Great but Weird Week

Man this week was strange. Started off really slow. On Monday we had Alex, Anthony, and Ajiatic (the Witherspoons) come with us to this members house who has a raquetball court in his basement. That was fun, played mostly basketball instead of raquetball. The rest of Monday and Tuesday consisted of E. Pasa Vaili saying goodbye and packing so not a whole lot got done. We ate so much food on Tuesday. Like we had a meal at 1:00 one at 3:00 and one at 5:00 with desert and man I was full. Then we obviously ate a ton on Thanksgiving too. I was like sweet I've been eating so much food maybe I fatten up a bit!... nope. Not a single pound gained.

My new companion is pretty awesome. We get along really well and he's a fantastic teacher. He's from S. California and has been out for like 11 months. We have been working really hard to help this new zone get moving. There are 20 missionaries besides us in the zone, which is tiny, but 11 of them have only been out for 4 months or less. All of the District Leaders have only been out for 3 months. It's crazy. But the work in our area has been going great! We put a lady named Oretha on date for baptism this week. Her date is for Dec. 14th and she is very excited. I guess she has relatives in AZ who referred her and so we went and started teaching her. She is from Lyberia and her English is okay. But she feels the spirit and is very excited about the church and her baptism. It's so cool to see how the spirit can comunicate things we can't. The W. brothers  are doing awesome too. Alex, Anthony, and Ajiatic are all on date for Dec. 21. We need to check with the Mom though and make sure it is okay. But we had a couple great lessons with them and they are funny awesome kids. We also had a very short amount of time to tract this week but it was amazing to see how the Lord led us where to go and our efforts were effective. We found many new investigators who we have appointments with for next week.

Thanksgiving was bomb. We got to play in the Ward's turkey bowl. That was real fun, I hadn't played football forever. Then we went to two different members houses and ate tons of food. Then we did a coordination meeting with the other zone leaders who our zone was split with. There's a ton more planning that goes into our work now that we are responsible for all these other missionaries.

Well I love you all and hope everyone had a sweet Thanksgiving! Oh and as far as winter clothes I need a sweet cardigan... but I might just buy one anyways. Other than that I inherited a GPS this week so no need to ask for that for Christmas... I don't know,  I'll keep thinking. But man I love my mission so much. I don't want to go back to normal life now... the thought is just depressing;  everything out here is just awesome and tons of fun.

Elder Cooper

Interesting Transfers

So we got transfer calls this morning. I found out I'll be staying here and Elder Pasa Vaili will be going to my last area, ha ha. He's gonna have some crazy times in the boonies... But the weird thing is they just split our zone so I'll be in the new zone. President Wolfert actually called and asked me to be the new Zone Leader here. Sigh... I'm excited, I guess.   I know I'll love the experience it's just the extra responsibility on top of everything else that will be happening.  I'm really glad I'm staying here, and my new companion Elder Coleman is a boss. He's really cool and a super good missionary. I'll miss Elder Pasa Vaili though and one of the sister missionaries from our ward who was really cool is getting  shipped out too so that kinda sucks. But overall good news.

This week was a lot slower than the last couple. We only had one of the W. boys come to church, Anthony the 12 year old. He's the most solid too he's so cool. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and he loved it soaked it right up. Our awesome Ward Mission Leader Bro Lakip has a son that plays football for Clemson and Bro Lakip took Anthony and Alex to the game. So cool they really enjoyed it and because of their circumstances they probably never get to do things like that. What a G. We also met this old lady named Oretha from Liberia who we are teaching. She came to church and seemed to enjoy it. She is very hard to understand though... and we might pass her to the sister missionaries I'm not sure yet I want to see what Elder Coleman thinks.

Other than that it has been slow though. We dropped a couple investigators who aren't progressing at all and knocked some doors but had a hard time finding people this week. The holiday season makes missionary work a lot harder than usual because people are double busy. I forgot about that...

It got a lot colder this week holy cow! It's freezing out right now it was like 34 this morning. The last few days have been like that but it's supposed to warm back up in the next couple days. We are going to a couple different houses for Thanksgiving should be pretty awesome! The families feeding us are really cool.

