World Cup.......CRAZY!!!

World Cup.......CRAZY!!! we have come to a time here in argentina that is considered very sacred to everyone. I mean this is Super Bowl level but every day of the week for one month. It just started this week and i didn't think it would affect us too much but i underestimated it a ton. First off every house that we get in to has a game going on. From the time of 3 to 10 at night you will have some sort of game on or some sort of futbol talk. Yesterday Argentina played against Bosnia and the whole nation shut down. We as missionaries have been given permission to watch a few fo the games which include those of Argentina and of The United States, but only on a few conditions which we try to meet because my companion is a huge fan of watching futbol and i can not lie saying that in my time here i have grown to love playing and watching soccer. The United States plays today and i don't think we will be able to watch it because we have a family home evening but i wont be surprised if i hear a little bit of whats going on from someone. But so thats how we as missionaries are surviving the long awaited world cup.


Some great miracles have happened this week. First off we have been working with a less active family that lived in Utah for a time being and know live here in ARgentina. Some of the kids speak a lot of English so when we are there we find ourselves speaking a lot of English which to me is a little strange at first be also a little cool because it is out of the ordinary now. But the coolest part of it was that this sunday the oldest brother of the family came to church this sunday. YAY it was super cool. We have become super good friends with him and have been helping him out not feel too stressed about all the stuff that has been going on. This family is passing through a lot because their mom has just gotten back from surgery. She went into surgery about two weeks ago fro Breast Cancer and they are now sure that all the cancer is gone and so she is now just recovering. It has been a long road and a huge fight and now they are just all recovering and we are helping them out with that part of things. But god helps his children.


Other than that i really don't have too much time to write but just to let everybody know that i am loving the mission. you see so many miracles and i just am so grateful for all the wonderful lives that i have seen change in seconds. i love feeling the spirit and i love just seeing the gospel take affect in the lives of the people that are in Cordoba.


I love you all!


Elder Cook

things are starting to get rolling

 Week four of the new transfer and things are starting to get
rolling. Just yesterday i had a super cool meeting with all the new
district leaders in the mission and i can say that i absolutely love
my mission president. He is just a super cool and legit guy that knows
a lot about the gospel. i guess when you were a seventy and then being
a mission president does give you a few cool experiences to see the
gospel in everyones lives. He is super down to earth and really does
just have a pure desire to help us in the lords work and he knows how
to speak and teach. I would love one day just to see him teach one of
the missionary lessons.
   so this last week i had a little taste of home. Our ward mission
leader is a super cool guy first off. Him And his wife take a bunch of
trips to the united states and bring things back from the US that they
love and always have a ton. So first off...he knows how to make root
beer...i drank my first glass of root beer since i was in Florida and i
dont really remember drinking that too much because i preferred water
or gatorade. but can i just say that i really miss root beer. i didnt
realize it until i took my first glass. i had three that day and i
almost died. Yeah i miss some food from the US.
   My new comp is absolutely awesome. We are getting a long super well
and he is sure helping me out not to get too stressed out. he helps me
out with ideas on how to help the district and ways that i myself
could just improve. For example these last couple of weeks my
companion was telling me that i should play around with my hair a
little to make it seem like i actually care about how i
look...apparently i didnt before hahaha. so he did just that. We
played around with my hair and found that the side swipe was the way
to go. so you may notice a change in hair due in the pictures that i
send.
   The area is super sick we have found some really cool people and we
are working with one family that hasn't come to church for the last 10
years. When i first got their i was told by her and the ward that the
family had absolutely no desires to come back to church due to an
incident that happened in the past with her kids. But recently the
whole family has showed desires to come back to church and not just
that but in that time there have been a lot of people who now are old
enough to be baptized who weren't before. This family i have gotten
super close to and i just cant wait to see what ends up happening with
them.
   Also with the area we have found some great spots to look down at
the city of cordoba. i have really noticed how the city has its own
beauty to it and i just love it. Sometimes i think to myself i would
love just to live in a small country town but i don't think i could
ever be too far away from a decently sized city. Anyways i have found
that i just love being around the city. now that i finally appreciate
it i think that i can just keep accepting the fact that i might just
be in the city for the majority of the mission.
   Anyway i love you all and i hope that the week is going superbly
amazing for everyone. i am loving it so much. Hasta Luego!
      Elder Cook

I GOT HIT WITH A COLD!!!!

