Achieving Goals (Plus Pictures!)

Sister Price and I on the ride at Scandia last Monday.

My district this past transfer: From the left Top: Elder Verelia, Elder Cuellar, Elder Hair, Elder Schmidt. Bottom: Elder Robbins, Elder Sheppard, Sister Cook, Sister Price

Me and my hedgehog fairy house made by Shanna and Sister Koopman

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you all have had a fantastic week. Mine and Sister Price's has been incredible. We started it off by getting Angela excited about baptism and we ended it with her as well. It has been such a great week to spend time with our investigators and finding some new ones and just helping them feel God's love. Angela is always so happy whenever we talk about her baptism and it is just contagious. The Gospel makes people happy - that is why I do what I do every day, and that is why this all works.  We have a lesson scheduled with a new family tonight and I am just so excited to share with them the hope that can come from believing in Christ.

Today marks the beginning of a new transfer and I am excited to report that Sister Price and I will be staying together here in the Silver Lakes Ward. We were so nervous for the call from our district leader on Saturday and so relieved when it came and we learned we were both staying. So, I will be here until about the middle of July and hopefully I won't die from the heat. (Pray that I will stay cool, please). In other news with transfers I learned that Sister Ott is coming up here to Hesperia to train a new missionary so I will get to go on an exchange with her sometime this transfer! I am so excited :D I am really looking forward to everything that we will be able to accomplish over the next 6 weeks.

I have been focusing a lot over the last couple of weeks on the Book of Mormon and I wanted to be able to strengthen my testimony in receiving answers to my questions from the Book of Mormon. I want to share some experiences I have had over the last couple of days that has allowed me to do this. First, I set a goal this past week to place a copy of the Book of Mormon. I hadn't had a chance all week until yesterday. We had a referral from the elders in our ward and we went out to try to contact them and right after we said the prayer before we left the car I knew that this would be my chance to place my copy of the Book of Mormon. I grabbed one from the trunk and Sister Price and I walked up to the house. The kids were playing outside and we asked if their mom was home. One ran inside and got his mom and we were able to talk with her for a minute. She was busy right then, but we scheduled to come back the next day (today) to teach them more. I asked if the elders had given them a copy of the Book of Mormon and she said no so I was able to give her the copy I had grabbed. The cool part of the story is that as we were leaving one of the little boys asked if we knew who Jesus was. The mom told him, yeah they know about Jesus and they are going to teach us about him. He responded and said, I want to know who Jesus is. It was a really cool experience to see this family want so much to learn about Jesus and I am so excited to share with them more of the Book of Mormon to really teach them who Jesus is and what He did for us. This relates really well to the other experiences I had this week with really feeling and knowing who Christ is to me from reading the Book of Mormon. I think I have mentioned before that we are reading with one of our recent converts, Vanessa, through the Book of Mormon and right now we are reading with her in the Isaiah chapters of 2 Nephi. Sister Price and I have been studying a little every day so we can be prepared for our lessons with her. As I was reading one day this week I was so touched by the power of Isaiah's words in describing Christ and all that He has done for us. The song "The Messiah" by Handel has been playing in my head all week, and I love all the titles of Christ - Wonderful Counselor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Christ is there to help us with EVERYTHING. There is nothing in our lives that Christ can not help us with. My testimony of Him has grown so much over the past month, and I am so grateful for all that He has done for me.

I hope you all have been having wonderful experiences with the Book of Mormon and I would LOVE to hear about them.

Thank you for all your love and support!

Sister Cook