Being District Leader is awesome because it gives me such a great opportunity to get closer to the lives of all of the missionaries in the District.

Hey ya'll, how is everyone doing? This past week has really been quick, and has been as great as ever!

This is Monique. She's a Return missionary and 

is by far one of my favorites in the branch. 

She's like my sister here, so yeah, she's pretty dope.

So last Monday, literally RIGHT as we got done emailing, we got a text that our branch president's wife had passed away. She has had a REALLY nasty heart disease for the past 5 years that kind of makes it so that she can't even move and literally every breath is painful. So to be honest we were really shocked about it and were really sad, but then when we showed up to President's house he was joking and laughing and getting excited because, in his words, he can finally get married again. He really loved her and took care of her, but we think her heart disease was just a huge trial and burden in his life as well, so he's probably relieved that she's finally in that better place.

The rest of the week was just normal missionary work. Our only problem is that we have A

Having a little fun

TON of people that we want to teach, but it's a bunch of mothers and their kids. Of course, that's not a problem, but as missionaries we have a rule that if we want to teach anyone, there needs to be at least one more male present who is 18 years or older. So there's a lot of people to teach, we just don't have that male presence that we need, so it's kind of bumming us out a little. But we aren't worried  in the least, we always have hope and are always smiling!

We have ourselves several baptisms lined up for this Saturday, so life's going great. Being District Leader is awesome because it gives me such a great opportunity to get closer to the lives of all of the missionaries in the District. Most of the District Leaders that I know hate their calling, but I absolutely love it! All of the missionaries did much better this week than in previous weeks, so I'm proud of them all.

Selfie before coming to email today

I'm in the middle and Elder Hoecherl is in the blue sweater

That's all for now folks! This week will hopefully bring miracles and awesomeness (Of course, we always need awesomeness) 

Love you all, Ingat kayo!!

Elder Austin Cook

ps:  So Elder Hoecherl is one of my roommates and he found out it was my birthday on the 29th and bought us a cake and stuff, so hes great!

 Elder Caballes 

with my awesome companion

having some fun

This is called Fiesta. It's a HUGE event. There are a 

ton of street dancers, bands and stuff literally all day. 

One band group of street dancers can last about 2 hrs

We had to carry a bunch of chairs across the river.
This guy who is carrying 10 chairs...Yeah, hes a grandpa,
about 68 years old.