New Transfer, New Sisters Helping Hands

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been a great week. Sister Price and I are excited to spend another transfer together and she will officially at the end of the transfer be my longest companion (2 transfers + 2 weeks). We have a lot of new sisters in the zones here in the desert and I am super excited to be working with them. It is going to be fun. We figured out exchanges for the transfer and might possibly do 3 in one week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) which would be crazy, but fun.

We had a busy week this week. We spent a couple days with the new sisters, either having lunch with them or just answering their questions. We also got to teach part of Young Women's on Tuesday. Our subject was Agency and Accountability because it was for their standards night. It was a good experience. The young women in the ward are great.

We were able to have another lesson with Jessica this week. She is great and we are still planning to try and have a tour with her of the church to help her not be as scared of coming. We had another one of our investigators, Angela, come to church yesterday! It was a great day at church!

Saturday we were able to help with the Mormon Helping Hands! It was my first time helping and getting to wear one of the yellow vests, it was pretty exciting. We helped spread some new wood chips in a park and cut mistletoe out of some treas. I never knew mistletoe grew as a fungus in the trees, but it does! 

We had some great lessons and I am still learning a lot this past week. I love being a missionary and being able to serve the Lord. He is protecting me and really helping me become the best I can.

I love you all and I want you all to know that I know this church is true!

Love,
Sister Cook

Happy Easter

APRIL 21, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Easter! We had a good Easter being able to visit all the sisters and wish them a happy Easter and say goodbye to some that were leaving with transfers. We gave them each an egg with a peep inside and a note. It was fun, I told Sister Price that days like that are when it is fun to have our assignment.

We had a couple really cool miracles happen this week! My testimony of miracles happening on exchanges increased exponentially this week. First on my exchange on Wednesday we had to walk most of the day since the sisters are running low on miles in their car and right as we leave the apartment a member of their ward is stopped at a stop light and yells if we want a ride, it was incredible. She gave us a ride the furthest distance we were going to have to walk! Then on Thursday in our lesson with our investigator Jessica we had an amazing lesson about the commandments to pray often, study our scriptures and obey God, then at the end of the lesson she said the closing prayer and it was incredible! Then on Saturday on another exchange we were meeting with our bishop in the morning and he had mentioned that a lady had called him asking about the ward because she just moved in and then Sister Havens (who was my companion for the day) freaked out because she knew the lady! So of course we quickly went to go visit her as soon as we could and she is amazing. I am really excited to work with her. And as we were there we mentioned that my normal companions name is Sister Price and she paused and then said, that is crazy because the first missionaries I ever met were named Sister Cook and Sister Price! It was really cool. Then later that day we were trying to visit some other less active's in the ward and at first couldn't find one address so we went to the next one and had a good conversation with this less active lady and later found out that our Bishop wanted us to try and visit her as well. It was an incredible day seeing the effects of following promptings and receiving revelation, while also asking our Bishop for people he wanted us to see. Miracles happen on exchanges!

So transfer news came and Sister Price and I are staying together another 6 weeks so she will be my longest companion after this transfer. (2 transfers plus the 2 weeks in the MTC :D). Not very many things have changed this transfer for the sisters we are over or our zone. I am excited for a new transfer though and the opportunity to keep trying hard and working in this ward!

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

Love,
Sister Cook

These pictures are of fairy houses Sis Cook made at a member's home :D

Something to Look Forward to

APRIL 14, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

What a great week we have ahead of us! Easter is on Sunday and I am so excited. I hope you all have heard about/seen/fell in love with already the church's Easter page easter.mormon.org and the video they released. It is amazing. Anything is possible because of Him. I hope you all get a chance to watch and share the video with everyone you know!

We have had a pretty good week. We had two exchanges this past week and I got to be an Hermana for a day on Saturday.  We didn't have any lessons because we were doing service all day, so I didn't get to use my Spanish skills, but I will keep working on them for our next exchange! The Hesperia stake does a Roadshow every two years for the youth and we were able to go and watch them perform, it was really cool, they did a great job.

Not much has changed since last week. Nicholas didn't come to church yesterday so we will have to change his baptismal date from May 3rd. Sister Price and I are borrowing bikes from one of the members to ride around in Silver Lakes and we will hopefully get a chance to ride them today - I am pretty excited. We have been working closely with the members this past week by sharing with them Elder Nielsen's talk "Hastening the Lord's Game Plan." It is incredible how much we can accomplish with the members helping us through prayer.

I hope you all have a good Easter.

I love you all,

Sister Cook

PS We have transfer calls this Saturday so with the trend I have been on I will probably be in a new place when I e-mail next week.

Pictures:

1. The ostrich farm in our area

2. The view from North Beach in Silver Lakes. It is beautiful :D

General Conference

APRIL 7th, 2014

Family and Friends,

What an incredible week. General Conference was amazing! I feel like I learned so much about what our Heavenly Father wants us to be doing over the next 6 months. Standing up for what we know is right, and working hard now. There seemed to be a sense of urgency in what everyone was saying. He is coming quicker than we think.

Other than conference this past weekend we had a pretty busy week. We have a new investigator named Nicholas who is really excited about learning so we met with him a lot this past week. He has agreed to be baptized on May 3rd so it has been fun to help him prepare and get excited about his baptism. We also went on an exchange Wednesday where I went in the other sister's area. Sister Price called after our studies and told me that Jenny was going to be able to be confirmed that night so we rearranged some of our plans so we could exchange back early so I could make it to Jenny's confirmation. It was an amazing experience. All of her kids were able to be there and the Spirit was so strong. She was talking to us afterwards and asking if it is normal to feel your heart beating so hard and feel really hot. It was incredible to know that she felt the Spirit so strong and she received the gift.

