This has been a great last week to end my service as a full time missionary in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!

This has been a great last week to end my service as a full time missionary in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! I won't spend this email getting sentimental, but I am very grateful for the time that the Lord has granted to me to serve the people of the Philippines.

This last week we had the baptism of Aries and Jambie Bron! It was an amazing baptismal service, and the Spirit was felt strongly by all who were in attendance. As we stepped outside to take pictures before the actual service started, the sky was so beautiful as we could see huge beams of sunlight breaking through the clouds, almost as a testimony from God himself to Aries and Jambie that their decision to be baptized was right. I had the opportunity of baptizing Aries, and Elder Abrigo baptized Jambie. As Jambie came up out of the water she had tears in her eyes and told us that she felt so much lighter and peaceful about her entire life.

Elder Villegas and I were also able to find an AMAZING family yesterday, and they were very very excited to learn about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. They were actually taught by missionaries about two years ago, and they still remember Nephi and Lehi's dream about the tree of life. They had many questions, and they even want to come to church this next Sunday. I won't be there to see them, but I hope that things go well for Elder Villegas in this area when I'm gone.

Anyways, I'm very excited to come home this next week! I always thought that if you have been a successful missionary, then you will be sad to go home. I almost believed that it was required for good missionaries. So I started to feel a lot of sadness about two weeks ago, but then I realized that I don't have to be sad, and that the Lord wants me to be happy and at peace about the work that I have done for Him on my mission. So now I've chosen to be happy instead. Funny how happiness is a choice right? So I am excited to see all of you again, especially my family and close friends. I'm excited to continue life as I return home to Las Vegas.

I know this church is true, as is the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith was the Prophet chosen to restore the Gospel here in earth, and President Nelson is the living Prophet chosen to guide us in these times. God lives and loves us, as does His Son, Jesus Christ. I love you all and will see you in a short couple of days!

Elder Austin Cook 

I can say that it was the best birthday surprise that I've ever received

Okay, so I haven't emailed in a couple of weeks, so my bad for that one. But this is officially my last full week to serve as a full time missionary, and the feeling is a little different. But I am currently refusing to get sentimental on my last days because I know that that can be destructive to my personal happiness haha. But these days are great!!

First off, the best thing that happened last week was a surprise visit that I got on my birthday! Probably my strongest convert on the mission, Twinkle Frilles, traveled many hours just to come to church in Comun and visit me on my birthday! It was great to see her and Sandra on my birthday, and I can say that it was the best birthday surprise that I've ever received. I had nothing to give in return, but I am grateful to God for the tender mercies that He freely gives us. So we walked into the meetinghouse and BOOM Twinkle was already there and I was really surprised because they got there before us. So we talked for like 15 minutes before church started. It was nice to just talk to her because it brought back so many amazing memories from Irosin. It was like a member of my family came to visit. I felt bad because I couldn't hug her, but I know she understands 😂 And then they had some surprises and gifts and letters for me, and it just made me so happy. She also gave me a flash drive with some videos of the members from Irosin all wishing me a happy birthday. Honestly I've never received a greater birthday gift than all of this. We just talked as much as we could before the time ran out, but the time did out as it always does. But It really gave me the perfect close to my missionary service. Seeing those that I helped more than a year ago brought so much warmth to my heart. It was hard saying goodbye again, but I'll still keep in constant contact with her through facebook! I'm just glad that she took pictures of it all, because I have nothing on my camera haha

Elder Villegas and I are working hard everyday! We have a baptism lined up for this Saturday for our investigators Aries and Jambie Bron. They are a younger couple, and we have been teaching them over the course of this past month and we have seen their strong desire to become disciples of Christ. This will be my last baptism of the mission, as well as Elder Villegas's first! We are very excited for them.

This next week will just be focused on finding because we don't really have any investigators besides those two haha. Wish us luck!! 

Below are some of the photos Twinkle took of my awesome Birthday Surprise! :) and wonderful Sandra ♥

It's Official.... I'm Coming Home

Mayon Skyline Volcano Photos

This week was even better than the last! Elder Villegas and I set some pretty high goals when I first got into the area, but those goals have unfortunately not yet been met by us. But I can say with absolute certainty that we are doing everything in our power (physically, mentally, spiritually) to continue to reach those goals. It helps us think harder, plan smarter, and work with more urgency.

This week has been full of just straight work and finding. Some days we don't even have full time in the mornings to get ready or to study because we are excited to rush straight to work. I love Elder Villegas because he loves to work just as hard, so we get along real well. In our work we are serious and diligent, but we are also very close and love to joke around with everyone. It's a really good mix that we have in this companionship.

Honestly, I don't really know what to update on here. I'll just slip in some personal thoughts.

Last week we met a man named Emilio. He claims that he has no specific religion, but he studied at a religious seminary for ten years, so he knows a lot about the Bible. He started by telling us that he had only ONE question for us, and that if we could answer it, then he would listen to our message. He asked: If Adam and Eve were both white, then where did all of the different races in the world come from? We were pretty unsure if we should answer him or not because we felt like he wouldn't accept our answer, so we just told him that we didn't know. He proceeded to tell us that back in ancient biblical times, angels came down from heaven to marry people here on earth, and the angels that married women and DIDN'T return back to heaven because of their disobedience were cursed with black skin. We tried to explain to him that the answer to his difficult question can actually be found in the Book of Mormon, but he absolutely refused to receive anything that came from the Book of Mormon.

We were pretty speechless after that because his claim has absolutely no realistic basis...

