Hola mi familia!
Today its somewhere in the 80's, but the whole town of Mercedes
is decked out in Christmas decorations! It’s the craziest thing and I'm still
trying to get used to it! It’s been a great opportunity to talk with people, we
even ended up hanging up Christmas lights for a blind man (oh boy...talk about
hard communication in Spanish!...I learned a lot of good directional words that
day!).The highlight of the past week though was the Mission Conference with Elder Gregory A. Schweitzer! Thursday we went to a fireside he gave for recent converts and investigators. He shared a great lesson on teaching in our families and applied it to the 10 Commandments...he made the interesting point that the reason we are promised long lives for honoring our parents is because if our kids see us taking care of our parents, they'll take care of us when we're old! We brought Angelina our recent convert! She loved it! Keep her in your prayers the next few weeks! She has surgery this week and court to win back custody of her kids (The gospel does miracles for people!!!) the next week!
The mission conference was such a spiritually uplifting
experience. It was so wonderful to have all 190 of the Texas McAllen
missionaries there! It was like a big family reunion! It was great to see Elder
Stott, Elder Sanders, and Elder Hardin especially!!! We had a good time talking
and catching up! He speaks great Spanish! Elder Schweitzer taught us a lot
about the value of the Book of Mormon and as well how we can better help people
to repent before and after baptism. He invited us to study more fully how the
characters of the Book of Mormon have their own distinct personalities and how
they were real people with real lives and as well how the Book of Mormon is
such a miracle and the evidence of God's love for us today!
A few more fun highlights from the week...we taught a family
history lesson to our local librarian! Taught a lesson to a local pizza man who
wants to be baptized and had a less active sister come back to church (her
daughter isn’t a member and wants to start meeting with us as well! Spanish is
going great!
This week I had a little bit of time to study in 1
Corinthians 13....which mirrors Moroni 7 talking about charity. It’s such a
powerful chapter and helped me understand that of all the things we can become,
learn, or do, learning to love one another goes far beyond the others in
importance. Faith is the tool we have in this life to help us use the Atonement
of Jesus Christ to purify and perfect ourselves for living again with our
Heavenly Father. Someday, when we stand before God we will have that perfect
knowledge of Him and His Son and that need for faith will be no more. Then (as
Elder Eyring mentioned in his talk at conference) how we served the Savior and
really how well we have done at developing charity will be the most important
issue! I'm also realizing that with the people we teach, Heavenly Father has
the power to send angels to teach them the gospel, He could take away their
trials, give them the material blessings they need, but he chooses to send us
so that we can learn to love our brothers and sisters and so that we know how
to love each other as an Eternal Family. The only thing we have to offer others
that God can’t give them is the love and charity from our hearts!
Muchisimas gracias por sus oraciones, el amor, y todo! Con amor y carino,
Elder Cook
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