Elder Cook Week Ninety-Four

FAMILIA!

     We just had the most insane day of my mission!!! I can hardly even believe what happened. Alright, so it all started on Monday with a family we found.  We went to go visit someone else nearby, but contacted them when the other fell through.  They let us right in, they’re super nice, and the member daughter was there.  I thought the guy was her grandpa but it was really her dad, and he’s awesome.  He didn’t understand the importance of marriage so we told him to pray and we’d be back in two days.  We got there Wednesday, talked about marriage again and the importance of obeying God’s commandments, but we didn’t get any further. We tried a different approach Friday with part of the restoration and they committed to going to church.  We went back on Saturday night to make sure everything was good for Sunday, and the daughter came out to tell us some bad news.  They had some concerns about rumors they had heard about our church.  Elder Jose and I had the talks on Sunday, so we decided our talks would be focused on the gospel and the Savior, because many of the concerns he had were about Joseph Smith.     

     So today, we went to pick them up, and guess who was already there with his hair combed and nice clothes on before the rest of the family? The dad!!  So everything’s great, he hits it off with a member we brought to walk with us and he’s excited to attend church. So we give our talks and the Spirit was super strong in sacrament and we challenged everyone to follow Christ and be baptized.  We finished up about 5 minutes to the hour just enough time to have a song and a prayer.  But then a leader shared some last words and guess what his topic is about?  The Prophet Joseph Smith.  All the missionaries in his room instantly drop their heads and start praying that the investigators hearts will receive the message.  So about 30 minutes after the hour, sacrament ends, and we walk over to our investigator (the dad).  He’d been pretty ridged in his seat the whole time, but he gave me a hug and said “Hey I loved it!  I am staying for the next two hours as well!” I was so happy.  We went to principios del evangelo class and he was so intensely involved answering questions and reading scriptures, you would have thought him a member.  Then we went to priesthood, and I want you to take one more guess at what the temo was today?  Did you say Joseph Smith?  Right again! But let me just tell you this, I know that God wants this man baptized.  Every single man in that room was inspired with what to say in that meeting.  I have no doubt of that.  The spirit touched their hearts, and they all took turns explaining our beliefs about the trinity and who Joseph Smith was, and testifying of them.  Right before the last prayer was about to be said, the investigator stopped everyone and wanted to stay something.  We were worried.  But he said, “I’ve gone to a lot of churches in my life, and I’ve never felt good in any of them.  But I think I’m going to stay in this church.  I like it here and I believe this is the church of the Lord.”  I’ve never been so close to jumping out of my chair and cheering in the middle of church before.  This man, without knowing it, had just felt the Holy Ghost, recognized it as an answer from God, and acted on that prompting.  

     I think God knew exactly what he needed to hear.  We went over to their house today and put a fecha [baptism date] for them to be married and baptized.  I learned a huge lesson today.  God knows better than us!  Always.  He knows us, and definitely knows His children’s’ needs better than we do.  While I was stressing about the situation that was happening everything was playing out just how Heavenly Father wanted it to and you know what?  My stress didn’t help squat.  I think we need to learn to trust our Heavenly Father a little more.  He knows what He’s doing.  If we don’t like a situation we’re in or a problem or challenge we have, and there’s something we can do to fix it, do it.  If not, relax and let Heavenly Father take control.  He loves us, and promises not to give us more than we can handle. And one more thing, the Spirit converts, not missionaries.  We could have been in that man’s house for a year trying to convince him to be married, and he wouldn’t have even given it a second thought but the moment that the Holy Ghost touches his heart, he was willing to change everything and follow Christ.   

     We also taught 10 angry people of another faith (at the same time), chased down everyone in a park contacting for a couple hours, ate about 7 meals on the 24^th and almost puked, dodged a couple fireworks people threw at us, killed a rat inside the church, and baptized three ninas on Saturday.  Awesome week!

Love

Elder Cook

Elder Cook Week Ninety-Three

This is some of what Elder Cook shared with us when he was able to Skype with us on Christmas Eve.

