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

Hay Amor!!!

Hola mi familia!

One of the things I love most about the mission is seeing how much enjoyment comes out of the little things! Here are a few of the big and little things that happened this week!

-We had 3 days of training in McAllen and boy did we learn a lot!!! It was great to see former companions and missionaries I lived with and we saw lots of great miracles during the night times (we were in training from 10-6 and then had 3 hours each night to work).

-Elder Ayers and I participated in 4 musical numbers...it was super fun! One of which I got to accompany an Elder singing a solo for Be Still My Soul, and then Elder Ayers and I sang a duet with guitar of "I love to look for rainbows." It was great! Music and missionary work make such a good combo!

-Saturday I was back in Mercedes on bike and we found some really cool people to teach! We talked to a guy on top of a gas station roof who was looking for a church, felt impressed at one point to knock on a car window and that led to us helping a lady take in her groceries and then we taught her and her sister, and then we also met a few people that knew some of our members back in Alamo! It was really cool! I worked with an Elder Child who’s from Northern Utah and he's been with me both in McAllen and Brownsville! He’s a great friend and it was really good to spend the day learning from him! It was great being on a bike too...we even got a little rain!

-Sunday- We had some really good talks at church on forgiveness and charity!!! One thing one of the speakers said that really stood out to me was the fact that charity is being able to see a need in someone around us, then feeling a desire to help them and acting upon it in faith! I have a long way to go!

One of my new favorite scriptures is in 2 Peter 1! Here Peter talks about the process it takes for our faith to be transformed into charity! Elder Ayers and I looked at this list of characteristics and put it into a pyramid and it was interesting the progression!

5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;

7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Or
                                                                                              charity

                                                                        brotherly kindness

                                                            godliness

                                                patience

                                    temperance

                        knowledge

            virtue

diligence

The higher we get up on the scale! The higher our love grows! My favorite part of that verse though is the end where it says that as we develop these qualities or "Christ-like attributes" the more we come to know our Savior!!! What a beautiful thought! I know that charity never fails and that people never forget the ones that love them! I know that the greatest form of charity comes from the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He loves each of us!

Con amor y animo!!!

Elder Cook!!!

Hasta Ver!!!

Hola mi familia!

We’re doing really good down here in South Texas! The temperature got down to 33 this week and boy was that cold. No worries though...today we’re back up in the 80's again! It feels so good to have the heat back...hopefully it’s Springtime now!

We received transfer news this week! I’m staying here in Alamo/San Juan/Pharr which means I’ll be Elder Ayers’ final companion! We were both really excited and happy to hear the news! We had a lot of changes in the missionaries who serve around us but the new missionaries who are coming are good friends as well! Today I’m short on time so I'll just share a few thoughts I sent to Scott earlier today!

Being in South Texas is all just one big Eternal summer. Today we got up early to go take breakfast to some Elders getting transferred and as we drove home from Weslaco to McAllen I had the strangest sensation that I was back in time at the start of my mission. I felt as If I still had a whole two years ahead of me! Looking back it feels like I’ve climbed a huge lighthouse and I see all the stairs...but when you look up and out you can see and savor all the beauty for miles. I’ve decided the easiest part of ending is that most of my mission friends have been older than me in the mission or will be ending just a few months after me! The hardest part...well...I think it’ll be the release itself. Lately I’ve noticed how strangely people act around missionaries. Unconsciously they can sense in their spirit that we really are representatives of Jesus Christ and so they often behave the same way towards us as they would behave if the Savior was there. Last week for example we taught Rene about the Word of Wisdom. We committed him to live it and he accepted and then took about 15 minutes to just unload his burdens about how he had felt unappreciated at work and in his family. It was completely unrelated...but I could tell that that's what he would have told the Savior if He were there! People just often need to speak about the problems and troubles in their lives and because the Savior has suffered and experienced all of it they can feel that as they open up and share these things with His representatives they will feel peace and happiness. It really taught me the principle of being a representative of the Savior. How grateful I am for the authority and power of the calling of a missionary!