 I GOT HIT WITH A COLD!!!!

     This week was filled with tough mornings, rough starts, runny noses, a lot of coughing, and being bundled up all day long. Usually when i start getting sick means that it has been getting super cold here. In the mornings we are found usually bundled up with everything we got. a blanket and sweat shirts, and sweats and taking some time to warm ourselves up. I made the mistake one day after lunch to not take a jacket and that night it got super cold. yeah the next morning i found myself with a nice old cold and with a little of a fever. it was not a fun night. But the great thing is the lord sure does bless those that are dedicated to the work so i just bundled myself up with my jacket and a scarf and got out to work. The worst part of it all though is that just as i am recovering my companion is now sick and he has to go through the same lengthy recovery. YAY FOR COMPANIONS!

    Anyway the week was super good though. We had a mission conference this week where Elder Viñas of the quorum of the 70 came to visit and he talked a lot about the atonement and how that has affected us as missionaries. Super spiritual experience and i was super more excited to apply all the things that he taught. Another part of the conference though was the office put together a little choir of 12 people together to sing for the conference. Well lets just say word has been spilling around that i sing so i was chosen to sing for the choir. And not only that i was chosen to sing a special number of Be Still my Soul in a quartet. The only thing was i was chosen to sing tenor...well if you read the above statement...i am going to say that having a cold and tenor just doesn't mix. I was super worried about singing. The part was decently high and i had a hard time, but i was blessed with a clear throat just for the two songs and then returned back to being sick again. Lords Tender Mercies.

    A cool spiritual thing about this week was we ended up having two super cool lessons with 2 different guys. Both basically accepted to be baptized and both committed going to church. For one reason or another neither came to church but the lessons were super cool and super spiritual. THe things that i learned during the lesson was that the spirit teaches a lot more than i ever can. All i do is just speak words sometimes not even the most eloquent words. I just speak spanish and the next thing you know they are testifying to me about how these things could change and affect their life. I love being a missionary.

    Anyways i love you all and i hope that this next week i get to give everyone a little bit better news and even better spiritual experiences to talk about.

    Love

       Elder Cook

Another week has flown by for me here in my new area

Another week has flown by for me here in my new area. a little stressing just because a lot of things ended up passing by in my first week here. First off First week here and we had a baptism on saturday. We baptized an old lady named Segunda. She is about 79 years old and she is a super sweet old lady. She is super funny as well. She doesnt understand everything that we taught her but she does know one thing. She feels a lot happier know that she was baptized and confirmed then she was beore. She now has said that she will be coming to our church for the rest of her life. Funnier part is that she nagson my companion for acting bad a church. The funniest part was for sure after the baptism when she punched him rightin the gut for not telling her to bring a comb....haha yeah super funny. My companion Elder Martin is from Draper Utah. And he went to Alta High. He has a little under 10 months in the mission and is super cool. A super big tie addict and is super cool. we get a long really well. Something that i have found is that whenyou are in a gringo companionship you end up talking a lot more english. We talk english a lo tbut the best part of it all is that we just switch between english and spanish all the time and it just doesnt affectus anymore. It is super cool. The ward that i am in is for sure different. I went from 40 people going to church to 100 people going to church.i did feel like we filled up our chapel a lot more than from my other branch. This ward is super cool i am already falling in love with all our members. Our ward mission leader speaks a ton load of english so he speaks a lot with us in English. Him and his wife take a lot of trips up to the US so they have learned a lot. They are super cool and jsut getting to know the wrad makes me super happy because i know that i am going to get a long with everyone. To end it i guess i could just say that i love the mission. You really get to see the happiness that the gospel brings to people. I for sure saw it in more than one family this week and i am super greatful that i got to be part of it all. I love you all ElderCook