I’ve gotten to know the gospel so much more, I didn’t understand it as well before but I feel like I understand it a lot more now.  I have really gotten a chance to read and study the Book of Mormon. Another thing I’ve learned on the mission is the importance of having an eternal marriage. It’s one of the most important things in life.  To have a family that will endure for eternity. I’ve been studying that the importance of a mission is to prepare to have a family.  This is the thing, the mission is like life.  It teaches us why we’re here.  One of the most beautiful things is eternal families.  That’s the most important thing to me.  Obviously we’re here on a mission to help other people and that’s our purpose and that’s what we need to focus on.  

Elder Cook Week Ninety-Two

 Hey Familia,

     Ah man we had an awesome week!  Our investigators are doing AMAZING and everyone’s going great towards the baptism dates!  We’ve had some super spiritual lessons and the member were spot on with their testimonies and explaining questions and organization of the church,  We’ve been able to leave appointments feeling so grateful that the spirit had helped us all out so much.  All the investigators who we have are right on track.   

     We also had our house flood like four times this week on Tuesday at like 4am my comp woke me up and said in English “Elder we’re floating.  Our house is floating.” I got up and realized there was a good inch or two of water on the floor!  It looked like it had rained hard and the back porch drain didn’t drain so it all came in the house.  We figured something had crawled up the drain and died in there, so we hooked a bunch a metal hanger together and tried to push the gunk out.  We took buckets and got out as much water as we could from the house and porch.  Then it happened again another night, but it didn’t rain that night!  We couldn’t figure out why it was happening, until today.  We figured out that the tank of water, which is underground, wasn’t shutting off when it received water, so it filled up, then filled the porch, then filled the house.  

     We also had a real Christmas dinner at the mission Christmas Activity! It made me miss American food so bad.  We ate salad, mashed potatoes, turkey and ham!  America just makes food right.  Well, we’re working hard out here in Beautiful Rocks!  Everything’s going great.  You know something I realized today?  I love fasting!  I know that doesn’t sound like the kid you knew before he left to Honduras does it?  I love how strong you can feel the spirit, how close the Lord is, and how amazingly fast he answers what we fasted for.  It’s such a blessing to be able to fast.  Just handing over a little bit of what the body craves to the Lord makes a huge difference in our spirits.  Pray, fast, read the scriptures, and go to church!  Just remember that we don’t know what will happen tomorrow, so the time for repentance is today.

Love

Elder Cook

Elder Cook Week Ninety-One

This is the first time in my whole mission I’ve seen

one of these things, felt like I saw a long lost friend! 

Hey Familia,

     We have fechas [baptism dates] with two families!  I’ll tell you about them.  For the first one, their son, who lives apart from them with his wife, gave them to us as a reference.  The dad is a menos activo (less active) and the mom isn’t going to any church right now.  She says she used to hate the Mormons because of what other pastors and people said, but when we came and taught the first time we were different than what she had heard.  She agreed to go to church yesterday along with her husband and kids.  When we went to visit them that night, she said she liked the church and felt good.  She also said that right before they went there, she had said a prayer and asked that if this is where she needed to be and it was the true church that she could feel it, and she did!  She said in all her time going to different evangelic churches she never felt that way before.  My comp and I were so happy!  We ask  people every day to do that exact thing; pray to God to know if it’s true and they never do, but this Hermana did if perfectly without even being invited to!  We quickly explained that Heavenly Father had answered her prayer through the Holy Spirit, and challenged her to be baptized.  She said she wanted to and also to get married.  We are pumped about this family, because she has great faith and a knowledge about prayer that will help her out a ton in preparing to be baptized. 

     

     The other family is this is a young couple that was also given to us by reference from a friend in the ward.  The first time we went over there we could hardly believe how great they were.  They were really listening and the spirit was very strong as we talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ, faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.  They have such a strong desire to follow Christ and even wanted to go to church!  That was the best part.  He also talked about the example that his friend is that gave us the reference.  He had seen the change that had happened in him, and wants to do the same.  When we went to bring them to church yesterday, we were crushed when they didn’t answer the door!  But we found out later that they were gone because he had gotten robbed and beaten up the other night.  So we went over in the afternoon and challenged them to marriage and baptism, and they accepted!  Two amazing families!

