Elder Austin Russell Cook Philippines, Legazpi Mission 8-2016 thru 8-2018: I've really come to the point that I don't want to leave this area, but I will go wherever I'm called without complaint. I am very grateful for Elder Caballes and everything that he has taught me and helped me with.

This last week we did some of our best work yet and have OFFICIALLY established this area. We have baptisms lined up for literally every week in October and some for the first weeks of November, and all of them are very excited (about 15 in total). But the sad part is that I will probably be leaving this next week :( but at least I know that I am leaving the area in the very capable hands of Elder Caballes! By the way, just for the record, he's from a place called Baguio.

Nothing much happened this last week other than the usual work, and we found many new people who really want to hear our message and are very willing to accept our invitations to them. I've really come to the point that I don't want to leave this area, but I will go wherever I'm called without complaint. I am very grateful for Elder Caballes and everything that he has taught me and helped me with. He has by far been my best companion and I couldn't have asked for a better trainee/companion/friend. It's honestly going to be very hard to part with him. I imagine if all missionaries had the love and drive that Elder Caballes does, this world would be much more prepared for the second coming of the Lord

So I guess I'll just highlight a couple of parts from last week. The best part is that we found three new families to teach, but I want to talk about the Renancia Family. The father, Santiago, had a stroke last February and because of that it is very difficult for him to walk and to talk to us. But we found him and his family last week while we were tracting. We actually found his 13-year-old daughter, April Joy, and she was very kind to us and kind of showed us around her "neighborhood" and introduced us to all of her neighbors that we could teach. She was actually very mature for her age so we asked her if she could introduce us to her family, which she was happy to do. So we taught their family, and turns out their mom actually left to Manilla last year and told them she wasn't ever going to come back, so now it's just Santiago and his four kids. But they accepted us into their home and we taught them and it was a very fantastic lesson in which they all listened really well. Santiago tries to speak to us sometimes but we don't really understand him because of the stroke, so sometimes April Joy has to translate for him. At the end of the lesson, I gave them a picture of Jesus that I had just so happened to be carrying that day for no real reason, and as soon as I gave it to them they ran and taped it to the wall in the center of their home. I really love them and we are going back to them today to teach them again. :)

Cleaning the church with investigators

Also last Saturday we had a branch activity to clean our meetinghouse so that it's not so dirty for all of the visitors. And the best part is that three of our investigators came! We didn't even ask them to, they just told us they were coming to help us clean. To be honest, we didn't actually believe them, but then BOOM they showed up and wow that was a huge surprise haha. Oh also when we were cleaning the church, we have this kitchen in the upstairs that NO ONE uses because it is so disgustingly dirty. But I took on the challenge of trying to clean it by myself and the entire time I was like "Oh man, I wish mom was here she's a champion at this stuff. She would have this done perfectly in like 10 minutes"

But that's all I have time to type out today! I'll send some pictures of this week (even though I didn't take that many, sorry Mom) Love you all and hope ya'll have a great week!!

Elder Austin Cook