Elder Austin Russell Cook Philippines, Legazpi Mission 8-2016 thru 8-2018: 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