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| Comayagua Zone with Elder Alonzo of the Seventy |
Hey Familia!
Man we just had the most spiritually
packed week ever! It started out on Monday when we played a sick game of
ball with all Gringos (that´s basically a spiritual experience for me). Tuesday
we had a rockn´ leaders meeting where we presented our goals for
February. We started announcing our goals each week and the room went
super silent. Everyone thought we were crazy for having such high goals
but once we finished President Fortuna backed us up. It was way cool and
now the whole mission is watching to see if we can do it, so our whole zone is
pumped!
This week, Elder Alonso from the
Seventy came!! Ah man I can hardly even describe how huge of an impact he
made on us, and especially me. On Friday he, along with Pres Fortuna
talked to our zone along with 3 other zones. I had to direct the meeting,
which was fine until I looked down after the two and a half hour bus ride to
the temple and realized I forgot to shine my shoes after the assistants had
sent out a message reminding us to. So I borrowed Elder Taylor´s size 11
shoes [Elder
Cook wears a size 14] and rocked
those for a couple hours. So the theme of the meeting was how we can
touch the mantel of the Lord and repentance. I learned so much in those
couple of hours that I know will change my life. The biggest thing that
impacted me from what he said was probably how much Christ wants to forgive
us. I really felt His love for us and all of God´s children. It
literally doesn´t matter what we do, how many times we do it, or to whatever
degree it´s done, He is there with outstretched arms to help. We can
NEVER think for one second that we can´t repent or that we aren´t worthy
to. It´s why He came here! He suffered unimaginable pain in the
Garden of Gethsemane for one purpose, to stop ours. His sacrifice is infinite
and eternal and welcomes everyone. It´s so hard to describe the feelings and
all that I learned there, but I will give you my witness that Jesus Christ is
our Savior. I know He is. There is no doubt in my mind that God
lives and He sent His Son for us, because He loves us. This is His church
and He leads it! He is directly at the head of it, guiding every single
one of the inspired leaders that we have, personally and through
revelation. When we got out of the meeting and back to our area, I just
wanted to teach EVERYONE about repentance! As it says in the Book of
Mormon, the truth has been restored to bring us back to know the True
Redeemer. Our church is the only true church on the face of the earth and
is the only one that can really bring us closer to Christ, because it´s the
only one that teaches truly who He is and what He taught.
We also had an awesome Zone Leader
meeting with Elder Alonso on Saturday where he taught us how to be true
leaders, like Christ was. I will never forget that lesson and we´ve
already started implementing it in what we do and have seen amazing
results.
Then on Sunday, we had another
meeting of like three and a half hours with all the bishops and branch
presidents and another seventy (Elder Ocampo).
The meeting was to help out a little with their goals and what they can
improve on. We´re going to go all out these last couple of weeks!
My goal for the next two weeks is that every person in all of Piedras Bonitas
and part of Comayagua will be converted. Be afraid Satan.
Love,
Elder Cook
I have pictures but I´m probably just going to give them to
you when I get home. In a weekish :) We are doing great! Yes, my shoes will last. We
married and baptized our family on
Friday!!! It was literally a miracle. I´ll tell you
a little about it! So we´ve been going crazy this week getting all the
papers together, and took it all over to the alcaldia in Ajuterique, a little
pueblo about 30 minutes outside Comayagua. They told us there that there
was one more paper that the family had to take out before everything was
good. We told the family about it and they went out to get it from a court
house. They came back, and told us that there could be some delays, there was some kind of problem.
We all were pretty crushed especially after all the work we had already put
into this wedding. But we decided to just go down there since it was
already set up and see what would happen. So we got to Ajuterique, sat
down and turned in the papers that we had and hoped for the best. The
lady came right in and started up the wedding! Elder Long and I looked at
each other super shocked but tried not to let it show. In the end, they
got married! We don´t know exactly how or why she forgot about that paper
but we sure prayed hard the night before, so we know Heavenly Father wanted
that family baptized.