Perseverance

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, first off, I would like to congratulate Mom on always being able to do more than one thing at a time ha ha! You are incredible and can always put your mind to achieve all that you want. And look! You can walk and listen to books now, ha ha! I love you soo much!

As well, just about an hour or two ago we just had transfer meetings. And seriously they are my favorite meetings in the whole mission! Seriously President is a man called of God! He is incredible and I love that man sooooo much! As well, he does the transfers sooo fun too! Ha ha, I don't know if I have ever told you but normally Saturday in the night the missionaries find out about changes and you will only know if you are going or leaving. Nothing else. You don't know where or with who or what! And so if one missionary is leaving he will pack his bags and then in the transfer meeting there is a huge movie screen and he projects all the changes on the screen and it is always soo surprising! President is always soo random, but I know it is by revelation! And that's why the meetings are always so fun and suspenseful! Ha ha, I love it!

Now, I just wrote that to let you guys know how it all works. But don't think that I have changes! Ha ha, Elder Kimball and I are still together! Don't worry! There is still a lot of work and success we have to do here! Woo hoo! But this transfer meeting was one that was really, really emotional for me. I was crying for half of the meeting! HA ha! And that's because there are 22 leaders of the mission going home. And about 5 or 6 of those leaders have been my past zone leaders or assistants to the president ever since I got here in the mission. And for all this time I have always looked up to them as heroes and as examples. And now, sadly enough, they are all going home which made it emotional to say goodbye to them. (Blake if you could try to look for Taylor Lythgoe, he´s going to back to BYU this next semester and he is a stud! I feel like you two would get along great! He actually knows a lot of people from Mesa already too!). 

And the second thing that made the meeting emotional was that as I was thinking of all the time I have had looking up to these leaders, I was thinking to myself of why they have to leave, why do missionaries have to finish their missions. For me, it's one of the saddest things. . . And that's when it hit me during the meeting that these leaders are going home because they have hit their 2 years. And even though they have been my leaders my whole mission, I realized that today I have 11 month in the mission!! And that now it's time for others to fill their footsteps. . . And I want to be one of them! And I realized how fast this next year is going to fly by. . . It scares me to even think that! But I will make it the best!

That meeting was just incredible and I'm going to miss Elder Lythgoe, Elder Thompson and Elder Nelson sooo much! But I know they are going to be great when they get home! And now it's time to go back to work and have another transfer with Elder Kimball and even though we had a lot of success at some times, we need to find a lot of more people still. Because this past week . . . well I don't want to write about it . . . it was just a really long week and we didn't really have any lessons for the week and it was really hard, which I was kinda thinking might happen right after having an incredible week! We actually finished on a average good note for the transfer so it wasn't all lost. I really was just looking forward to the transfer meeting because Monday till about Thursday we couldn't get into one single house . . . Luckily, the weekend we were able to have about 5 lessons a day and it was all well. But at the beginning we had to endure a lot ha ha! But Elder Kimball and I just got to know each other even better and didn't let each others excitement go down! I love this companionship!!!!!!

And now with all the new investigators we have found since we have been whitewashed, we still need to keep finding more people. More people prepared and ready for the waters of baptism. Because this last transfer we were able to find a TON of people but being able to have a follow up lesson has been really hard. So we need to get into Game Time mode and find the people that the Lord is preparing for us! Which I know they are there! And I know we are going to have baptisms soon!

Another side note . . . is that tomorrow I have to go back to the CCM. But this time for something a little different . . .an appointment with the doctor. . . Starting about Tuesday I started having a lot of pain in my lower abdominal part. Like where your appendix is (which I don't know if you remember but this pain has been there before in my mission) but it's a little lower. It started up Tuesday and I realized it was that same pain I have experience like 4 or 5 other times in my mission, but I have always thought it was my appendix or anything. I called the Sister doctor of the mission (who doesn't really know a whole lot . . .) and she just told me to wait it out. But we live with a missionary that was studying to become a doctor before he left and he checked me up and told me that it's not a stomach or appendix problem. But I just kept telling everyone to not worry about it . . .

