Here We Go Again!

Dear Family and Friends,

I am e-mailing today from back 'down the hill.'  I got transferred to Rancho Cucamonga serving in the Terra Vista ward. My companion is Sister Edwards. She has been out almost a year and I have known her her whole mission! Sister Price trained her and I have been on multiple exchanges with her. It is going to be fun. We are whitewashing into the ward (meaning neither of us were in the ward before today), but Sister Edwards served in this ward before - back in November and December. They have realigned the boundaries and split the ward since she served here so it is a little different. They kept Sister Training Leaders in the Silver Lakes Ward - I was replaced with my namesake - the other Sister Cook - and her companion is Sister Green, who is coming from the Terra Vista ward. It is a fun switch. Sister Price is still a sister training leader here in Rancho Cucamonga - she is now MY sister training leader, I am excited! - and she is serving in a YSA ward! She is freaking out!  It will be a fun transfer.

As for my last week in Silver Lakes it was a good one. We had two exchanges and we weekly planned with the Barstow sisters. We had tons of lessons and we even had an investigator at church! It has been a good week. I am really going to miss that ward and the people there. On Sunday one of the members of the ward put together a little farewell party for all the missionaries leaving. It was just a small potluck at her house. It was nice to see everyone and say goodbye. We had a lesson with Vanessa after that and when we were saying goodbye she almost started to cry, it was terrible. Then we had a lesson with Angela and her family. It was good to see them all together as a family listening to our lesson, they have grown and changed so much since the first time we were over there! I am so excited to come back when they go to the Temple someday! Then later Sunday night we spoke at the Bishop Youth Discussion about missionary work. We were able to say goodbye to all the youth in the ward. I have grown so much to love the people here, it is really hard to leave.

I am excited for my new adventure here with Sister Edwards. We are going to have a great time together. 

Have a great week and remember the Lord loves you!

Love,
Sister Cook

Happy July

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy 4th of July! I hope you all were able to spend the day with family and friends and enjoy some fireworks! I know I did! As with most other holidays we are supposed to be home early - 6pm and Sister Price and I were lucky enough that we were able to see the fireworks in Victorville from our apartment window! It was super fun! We spent the whole day out in Silver Lakes biking around. It got pretty hot and a dust storm hit us, so we came home pretty dirty; but it was a successful bike ride because we were able to meet a lot of people and get to know our ward list a lot better.

We had an exciting exchange this past week on Wednesday. I was in our area with one of the new missionaries, Sister Martinez. She is from Durango, Mexico and didn't know any English before she came out on her mission. She has been here for 3 months now and is doing amazing! She spoke in our lessons more than I ever did during my first transfer. I was very impressed. We had so many miracles that day. We were able to teach a lesson every hour the whole day so Sister Martinez had plenty of practice to boost her confidence in her English! It was amazing.

We are still teaching a lot of the same families we have been teaching for awhile. We have a family out in Oro Grande that is doing well. They are a part member family and the member dad is preparing to baptize his two children. We had a great lesson of teaching the Plan of Salvation on Thursday. They have a lot of good questions and are eager to learn and grow in the Gospel.  We are also teaching a girl named Jessica - I might have mentioned her before. She has been going on a lot of trips across the country recently, but we stopped by this past week and saw her. She is still doing well and still progressing slowly. Keep her in your prayers.  We are working a lot with part member families right now and seeing a lot of success with that!

We had our Mission Leadership Council this past Thursday - it was a great meeting, as always. We talked mostly about Chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel which covers Using Time Wisely. We had a lot of great trainings about goal setting and planning and about creating a vision for those we are teaching. Ask yourself the question - What does God want to happen? That is your vision. Then ask - What am I not doing that is causing me to not reach my vision already? - that is your goal. Then ask - what can I do today to make sure to accomplish my goal - that is your plan. We used this when planning for all our lessons this week and it really helped us see God's vision of hastening the work and helping us be prepared for Christ's coming.

We have transfers this coming week so Sister Price and I are really working hard to leave our area stronger than we found it every day. It is crazy how quickly the transfers fly by.

I hope you all have a good week! Thanks for all your love and support!

Love,
Sister Cook

Interesting Week

Here is a picture of Sister Price and I at the family history center about a month ago.

Dear Family and Friends,

Sister Edwards and I have been having a good week. We came into this area with a lot on our plate. The ward boundaries have just recently been realligned and so there are a lot of less active members and people upset with the new boundaries. We have been working very closely with the members of the ward to build unity and trust between them. It has been really fun to get to know the wonderful people here. There is so much excitement for the work and I feel like missionary work is really what is going to unite the ward. We have been visiting some of the families that are on fire with the work and it is so exciting to go into their home and have them immediately start telling us about the people they are working with. We are having them use Preach My Gospel in their individual and 'companionship' studies and we are inviting families to use it for the Family Home Evenings. It makes it really fun to be a missionary when so many of the members are so excited and willing to help.

