week 12 New Transfer

This last week was the last week of the transfer. I am staying in Heathridge and my new companion will be Elder Bennion. He was the district leader of the other district in the zone. I get along with him fine, and he is an interesting guy.

 

This last week has been pretty amazing. We have found a bunch of people that are interested. We tracted into a young guy from Sudan who did not appear intersted when we were talking to him, but when we asked if there was another time we could come around he said he was really interested and asked if we could come back tomorrow. We had a sweet lesson with him and his cousin who was there. Then we invited him to a baptism on Saturday but he was busy but said that he would come to church. He came so that was my first investigator at church. We were not the most organized because we were not sure if he was actually coming, and we did not have a Gospel Principles class organized because investigators do not come, but that will change for next week. Also Elder Thomson was on exchanges with Elder Martin the other zone leader and taught a guy who is from New Zealand and heaps of his family are members and it was supposidly a great first lesson. This next week is going to be great also because we have a lot of appointments set up which we normally never have, so I am excited about this transfer and watch the area continue to grow. I am a little nervous about leading the area since I know it, even though I am junior companion. Also because of all the new missionaries applying our mission is going to grow from around 110 missionaries to 130, so it will be interesting to see which new areas are created in the upcoming months.

 

 

Love

Elder Cook

Week 11

I might have gained a little weight since I have been here, but not too much since my clothes do not feel any different. This week was good and disappointing at the same time. A bunch of our scheduled appointments fell through, and nobody was really home so we only taught five lessons. We have found a some more potentials, I just hope we can start teaching some of them. We did have a cool experience yesterday though that made the whole week worth it. We were visiting a potential who was not home and we started to get into the car. Then these two kids come up and ask if we are elders. We started talking to them and they said that they used to go to church and the older one was going to get baptized but they had to move to New Zealand. They told us where they live and said they wanted us to come over. The younger one who is now 8 said that he wants to go back to church. They are Maori which means that they are more likely to get baptized. We were also able to get a hold of the missionaries who were teaching them and got some information on the family. Also one of the missionaries that was teaching them went home, but is now living pretty close by and he said that he is willing to help teach them. We are going to go see them this week and hopefully start teaching them.

For P days mostly we just play sport. One of the members in another ward has a tennis court at their house and tells the missionaries to just come at any time. We do that most weeks even if it is really quick since everyone but me in the flat played tennis in high school. I have been getting better at it,but always at a disadvantage. sometimes we go to a chapel and play some sport and have lunch together. Today we are going to play capture the flag. It is really nice that most flats have washers in them so we do not have to spend time worrying about laundry.

I honestly do not know how big my area is. I think it is a medium area. It is half as big as it used to be because they split it when I came in. We have a car about half the time and I enjoy biking. You talk with more people that way, and I am not tired like I used to be when I was first here. I might like biking a bit less when it gets really hot. It is really nice having a zone leader car because they get heaps of km's that they can't use them all if they tried. It will be weird having to be carefull how I use them in the future when I do not have that luxury.

love

Elder Cook

Week 10

This week I hit my 3 month mark which is crazy because it doesn't feel like I have been here that long. This week started out lame because of the election, but got better. We had some good lessons and we have found a lot of potential investigators, I just hope this week we can turn them into investigators. I love Heathridge and it is supposed to be a lame area, so I am excited to see what other wards and areas are like. We had a really cool experience this week. We were driving to visit someone when Elder Thomson felt prompted to tract a street. The first couple of houses the people were rude, and on about the 4th house we started talking to this lady. She was interested and we told her about the Book of Mormon and a very brief Restoration. I started to tell her about the Holy Ghost and she said she knew what it felt like which was cool, and then told us she was feeling it right then. She wants us to come back, but she is busy with home renovations and getting married so she told us to come back after Christmas which we might not be here for, but she said we can call her and see how the Book of Mormon reading was going. We also have some lessons scheduled for this week which I am looking forward to. This week we also invited two people to be baptized. One is a part member family and he said he wants to, but is just lazy and doesn't want to come to church, but we will work with him. The other is an 17 year old girl who said maybe, but her mom said she could if she wanted to, so we will also work with her. It has been cool to see the area grow, and a little weird that I might be transfered in two weeks. Can't wait to see what happens then.

love 
Elder Cook

Week 9

I can't believe this transfer is half over, it is making me realize how short 2 years really is. It has been a good week. We have three new investigators, but only one is solid. She was actually an investigator that was supposed to be golden that the other missionaries gave us. We had a lesson set up my second week here, but she canceled, and we were never able to contact her after that. This week we were able to catch her and set something up for wednesday, so hopefully that goes through, and we are excited for her. We are a little sad because the lady from Peru we invited her to be baptized, and she said that she was scared of commitment, which we thought we could work out, but she has been avoiding setting up another appointment with us, but hopefully she is just busy and not trying to drop us. We also had a really cool lesson where there were three friends outside who we were talking to, and then the other missionaries came to pick us up, and started talking to them too. So we had three individual lessons going on at once with four missionaries, and I was jumping between two of them. All of them were really cool, and we just had a lot of fun. This coming week we will hopefully be able to have a good week because we have a bunch of scheduled appointments. It will also be a weird week because I will be on exchanges for most of it, but it will be good. It was also cool because lots of members had missionary experiences that they shared during testimony meeting, and Preisthood. It is cool to see the members excited about missionary work, and hopefully they will continue to be so the Heathridge ward can have some success coming from them. I love you all.

 

love

Elder Cook

Mailing things to Australia

Hi! Alex's mom here with instructions on how to mail letters and packages to Elder Cook.

Letters are the easiest to mail.  Buy a $1.05 airmail stamp, or even better - buy 5 or 10 so you can send several letters without having to go back to the post office.  Use a regular-size envelope (up to 6" x 11 1/2", not square), and fill it with letters and pictures up to 1 ounce, about 5 sheets of paper.  It will cost more if you go over the weight limit or if you include anything other than paper.  Mail letters and packages to the address listed on the left side of the blog.

Packages are such a pain to send that probably nobody but me will do it.  I'm putting the instructions here anyway, just in case.  You can bring any size box to the post office and they will tell you the cheapest way to mail it, but count on it taking forever to get there.  International priority mail is a good compromise between cheap and fast as long as you aren't sending much.  The small box (8-5/8" x 5-3/8" x 1-5/8") costs $16.95 to send and takes about 2 weeks to get there.  It's really small but the next size up is $47.95.  See how difficult this is? And it gets worse.  If you actually go to the expense of sending one of these boxes you also need to fill out a customs form: PS Form 2976.  This form is only good for the small priority mail box.  If you use another box there is a different form.  The Post Office has the forms and you can fill them out by hand, but the Post Office inside my local grocery store will only accept the online printed forms.  Everything in the package has to be itemized by description (be specific!) and weight.

If you're still determined to send a package to Australia, there are lots of restrictions on what can be sent.  Australia won't allow the following products into the country: Everything.  Just kidding, but nearly all food products are prohibited.  Candy is ok as long as it doesn't contain fruit or nuts.  I think powdered drink mixes are ok, and maybe jello and pudding mixes.  DON'T send food containing grains, meat, eggs, dairy, fruits, vegetables, seeds or nuts.  Also, don't send liquids or anything made with plant products (wood, straw, etc.).  If there is anything left that can be sent, it's probably something the missionaries aren't allowed to have.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.