Monday, August 25, 2014

Argentina weather is more bipolar than any other place in the world

 The week from heat to rain to cold to oh my gosh Argentina
weather is more bipolar than any other place in the world. This last
week we have been dying from heat. Since monday i have just been
dying. We were up to about 80 to 90 degree weather all week but with
the humidity i was about to die. I seriously started to feel sick from
being out in the sun too long. Then i think to myself...freak i need
to drink more water, and i don't think this was as bad as florida. Then
we get to about saturday and the clouds roll in. We are now in a nice
cold weather where you really just feel you need a sweater just to
survive. I dont understand why 65 degrees just feels so cold now.
    The side of the work, i am absolutely loving working with my
companion. We have this one guy we are teaching. I feel like is a lot
older than i am but he is actually the same age as i am. He speaks
perfect english because he lived in layton utah for about 6 years.
When we go to his house, we teach him in english. This last week we
had a goal to get him to church again and as well as take his little
sister. Well we got to his house and we shared with him the mormon
message "Hope of Gods Light" the lesson wad just super spiritual and
it gave him the desires to go to church the next day. The last time he
came to church he was a little wasted and tired but this time he came
in happier than normal. He stayed the whole three hours and loved just
hanging out with us. He has seriously become a good friend of mine and
i can just see how much happiness he has right now.
   The next cool experience of the week had to be from yesterday as
well. We were invited to go eat dinner with a family that i have known
since my first couple days here. They are the ones that have the
helicopter in their garage. Well We went over and they had cooked a
goat asado. it was absolutely delicious. i just loved it and we had
salad and just so much good food. I have missed a good cooked asado.
The best part was though that we just had a good time with the family.
They are about 6 people and we had 4 of them there and we just all
started to laugh and have a ball with the time we had. I loved it. I
really just feel lucky with the friendships that i have made here in
this area.
    I love the mission, i love the area, i love my companion, i love
being a missionary, i love serving people, and i just love the fact
that i still have so much time to do the things that i am doing. I
love you all and i hope that you have just an amazing week.
         Elder Cook

Monday, August 18, 2014

new way of working, and just a ton load of fun

New district, new way of working, and just a ton load of fun.
    I got to say that just sums up the thing of this week. I am absolutely in love with the people in my district. we are in a district with all gringos. that means all four of us speak english. we speak English here and there but we have a new missionary in the pension so we are playing a game to help him learn spanish. We call this game Spanglafu. We have the goal to speak 100 percent pure spanish in the street and if we speak just one word of english we get the Spanglafu card and at the end of the night the two people who have the Spanglafu card play a game of Rock Paper Scissors and who ever has the most points at the end of the week has to buy dinner for the four of us. One of the missionaries has lost 3 nights in a row and so he is basically locked in to buying the dinner next week.  But the game is super fun and we get pretty into it.
    Elder Lacutoure is the best companion ever. He is absolutely awesome. We work so hard every day. we find ourselves just walking a ton every day. we have found just so many miracles and i just can't believe how many times we have gotten into a house and now felt the spirit so strong as we teach and testify together. As much as i loved the mini missionary, it is so different having someone who actually knows what he is doing and knows the lessons backward and forward. We have gotten along so well together and we just bust it up in the streets as we laugh and have fun together. I dont have my camera with me so i cant show a picture of the district or my companion but i will try for sure the next week.
     Anyway i don't have too much time to write but i just got to say i have seen sooo many miracles this week due to just having faith in the lord and that he would guide us in everything that we do. We have seriously only put faith in the spirit and we have found chosen people left and right this transfer. I absolutely love this area, i love the mission and i just in general love being a missionary.
    I love you all.
         Elder Cook