Well, as I said that started up again Tuesday but normally, as it has in the past, it goes away within a day . . . but it kept going . . .to Tuesday to Wednesday tillThursday up until last night to where last night I could barely walk. I personally think it might be a hernia . . . but we don't know right now. . . Tomorrow I'm going to the doctor and we will see. Right now it doesn't hurt, but these past couple 5 days it has. But!! Don't worry, Mom! It will be totally fine! Maybe it's just another worm ha ha ha!  (just a joke). Ha ha! So I will let you guys know how that goes. So with that and with hardly having lessons that's why this last week was a little long. But I am SUPER excited for this next transfer! Woo hoo! I love starting a new transfer every time! 

I know the Lord is with us! I can testify of that! I know that this is HIS work! And it is the most joyful, loving, spectacular experience in the whole entire world! Keep working with the Lord! Let Him shape you into what He wants and plans for you to be. And most importantly, have the faith to act in His name to receive power from on high and to see miracles in your lives. I pray for you all so much and am so grateful for each and every one of you!! 

Love,

Elder Cowan

Game Time! The Underdog Story

Dear Family and Friends!!!!!!!!!

HOLY COW!! This week has been incredible! I can't believe it! It has been insane! So many things happened this week! Wooo! Well, the first cool thing this week was playing soccer! Aww, I love soccer soo much! Our zone started playing at 6 in the morning and it's sooo sick! It's awesome! But at the same time it does make us pretty tired, but we rested a little bit this week and I'm glad we did! Woo hoo because we needed the energy for the miracles that happened this past weekend! Aww, it was insane! But I will get onto that topic in a little bit!

Well, to start off to explain our week, it can be summed up in one word. . . horrible. . . But as I said that was just the start! I'm getting to the juicy details later! But, yea, basically this week started really, really bad for us! I don't know why, but it was really lame and we just ended up knocking on doors for the first part of the week and we didn't have any lessons. As well, I had to help my district with a lot of stuff which meant I was outside my sector traveling to their sectors to help them out with what they needed. One was pretty funny, though, which was when the sisters in my district called me and they were crying and told us that someone robbed their house. This was at about 9 o'clock at night so I booked it over there, called the pensionistas and zone leaders and got over there as fast as I could. Then I got there and the other elders arrived and they said the door was open when they showed up and when the other elders got there someone from inside closed the door. So that is when they started to freak out and I was on the phone with the zone leaders and then the pensionistas and one Chilean elder was calling the number of the police. . . right when the lights in the house turned on and it was the roommates of the sisters in my district laughing. . . Yea, it was all a big joke, but they did it really well. I will have to give them props for that! Ha ha, aww man, it was dumb but really funny! ha ha!

But I kept busy this past week with stuff I had to do with divisions, and with meetings with the zone leaders and everything. One cool thing was when I was on division with an elder in my district and they hardly have anyone to teach and they have been a little depressed with not having or finding anyone to teach. We basically contacted all day long and knocked on doors. I was really trying to motivate him and to keep him excited, but at the end of the night we didn't have any success. That is when I saw a tiny little pasaje and told him that we were going to find people on that street if we contacted everyone. So we did! But we still didn't have any success until we got to the very, very last tiny house. The elder told me that I was wrong and that this street was dead. But that is when I ran to the last house, turned around and told him that we were going to find a family of 5 here! He doubted and just smirked, but I knocked on the door and a family of 7 answered the door!!!!! Woo hoo! And they are going to have a lesson with them tonight!! Woo hoo! It was awesome! I'm glad I was able to motivate this elder.

But other than that, we ended up on Friday night with only 7 lessons for the whole week . . . which is horrible! That night the zone leaders got on me and got on my case that in this zone missionaries should be averaging between 20-25 lessons. With it being Friday in the night with only 7 lessons, we were WAY behind! I was a little frustrated, but I knew we should have had more lessons at this point in the week, approaching the weekend.

