La taqueria diligencia

Hola mi familia!!!!

So this week one of my focuses was diligence! It’s always fun to see how the emails you send me can reflect the things or lessons I’ve just learned (Moms really good at it!). This week Spencer told me about his night of 3hrs of homework and it made me laugh again! We worked really hard this week with helping our investigators make friends and meet people in the wards where we are serving and it was a great week!

The Reyes family (Glenda and Jorge) are doing really well and we had a wonderful lesson where we taught Glenda about the plan of Salvation! She loved learning about what happens after we die and was so excited to come to church on Sunday to keep learning about the gospel. We also had a really great lesson with a less active member of the church named Ashley. She’s 29 and has 6 kids and is going through a really ugly divorce right now. Wednesday night she came over to the church for the first time since last November and as she learned about Joseph Smith and the restoration and prayed to receive a confirmation of its truthfulness, the spirit bore a strong witness to her and she felt such a strong desire to come back and feel the Saviors love again in her life. I love experiences like that! They seem to come and go so quickly and I try to do all I can to savor them! I really have a strong testimony of the power and authority of those who are called to preach the gospel. It’s such an interesting thing to see how people act when missionaries invite them to come closer to the savior...and I believe so strongly that the same way they respond is the way they would respond to the Savior Himself.

As a missionary I’ve learned that diligence is a great expression of one’s love. Often by being persistent at the little things we communicate our love to those we are serving or trying to help. I am so grateful for the Saviors example. He was so persistent in teaching those around him and observing their needs. I know that as we serve the Lord with all our heart might mind and strength and seek to do all we can to help others...we are able to see how we can bear their burdens through the Saviors love and make their lives easier! I know the Savior’s promise is true when He said:

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Con amor,

 
Elder Cook

Semana de la conferencia!

Hola mi familia!

This was a pretty great week! It was full of lots of learning and my checklist of things to do and put into practice seems longer than it’s ever been! It’s great though! Recently we’ve received a lot of great training on the importance of goals and planning and how a good goal only comes from good plans! Lots of desires means lots of plans which translates into lots of changes to make!

Things are going great with my new companion elder Munoz! He is great! I learn something new about Colombia just about every single day and it’s fun to compare the differences between his culture and the Mexicana cultura! Saturday we had a little lunch in between conference and he taught us how to make plantains (those banana like things that are really popular in South America). One of my goals for this month is to improve my culinary skills!

General Conference was a great experience! It was such a blessing to hear from the prophets and apostles and to learn directly the will of the Lord. In between the Saturday sessions Elder Munoz made the comment that he couldn’t believe that so much of the world could miss such a big event! I think the messages that left the biggest impression on me (aside from all of the apostolic testimonies) were the talks by Elder Bednar on the "loads" we carry and spiritual traction, and then Elder Zwick’s talk on communication! Being a better listener and listening with the intent of understanding is an area where I can definitely improve. In our area this week we had lots of cool experiences meeting people that I had talked with before. We made contact again with three families that I had met when I first came into this area back in December but with whom we hadn’t had contact for a few months! One of them, a man named Noe came to institute, 4 sessions of conference, and stayed for a baptism! Seeing him with his friend (who is a member) at conference reminded me of when Kelsey Sicker came over for conference and that led to her learning from the missionaries! That was such a fun experience!

This week I’m focusing on being a more patient Elder Cook.  In Romans 8, Paul teaches about the power of patience and the great need to develop more of this Christ like attribute:

25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I have a testimony of the redeeming and renewing power of His Atonement. Through him we can become better people and our efforts to make permanent changes in our natures and characters of being occur according to the faith and trust we place in Him. His example of Patient suffering and labor should motivate each of us to be kinder and more willing to sacrifice for others! I hope we can all be a little more patient this week!

Con amor,

Elder Cook!

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!

Placentero nos es trabajar!

Hola mi familia!

Hope spring break has been fun and safe so far for everyone! I had a great week! With lots of learning and I think something "crazy" happened just about every single day! One of the best lessons I’ve learned this week was just how clearly and directly Heavenly Father will speak to us if we take time to listen for the promptings of the Holy Ghost! Here are some of the highlights/good moments from this week:

-Tuesday we helped by moving furniture in and out of some of the apartments and it was a good opportunity to get to know some of the other missionaries better! After a district meeting we went to Wendy’s (I can never resist the opportunity to tell them that it started in Columbus!).

-Elder Ayers is preparing to go home on Wednesday and we've had fun helping him as he plans and prepares for all of his great adventures yet to come.

