Happy Father's Day

Dear Family and Friends,

Angela got baptized!!!!! It was a wonderful baptism!!! She was soooooo excited. We went by before the baptism on Saturday morning and she said that she didn't sleep all night because she was so excited. She is amazing. After church on Sunday she seemed so comfortable there and she really just seems to fit in. I am so excited for her. Her mom wants her to one day serve a mission, and I am excited to see if she chooses that option. She has a couple years to decide (she is only 13), but it would be so cool to see her progress in the Gospel that way.

We had a good week along with the baptism on Saturday. We spent some time on Friday morning visiting all the new sisters that we do exchanges with and it is so fun to see new missionaries excitement.

I have been having a lot of fun Physics freak out moments this past week too. On Wednesday night after our lesson with one of the families in the ward we went outside and he pointed out Mars, Jupiter and Venus in the sky. It was fun to spend some time just looking up into the sky and imagining all the wonderful creations of God. He told us that next week (this week) he would get out his telescope and we could see them up close! I am so excited.  Sister Price and I have also been talking a lot about keeping an eternal perspective and it reminded me of studying Einstein and how we know that time is only relative. It is cool to think that we can understand God's perspective a little bit more when we use laws of Physics.

I hope you all had a wonderful Father's Day! We were able to spend some time visiting some of the members and showing them my favorite Mormon Message Earthly Father, Heavenly Father. It is such a wonderful knowledge to have, that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us more than we can even comprehend. I am so grateful for all He does for me and all I can learn from Him every day.

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,
Sister Cook

BARSTOW!!!

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy first week of June! This week has been incredible. A lot of miracles and fun things have happened! On Monday we had a lesson with a family and they are interested in learning more, it was an incredible way to start off the week! Then we stopped by another investigator who we haven't seen in awhile and she was home and welcomed us right in. It was about 8:15pm and she still hadn't fed her family dinner yet, so she invited us to stay and have dinner and cake with her and her kids to celebrate her sons birthday. We had already had a huge dinner earlier that afternoon so it was an adventure trying to not be rude and eat her food while also being stuffed! Sister Price almost threw up when we got home, it was crazy!

We had MLC this past week on Thursday. I always love MLC and learning from President and Sister Hobbs, and feeling the Spirit in these meetings. We are focusing this month on Christlike Attributes and how to obtain Christlike Attributes. Sister Hobbs talked a lot about prayer and using prayer to connect with God and learn from Him. I was studying from the April General Conference Brother Teh's talk titled "Where Your Treasure Is" and it mentions that we can make sure we are following the Lord when we are seeking to obtain Christlike Attributes. When we desire to become more like Christ, then we are more willing to obey and follow His counsel.  I am excited to focus on becoming more like Christ and putting Him first so I can become a better disciple and missionary.

As you can tell from the title of this e-mail I also spent some time in Barstow this past week. I was on an exchange with Sister Richardson up in Barstow and we had a great day. We did service in the morning then went to In-n-Out for lunch. We had a really cool experience at In-n-Out where the two people behind us in line asked a lot of questions about us as missionaries. The line was really long so we were able to spend probably about 20 minutes talking to them about our role and what we do. It was really cool. Then we spend a couple hours out walking around Barstow trying to find new investigators and meet less active members of the ward. It was a great day.

We are excited for Angela. Her baptism is still scheduled for Saturday. She is excited and nervous. Pray for her and her family, please!

My testimony of this Gospel gets stronger and stronger every day. I know the Lord is hastening His work, and I am so excited to be such a large part of it.

I love you all and I would love to hear about what you are learning in your scripture studies and how your testimony of Christ is being strengthened.

Happy Father's Day on Sunday!

Love,
Sister Cook

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

Another week in the life of Sister Cook

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has gone well. Sister Price is no longer sick, she did pass on her illness to me, but luckily since I have been taking plenty of Vitamin C and have been gargling with Listerine about 5 times a day, I haven't been slowed down. We were able to do a lot of work this week and it has been great.

Our district set a goal to find 3 new investigators as a district this past week. We found one on Tuesday (she is the wife of a less active member who has been coming back to church! We are really excited!), and when we were talking to our district leader on Friday night he informed us that as a district we were at 9 new investigators for the week! It was so exciting to hear that! Sister Price and I have been working on setting goals that are realistic and it was cool to see that when we set a goal we all believed we could achieve (3 new investigators) He blessed us with so much more! My testimony that the Lord is really hastening His work has improved so much over the past couple of days!