Weird stuff right? But it pointed out, yet again, that no matter how much knowledge a person has about the bible and religious things, if they don't accept the Book of Mormon to be the word of God, then their knowledge pretty much levels out to nothing. This man continued trying to make endless points on doctrine that is very vague in the Bible, but is so clear in the Book of Mormon. If this man would have only accepted the Book of Mormon, he would have the answers to literally all of his questions. We laughed about it afterwards because most of the primary children in this church know more about God's plan for us than Emilio did.

In conclusion, the Book of Mormon is true kids! Read it! That's it for this week, thanks for tuning in, stay classy ya'll ;)

I LOVE THIS NEW AREA!!! This area is great, my companion is awesome, and the members and investigators are the best.

I LOVE THIS NEW AREA!!!

This area is great, my companion is awesome, and the members and investigators are the best.

So my new area is a small area called Comun. Our apartment is in a city called Tabaco, and in order to get to our area in Comun every day, we need to take a 30 minute tricy ride in order to reach our area, so it's pretty expensive for travel here. But this apartment is BY FAR the cleanest, largest, and nicest apartment I've been in my whole mission, and it really helps me to focus on the work more.

My companion, Elder Villegas, is a high quality missionary. He's actually really new on the mission (about four months) so he really wants to learn as much as he can from me in my last month here. He's very humble and is always asking me to teach him how to do certain things better (finding, teaching, planning, etc), and he always applies my advice into his work. We have set goals to find ONE FAMILY every week to baptize. Let me tell you, I have never dedicated myself to the work harder than I have this last week. All of the prayers, the planning, the awkward Gospel conversations with people just to find families is extremely hard work. But this last week we were able to find one absolutely golden family, the Bermundo family. We were only able to teach them once, but the father of the family is very interested in what we are teaching. In our first visit with them, they told us that they are looking for Jesus Christ's true church (I can't make this stuff up) and we just straight up told them, "HEY YOU FOUND IT!!" We also found two other really good families. They aren't as golden, but they have a lot of potential.

Our efforts don't stop there though, we have to find another family this week! So back to planning and goal setting in order to find them.

The members here are also great! I don't know what it is about this area, but as soon as I met all of the members here it felt like I had known them for years. I feel like I'm already best friends with all of them! Our attendance at church yesterday was 52, and I already know almost all of their names and have already visited their homes. There are A TON of part members here, so that is our hunt for this next transfer. The members are VERY excited to refer their family members to us to teach them, so we will be working very smart and quickly in order to befriend and teach all of the part members here. I'm just wondering why the past missionaries haven't been seeing all of these ideas, but I've since learned that there has been a lot of disobedience in this area for the past two years or so. But the trust of the members is practically already solid with us, so we are set!

Elder Villegas and I are so excited for this next transfer in every way. I might not be around to see all of the fruits of our labors, but that doesn't stop us from giving it our all. The church is true and this is the greatest work that we can participate in!!

(Sorry, there are NO pictures for the week... My mom's gonna kill me...)🔫

Me my last new companion, 

Elder Villegas and a stellar member

                                                                        

I got the news that I will be transferred to a new area called Comun. President is sending me out there to help my new companion to be a leader

I learned a priceless lesson this last week. The whole of the lesson was actually learned in about 20 minutes or so, but I think the Lord has been preparing me for the last four and a half months to get me to those final 20 minutes, in order to teach me the things that I needed to learn. I won't go deep into the details, but Elder David and I have really been having a lot of friction this past transfer (so for the past 6 weeks) but neither of us talked about it. It was kind of under the surface stuff, but it was VERY obvious that both of us were irritated.

Well, last Friday, we finally opened up to each other about all of the things we were irritated with. We used very blunt words to explain what we were feeling, and turns out that we were both feeling the EXACT same thing about each other. The conversation lasted about 20 minutes, but by the end, there was not even a trace of anger or frustration between the two of us. Crazy how we both just sat and suffered for 6 weeks when all we needed was a twenty minute talk to put it past us. Valuable lessons for the future. I assume this lesson might come in handy when I'm married hahaha.

Anyways, as far as the work goes, this last week was GREAT for finding! We have made it a goal to talk to as many people as we can in the streets, and really focus our finding efforts on families. So anytime we saw a family sitting together, or just a couple sitting together, we just walked straight up to them and tried to introduce the Gospel. We ended up finding two families who are very humble, kind, and interested in the Gospel and in what we have to share. We are very excited to see the progression these two families will make. We were able to teach both of them in their homes, and they really seemed to get what we taught and showed that they were very interested.

We also found an attorney! That probably doesn't sound that cool to you guys, but here it's a pretty big deal because all of the attorneys and the lawyers here are VERY prideful and don't want anything to do with us. But we were tracting late one night and found this guy named Edgar Abitria. We briefly shared a 2 minute message of the Restoration, and he told us to come back the next day to teach him in his office. We did, of course, come back the next day, and it was one of the most professional visits that I've experienced here on my mission. He was actually very humble and respectful (asked a ton of questions) but he told us that he wants to hear more about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Cool stuff right?

Just last night I got the news that I will be transferred to a new area called Comun, which isn't too far from where I'm at right now. I know nothing about this new place, all I know is that it's supposed to be a very beautiful place. I don't know who my new companion is, all I know is that he's a special assignment for me. The Assistants told me that President is sending me out there to help my new companion to be a leader. I guess we will see how these next six weeks go! I have high hopes though. Either way, I'll be home pretty soon, so I plan on giving it my all in this new area.

 Photo with some ward memebers

This is Fred! Hes from Pennsylvania, and he's super cool. We took some farewell pictures with him. He lives in the apartment underneath us. He hates Mormons, but he loves us haha.