This church is true, there's no simpler way to put it!

Hey kids, this week was pretty interesting!

So we've boiled down this area to the core, and we have learned the sad fact that we only have ONE investigator ready for baptism. She's great and 100% ready, but only one nonetheless, so we've gotta start changing something in the way we work.

So anyone who is familiar with the work knows that the best way to find investigators is through referrals from the members. Usually you would go visit the members, share a short message about the Restoration of the Gospel, and then ask who they know who could benefit from our message, and then BOOM you have a referral. Well our problem is this: We have about three active members in our area. All of the other members (which are many) live in the area of the other Elders in the ward, and we aren't allowed to cross area boundaries to visit those members, so we never get referrals! This means that all of our work comes from tracting... And we can see how effective that is, considering we've been straight tracting for 6 weeks and we only have one investigator that is progressing haha. But such is life.

We decided that if the only thing we can do to find is tracting, we must perfect the art of tracting. So we put together a little bundle kit type thing to give to people while we are tracting, or we just straight up give them a copy of the Restoration DVD so they can watch it on their own time. Our bundle kit that we hand out basically consists of "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," "The Living Christ," and a really cool pass along card with our names and information on it. Until thus far we still have yet to see anything great happen from it yet... But we won't give up easy, we will find those who are ready to receive the Gospel.

We also had this idea where we just bring a piano out to the park in Daraga and just sit me down in front of it to play. We don't really know much of a plan past that, but we think having a random white foreigner playing piano in a public place would attract a lot of attention, and maybe get some people to ask us what it is we are up to. At the very least we could just play some hymns in public as like a service thing that the people can enjoy.

Johnathan & his sister Lannie (our only investigator).
 Lannie has a scar on her face because she got
in gnarly accident on her motorcycle a month ago

That's pretty much it for our finding ideas though. Our investigator, on the other hand, is doing great! Lannie used to be scared to death of the Mormons, and now she really likes church and reads the Book of Mormon every day, and she's super excited for her baptism on May 5. She even came to a service project that the ward did last Saturday, so she really is getting involved with the church!

Elder Faka'osi and I are doing great! He's really cool and has a great desire to improve the work in the area. Overall, although our numbers are low here, we are happy!

This church is true, there's no simpler way to put it! We tell people about our message so many times in one day (and get rejected every single time) but we can't get tired of it. This is the Lord's work, so we just do efficiently and effectively.

Me and Elder Faka'osi

Love you all, and I'll email again next week!

Me and the kids in the Dean Family.

Made about 100+ Lumpia rolls for our
 food for the next two weeks.

Part of our apartment

Kitchen

Bedroom..notice the pillows my mom sent me and my comp

Nice living space with fridge too!

Tried some face masks...haha

Walking the streets of Daraga

Streets of Daraga

   

Met these kids that found a HUGE butterfly

Gotta love the size of the bugs

Walking to our Service Project

Johnathan and Lannie

Service project where we just tore down this house.
A member named Nanay Atos owns it

 

Service project... safety first

service project

My hair looks grey from all the dust

Waiting for a Jeep to pick us up

She leaned over to me and asked, "are there requirements to be baptized into this church?

Me, Sister Ieremia, and sister Marcos

Typing up emails every week is low key a struggle for me, because I have to type like twenty thousand other things besides my email... But I do this for all of you! So just remember: if you think no one loves you, at least I'm using effort to email you haha.

Last week was pretty hard work. I've learned this new thing where we just talk to everyone, and I think I pretty much spend every day talking until we go home at night. But of course it's not just talking, it's sharing God's plan with the people! Last week President Kotter just randomly showed up at our apartment on morning and told us that he was going to work with us that morning. I had always heard that he pulls stunts like that, but I've never had it happen to me until just last week. Anyways, we went out and taught one of our newest investigators named Cha, and she turned out to be SOO interested in the Book of Mormon! She had a whole notebook and was writing down everything that she learned from her reading inside of that notebook. She told us that it's SO AWESOME that there's another book about Jesus Christ with different characters testifying about him. Amazing right? Well, President Kotter took a picture with us and Cha as a remembrance for him working with us. And then a couple days later, at a mission conference, he displays this picture to the mission and tells them the story of how we found Cha, how we taught her, and how we got her interested in the Book of Mormon. He kind of used us as examples in the work, which was a really good feeling.