We have had  a wonderful week with working with our recent converts and less active members. We were able to find some lost members (those who live in our area, but we don't have their records on our directory), teach a lot of lessons, and bring the Spirit into a lot of their homes. The miracles that I have been seeing on exchanges recently have been very closely related to our work with less actives. It has been incredible.

We had two exchanges this week. I got to spend the day in Hesperia on Wednesday. We set our goals and plans Tuesday night and it was really cool to see that most of our plans changed, but we were able to still achieve all of our goals! It was a good day. On Friday I was able to spend the day with Sister Richardson (my companion from last August- November). It was great to be with her again and feel of her Spirit and faith.

In Church yesterday the Young Women in the ward put on a Program for Sacrament Meeting. They had many of the young women get up and give short talks and they sang a couple musical numbers. Two of the young women sang one of my favorite songs "I Walk By Faith" by Janice Kapp Perry and then they sang the theme songs from the last two years as well (Come Unto Christ, and Stand in Holy Places). It was beautiful!

All in all, it has been a good week. I have learned a lot and been able to help and invite others to come unto Christ and it has been wonderful!

I love you all and I hope you find an opportunity this week to share with someone your testimony of Jesus Christ.

Love,
Sister Cook

A week of hope!

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been amazing! Sister Price and I have been having a lot of fun and we even saw some miracles, actually, we saw a lot of miracles.  We were able to achieve almost all our goals for the week and we ended it with a fantasticSunday.

We have been working with a part member family a lot recently and this past week we have seen a lot of progress with one of the daughters. She is 13 and has been coming to church the past couple weeks when we have been able to find a ride for her and just last night we invited her to be baptized on June 14th and she said YES! We are so excited, so keep Angela in your prayers!

We have also been working closely with a lot of our recent converts. There is one, her name is Vanessa, who we have been going over and reading the Book of Mormon with. Right now we are in 2 Nephi 17ish and it has been such a miracle to pray at the beginning of personal study to understand what Isaiah is saying and by the end be able to explain to Sister Price and then Vanessa what Isaiah is telling us and how to apply it in our lives.

We also had Zone Conference this week. We were able to learn from President and Sister Hobbs, his assistants and 1st counselor about how to be better missionaries. It is always great to be able to hear from our leaders how we can become better and then set goals to improve. It is all about becoming more like Christ and by following and being obedient to our leaders we can learn what we need to do to become more like Him.

We were asked to read Elder Bednar's talk Converted Unto the Lord to prepare for Zone Conference and as I have studied that talk and thought about what it means and have taught some of our members about it, it is incredible to see that we are here on this earth to really be converted unto Him. Every day we have choices we can make to choose whether to grow closer unto Him or further away. By consistently choosing to come closer to Him, we are converted day by day. The Lord has perfect timing, and conversion takes a long time. I know I have been discouraged sometimes when I haven't changed as much as I want over a specific time period; but, the Lord knows how much we can change and all that we can do and He will give us enough time to do everything we need to do.

We talked at church on Sunday about hope. The high council speaker focused his talk on the subject and then in Gospel Principles we tied the subject of repentance to hope as well. When we have that hope in a brighter future, and when we understand that our faith in Jesus Christ can give us hope it makes following Him so much easier. 

I have hope that someday I will live with God again. I hope that at that day I will have done my best so He will tell me "Well done."  I hope that I can share the light and joy of the Gospel with as many people as possible. And, I hope you will do the same.

I love you all, and I am so grateful for your love and support!

Love,
Sister Cook

Happy Mother's Day

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been crazy! We spent a lot of time in meetings, with the sisters, or in the apartment while Sister Price rested (she has been sick since Friday). We had Zone Meeting this past Tuesday and Sister Price and I were able to do a training on the Book of Mormon. It has helped me so much to renew my own testimony of the Book of Mormon and remember how powerful the Book of Mormon really is. Later that same night we had a lesson with a less active family and talked with them about the power of the Book of Mormon and showed the Mormon Message Origin and they commented that that was exactly what they needed to hear. It was really great to be able to see the Spirit working through us to teach them the lesson they needed to hear. I know that the Book of Mormon can change people's lives.