Thursday we had Mission Leadership Council (MLC) where we focused on Chapter 4 in Preach My Gospel and the First 12 Weeks Program. Sister Price and I are going to train on the 12 Week Program to the rest of our zone on Tuesday and I am really excited. I love the 12 Week Program. Sister Hobbs had called Salt Lake to ask them about the booklet and came back with some amazing insights, so we are excited to share those with the Zone tomorrow.

Friday we spent the morning with two sisters in Hesperia to help them weekly plan. It is always a long process, but it was nice to be with them and help them with other ideas to help those they are working with. We also had our ward's Relief Society Birthday dinner that night and one of the sisters in the ward played "For Good" from Wicked on the piano. I love that play! (I have had the song stuck in my head for a couple days now).

We watched conference at the church building and it is a tradition of the Tongan ward to provide lunch for the missionaries and others who watch conference at the church, so we were spoiled with being provided lunch both days!

We have a lot going on and a busy week scheduled. Sister Price are excited that we have been so busy!

I love you all and appreciate all your love and support!

Love,

Sister Cook

Sister's Conference

MARCH 31

Family and Friends,

This week has been busy, just like every other week of my mission. We have done a lot, yet I still feel like we should have accomplished so much more in a week. On Monday we went to visit a less active out in Silver Lakes who has a nice grand piano. He let me play it and it was so much fun. I wish I had more time to practice because I am definitely getting rusty. We went on two exchanges this week and had very busy days both times. I really love the sisters here in the mission and it is so much fun to exchange with them and learn how to improve and become better each day.

We had our semi-annual Sister's Conference on Saturday. We met together with all the sisters in the entire mission and had dinner - which was a fantastic homemade meal of enchiladas and rice made by a lady in one of the Upland wards, learned different ways to tie scarves, had a wall sit competition - the winner held a wall sit for an entire 10 minutes!, took a picture with all the sisters and then was able to watch the Women's Conference with everyone.  It was such a wonderful conference and I felt the Spirit so strongly. It was just amazing to see all the sisters of the church join together to learn and grow.

I am so excited for General Conference this next weekend. We were teaching one of the recent converts in the ward the principle of Following the Prophet last night and I mentioned that conference to me is like watching the newest episode of your favorite show on TV. You look forward to it for days (or even months) and just get so excited. I love being able to learn from the Prophet and hear the words that God would want us to hear.

I hope you all have a fantastic week and watch ALL of conference.  I am so excited.

I love you all.

Sister Cook

Happily Ever After

MARCH 24

Dear Family and Friends,

I feel like all the titles of my e-mails are really cheesy and unrealistically optimistic, but I promise today's actually applies. In Church yesterday one of the speakers was speaking about obedience and gave a really cool analogy. She mentioned that in fairytales a princess always needs her prince, a frog needs a kiss, a beast needs someone to recognize his true beauty, a lamp needs to be rubbed, but we know that we don't need anything to have our happily ever after. Christ has already performed the task, He is who we need and He will always be there, we just need to accept Him, have faith and live our happily ever after. I thought that was such a great analogy. We don't need anything else to find joy and happiness in this life other than Christ. Also, as I was studying this past week about submission and drawing closer to God I found a verse in Alma that says exactly my thoughts. Alma 22:18"I will give away all my sins to know thee."  That is what God asks of us, He asks that we give away all our sins, everything that we do that disables Him to grant us His Spirit. He doesn't require us to give away our kingdom's or our treasures if they are helping us achieve His will, but He asks us to give away our sins. Jenny has been a great example to me of this. She was baptized on Saturday and it was so beautiful to see her come up out of the water and be clean. She has worked so hard over the past 16 months of her life to get to where she is today and it is so wonderful to be a part of her story.

In other news, we went on two exchanges this past week. I feel like I learn so much more from these sisters than I ever teach them. We had fun both days and I realized how much the Lord trust us as His missionaries. It is incredible to know that we can always turn to Him in prayer and He wants so much to hear from us. We can tell Him anything and He won't judge or criticize us for the choices we make. I am so grateful to know that God really is our LOVING Heavenly Father. He loves us so much.

We have a good week planned for this week, we have two more exchanges and we have our semi-annual Sister's Conference. All the sisters in the mission are going to get together to watch the Women's Broadcast on Saturday. I am really excited, it is going to be really fun.

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

Love,
Sister Cook

Busy Week

February 18, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

We had a busy week last week, it was great. We went on two exchanges and had a lot of fun experiences.  I was with Hermana Munoz on Thursday here in Diamond Bar, then I left for Ontario for the day on Saturday to spend it with Sister Respecia. We had some great adventures and fun times. Hermana Munoz is brand new so I had to go digging through my stuff to find my 12 week training manual, it was fun to remember training and spend some time watching The District videos. She is great and has a lot of confidence. She is a great missionary. We practiced during her language study how to teach in English since she has grown up learning all her church stuff in Spanish. She is from Columbia. It was really fun. In Ontario Sister Respecia and I had fun trying to find some new people for their area. We spent a while at the park at talked with a really nice lady for awhile; it was great. I always feel like I learn so much more on exchanges than I ever teach these sisters. It was great.

We are still working in our area on trying to find some new people to teach. We have been trying to work a lot with part member families and really emphasizing talking with everyone. I have learned a lot.

We had a great valentine's day. The ward had a party with lots of really great food and Sister Ott and I heart attacked a couple people in the ward. It was really fun.

I hope everyone has a great week and had a good day off yesterday with the holiday.

I love you all!

Sister Cook