Every minute counts!

Dear Family,

You probably get bored of me saying this, but I can't believe it's preparation day again! The weeks just seem to fly by! This is going to have to be a short email because myldsmail has been giving me some difficulties.  :(  Oh well life goes on and we work through it!

Tuesday: Elder Taylor and I went on an exchange with Brandon Dial. We planned to go see a media referral that was way south in our area near Lake Secession. It took us 35 minutes to drive down to the area and find the road, but then we could not find the house. We drove around on the road on which she lives for about twenty minutes trying to find her address. Elder Taylor and I finally jumped out of the car and started knocking on doors with the intent to ask the neighbors if they knew where this lady lived. The first door we knocked on was the house we were looking for!  :)  We came in and taught a lesson, the lady was not very interested, but her son-in-law, Mark was very interested. We turned our teaching focus from her to him, and we taught a really good lesson. I'm excited to have another investigator, but it is going to be difficult to get down that far south to see him. I guess this is the Lord's way of making me stretch and grow and make me use the members more.  :) 

Wednesday morning Elder Taylor and I were out knocking doors and we met Colleen. When we introduced ourselves to her, she told us the reason she was talking to us was because she was so curious what we believed because all growing up whenever the "Mormons" came knocking on the door, her parents would close the door and blinds and tell everyone to be quiet until the missionaries left. This extreme reaction made her want to listen to our message. As we taught, she opened up more and more, and by the end of our lesson Colleen realized that our church teaches what she feels to be the truth (God loves us--not the belief that some preachers believe that God is a jealous God and if we do anything wrong he is going to thrust us down to hell.) When we asked for a return appointment, she asked us to come back that night to teach her husband Roy. We came back and taught another lesson, Roy is not as excited about the church, he feels its just another group of people worshiping God, but we will fix that....well I guess the Spirit will fix that as he comes to church. They have three daughters ages 12, 9, and 7. It is exciting to have a family to teach.

Laura is still doing great and progressing along very smoothly. She came to church yesterday so I think we may move her baptismal date from the 15th to the 8th. I'll have to see how what she says when we bring that up.

Thursday we went on an exchange with another member and after we saw everyone that we had planned, we were dropped off at the apartment at 8:50. The rule is that we have to be in at 9:00 unless we are teaching a lesson. We had ten minutes. There is not a lot of things one can do with ten minutes, but Elder Taylor and I decided to knock our apartment complex, and the first door we knocked on we met Brian. We taught a really good lesson. Brian has strong ties to another church so we will see what will happen there, but when we left he told us that he really needed to hear our message. I did not reply so he stopped us as we were walking away from his apartment and he said, "no, you don't understand, I REALLY needed to hear that. I know God sent you tonight." It was a great experience, and if Elder Taylor and I had decided to end our day ten minutes early (which I have never done and never will do), we would have missed out on that wonderful experience. It also taught me the importance of every minute. I love this work. I'm out of time. Have a great week!

Elder Cowan