Elder Cook Week Forty-Two

Thanks grandma and grandpa!  We loved your gifts!!!

Hey family

We had a pretty off week with Christmas.  The 24th and the 25th we pretty much did a dive bomb with lessons.  No one wanted to receive us, so that was a bummer.  But we did get invited to a couple dinners so we were pretty stoked about that!  We ate nacatamales and torrejas.  Torrejas and nacatamales are pretty much what the Hondurans eat the week of Christmas.

Another tradition the have here on Christmas Eve is fireworks!  But when I say fireworks I don´t mean the cute little spark fountains and ones that have pretty colors.  These things are straight up bombs!  I wish I was joking.  It literally sounded like a warzone that night. Most Elders didn´t even get to sleep!  Those things make a sound so loud it must be a blessing from Heavenly Father that they all still have eardrums intact.  I saw a lot of people just get a bunch of gun powder in one spot, put a rock on top of the pile, then throw a bigger rock down to light it off!  And they´re all drunk doing it. The next morning was like a ghost town.  Everyone was zonked out the whole day.  Hey guess what? I found eggnog in one of the pulperias [small grocery store]!!  It was so great.  

Still working hard on the spiritual side of things, but yesterday Q dropped us. He informed us yesterday that this would be his last time coming to church.  He´s pretty lost in his life right now and this gospel is exactly what he needs.  Do you know what makes missionary work so hard?.  When you are putting your whole effort, mind might and strength into that one person, with a real love and preocupación [concern] for them, and you know that the gospel is the one thing that can bring them the real joy and help that they are searching for in their lives, and they say no.  That´s why it´s hard. The rules and walking and studying are nothing.  We are trying to improve in finding new people to teach and so far we´ve found a few pretty positive people, so we´ll see how it goes this week!  Love you guys

Elder Cook

nacatamales

torrejas

The grandparents sent

Elder Cook some money,

he bought lots of food!

Elder Cook Week Forty-One

Mission Christmas Program

Elder Cook & Elder Angulo

Elder Cook and Elder Pinto

This is half of Elder Cook's mission

Hey family

 

We had a sweet experience last night.  It might be a little long but it was cool so I´m writing it. Yesterday all our plans fell and we were having a rough time.  We went past plan B to digging in the numerals somewhere just for someone to let us in to teach.  We only had until 6pm because there was a Christmas ward devotional and we were down to our last half hour just contacting.  We knocked a bunch of doors, got rejected, and started to head to the church.  I felt like we should just knock one more door, so we turned back and did.  

 A gruff voice asked who it was and we said the missionaries, expecting to hear a get outta here.  He opened the door (that´s always a really good sign.  Most just yell at you from whatever room they’re in) and said he was sick.  We started to ask when we could come back and he told us pasen adelante.  My comp and I looked at each other with shock and went in.  We started chatting a little about his family and house, and asked him what he was sick with.  He said he´d just been in a coma for 8 days.  Probably the first person we´ve contacted who´s actually had a good reason for us not to come in, and still let us in.  Then we explained a little bit about what we do as missionaries and started in on the lesson.  When I teach I never ask questions about their relation to Christ because they just end up saying the same thing (Dios es el único, solo hay un Dios, Dios es poderoso, Dios me ama) or whatever their pastor told them, so it doesn´t really get us anywhere.  But the Spirit prompted me to ask it so I did, and he started crying.  He said that Christ saved him from his coma and that in it he had a revelation that he needed to start following Chirst and go to church.  I´ve never felt so guided by the Spirit in any lesson in my mission like that one.  We explained that Heavenly Father had sent us there for a purpose and that he was looking for what we had.  My comp and I love to share the Restauration as the first lesson that we teach because it´s the one thing that sets us apart from the rest of the churches.  I tried a couple times to start it up, using families first and then God´s love for us, but the words just kind of choked in my mouth.  I then went into the Plan of Salvation instead, and we explained that we all have a purpose in life.  He started crying again and we left him with the invitation to pray about what we had shared.  He told us that we could only come on Sundays because his family wouldn´t let him listen to us if they found out, and Sundays they were at a different church. 

  Elder Cook didn't say who this is, but he

did say he’s the tallest Honduran he’s met.

We left the house pretty humbled.  We felt so blessed to have been able to find this guy and we know it was because Heavenly Father wanted us to.  It was really a miracle.  For the rest of the week, we just worked hard and sweat a ton.  My mission consists of three parts.  It´s about 33% walking, 33% hiking, and 33% teaching.  And it feels like way less than 1% sleeping.  

Love you guys!  

Elder Cook

Brooklyn, I’m good, comps good, stay away from dumb boys!

Elder Cook Week Forty

The two baptisms we had here!!!

This week was super great!!   I have a new companion!!!  He´s from San Pedro, Honduras.  He is super clean, super obedient, super humble, and has a great sense of humor.  He has a testimony that could knock your sombrero off.  We were contacting doors one day this week, a guy let us in, and he started asking us questions about the church.  Usually people aren´t that interested so we were pumped and tried our best to answer them all!  At the end of the lesson, he proceeded to give us about a half hour lecture about how religion is just a bunch of baloney.  His head was so filled with theology and books of apostasy that he was just really confused about life.  When he finally took a breath, Elder Pinto bore his testimony about what we shared.  I hadn´t felt the Spirit the whole lesson until that moment.  It was amazing.  The guy still went back to more theories and apostasy, but if anything that lesson sure strengthened my testimony.  I love Elder Pinto already and I´m excited to have him as my companion! 

Love you guys!  

Elder Cook

My new district

My area

Another part of my area, you can see El Picacho in the distance

Sandwiches at my Honduran Grandma´s house!

  

This part of my area is awesome! Pictures don´t do it justice.