I’m so grateful to be a representative of Jesus Christ. I have a testimony that He lives. I am His disciple and my commission is to say what He would say, to do what He would do, and to minister to the very people He has sent me to in the way that He would if He were here. The happiness I am experiencing on my mission is greater than any other of my life before or that I’ve yet found in this world! Missionary work really is the best!

Con amor,

Elder Cook!

From February 3 - Judges 15:3-6 (La razon por el cual el auto dominio es tan importante!)

Hola mi familia!

All right: highlight moments from the week:

1) Round II with the dog that bit me! We went back to the same house (my companion had planned that house the night before and didn't tell me which house on that street we were going to....which is good because otherwise I might have objected) and this time as we walked up through the gate we saw no dog and I confidently told Elder Ayers "Let’s go, no one ever gets bit by the same dog twice!". About 5 seconds later the monster dog came charging at us and this time I had my backpack off and started swinging like crazy in 'defense mode!' Luckily the owner was nearby and no harm was done to the dog or my left ankle. It turned out to be the home of a recent convert who we thought had moved to Corpus but really was still living there! We had a great lesson and he referred us to a friend who we’re now teaching as well!

2) We had 2 different exchanges and Elder Stott (from BYU) taught me a lot about trusting in the Lord and working with urgency!

3) Played some morning basketball (Elder Ayers...my 6"7 companion has gotten a lot better since he figured out the art of dribbling and that if he gets closer to the hoop it’s pretty much impossible to block him!)

4) Sunday was a fun day! Everyone and their dog had a cookout so as we went by visiting people we had plenty of carne asada offers and even some pan dulce! Every house has a fence, a dog, and a homemade barbecue made out of a tire rim and scrap metal! I love the Valley!

5) I had some really great studies from the Bible this week reading in the first few chapters of James and then in Judges as well (Samson’s pretty crazy!).

All in all...it was a great week!

I am so grateful for the opportunity the Lord has given me to serve a mission. It helps me so much to feel my Heavenly Fathers love, to see the hand of the Savior in my own life and the lives of those around me, and to learn from the Spirit as I study, pray and serve others! Often people ask us why we come to South Texas to serve as missionaries and my answer usually comes out as something along the lines of "well, we know these things are true and we've seen the blessings and happiness that have come into our lives by living these things and we want to share them with everyone." Lately I’ve pondered that a little further and realized how much I keep going through that same process over and over again. Before my mission I knew how to believe in the gospel, how to learn it and to teach it and to some extent apply it to my own life. Here in South Texas I think that more than anything I’ve learned how to live the gospel, and how to make daily changes to live more accordingly with the plan that I know my Father in Heaven has for me. The most exciting moments of our week this week were times where Elder Ayers saw the families and individuals we're visiting making changes to come closer to God or to see those good changes from the past become firmly cemented and rooted into their character. We've got a great friend named Rene who continues to show us what it means to be completely honest with yourself, with God and with your fellow man. Another lady Lupita has such a great desire to learn things from the scriptures that she can put into practice today to help her become a better mother and wife. Another young woman, who recently went through a painful separation, has taught us how recognizable the peace of the gospel is! I love it! It’s great to see the light of Christ come into their lives and direct them to the truth! As I see people on my mission making changes and losing their old worldly selves as they are reborn in Christ it reminds me of the Savior’s words:

23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

I know the Savior expects so much of us and the reward will be great and we have so much to gain in this life and the life to come if we take up our cross daily in following His example!

Be happy and make a good change this week!!!

Con amor,

Elder Cook!!!!

P.S. Whenever we teach we say an opening and a closing prayer. One of us missionaries always says the first one and then last one is said by the person who’s being taught or who we’re visiting! Time after time they always pray for our families! So remember...the people you pray for often pray for you as well! It’s such a great thought isn't it?