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 

Staying in John's Creek

Yes! Transfers were today and I'm staying here in John's Creek! Thank goodness. I was really worried I would be getting 6 week transferred out. Elder Pasa Vaili is staying with us too. I'm glad about that too. We get along good and he's been working harder and harder. We even got 100 contacts this week! Our goal is usually 70 so it was pretty cool.

We had a great week with some great miracles. We were able to meet a new investigator named Dino. it was a miracle how we were able to find him, because he was in the area book and we referred him to the sister missionaries because he was in their area, the they visited him right when he was praying for guidance, and referred him back to us and we taught him. He's going through a really hard time, just lost his job and is struggling with a lot of things. We are really excited to see him again though. Steve A. is doing well. We were really worried because we couldn't get in contact with him all week but he called last night and said how he had read a bit and wants to read more of the BoM. He said he could tell we were praying for him and was excited for us to come back. What a boss.

We are getting another set of sisters in this area on Wednesday. 6 missionaries in one area! and a senior couple! Crazy

We are not able to use any technology such as ipads or facebook yet. Haven't heard any mention of it either... all we got is stupid Tiwi. Tiwi is a dumb little box that yells at you when you drive too fast or aggressively.

Anyways great to hear from many of you and I hope you have a fantastic week. Remember, the church is true.

Elder Cooper

Great Week

This week was amazing. Filled with miracles. Mainly meeting and teaching Steve.  You remember when I was talking about how we were really unmotivated that one day but decided to go tracting and found a really awesome guy who was prepared? That's Steve. We had a lesson with him on Friday and he is amazing. The member we took with us testified perfectly about eternal families and he was attentive to everything we shared. The spirit was strong the entire time. We were rapping up our lesson and I started to say, "Will you read this book and pray about it?" but he cut me off and said, "Listen. I'll promise you one thing. I'll read... this entire book and pray about it." I was like, "...okay!" Then we invited him to conference. And he came! To the Sunday Morning session. Everything that was shared that session was perfect for him. He has a son and a wife who have addiction problems and so Pres.Eyering's and Monson's talks were sooooo great for him. He enjoyed it and we're meeting with him again on Thursday or Friday.

But anyways conference was legit. I've said this about all the ones I've viewed on my mission but this was one of the best I've ever seen. I especially liked the very first session. My favorite talk was probably President Eyring's. I also loved Ballard's of course about missionary work. That was so awesome he talked about how there could be a million members baptized before Christmas. Also Uchtdorf's talk Come, Join with Us was great. Oh and both of the women speaker's were great! Bonnie Oscarson had an amazing talk about conversion too. Every time I watch conference I just find myself saying, "How could this church not be true?" I know it is.

Elder Cooper

Good Week

This week was pretty good. I went on exchange with our District Leader and that was fun. We had some awesome experiences contacting. Definitely gained more of a testimony of service. We were able to help a few people out and they totally opened up and allowed us to teach them more. Elder Pasa Vaili and I had a cool day Saturday too. There was a big festival that day with thousands of people there. We contacted there but nobody was really listening. When we came back we were already kind of discouraged from the festival and then our team up fell through and our dinner. We were really bummed and didn't want to go out and tract. But we did even if it was with a bad attitude at first. And I realized that we always need to work because that night we found a super legit guy. He was awesome when we told him about prophets he said he got chills.

That was about it for this week though. Were still teaching John and he's progressing very slowly. The weather has been getting awesome and I love riding my bike right now.

We're real short on time I'll write more next week I promise

ELder Cooper

PS yes I got the package thanks sooooo much it was fantastic.

Pretty Good Week

This week was pretty good. We worked hard and even though our numbers don't show it we accomplished a lot. We were able to meet with the Chinese speaking elder and coordinate with him how he can help out the Chinese members and where he can work in our area. It's super weird he was called English but when his mission president found out he could speak Vietnamese and Chinese, he was switched and he covers all of GA doing work for the Vietnamese branch. The weird thing is he's the only one that speaks it, his companions have all been just English speaking so when they're with him they do like nothing... super strange!

But we met with our investigator John again who we found a couple weeks back by tracting. He's a cool guy, he did stand up comedy for a while and has a ton of stories. Now he has MS and other medical problems and hardly sees anyone. It's sad but I feel like his condition has prepared him to receive the gospel. He moving slowly but I have very strong faith he will progress to baptism. Our other investigator James has been passed off to the YSA branch elders so we see him every now and then, but we aren't really teaching him.

On Saturday it was really rainy. Pretty hard actually for the first time in a while. We had an event that evening called a member mingle at our ward mission leader's home. It was like a social gathering for part members, less actives, and members of the ward council. It was pretty great, even though we invited some people who said they would come and didn't. We also had the opportunity to teach mutual on Wednesday to the youth, that went okay. Elder Pasa Vaili and I also went to a youth fireside last night. It was really good.

I've had the opportunity to play piano quite a bit. This ward is soooo rich. And most people have a piano so I get to play at people's houses which is great.

That's about it though. Today for Pday we're going to some persons house who has an indoor basketball court, pool table, foosball table, huge field in the back yard. So should be cool.

I had a great study in 2 Nephi ch. 9 too. I would recommend a study of that again I get a ton our of that chapter every time I read it. Also the CES fireside talk by Elder Christofferson called Give us This Day Our Daily Bread. Amazing talk. There's an awesome Mormon Message video on it too.

Take care love you all

Elder Cooper

Good Week

This week was pretty good . We have been working harder and finding some good potential investigators. Street contacting here in Johns Creek is pretty good, a lot better than in Dahlonega. And we have been doing some good Less Active work. The ward is awesome, members of the congregation go out with us every night to see people. Dinners have been pretty regular too. We've been riding our bikes quite a bit recently too. The weather is cooling down and is becoming very nice. Within a couple weeks it will be perfect I think.

We're planning a couple of events too. One is a member mingle the Ward Mission Leader does quarterly to welcome people who have moved in and also any investigators or Less Actives we are working with. That is this Saturday and should be pretty good. The Saturday after is the Duluth Fall Festival (Duluth is a city in our area). There are going to be tons of people there and we're hoping to set up a booth. I'm really excited for that, the problem is our mission president hasn't cleared it yet so it may not happen. We'll see.
We weren't able to see James, our investigator who had a baptismal date, at all this week. His Mom went to the Hospital and he was super busy with work and helping her. But he's coming to the event this Saturday and we have another lesson the day after that. I think he'll probably be a little while to be baptized but we'll see. We met with a new investigator this week who is pretty cool but he talks a ton! It was hard to teach cause he'd answer a question and get way off topic while doing it. But he's a great guy we'll see where he goes.

As for things I need... nothing really. Doing good on garments and clothes and everything. Thanks for asking though.

That's about it. I'm loving the work and this ward. Looking forward to finding some more elect people.

Elder Cooper