-Sunday was a marathon day! Saturday night we'd forgotten to fill up the truck and as we turned the key Sunday morning the gas light went on. We went about 27 miles that day without getting stranded! That was a tender mercy!

-Church was a marathon day! I attended the Spanish ward and played piano for 3 hymns and a special musical #, gave a talk and then we had a really good meeting with our new Bishop right afterwards. His name is Obispo Trevino and I actually taught his daughter (who’s not a member because she needs to get married) back when I was in Las Milpas. We spent the evening saying goodbye to some of the members and this morning we got to go eat breakfast with Joe and Lupita!

- We got transfers! I m excited! I’ll have 6 more weeks in Alamo Norte (hopefully 12!!!) and our area will actually be growing a lot bigger (we’re taking about half of the area above us). It’ll be a lot of work organizing everything and getting to know all the new families but I’m excited!

- For one of my studies this week I read a talk by President Uchtdorf!  In preparation for conference I thought I’d just share the video clip and invite ya’ll to watch it this week! https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/of-regrets-and-resolutions?lang=eng&query=regrets+and+resolutions

Thanks for all your love, support and prayers! I’m so grateful for this time I have to represent the Savior and it means so much to have wonderful and loving family and friends cheering me on. It makes me reflect on the angels in heaven that cheer us on in our mortal existence. While it’s rare that we hear from them and will most likely never see them in this life, their influence is felt the whole time! I know that we were prepared so well by loved ones before we came to this Earth in order to keep the special promises we made with our Heavenly Father. Equally, I know that there will be a great celestial fanfare for each of us if we do our best to live faithfully to the commandments and covenants of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Con mucho amor y animo

Elder Cook

Remember the Alamo!!!!!!!

Hola mi familia!!!!

Wow! This week went by so fast! And it was a great week too! Full of fun surprises good days and we met lots of really sincere people as well! This week we had a little more time to be in our area and it made me really appreciate it a lot more! We’re blessed to have lots of members of the church and they’re all so willing to help us and serve us! I love it! Tuesday we had a lesson at the home of a sister who had a baby about 2 weeks ago, but about 5 days after the baby she was back on her feet and living life normal again (she has 2 other small children ages 2 and 4). She definitely exemplifies a mother’s amazing ability to win a perpetual wrestling match with the kids while cooking dinner and doing 100 other things! We taught two of her friends inside her home and the visits ended with her bear hugging one of her friends who was in tears after praying the first time to know if God was real! It was a great experience!

On Thursday we also had a huge miracle! We’d just finished visiting the Ortega family (the wife was baptized about a month ago) and a car pulled up and a lady asked us in English if we could come by sometime and visit. She was in her 20's and her husband was driving and there was a young man in the back of the car as well! She told us her husband had seen us outside a few days before and wanted to talk to us! We set an appointment for the next day and came back to teach the Reyes family!!! They are an awesome family and the husband (Jorge) had tons of questions and it was fun to watch him find the answers on his own as the Holy Ghost taught him through the pictures of the Restoration pamphlet! On Saturday we introduced them to the Book of Mormon, Sunday they came to church for the first time and during gospel principles he received a call from a restaurant that wanted to have him come in for an interview (he had been out of work for about a week and told us that he’d lost his job because of some poor decisions in his life and wanted to change before he lost anything else important!) He's a good example to me of humility!

Lastly: A few more things I'm grateful for this week:

-Warm South Texas days (woohoo! they’re back!)

-Elder Ayers got to eat menudo for the 1st time (Google it!)

-A few old TMM missionaries came back to visit

-We got to sing hymns for lots of the members

-A really good visit with the Leija family

-Reading the story of Captain Moroni and Pahoran this week

-Feeling better after eating healthier (we’re make sandwiches from 12 grain bread...who knew they had that!)

- On Saturday as we pulled up to a house we saw a squirrel on a birdbath do a push up. It was hilarious!

I know the Lord loves each of us and as we recognize the blessings in our lives on a daily basis we’ll feel more peace and joy!

Have a great week!

Con amor y animo!

Elder Cook

Con amor y animo y ahinco por lo bueno!!!

Hola mi familia!!

This was a great week! We had 2 or 3 days of meetings still but it was still full of cool things! We’re getting lots of training on the new teaching methods and it’s fun to have such a big change up!

It’s been raining and coolish still (we thought the heat was back) but it still feels like February here! My testimony grew a lot this week in the power of prayer and I'm really grateful that we can help others to gain answers from their Heavenly Father! Here are a couple fun highlights as well!

