Spring Rain = Wife Points

March 30, 2009

Hello Family!
This has been one crazy week...but then again I don't think I will ever have a boring week on my mission. :D Tuesday we parked the car at a member's home and rode around on our bikes the entire day because it is near the end of the month and we are low on miles. We started the day by visiting a member's mother who does not want to join our church because we are quiet in our meetings. (She is used to the shouting and praising.) After we talked with her for awhile we went contacting and the first person we talked to was a lady named Melonie. She does not go to a church and she was very interested in what we believed. While teaching the first lesson, Melonie explained that she has cancer and the doctors told her she has less than a year to live. :( We had a wonderful lesson and I really think she is ready to accept the gospel into her life. On to Wednesday--It rained all day Wednesday. It was my first opportunity to use my rain jacket. I thought of dad's dream of wearing a big rain jacket on his mission. We biked in the rain for the major portion of the day. While contacting, we ran into a man named Barry Brown. This man is HUGE! He says he used to play football in the NFL, but that was six years ago, and all the muscle he must of had, has now turned to fat. When we taught him, all he was wearing was small basketball shorts. He had stretch marks on his belly. :P Anyways, back to missionary work...Barry is searching for more truth, he's been reading from the Koran, so we gave him a Book of Mormon and testified that he would find the truth he's searching for in the Book of Mormon. Wednesday night the zone leaders came and stayed the night with us. It was a very quick visit, I'm not even sure why they came but they stayed the night and then the next morning they left. It rained all day Thursday as well. It was raining harder and the wind had really picked up so instead of biking we thought it would be safer to walk. I just want you to know I love my shoes. I think it might be because I shine them on a regular bases, but they have kept my feet completely dry! We walked in a continuous puddle all day and my feet stayed dry. :) Nothing too exciting happened on Thursday, it was one of those days where the Lord just wanted to see if we would be faithful and work even in the rain. A member put it this way: We are gaining wife points. :) Whenever there is a difficult day, as long as we keep a positive attitude and continue to work to the best of our ability, the Lord may not bless us with investigators, but he will certainly give us beauty points towards our wives. :P That made me laugh. Friday was Zone Interviews. We had to drive to Greenville and we didn't get back until 7:00 that night. My interview with President McConkie was very short. When we weren't being interviewed, the assistants trained us. One of the assistants did a training on discerning investigators concerns, and the other assistant trained on answering those questions, the questions of the soul. After zone interviews, we planned to teach Luis and Gasper, but they were not there. We have not been able to get a hold of them since I got here. We tried to find people to teach but once again it was a wife point type of day. We didn't teach a single lesson. Saturday was supposed to be Nick's baptism and Luis and Gaspers. I'm not sure if I wrote about Nick in the last email but his mother would not sign the baptismal record so he could not get baptized. Luis and Gasper have not answered the phone for the past week and we have not been able to teach the rest of the lessons so we had to cancel their baptism as well. :( Instead of baptisms Elder Bowles and I focused on getting people to church. We tried to visit five of our investigators and not a single one was home. We then went contacting the rest of the day and we didn't teach a single person. It being the 5th Sunday, all the adults were combined and we (the missionaries) taught a lesson about member involvement in finding people. We showed the video "by small and simple things" and then passed out a card that we had created and put on a magnet so the members can put on their fridge and it was titled "My Missionary Commitment" our focus for the lesson was to remind the ward that as disciples of Jesus Christ they are responsible to testify of the truth. The card was a check list of things each member should do. I'll mail one home so you can know what I'm talking about. The meeting went very well. I hope it made the members excited to do missionary work. After church we went contacting (the rain finally stopped) :) but it was really windy and cold. I'm not sure what we need to do better but we once again did not teach a single lesson. We will just have to do better this next week.

Elder Cowan

I asked about Grandma's emails and you can just email it to me. I can also email other missionaries in the field as long as their mission president is fine with it. So Elder hill needs to ask if he can email me. :) I loved the package. The treats were delicious. Thank you very much. From the email I recieved from you mom, it sounded as if dad sent me an email as well but I never recieved it. Maybe he is sending it to the wrong place. I wish I had time to address the letters you sent me but I am out of time. I love you and I know the gospel is true! I have the greatest job!