As well, Saturday in the morning we had a meeting with President as a mission which took some time too from working, but I am actually really grateful for that meeting! President is really called of God! He is incredible and I love him so much! In this meeting he taught us a lot of things about the Doctrine of Christ and how we can achieve more than we think we can. That is when I thought of the quote from Dad when he wrote me, "success is when preparation meets opportunity." It was a really big spiritual uplifting meeting and afterward Elder Kimball and I had soo much excitement to achieve more than what our minds thought we could because that is what we really needed in that moment! We decided that even though we were way, way behind for the week we were going to see miracles. I am so grateful to have Elder Kimball as my companion because we both just have this excitement to give it completely our all! 

So we decided to get to work! I kept yelling out to Elder Kimball that it was "Game time!´" Ha ha, just like Jake Wright would always say, ha ha! We got ourselves really pumped up and decided to go straight to work! And Saturday was incredible! I am actually really tired because we decided to do a day of verification on EVERYONE!! So we literally ran house to house to every single person that we know! And we got 5 lessons just in the night!! Woo hoo!!! It was incredible! I don't think I have ever had 5 lessons in one day in my mission before . . .well, not until that Saturday at least. But it was truly a blessing! And we were even able to get a lesson in right before we ended the day. 

We had four lessons and it was 8:50 in the night. We just wanted one more lesson so we started booking it to some more houses that we knew up until we got into a less actives house at 8:58 in the night. If we were two minutes later we wouldn't have been able to enter the house, but if you get into a lesson before 9:00 you have till 9:30! Woo hoo! So Saturday we were able to visit a lot of people and to help a ton! We really showed our faith to the Lord and loaded our backpacks with a total of 5 Book of Mormons, which makes it heavy, but we knew the Lord was going to bless us with the people to give them away to. As well, even though we knew it was going to be cold that night, Elder Kimball and I decided to take all of our winter clothes off to show our faith that the Lord would protect us with blessing us with a lot of houses to be warm in. And He did bless us! We did enter into all those houses and, as well,l gave all the Books of Mormon that we had! Wo hoo!

But just wait! It gets even better! Better as like I know yesterday was one of the best days of my mission!! Cualquier Milagro!!! So feeling content of the days work, we still knew that we needed a lot more lessons to finish up the week and to hit our goal. Saturday night the zone leaders congratulated us, but still got on us that we still lacked almost ten lessons and that Sunday is the last day of the week. There was a meeting I had to be at in the stake with the zone leaders Sunday night, but they told me to not come until we had at least 20 lessons for the week. That's how I am writing it but they told us a little bit more up front and with doubt that we could actually do it. But then putting us as underdogs in the situation just motivated us to work even harder on Sunday!!! Oh yea, baby!!!

Sunday we woke up and were able to go to church with three new investigators we found who are all teenagers, but they have some friends in our church. So we got them up and going and went to the church which basically this whole transfer we haven't had a real single investigator attend church. So that is what started the day great! But there was sure a whole lot more the Lord planned for us as well that day! Because not only did we have three investigators attend church but we had 13 LESS ACTIVES ATTEND AS WELL!! Woo hoo!! I don't know what happened, but we had brought 16 people in total to the church! I have NEVER had that many people in my sector attend church! It was such a beautiful sight to see the chapel full! With this new pilot plan that we are doing we have had a goal to increase the attendance of the sacrament meeting by 20% and with the 16 people we brought to the church we went over our goal and almost had a 100 people attending! It was incredible! And it sure was a great opportunity for the members to gain their trust in us! 

But!!! It just keeps getting better and better! We knew we had a great time at the church and everything, but we knew we needed to do a lot to make up for the lost week! That is when we went GAME TIME ROUND 2! Ha ha! And we sprinted to every single house. We loaded our backpacks with 6 Book of Mormons this time and we decided that we weren't going to go enter the house till we didn't have a single one! And the Lord blessed us incredibly . . . All night last night and just writing this now it just brings tears to my eyes of how merciful the Lord has been with us, because we were able to have 9 lessons yesterday and find 8 new investigators, and put 3 new baptism dates!!! Aww, I have just been overwhelmed with gratitude this day.

With those 9 lessons we got up to 21 lessons and were able to go to the important meeting at the stake where I needed to be. I came to find out that the zone leaders put that same challenge for the other district leaders and if they didn't have that many lessons they couldn't come. And as I got there, you should have seen the face of our zone leaders! And it turns out that I was the only district leader to have accomplished the challenge from them! The zone leaders came up to me after the meeting and apologized for not trusting in us that we could do it. I let them know that it was totally fine and that it really pushed us! And the meeting was great! It was with three of the seventy talking! It was great!!! I loved it! I felt like I really earned that opportunity to hear the words of the prophets. 