Well I love my mission so much and I hope you all have an awesome Thanksgiving!!!

Elder SR Cooper

Great Week

This week was pretty awesome. The weather was pretty cold most the week but the last few days have warmed up even though they've been rainy. We found a pretty good number of new people to teach again this week. But we've been having the problem that we will have one lesson with someone and then we can't get in contact again with them. But that is a very normal thing. The best though was that yesterday Alex and Anthony came to church. They are two black kids we met a while back. They were at church last week too and their sisters and cousin were there but this time it was just them two. After church our Ward Mission Leader Bro Lakip brought them and us back to his house and we had lunch and a lesson. It was so awesome. We have had a really hard time getting into Alex's house to teach lesson's cause it's never a good time for his parents or whatever but when we were able to sit down in an environment where the spirit was there and there were no distractions it was great. They comitted to be baptized on Dec. 21. They are awesome kids and are really excited to keep coming and to be baptized. So cool. I really think if everyone would just do those small things like invite investigators to dinner or something it would help the work hasten so much. They also went to mutual on Wednesday and loved it.

That's about it though... I mean nothing really funny or crazy happened. This ward is so bombastic though man. They are so awesome and I really hope I stay here another transfer. Transfer calls are supposed to be this Saturday i think so I should know already when I email next. I'll be bummed if I am cause transfers are the day before Thanksgiving so if I had to pack up and go somewhere new for the holidays I'll be mad. But I mean it's really whatever the Lord wants. The work is going great though and I love this area and the missionaries I am serving around right now. Love you all

um bye

Elder Cooper
O I totally forgot to say we performed a special musical number in Sacrament meeting. It was an arrangement of Nearer My God to Thee I wrote. We had the 4 sister missionaries and my comp singing. It turned out pretty good. I keep forgetting to include things. Man life is hard when you have brain damage...

Great Week full of Miracles

This week was pretty amazing. We had 12 new investigators! We were expecting 9 at church and got 6 so that was very exciting too. We definitely experienced some miracles. We had one where we planned to go to one area to tract in the morning but Elder Pasa's bike broke down so we went to the bike shop. By the time we were done with that we only had about 20 minutes before we needed to head back so we decided to go to an apartment complex close by. The second door we knocked on there was a 17 year old kid who let us in right away for a harvest blessing. He only happened to be there because he was sick home from school that day. We left a blessing with him and then came back later in the week for a lesson. He's awesome and accepted a soft commit to baptism. We were a bit dissapointed when he didn't come to church but I am very hopeful for him. The Lord really leads us to his elect if we trust him and show our faith by working hard every day.
We also had a couple of mormon.org referrals we taught that were great. And we've found some more investigators by tracting and passed off from the sister missionaries. We have a great ward and they have been very supportive and helpful this last week in fellowshiping and in being willling to come to our aid when needed.
We had zone conference and I enjoyed it a lot it was a very spiritual meeting and I realized how much more I need to rely on the spirit in everything. Most of the trainings were on relying on the spirit and finding those who will recieve you. There was also one on flirting hahaha. With all these new sisters they gotta make sure we stay focused I guess. Also I've been playing a lot of special musical numbers recently it seems. I played one last week for a baptism with a ward member. It was actually the song Make Me Whole from The Lamb of God. But I wrote an arrangement of Nearer my God to Thee that we are doing next Sunday. All the sister missionaries and Elder Pasa Vaili are going to sing for it. Our sister missionaries are pretty bomb singers and Elder Pasa Vaili's Samoan so of course he can sing. And I'm playing one Tuesday for another missionary meeting. It's been good I love the ability to still play.

For Christmas.... well I love hot chocolate..... and that carmel zebra popcorn was awesome! But I dont really know. I guess whichever MoTab CD has If You Could Hie to Kolob on it. Really food is good though. Or just money as boring as that is but there are some clothes I could definitely buy. Oh and nice ties are always good. Plaid and stripes are my favorite for that. And my favorite brands are Chaps and Penguin but whatever looks good. Anyways I'll keep brainstorming.

