I'm starting to realize how important a belief in God is.

So this week was really good! We found some super fun people to teach, kept ourselves pretty busy, and just had an overall great week!

So one of our new favorite groups of people we like to teach are the boarder girls. I don't remember if I mentioned them last time, but while we were going door to door looking for people to teach, we ran into this one house where like four 21-year-old girls opened the door and just started screaming because they were so excited to see two white guys standing at their door. Before we could even tell them who we were, they just told us to come inside. I didn't want to (because there was no man in the house, and it's not allowed to teach girls without another male present) but Elder Perkins kind of disregarded that, so I followed him inside. Turns out it was a boarding house, a place where college girls live because it’s close to where they go to school, so there were like 20 college girls in there who were all just so excited to see us. We were only there for like 5 minutes before I finally got Elder Perkins to leave, but they were SUPER excited for us to teach them. We've been back a couple times since then (And yes, we bring an older guy with us who is like 35) and they are so excited for us to visit. I was pretty sure it's just because we are white, but hey, whatever works. Eventually, I thought, they'll start listening to what we have to say and believe in what we teach. And this week that happened! Two of the girls we were teaching now want to be baptized! One of them especially really believes in what we teach, and absolutely believes in the Book of Mormon, and in the Plan of Happiness. And I really have high hopes for the rest of the girls in there.

And then there’s the boarder guys. They are also college students who all live together, and they love it when we come around and teach. We haven’t seen much improvement in them, but there's this one guy, Sherwin, who is awesome. He’s super funny and inappropriate and he's just the best. He doesn’t do anything we ask him to do (read the Book of Mormon, pray, go to church, etc) so we didn’t have any expectations for him. But then one day we asked him to pray and ask God if our messages were true and if the Book of Mormon really is another testament of Jesus Christ. He then asked us and told us that he doesn't even know why it’s important to pray about it, because apparently HE ALREADY BELIEVED US. Here we were just assuming he didn't believe us because he hadn’t been praying or reading the Book of Mormon, but here he is the whole time already believing that Joseph Smith restored Christ's church to the world again, and he believes that the Book of Mormon is true. Needless to say, he now wants to be baptized. So yeah, everyone we are teaching really seem to be progressing!

Our Zone

Getting ready to take a photo of our zone 

I'm starting to realize how important a belief in God is. Honestly, if we as people don't have any belief in God, or put any thought into what our purpose here is, or where we go after this life, we need to really reconsider our train of thought. I think about it, and our time here on Earth is short compared to all of Eternity. And if we live this life right, we can go back and live with our Heavenly Father again. Now, if we don't put any thought into religion, or God, or any of this, our state after we die will be pointless. In this life, we just eat, drink, and sleep, just like any other being does, but after we die, then what? There HAS TO BE MORE. If there isn't more, then there is no point in living, we would just die and disappear. But we don't. We are here to be the best we can be, to follow in the footsteps of Christ so that we can make it back to the presence of our Heavenly Father who loves us with an infinite and unconditional love.

That was just a little thought I had this week. Maybe it doesn't make sense the way I worded it, so sorry about that. But that's what I believe. Anyways, I still hope all of you are doing well and are happy and keeping yourselves out of trouble!! I love you all and miss you all a ton!

Love Elder Austin Cook