-In our apartment we realized that in the Mexican culture..."graham crackers" don't exist! The Elders we lived with bought some this past week and it was a good sentimental snack of our "old culture".

-Presidente Maluenda really likes using math or the principles of math to teach us about missionary work! Ha-ha it really helps me to understand things better as far as measuring quantities of things (like love, obedience, hard work, attitude) and I feel like King Agrippa before Paul ..." Thou almost persuadeth me to be a *student of math* " (in the scripture it says Christian.) But it’s been fun to see something that before I thought was outright unpleasant have a useful function in my life....to put it short and with a pun... I’ve started to see the absolute value of math in life....har har!

- This week we had a week of the Breakfast of Campiones!!!! (Champions!!!...although ironically that word also means mushrooms in Spanish....no Spencer...I did not eat mushrooms for breakfast this week!) A couple of days I got ambitious with the cooking (had to prove the last name) and we had breakfasts of tortillas, bacon, hash browns, eggs, smoothies and toast (if you’re not hungry reading this you probably had a good lunch!) Stock up on tortillas for this summer!

Alright! One cool miracle as well! Saturday night I worked with Elder Merrill in his area on bikes and we talked to some really great people! About an hour or so left before the end of the night we saw a lady outside with her kids! We started talking to her and I shared with her how we took Sunday walks back at home! It turned out that she actually has been coming to our English ward for the last 3 months and the Elders just didn't know she lived in their area! Her husband is a member already and we met him too! We sat down for a lesson and at the end she prayed to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet and received an answer that he was! The Spirit was so strong and after her prayer she told us she wanted to get baptized! The next day at church they had already planned on having the baby blessing for their new born baby and then her brother in law (who was in the Lesson and is 16) got up and bore his testimony! It was super great and such a huge tender mercy! The thing she said that stood out to me the most was when she talked about all the little ways and miracles that have helped her feel God's love and how she feels like God is telling her exactly what she needs to do! We had a great ride home that night!

I know that our Heavenly Father hears and answers each of our prayers and that His plan is the best plan!

Con amor y animo y ahinco por lo bueno!!! (ha-ha)

Elder Cook

Como ensenar!!!

Hola mi familia!

This week was a pretty packed week! We had lots of training and a visit from the Missionary Department! It was super great! They've completely revamped our teaching approach and it’s been a lot of fun so far! There’s a lot more discussion now as we teach and the lessons are guided by the responses our investigators give as they are prompted by the spirit! We need lots and lots of practice but its lots and lots of fun! As I’ve reflected on teaching and learning it’s been interesting to see how so much of communication is just teaching and learning information! I love it!

A few fun experiences from this week:

We shared the restoration lesson with a member family and the kids knew so much and so they practically taught us everything! in the past it was a little tougher to keep their attention but because it was simple and based on pictures the kids taught us all of the lesson and we just helped them keep it in order!

-I got to work on bike in the downtown area of Pharr! One of the families we visited the husband's from Canton, Ohio! When I found out he was from Ohio I said "O-H"... with my arms up and he smiled and responded "I-O...Go Buckeyes!!!!  The other missionary joked with me that he thought we did some weird gang symbol or something. It was great!

-One of the families we’re visiting has a daughter who received such a strong answer she prayed to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet! She was so happy to see us the next day when we came by to visit and when we gave them the Book of Mormon she promised to read it in 3 hours!!! Ha-ha. It’s so great to see people’s eagerness to learn about the Gospel and the impelling influence that the Spirit has on accepting hearts!

-We had a late breakfast/brunch with a recent convert family in our area (Joe and Lupita!!!!) They’re doing super good! I re-discovered the simple beauty of breakfast tacos!!! (I’ll be making my own for breakfast this week....man...ya'll better stock up on tortillas cause that's all I’ll be eating this Summer!...de arina por favor!)

Stake conference was great this week! The biggest lesson I'm learning now in my mission is summed up in a quote from L. Tom Perry:

"There is just so much fun in church service!" ...really for me it’s that there is "So much fun in Christ's service"

The greatest service of all came through Jesus Christ’s act of sacrifice for our sins and to overcome death! Without this great act of love we truly all would be lost as Jacob teaches in the Book of Mormon:

"And this is not all—it has been made manifest unto me, for I have heard and seen; and it also has been made manifest unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, I know if there should be no atonement made all mankind must be lost."

I too have a testimony of this and I know that through the power of the Holy Ghost and through asking our Heavenly Father we can gain a testimony of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice! Each time we serve out of love this testimony is confirmed by the joy we feel in our hearts!

Have a wonderful week!!!

Con amor,

Elder Cook