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.

Elder Cook Week Thirty-Nine

Whew!  This week I felt like a lump of clay.  I learned that I can´t make myself nor any other lump of clay out there into anything, without the Lord´s hands involved. 

People don´t usually come to the door when we try 

to contact them, but their parrots do!

Last Monday started out fantastic, but within three hours of work it took a pretty steep nose dive.  I think I´ve already told you that G had a fecha (baptism date) and we were so happy for her.  She was telling us all last week how we need to make invitations and how we needed to start teaching her son... then Monday night we heard from her friend, a member in the ward that helps us a ton, that she wanted nothing to do with the church and definitely didn´t want to be baptized.  That pretty much crushed us.  We continued to our other citas (appointments), and at each door we went to we were told not to come back.  That day, we lost 5 investigators and a baptismal date.  The rest of the week was pretty much the same.  We only had one cita (appointment) every day, and the rest of the time was just spent trying to get anyone to answer their door.  

Thursday night, we were pretty down.  We had visited G every day and she wouldn´t talk to us. We had contacted more doors in that day than in the whole last week, in the rain.  We got down to the last thirty minutes before we had to go home without a lesson, and we thought it would be a wasted day. Then my comp said that we needed more faith and that the Lord was testing our willingness and obedience.  We talked a little, decided to rely on the Lord, and knocked one more door.  A college kid answered the door and said he´d like to hear us, but his mom hated Mormons so we had to do it outside.  I have never felt the Spirit testify so strong from both my companion and me. The guy listened super intently, and then smiled.  He said he was really excited to read the Book of Mormon and wanted us to come back in a day or two.  I don´t know if I´ve ever felt closer to my Heavenly Father than in that moment.  Right there in the street, we said a quick prayer of thanks, and headed back to the house.  Then this Saturday, we had a lesson with Q.  He´s the guy from Georgia, and he hasn´t progressed at all in the last month.  Every time we come he just wants to argue.  Yesterday he started off the same way, attacking the church.  We gave a minute of thought after his rant, and then I felt the Spirit tell me that we should express our love for him and that the only reason why we were there was to help him.  Now, he has a baptism date for this Saturday!!!! 

Those are old brake pads 
and a shower rod, but it works!

Heavenly Father is there!  He listens and shows His power according to our faith.  We won´t always understand his ways nor reasons, but everything that happens is for a reason!  It´s so that we can progress and grow and learn and become more like Him.  Never doubt what God can do!  Something interesting that I realized as well is the power of service.  We ended up doing more service this week than in the two months we´ve been together and we were blessed for it.  We helped a guy move a fridge over a house (about as easy as it sounds), moved a ton of sand from one house to another in buckets, moved a dresser about a half mile to the pueblo part of the colonia, and a bunch of other random things like that.  We really felt an increased love for both the people and our Savior.  Sheesh that was super long.   And you can never write me too much, trust me. Love you guys!

Elder Cook

Elder Cook Week Thirty-Eight

Awesome tree!!  We were pumped to have a Christmas decoration in the house!

(We sent Elder Cook this paper tree with pictures of his extended family on each ornament.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey Family!

It´s been cold the last 4 days!!!!!!  Nope, let me rephrase that.  It hasn´t been crazy ridiculous hot the last 4 days!!!!  It was really windy and the temperature dropped a little.  Man it was so nice!  For like two days I didn´t sweat AT ALL!  All the Hondurans are dressed up like it´s snowing, with snow jackets and scarfs and beanies.  It´s pretty funny.  They think we are nuts in short sleeves!  We´ve gotten in a lot of trouble from all the old ladies for not wearing jackets.  But today, it´s back to normal.  We had two days again with absolutely no lessons.  Those are rough.  On Thanksgiving the other Elders in my district got invited to Thanksgiving dinner with a family that had lived in the states for 20 years, so they got a legit meal!  With turkey and brownies!  We tried to make the best of it, so we got tortillas and some meat and had some sweet Guatemalan dish, but it ended up being more of a snack than dinner.  

I have the pics of the two baptisms but not on my camera, I´ll get them to you next week. Those stockings were so cool!  Thanks a ton!  My companion loves his.  He changes its tie every morning.  

My knowledge and understanding of the gospel, especially the Restoration, the plan of salvation, and the gospel of Christ, have taken leaps and bounds here. I have studied so much and read countless books, from the scriptures to manuals, and the more I learn the more my testimony grows. It all just makes sense! Sorry mom, that question is hard to write back an answer.  I could take pages trying to explain but the best answer I think is my testimony.  I know this church is true.

Welp love you guys!  Invite people to church!  Share your testimony!  Give someone a Book of Mormon!  Remember the worst thing they could say back to you- no.  And you still receive blessings!  But most importantly, remember to invite the missionaries to eat dinner!

Elder Cook

Elder Cook Week Thirty-Seven

Que ondas familia

Sheesh!  This week was the strangest week of my mission! Every day had something different happen.  Monday, my comp decided to cut his own hair and left a big hole in the side of his head, so we decided to go get haircuts.  When it was his turn, I was reading the LDM. [Book of Mormon] He said ¨Mire!¨  and I looked up to see what you saw in the picture I sent!  Then in about two minutes, the husband of the hair cutter said that her buzzer was messed up, took out his own, and shaved the rest of my companions hair!  I´m pretty sure it was the most humbling experience of his life. The look on his face made me really sad.  We walked out to get back to work, and everyone on the street was saluting him like he was from the army!  