Well, the next day (after the mission conference), we went back for a return appointment with Cha to teach her more from the Book of Mormon, but right as we got there, she completely and flat out told us that she doesn't want us to teach her anymore. She said that she doesn't like the fact that there's another book about Jesus Christ because one is already enough, and she also doesn't like the fact that these characters in the Book of Mormon are different than the Bible... These were literally the SAME EXACT reasons that she LIKED the Book of Mormon just a few days before, so we assume her neighbors are talking really bad about us. I guess that problem is still ever present, even in this area. But we are now teaching Cha's brother who is like 24 years old, and he seems to be showing a lot of interest. We just hope he doesn't follow the example of his sister haha.

Mission Conference

We had only one investigator come to church yesterday, but while she was listening to the testimonies of each member, she leaned over to me and asked, "are there requirements to be baptized into this church?" So I opened up to Moroni 6:2-3 and told her that those are the requirements. We had to leave church early that day, but she ended up staying the whole time even though she knew absolutely no one there. We have a lesson with her tomorrow, so we will probably ask her if she wants to be baptized. Wish us luck!

So when you train a new missionary on the mission,
that missionary is called your "son." So Elder Caballes is my son.
This is a genealogy picture: Me, My son Elder Caballes,
my Grandson Elder Spencer, and my great grandson Elder Duarte

 The White Crew

 I don't know why my body is like that in this picture. Oh well

 That's mah companion

taking photos with my Companion

Sometimes I wear my glasses

I know that the Gospel is the ONE path that God created for all of His children

I love being a missionary!

Since Elder Caballes is the new Assistant, we got to go
on exchanges! That means I gotta work with
MAH BOI AGAIN!! Love this kid so much

This last week we hit the "reset" button on this area, so we basically tanked all of our old "investigators" because none of them really had any interest. I guess the other elders were teaching them just so they could have some numbers to report every week, but there was never really any desire in the people they were teaching.

So, yet again, I come into an area with absolutely no ground work, but I can say from the bottom of my heart that that is now my favorite thing to do! It's great because you know that everything you do from here on out is because of you and the Lord, so you can actually be proud of the investigators you find and the progress you help create in the Ward.

Anyways, we've hit the ground running this last week by talking to literally EVERYONE. Okay, I know that I'm already a talkative guy, but I can say with a surety that I have never talked so much and to so many people in my life. After about two hours of proselyting my mouth has run out of saliva, but we still have 6 hours after that, so we just press on with joy! We've already been experiencing the miracles from it! For example, last Friday we were tracting ALL DAY and didn't get ANYTHING and we were so close to giving up, but we refused to. At the end of our proselyting we were about to go in for the day, but we decided to just go one more, and that family let us in the second we knocked on their door and now they are very interested in our message! That happened maybe 4 or five times last week and now we have a couple new investigators to be teaching this week!

It's just amazing how the Lord fulfills his promises. In D&C 84:33 the Lord said, "For whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two priesthoods of which I have spoken, and the magnifying of their calling, are sanctified by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies." Every time I get exhausted and feel like giving up, I just shove a little more faith in it, and when I do that, my strength is renewed and I forget that I'm even tired. I love this Gospel and the blessings it brings. People always think and say that there is a different path for everyone, but I know that the Gospel is the ONE path that God created for all of His children. And that's why I'm out here- just to share this plan with others.

having some fun with Elder Cabelles

I hope you all have a great week! Love ya'll!
Elder Austin Cook ♥

Elder Cabellas and I

Workin in da Jungle!

Walking with my current companion