I left the nice little branch of Jardin

TRANSFERS!!!!! Yup i left the nice little branch of Jardin to a new area called Parque capital. Lets just say that it isn't really too far from where i was at before. It is actually about 25 minutes away from my old area. But in a different stake. I am now in The Estaca Oeste (West Stake) But the funny thing is the last stake center where i was at is about 2 blocks from where i am living now....hahahahahah. yeah i feel like i haven't gone too far. My new companion is from Draper Utah. his name is Elder Martin. He played soccer before the mission and this is his third area in the mission. He has about 10 months in the mission and he has been in this area for at least 1 or 2 transfers...i need to ask him that. The area that i am in is an actual ward. My first ward here in Argentinian so we will see how things turn out. From what i heard they have about 100 people attending church weekly which is a lot more than i have had in my time here in argentina. More than that i guess i could just say i am really getting used to saying goodbye to a lot of people, but there are just some families where i just couldn't help but crying like a little baby to say goodbye. I had about 4 or 5 families where it was just really difficult to say goodbye. Especially to the members that lived below us. And not just that to say goodbye to the friends that i had made. Elder Celis and Elder Mendoza left as well to other parts of the mission. They had a bigger travel day then i did like 4 or 5 hours of travel but it was for sure hard to hug them and just say goodbye. anyways i really don't have too much to say just because of a new area and all that fun stuff. but i hope that next week i have some great news about the new area and how much just changing areas can change things. I am still in the City and i am still in an area that is pretty populated so i guess i will just continue to work hard and do the work. I love you all and until next week! Elder Cook

Mother's Day

Wow...how does time fly....

                 so with the phone call and all that stuff now passed i realize how little time we get as missionaries. in the last week i have experienced a lot of great hings and a lot of eye opener experiences that i will try to explain in this little section of an opportunity i have.

    So we start of on monday. So we had the activity and they had a spiritual thought. i know i wrote on tuesday but something that kind of affected me throughout the week was a thought that came to mind. One of the people there said we need to have our vision in the eternities. well so i started seeing a lot of things in eternities this week and i realized how much i was lacking in the area. unfinished reports and papers, unfinished invitations to people, and just not an urgency to the work. I had realized that i had something so precious and that i really didn't understand it well enough to have the urgency. Sometimes we don't realize what we have as members of the church.

    Anyway so this week was a lot of catch up work. We ended up looking through what we were missing as a matter of our area book and we just filled everything out. Then when we completed it all we made a promise to never get behind again, so a little more work but we get it done.

  Another opportunity was the fact that we hadn't caught up on a few really positive people in our area so we did that. With that we decided to go to Bouwer and try to contact some people. We ended up having a great lesson out in Bouwer with a lady name Julia. By the end of the lesson we invited her to be baptized and she accepted. YAY! the work sure continues on.

    And finally it made me think of the relationships that i am able to experience here on the mission. First and foremost my companion. I needed to be more reliant on his experiences as well as letting him grow from the experiences and trying not to baby him as much. So it was really hard for us both. As well as i tried to have a better relationship with those around em as other missionaries and members as well. IT sure did help me realize i only have a short time to learn from the people here on the mission some only a month, some 6, and some just for a few days. but one things is for sure i am growing up a ton, and that isn't just in weight.

  Anyway. i love the mission life and today was a great day to relax a bit from the norm. We went bowling, explored down town cordoba, and spent some time with just some really good friends. The mission life is awesome. I love it and i love all of you. Hasta luego!

   Elder Cook

It made me feel super good that i was able to be part of it

Well i don't have too much to talk about for this week. It wasn't really that big of a deal...Well that and that we changed everything about how we do the work and how we plan for our weeks. Last last week we received a new training on how our mission will be counting numbers and how it will be planning for people here on out until the end of the year. Basically they have changed all of our daily goals that we set and all our weekly goals that we set. Now a days we are more expected to work with the members and leaders of our ward or else our numbers don't show. One thing that does change is that now we are all responsible for all attendance at our church meetings. we now count less active member attendance, recent convert attendance, and investigator attendance. This first week was super interesting because the numbers that we ended up having seemed super low for a week but that was just because of a different focus. But the great thing is that this focus works. Other than that this week was just getting used to the new way of working. One thing that was cool was that yesterday we went up to the mountains to help out one of the areas in our zone. we contacted for about 3 hours and we ended up finding some of the coolest people. we found people who were ready for the gospel. one even whose mom died just 2 weeks before and was looking for answers in the bible. we read some things from the book of mormon and the next thing we know she is asking us about where the church was and at what time they meet. It made me feel super good that i was able to be part of it. Also we found a house that seemed to just have left Star Wars. If anyone remembers how the houses look like from Tatooine, that was how it was.I don't have a picture of it sadly but another missionary that i was with does and he said he will send it to me so i will have to see if he can send it to me. Well i love you all and i am sorry i don't have too much more to say but i just can't think of much to say. than i love you all and i am very thankful of what i have. At times i don't realize what i really have in my life and that i have the opportunity to share it. Elder Cook