Anyways I know this church is true and I love the Gospel so much. i was rereading conference this morning and I really kept seeing them say that God's Love is Always there, no matter what we go through, and no matter what we've done. I love my mission so much. Man it's the best. Even though Georgia traffic SUCKS and there are no street lights at all I swear. But really it's the best I'm starting to realize how much I love GA and how much I will miss it.

Loveyoubye

Elder Cooper

Good Week

It was a pretty good week.Sounds like your Halloween was pretty sweet. Ours was great for a missionary one. We got special permission to go to President Ernst's house and play scripture chase and have a big dinner and ping pong and foosball. It was us, the Spanish elders and the two sets of Sister Missionaries in our area. We also had a great ward Halloween party. It was at this members back yard. They have a MANSION.

 

 We had an awesome experience with a member family. We asked them if we could pray for their inactive children by name and had been doing so for a week. Then we met with them again this week and they said that their son is getting re-baptized and their daughter has agreed to meet with visiting and home teachers for the first time in years. It was great.

 

Our main investigator didn't come to church again so he's off date. I was pretty discouraged about that and I've just been getting down on myself lately because I haven't had a baptism since Woodstock (my first area). But I heard a great testimony yesterday that really inspired me and I bore my own which probably helped me more than anyone else. But anyways I've been doing real good and I've been having a great time in John's Creek.

 

Anyways love you all and I hope you are all doing well!

 

Elder Cooper

Pretty Good Week

This week was pretty good. Got to play some racquetball last Monday, finally! There's a member in our ward who has a racquetball court in his house. Yeah we definitely live in the richest part of Atlanta... Played more Ultimate Frisbee too, which was fun. A lot of my missionary friends have been transferred into this zone so I get to see them a lot now which is great! Today we are planning on going to the stake center to play some basketball, which is good cause I haven't played in forever.

 

Tuesday was amazing! We met with Steve and we had an amazing lesson. He recognizes the spirit so well. We read 1 Nephi Ch. 1 and 2 with him. He committed to baptism on Nov. 16th and is so excited. He wasn't able to come to church though and that was super disappointing. But we'll get him there next Sunday. But he has been reading every night since our visit from the Book of Mormon. I've been so blessed to be able to work with him. And we only found him because we diligently went out to work when we didn't want to. We actually have to do 2 hours of tracting everyday, I don't know if I told you that.

 

We taught an early morning seminary class on Jacob 5. That was good... except I was tired the whole rest of the day.

 

On Saturday, we got to go see Elder Oaks!!!!!!!! It was awesome. His wife was hilarious. She gave a really good talk. Elder Oaks talked about a ton of stuff. He was really chill though it was cool. Talked about the sacrament, setting goals we can achieve through our own agency, becoming a true missionary, and what we should take home with us from our mission. It was really cool to see all my old missionary friends too.

 

Well that's about it. Oh and we also got an amazing steak dinner this week. It was great.

 

Love you guys

 

Elder Cooper

Slow Week

Man this week dragged on forever. Just really, really long. Probably because we didn't have any dinner with members in their homes until yesterday. Yesterdays dinner was with the stake President though and it was awesome! They are the coolest people ever. We're going there for Halloween. That's awesome you got to talk to Sis Ernst mom. I played my jazz arrangement of "I Hope They Call Me On a Mission" but I played pretty terribly.

Anyway we did a lot of tracting and had a lot of appointments fall through. We didn't meet with Steve this week but we're seeing him on Tuesday. Dino the guy we met is going through a lot right now and so we won't be seeing him for awhile. We had a really powerful experience where we went and gave him a blessing though. And John is just simply not progressing so we will probably drop him soon. But we did find a lot of solid potentials that we are hoping to meet with this next week.

This week we had stake conference and we were able to also go to the adult session. It was awesome. We had Elder Aidukaitis of the 70 come and speak. He was hilarious! He told the nonmembers who attended the adult session, "This meeting is actually for members so you have two options; either you join us and get baptized after, or we will kill you!" So funny. He talked all about missionary work and how easy it actually is. he's from Brazil so he had a great accent... and a crazy laugh.

Well this letter sounds really downer but I do want you to know how much I love my mission. it is the best thing I have ever done. I have really come to not only know the gospel is true, but to love it.

Elder Cooper