We were able to spend a lot of time this week with different sisters in our zone's. On Wednesday I was on an exchange with a fairly new sister and we were able to do a lot of service in our area and have a really busy day - it was fantastic. We were also planning to have an exchange on Friday so we exchanged Thursday night, but Sister Price called me in the morning saying she was really sick so we exchanged back before our studies on Friday morning and were able to spend some time that day letting Sister Price rest. On our way home from our half exchange we were able to stop by and see almost all the sisters we cover, so it was a blessing in disguise that we had to exchange back so early.

On Thursday we had a short meeting with President Hobbs and he told us that our mission is gaining 5 new missionaries this week from the Ukraine mission. They have been reassigned here to finish their mission due to all the turmoil going on there in Ukraine. There are 3 new sisters and 2 elders and we just found out a couple minutes ago that one of the sisters is going to be up here in Apple Valley! It would be crazy to have to be reassigned after spending so much time in a different country.

We had a great Mother's Day yesterday. We had our Bishop give the lesson during the third hour at church and he showed the Mormon Message My New Life. This one is so good. It was a good lesson to remind us about what is truly important in life and the importance of being grateful for the little things. Thanks Mom for being a great example to me! We were able to spend the day with some moms and to follow our family's tradition I sang "I Often Go Walking" pretty often. It was great.

Sister Price and I have been having a lot of fun and working hard. I am so grateful for all your wonderful examples and support and I love you all so much!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and find ways to feel more deeply the love of our Savior.

Love,

Sister Cook

The Power of the Book of Mormon

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy May everyone!  This month has started out great and I am excited to see what the rest of the month brings. We had a bunch of miracles happen this week and a lot of birthdays to celebrate as well, it has been fun.

On Wednesday we were on an exchange and the sister I was with wanted to bike, so we drove out to Silver Lakes and got our bikes and had a list of potential investigators and less actives we wanted to try and visit. We were going from one less active to another and had to bike up this pretty steep hill. About half way up the hill she was just too exhausted and couldn't go any further. She really needed some water and we hadn't brought any with us so she went to the next house that looked like someone was home and started knocking on the door to ask for water. A lady came to the window, noticed we were missionaries (she thought we were Jehovah's Witness) and walked away. The sister was really desperate for some water so she just sat on the floor and caught her breath while we rang the door bell again. Finally someone opened the door and I asked them for some water, they felt so bad for us that they quickly let us in and gave us some water. We ended up being able to talk to the lady who owned the house and she told us about how she has been having a hard time since her parents have both recently passed away. We were able to bear our testimonies and a scripture with her and it was truly incredible to feel the Spirit testify to her of what we said. She said we can come back and teach her more. I felt bad for pushing my companion so hard to make her ride even when she was exhausted, but it led to a miracle of meeting this wonderful lady.

On Thursday we were able to attend the monthly Mission Leadership Council and I was amazed at how many of the questions that have been on my mind recently were answered. I love those meetings because the Spirit is so strong and can speak so clearly to my heart.

Saturday we were able to go with our zone and the other Victorville zone to a service project. We spent from 6:30am - 1pm at a Off Highway Vehicle Recreation Park (basically a huge flat piece of land where you can drive really fast) pulling weeds, picking up rocks and trash. It was great to spend so much time outside doing service. I love service! It is kind of funny though that we were in the middle of a great desert pulling up the vegetation - it seems that we should have been planting it instead of killing it!  Later that day we were able to go to the baptism of two young boys into our ward. The elders had been teaching them and they asked me to play the piano so we were able to go and feel the great spirit there. It was incredible. It was also Sister Price's birthday on Saturday, so of course we had to celebrate that with a little party and some cupcakes. Birthdays on the mission are so much fun :D

Sunday we were able to have a great first lesson with a part member family that we are going to start teaching. It was great to testify of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and feel the Spirit fill the room.

I am so very grateful for this opportunity to serve and bear my testimony of the power of the Book of Mormon. Sister Price shared a really cool insight this morning during our studies that the Book of Mormon is our gateway to heaven. It is our way to communicate directly with God and if we ever need to hear from Him or understand direction from Him we can just open the Book of Mormon and learn straight from God. I testify to what she said, the Book of Mormon is our direct means to communicate from God. I am so grateful for the wonderful blessing it has been in my life and the opportunity I have to share it with those around me!

I love you all and I hope you have a great week and a happy Mother's Day!

Love,
Sister Cook