     My comp was kinda having a hard week.  On Tuesday we went over to teach at a house and he saw a soccer ball and wound up to give it a good kick, missed the ball completely and fell right on his back.  Then he got up, went to kick it again out of anger and missed again.  It was a low blow because Monday he was feeling kinda bad about his soccer skills when we played as a zone.  Then Friday, I was on the phone in the street, and he went to help an old lady bring in groceries.  I looked down and looked back up and the ladies groceries were on the ground with all the fruit s and vegetables rolling away with my companion apologizing a ton.  We tried to contact her after that, but when she saw us coming, she ran into her house pretty fast. He’s a great guy hoping this week’s better for him.

Love you

Elder Cook

Elder Cook Week Ninety

Hey Familia,

It was so darn COLD this week!  Tuesday was easily the hottest day of my life and I was drenched literally all day from sweat, and then the next day a cold front hit and I thought I was going to freeze to death!  Sheesh it was crazy.  Never thought you’d be hearing that from your Honduras kid huh?  Don’t worry, I’m still in the same country I think. I’m not sure how cold it actually got but I was pretty sure snow was about to fall.  And all the Hondurans were bundled up like it would.  My sheet on my bed is not made for crazy Honduran climate changes.  Ah man showering was the worst!  You could walk down the street in the morning or at night and hear screams once in a while from the houses as people started to shower.  One time that we entered into a house at night Elder Jose and I looked at each other a little freaked out because we thought someone was being killed inside from the screams they were making, but then we heard them curse and say something about how cold the water was. So we calmed down, really makes you stop and think about how bad you smell to see if it’s worth it to shower.

We have been working our shoes and knees off in these last couple weeks trying to find and pray for new families.  In this week and the last we’ve found almost 15 new families, but only have a few really progressing.  This week we went all out for those families we brought members to their home, they the branch president, and tried to eliminate any doubt of problem that would stop them from going to church, but they still didn’t go to church!  Even after over 20 months, I struggle to understand why it’s so hard for people when they get so excited to go and completely commit themselves to going and then in the morning they don’t go to church!  We promised a pizza to the companionship that brought the most families to church today, and instead of raising the amount of families that the zone brought, didn’t get a single one there!  We are going to study about how we can help more families get to church this week to help the zone in the zone meeting. This Friday we hope the Lord revels to us how we can get better at that because for right now, we feel like we did all we could.

Hey guess what?  I think my soccer abilities are getting way better.  Because we had a lesson, one night I played one on one with this one 7 year old kid outside his house and I totally won.  We’ll see if I can move of a level play some 12 year olds kids next time.  

Love

Elder Cook

Random stairs in the middle of nowhere

Elder Cook Week Eighty-Nine

Hey Familia!

We had another great and busy week!  Monday we played some basketball as a zone.  It was a little sad to see how bad I’ve gotten, but it was great to play some ball again!  And the Latinos got bored and went to play soccer, so we got to play Gringo ball, so that was sweet.   

We also had two intercambios [splits] this week, Wednesday with the Assistentes [Assistants to the President] and Friday in El Carman in the zone. I went to Tegucigalpa with Elder Holt on Wednesday.  Man it was awesome, we had a lot of fun together and I learned a ton from him.  He’s always been a good friend in the mission.  Then Friday we had another intercambio and I went to El Carman with Elder Bendayan from Peru.  He’s finishing up his training right now.  Man it was crazy cold in El Carmen!  I’m pretty sure I almost froze out there.  It was the first time I’ve been cold in my whole mission!  It made me miss Mom because it reminded me of all those scout camp outs I went on and how she always told me to wear a jacket and I never did so I suffered at night freezing to death.  But this time no one even warned me!

We had a baptism!  It was awesome. This hermana has changed so much over the past month.  She’s happier and super excited to be a member of the church.  She can’t wait to be able to have her own eternal family.  She came to church on her own one Sunday and asked if we could teach her and has always been super active ever since.  The first night we gave her a Book of Mormon she read a ton and highlighted and prayed, and knew just after that night that it was true.  She’s an amazing convert and we are grateful to have met her. 

I think that’s about it 

Love you!