Hola!

Hola mi familia!

One of my goals this transfer is to do a lot better job at taking and sending pictures! It’s definitely a weakness! This picture we took this morning at the mission office after cleaning out the truck. Preparation days, after studies and cleaning, we go to La Vista to vacuum out the truck and turn in some reports. Then we email at the library. Next we’ll shop and do laundry and then probably go play sports or do something fun at the church with other missionaries!

Wow! My life has changed a lot in the last 7 days! My new companion is Elder Munoz!!! He's from Colombia! I’m super excited to have a companion from another country and now we just mostly speak Spanish (unless I get frustrated about expressing myself and have to switch to English!) He's a great Elder and we've had a ton of fun so far! While Elder Ayers was my tallest companion and the tallest in our mission, Elder Munoz is the smallest! Ha-ha…it makes me feel dyslexic about my height! We had lots of changes with the transfer and our area actually gained a whole new area. It’s been a lot of work organizing it and trying to balance things with the area we covered before but it’s a great challenge for me and after 4or 5 months here definitely keeps things fresh! I feel a lot like I did when I went up to Corpus Christi earlier in my mission! There are 10,000 things to do and never enough time in the day to take care of it...music and food help me not to stress so much! As well, I’ve started running more in the mornings and that has been really enjoyable! I’ve missed it a lot! In our area right now we’re visiting this really cool family named the Reyes family (Glenda, Jorge and Marvin, Gayell, Bridgette y Jocelyn). They’re a lot of fun and the kids are a handful but they help us to be creative!

Lately I’ve learned a lot about pride and how most of our struggles come in one way or another from pride. A few of our investigators have struggled with making commitments to God because they feel that they need to do more. They set the standard higher for themselves then where the Lord's set it. For me, it’s been so sad to see when a person’s pride holds them back from the Atonement. President Benson taught this really well in one of his talks! He said:"Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing.

The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.

Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s. When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of “my will and not thine be done.” As Paul said, they “seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.” (Philip. 2:21.)"

Later on he closes with this invitation:

Let us choose to be humble.

We can choose to humble ourselves by conquering enmity toward our brothers and sisters, esteeming them as ourselves, and lifting them as high as or higher than we are.

We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisement.

We can choose to humble ourselves by forgiving those who have offended us.

We can choose to humble ourselves by rendering selfless service.

We can choose to humble ourselves by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble others.

We can choose to humble ourselves by getting to the temple more frequently.

We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God.

We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, submitting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives.

Let us choose to be humble. We can do it. I know we can.

I have a testimony that as we seek the will of the Lord and do small Christ like actions to bless others, we lose our pride and grow in humility! I know that the Savior wants to love us and the only thing that keeps us back from feeling that love ever is our own pride or selfish interest! I need to be a lot more humble and in the next 12 weeks I’ll be doing all I can to make that change!

Thanks for your letters! Glad to see you had fun on spring break!

Con amor,

Elder Cook!