Tuesday, we finally set the baptism date with lady in the pictures I sent last week!!!  She´s the one that has had her own baptism date in her head that she said would be a surprise for us!  Then Wednesday, the power went out  in the whole colonia from about 5pm until the next day, so we had to head back to the house because it´s a mission rule.  We missed about 4 awesome lessons that we had planned!  It was a bummer.  Thursday, we had the multi zone meeting with President which lasted about 8 hours.  Friday we had the worst day we´ve had in the last 2 months with not even one lesson and only 2 contacts after 2 hours of knocking doors.  Then Saturday through Monday we had to stay in the house! All in all, super weird week.  And I heard fewer gunshots in those three days we stayed inside than we hear on a normal day!   I did a lot of laundry, read about a hundred sections of Doctrine and Covenants, read the book of Alma, and ate all my food that I had in the house this weekend. Well, that was my week!  Love you!

Elder Cook

*We were happy to hear from Elder Cook today. All missionaries in Honduras were asked to stay in their homes for a few days during a nation election.

Elder Cook Week Thirty-Six

Familia

I always forget how big I am here until I look at those pictures!  That´s weird.  And I¨m super white.  This week was pretty interesting!  I learned that Heavenly Father really is protecting His missionaries.  I´ll tell you that story in about 16 months.  We ended up contacting a ton this week because nearly all of our citas fell through!  It was a bummer.  And we had hardly any contacts either!  That´s not usual in this area.  We did finally got into a house on Saturday with this really old guy who was super nice, but I´m pretty sure he won´t remember a thing the next time we come.

About half of the economy in Honduras depends on door to door selling.  People walk down the callejones yelling whatever they have to sell, like Rica donuts hecho en casa!  Or Arreglamos lava manos, lava trastes, baños servicios!  Or Pescado!  And then people open their doors and buy it.  So while we were contacting the other day, a guy passes by selling homemade donuts so I bought a couple (I always get suckered in.  The things they carry always look so heavy, and the lug them around all day up hills!), and then he started serenading my companion!  He sang some song for like a good 3 minutes, just staring into his eyes. I was dying laughing.  He wasn´t even drunk!  Not too much more has happened this week.  We haven´t been able to put a date with any of our investigators, but we still have those four teetering on the edge so we´ll see what happens next week! 


Oh by the way, we have to stay inside Saturday, Sunday, and Monday now too so we won´t be writing until Tuesday.  I´m happy, feeling healthy, working hard, and learning a ton!  Don´t worry about me for a second.  Heavenly Father guides and helps His missionaries and His work.  Hey for Christmas it would be sweet to receive letters from all the family and little cousins!  Love you guys a ton! 

Elder Cook

This lady makes the best tortillas! She'll be baptized soon

We got to shower in brown water the other day!
We don´t know why it came out that way.

Elder Cook Week Thirty-Five

Quedito Familia

Changes are this week!  I might have a new companion.  The work is going great!  I love this area! We found a new family to teach!!!  The wife wants nothing to do with us but the husband is awesome!  After the three hours of church, he asked us if there was more!  He wants his family to participate so bad and asked us to do everything we can to get them involved so we planned a FHE this Tuesday and we hope that will do the trick.  He was so prepared to receive the gospel!  Our colonia is divided in zones, and this family is in zone 5. The members tell us not to waste our time there because the area is difficult, but we were determined to find someone and we found gold!  He´s been reading the Book of Mormon a bunch since the first visit.    

I love the mission so much!  It´s great to be a missionary.  We have about 4 other investigators right now.  They have all the lessons and believe everything, it´s just setting a date that´s difficult with them.  One of them, an older lady, told us she has made her own date for baptism in her head and will be baptized that day and no other.  But she won´t tell us what it is.  This one lady in the ward invited us over for cake for her daughter´s birthday the other day.  She´s convinced that I look just like some guy from her novela.  Everyone is obsessed with novelas here.  She showed me to all her friends that were there too, and they made me take pictures with them and their kids.  I ate something pretty cool this week too!  I forgot what it´s called, but basically it was a giant lizard, about the size of a cat.  It tasted alright, but we had to drink the lizard juice at the bottom of the bowl too.  Apparently Honduran legend says it can revitalize the dead or something like that.  Love you guys!

Elder Cook

Elder Cook Week Thirty-Four

We had a baptism Saturday!!!!!  It was awesome.  The missionaries have been working with him for a while.  At his baptism most of the people that attended were all kids his age, about 20, so hopefully we´ll get some good references out of that.  As a district Saturday, we had 5 people baptized and one family!  This area is so ready to receive the gospel.  We got 5 positive contacts yesterday and one guy even let us in to teach!  I am so pumped to be here.  And yeah the elections are on the 24th and 25th of this month and so President said to make sure we have food and water those days because we aren’t allowed to leave the house. Our next change would’ve fallen right on Christmas so President said that this change will only be 4 weeks, and the one after that 8 weeks!  That Costco place is called Price Mart but I´ve never gotten to go there.  It´s way outside of my areas.  I heard they sell donuts too, so I´ve wanted to go so bad!  Sorry not much has happened this week.  Just working hard, trying not to sound too Gringo, and breaking chairs.  Broke another this week, but luckily it was my own in the house.  I sit on the floor for studies in the morning now.  Love you!

Elder Cook