a grape across the table.

Overall, it’s been a great week of learning, having devotionals and getting to know our district and zone better, and most importantly, becoming more spiritually prepared to teach the people of Barcelona!

Miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton

PS Thank you President Millard for the Cupcakes! And thank you family for the awesome package, I ate like half the Reeses already!

 Elder Pixton and I by the temple on Sunday

 This might look weird, but this is the famous Cream Soda Tree, which seriously smells like Butterscotch or caramel for some strange reason!

 Bored in class - we spend like 12 hours a day in here!

Thanks for all the awesome letters!

Potato Cement, General Authorities, and Basketball Stunts!

Hola family y amigos!

Week 2 at the MTC, and I'm starting to get into a rhythm with all the work here. Each day usually includes 10 hours in the classroom, our teachers are Hermana Savage and also Hermano Ostler. Funny story about that, so our first investigator here at the MTC was Jose Pena, a dude with eye problems who REALLY wanted to get baptized (he reminded us of this many a time during our lessons haha). Last Friday though, Hermana savage announced that we wouldn't be meeting with him anymore, which was weird, until he came into the class later that night in a white shirt and said he was our new teacher named Hermano Ostler! Our district was thoroughly disturbed/extremely surprised by this , but he's a great teacher so we got over him duping us haha.

So another cool thing that happened this week was that Elder Oaks came to speak last night for our devotional! My companion and I had front row seats on the stand because we were part of the choir (we sang "Lead Kindly Light"). It’s crazy how awesome 1000 people can sing here at the MTC.

So the potato cement is what we think of about the mashed potatoes here. While it tastes great, it literally is the densest food I've eaten so it fills you up pretty fast. The food here is great otherwise, except for the mexican food...yikes that stuff messes you up.

Another good story was about when I attempted to save a basketball the other day from going out (The Basketball Stunt). Because of my elite sense of coordination (hahaha), when slapping the ball back in I ended up somersaulting across the court (quite a few feet) into another game. Sadly the ball went out so it wasn't even worth it in the end.

But besides that, Elder Pixton and I are teaching 3 investigators, Alan, Nicola and Sergio (two are our teachers, and one is a trc dude who we don't know is an investigator or not). We've been getting pretty good at speaking Spanish so those are getting easier.

My final story is about an elder from our sister district in our zone named Elder McIntyre. On Friday, since he was super sore from working out so he decided to take some Advil PM... at 10 am (on accident of course). So for the rest of the day we had fun listening to him try to give life advice while he was pretty much drunk (he eventually passed out asleep in class so he recovered). He fell asleep in his room with his legs on the bed and his face flat on a pillow on the floor haha. Lesson learned...PM does not equal AM.

Overall, the MTC is pretty awesome, and it’s cool to not be the new ones this week as another round of missionaries come in today. I miss you all, and I’ll keep trying to reply to all your emails when I can!

Elder Taylor Moulton

Barcelona Spain Mission

 In front of the temple

 District Selfie

 Chillin in our tiny classroom with Elders Fleming and Scheel

 Picture of the temple before our session this morning

My district by the temple last Sunday