Elder Cook: September Update

Sep 3
Everything is going well here! Well the week started off slow, we had a couple of good lessons, but right now we are struggling to find progressing investigators. We have a few good potential progressing investigators that we could commit to baptism in the first lesson, but they are always busy... We can never meet up with them so it is quite frustrating. But we are waiting right now and trying to find more people to teach. We have a pretty good pool of potentials but we can never catch them at home.. Ha but it's all good. We just have to be patient and wait for the Lord's time.
One cool thing that happened this week was that we went on splits and I went with a guy in the ward and he is awesome. He has really been helping us out lately with coming to lessons with us so that is great! We are seeing a great effort from the ward to help out with missionary work! We are taught to try and include the ward as much as possible! But anyway we went out and we had two really good lessons planned for some promising investigators but they both cancelled at the last minute so we had to go and contact some potential investigators which made me feel bad for my this Brother because that means just a bunch of walking around and knocking on doors to see if any people are home. But we had a little success, I think we contacted one person and set up an appointment to return. But the hour was nearing and we were supposed to go meet up with Elder Young and our mission leader and we decided to try one more house and so we went to this house who was  a less active member and talked to her and set up an appointment to come back. But as we were leaving, we met her son in law who was going through a rough time and he told us he wanted to change for the better so he could provide for his family and we talked to him for like 30 minutes and then it turned out to be great!
I love you all and look forward to hearing from you!!!

Love Elder Cook

Sep 9

This last week was a great one! It was super stressful though! But some of the highlights were that we got 3 people on date to be baptized and also we had 15 lessons which is pretty good! But I think it was friday that we had a long day where all of our appointments fell through and we were just riding our bikes in the hot sun. We were tryng to find people to teach and there was just no success. Well we get home around 9 pm and we open our door and there was a huge puddle in our kitchen! Well we had to mop it all up and we were confused what happened! Well it turns out that or water heater broke and was leaking so we had no hot water for the whole weekend and it's still not fixed... it has to be replaced. But anyway, hopefully it doesn't explode on us! Also I have to teach in district meeting this week! It is really intimidating because everyone in my district is at least 6 months out, and also we have the zone leaders in our district so I have to teach them for an hour.... I don't know how i am suppose to do that! But it will be good! Oh and also i have to take over the area tomorrow!!!!! That is scary because I will be in charge becuase we are going on splits and the District Leader is coming to our area and Elder Young is going to his! So that will be scary because I don't know where I am going to take him all day!! I have to think of a bunch of people we can maybe go teach! hopefully it wont be to bad. But anyway I have to go! See ya!
Love Elder Cook

Sep 16

This last week was a good one! We have 5 people on date to be baptized and we have one every week of October! A couple of them are really promising so we will see how it goes! But anyway this last week we finally got the leak to stop in our apartment... It turns out that it wasn't our water heater, so we shut off the water heater for no reason and so we could have been showering in hot water this whole time! But its alright! The apartment above us was the actual one leaking and whenever they would shower it would come down in the walls and leak pretty bad. We have to wear shoes in our apartment because our carpet is still wet. But at least we have hot water!! But this last week we were able to put two people on date to be baptized and so that was exciting! And also I don't know if I told you about one of our investigators that is being baptized, but his name is Ken and he was actually the first person that I was able to tract into the first week I was here and it was my first time going up an knocking on the door and seeing if they wanted to hear more about the message we had to share! Well it's really cool because all of a sudden him and his family are really progressing. He has accepted a date to be baptized on October 12 and his wife is still deciding! But she really wants to learn more so I could see her wanting to be baptized too. Hopefully! But yeah their family is great! They have a 3 month year old who has had a lot of medical problems and so that is hard for them, but we were able to give him a blessing and so far he is really doing well! So that is always an awesome experience! We give a lot of blessings out here because our ward has the hospital in our boundaries so we always get calls to go to the hospital to give blessings. I think we gave like 8 or 9 this last week! But anyway back to the family. They have another son named Carson, he is two. Anyway when they had him they really changed their lives around. Ken and Heidi (wife) use to do drugs and drink and when they had Carson they really turned their lives around and tried so hard to be the best parents they can be! And last they have a 9 year old girl who is super nice too! But that is the Jones family! Oh and also I was able to teach my District this last Thursday and it was pretty scary. I thought for sure I would end really early because I had an hour to teach but I ended up only sharing 1/4 of my lesson! So it went a lot better than I expected but I am still glad it is over! And also I was able to take over my area on Saturday because we went on exchanges and my District Leader came to my area so I had to lead everything and it went pretty well! We had 7 lessons planned for but all of them fell through..... haha but we contacted a lot of people and set up times to go see them! But I thought it was going to be hard to take over the area but it wasn't that bad! Oh and I made those muffins and they turned out great! They are really good and my companion loves gluten free muffins now! He had like 5 this morning! But everything is good here! I look forward to hearing from you all next week!
Love,

Elder Cook

Sep 23

I want to start off with a weird experience that happened to me while I was at the hospital going to give a blessing! We got a call to go give a blessing and so we went down to the hospital and we said the name of the person and they said they didn't have record of that person.... well after awhile of waiting while we were trying to call the person that called us back, some older lady walked out of the emergency room and walked by us and she looked at me and said 'I know you from somewhere' and shook my hand and winked and then walked off without shaking my companions hand or the member's that was with us! But it was really weird. Anyway it turns out that the person that we were going to see checked out before we got there!

We are going to the temple next week and that is way exciting! And also my birthday was pretty fun! We did missinoary work.... ha but I got the package that day and opened up all the presents and I love the new Book of Mormon and Bible! I am too scared to take it out in the field because I don't want to ruin them! Ha they are way nice! I just use them for studies in the morning for right now! But hope everything goes well and ill talk to ya next week!
Love Elder Cook