I have been thinking a lot this week about my purpose as a missionary and Sister Edwards and I have been discussing it a lot during our own companionship studies and it is amazing to realize how much of my purpose is simply to help. I help anyone who is willing to accept help come closer unto Christ. We invite people to do things because we Know that it can help them build their relationship with God.

We had some fun experiences this past week that I will share with you all. On Monday the ward organized a ward FHE. We had a group of about 20 members all together at the park. The elders shared a quick message then we played a game that is a mix between pictionary and telephone. It was super fun. One person would write a phrase on a piece of paper then pass it to the next person and they would try to draw it, then they would pass it to the next person who would write what they thought it was, pass their paper down, and keep rotating from guessing and drawing until it got back to the first person. It was super fun.

We have a lot of apartment complexes in our area (and a HUGE mall - Victoria Gardens), so we have spent numerous days this week trying to find our way through these apartments. We have gotten lost way too many times. We also figured out a trick to get into gated complexes: just walk through the front door! It is genius, I don't know why we didn't think of it before!

On Saturday we had a cool adventure of being able to spend the day with one of Sister Edwards good friends from the mission - Diana. She was baptized last November and moved down to LA, but she came back up to visit this past weekend and we took her out to some lessons with us. It was really fun! She is amazing!

Our days have been busy and we have been having lots of fun together. I can feel all the prayers taking effect - we are seeing miracles.  Thank you so much for all your support and love!

I know this Gospel is true and I know that God loves His children. If you haven't seen this Mormon Message - or even if you have - watch it and think about how much God loves you Earthly Father, Heavenly Father

Love,
Sister Cook

P.S.I forgot to mention in my big e-mail that we found out that we are having another Mission Conference at the end of the transfer and Elder Nelson from the Quorum of the Twelve will be there! I am super excited to have the opportunity to sit at the feet of another apostle and learn from Him.

Crazy Week

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you all have had a good week! I have to keep this short today because I don't have a ton of time. We decided since it was the last day of the month and we had some extra miles that we would take a drive, so we just barely got back. Here are some pictures of where we went :D

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It was fun.

Love,

Sister Cook

All Good Things Come Through Prayer

Dear Family and Friends,

Another week has come and gone for me here in Victorville. We had a busy week and we had a lot of fun. We had a district activity last Monday - this is probably only the second one we have had since I have moved up here in March - so Sister Price and I had fun with the Elders in our district running around the gym playing volleyball and basketball. It was nice to just get some energy out.

We had some good lessons this past week; Sister Price and I are becoming really good at teaching in unity and knowing what our investigators and those we are working with need to hear through the Spirit. I love being able to leave a lesson having learned something myself from either what Sister Price or myself taught. That is truly a successful lesson led by the Spirit.

We had two exchanges this past week. On Wednesday I spent the day with Sister Toolan here in Victorville and we had a great day full of lessons. She is a wonderful missionary and it was fun to laugh and teach with her. We also had an exchange with two Sisters in Hesperia. I spent the day there and it was ironic because a lot of the people we planned to see I had either met or tried to visit when I went to that area two transfers ago. It was really funny.

On Thursday our Zone Leaders planned to have our whole zone go to the Family History Center and learn a little more about family history from the consultants there. It was really fun! They showed us a couple different websites we can use and some of the tools on Family Search. The coolest, in my opinion, is a website called rootsmapper.com. You sign in with your LDS Account and it shows up with a map of where all your ancestors are from. I discovered that one of my ancestors was born in South Africa! It was really cool! They also showed us a website called puzzilla.org. There is so much cool stuff that you can do for family history right now! It is so much fun!

The title of my e-mail today is inspired by my studies this morning. I have been reading the New Testament recently because our mission this month is focusing on Chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel - Christlike Attributes, and I figured a good way to learn about Christ is to study His life. As I was reading in Luke this morning I noticed how often Christ prays. He prays before every major decision and usually He finds a solitary place to pray. I have been evaluating my own personal prayers recently and I have learned from the example of Christ and my own experiences that all good things come through prayer. When we pray to God about ALL things, He will direct us towards good. God will never deceive us and He will always help us when we ask. My testimony of prayer has increased do much over the past couple days. It is incredible what God will tell us when we ask.

I love you all and I hope you have a good week! Check out the family history stuff!!

Love,
Sister Cook