Monday, August 11, 2014

start the day off with an adventure

     So we start the day off with an adventure. Transfers came in this
last week and it ended up being that in our ward and district
everybody ended up being transferredexcept for me. they took out the
sisters and my mini went home. So it left me with getting 3 elders
today. The best of it  was today in the morning. They had told me i
would be going to the bus terminal to pick all 3 of my companions up.
Well it got to be about 1130 and we started to worry that my companion
wasnt there. He was supposed to be there at 930 and we had heard that
he actually had arrived there. After 2 hours of waiting no one knew
where my companion was and he was without a cell phone and no way to
call anyone or get in contact with us. So i was worried they had sent
my companion to some weird spot in the city where he was lost and
scared in the big city. Well gladly after 2 hours and a few frantic
phone calls, a member passed by the pension and found him waiting
patiently in front of the apartment door. we then flew over there so
he wouldn't be alone for too long and we finally got settled in.
   My new companions name is Elder Lactoure. He is from Parker
Colorado, about an hour away from Denver. He played tennis in High
School and loves to ski and mountain bike. an outdoorsy type of
person. i haven't had too much time to get to know him but i have a
feeling that we are just going to get to work and that we are going to
have some of the best times of our lives together.
   This last week has been filled with service projects. We had 3
different service projects this week and sadly i didn't bring my camera
so i couldnt get some good pictures to prove what i was doing. but it
all started tuesday when we cut down a willow for one of the members.
There are some branches that are precariously perched and he wanted to
cut them down before they fell into his house in the wind. so my
companion went up the tree and cut the branches and i was on the
ground breaking them into smaller bits so we could fit them into
garbage bags, we didn't finish that part because there are still a ton
of little branches and there isn't the great convenience of having
trash bins in your house.´
  other service was this friday we had to opportunity to sand the wall
of a member who is going to paint his house this week. the best part
about it was that while we were doing it, i cooked cinnamon rolls and
he was cooking an Argentine Asado. So pretty much we enjoyed the whole
Gringo Argentine experience with a good ole service project and
barbeque with a good fattening dessert. We were covered in dust
though. My clothes were completely white, it looked like we had
snuffed cocaine as well when we took of the masks because some of the
dust had entered in our face covers and only had the white powder
around our nose. it was super funny.
   and the final one was the same project we have been dong for the
last 3 weeks. we have been trying to put this electrical tubing in the
house of a member and we finally got everything placed and ready for
cables this last week. We got so much done that day. we had 4 people
or 2 groups of 2 people doing different rooms and we got things done
so fast. we cleaned up all the walls, and put the plastic tubing in,
and cemented them into the wall. this week they will be getting
someone to do all the connections and i will be finally able to see
the complete project and i will feel so happy just to see a light
switch multiple appliances running at one time. i will try to take a
picture of it sometime this week.
      Well i love you all so much and i am so excited for this
transfer and the weeks to come. i hope that everyone has a wonderful
week and i hope that everyone just has a happy wonderful time.
     Elder Cook

Monday, August 4, 2014

huge result of miracles

Another week of the same work but this end of the week we had a
huge result of miracles.
     First off, with the work here we have changed a lot in the way we
actually do the work. A lot more planning and a lot more talking with
members to help us out. Well with this we have focused a lot more on
the attendance of the sacrament meeting. We haven't had a lot of
success with reaching our goal of about 120 people at church. usually
we get around 90 people but this week with all the work we put in we
got 115 of our own members to church. i was so excited and even we had
more people that we weren't even planning for. The lord sure does bless a
good job well done. We Put the effort and we may not see all the fruits
until the end of the week. i love it.
   So it seems like this transfer has been titled the transfer that the
missionaries get to do a lot of service. as i informed my last email we
have been helping a member get her electrical done in her house. well
we still aren't done yet and hopefully by the end of this week it will
finally be done. We showed up this last saturday and we ended up being
the only ones to show up so we started beating into the walls to
atleast get the holes ready for the new wiring that is going in. i
accidentally whacked my hand with the hammer and it left one of my fingers
pretty bruised and swollen for a couple of days. Also we helped
someone cut their grass and now we have as well 3 more days this week for
service projects. We are keeping ourselves busy.
   I am sorry i don't have too much to write this week but it's because we
just did the same thing as we usually do but just a lot more. we put a
ton of energy into last week and as we head into our last week of the
transfer we are planning to do more than ever. i am just loving
the work and i am so privileged to be able to be part of the lord work. i
love it and everyday we see some sort of miracle.
   Love you all and until next week
           Elder Cook