I know that all of those lessons, all that time we used, all those new investigators that we were able to find and teach this past day and a half basically was not from our efforts. It was completely the hand of the Lord. These past two days were testimony builders to me of that the fact that the Lord really does direct His work. There is no way that Elder Kimball and I could have done that alone. With almost a year in the mission, I have NEVER been able to do that. And I know this time we were able to because we had the faith and the excitement and trust in the Lord. I am so grateful for His work and to just be a humble servant in His hands. I will go where He wants me to go. I will say what He wants me to say. I know that faith is a principle of power to endow us with miracles. I hope none of you think that I am boasting or just thinking of numbers only because those lessons that we had were people that only the Lord, at that moment, prepared for us. They were waiting for us and I know that was only because of the Lord's work. I am so grateful to be here in my mission and I love this work so much. I have really learned that I am absolutely nothing. The spirit is the one that does all the work through us.

I hope you all will be able to understand the huge load of miracles that our loving Heaving Father always blesses us with. I hope all of you will strengthen the faith. I have never understood this principle until now. I can almost say that I'm not even sure I had true faith before my mission. He lives. He will come again and He is hastening His work. I know this gospel is true without a doubt and I'm so grateful for it!

I love you all sooo much! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Cowan

Field is White and Ready for the Harvest

Dear Family and Friends who I loooovvveee sooo much!!! :)

Wow! Woo hoo! I'm so excited right now but at the same time sooo cold! HA ha and that's because 1) I'm a missionary and the 2) because of a rain storm that is happening right now! Unfortunately, Elder Kimball and I went to the plaza de Maipu when it started to rain and we didn't bring any clothes wise to fight the rain because we had no idea it was going to rain! And now it's pouring!!! Ha ha but I'm always a Arizonan and I love the rain! So there is nothing to complain about!!! ha ha :)

Well, off to my week! This week was a great week for us! In total, it was the worst week for my other sectors in my district but I'm hoping just as Dad always says that leadership starts with the example and not by authority. Because Elder Kimball and I are really trying to motivate our district to be better and have better numbers for the week! This week my district, other than our sector, didn't find a single new investigator and we only have one baptism date. Elder Kimball and I put two new baptism dates in our sector yesterday which will be a story I will tell in a little bit and we found 9 new investigators!!!! Woo hooo!!!!!!!! It was a great week! The Lord is really with us, I know it!

Well first off, I want to tell about the tender mercy of Rosa Bustamante, who was a contact that we made from our very first day together in this sector. We decided last Monday, after writing you guys, to go verify how our old contacts were and to see which ones could become new investigators. So we decided to go visit Rosa and she let us in right away! When we entered the house we met her two new sons, Bastian and Darwin!!! Woo hoo! Three new investigators! We didn't have a whole lot of time to visit with them on Monday, but we had a great chat with them. Then we decided to go by again yesterday and we were able to go inside and teach the Restoration, which, by the way, can I just express hoowwww much I love teaching that lesson! I get to teach it for two years straight and I never get tired of it and never stop learning about it! It is incredible! I love the Restoration and I love how blessed we are to live in this dispensation! Now we just have to make sure that we aren't sleeping through it! Ha ha :)

But back to Rosa, after we finished eating with them we started the leccion and it was incredible! Her oldest son was there and he doesn't really have a whole lot of religious beliefs in his life but he just ate the whole lesson up! You could just see it in his eyes as it just clicked--for this is what he has been waiting for! Rosa, you could see as well, was just soaking up the whole lesson! It was awesome!!! They are sooo prepared!! :) 

Rosa had a lot of questions which we were able to answer all of them and even use examples. She first had some doubts about the Book of Mormon and about memorized prayers. I then asked her if her two sons were in two different parts of the world, if she would like to hear from them every week. She responded and said she obviously would love to hear from them both. And that is how we were able to resolve her problem about the Book of Mormon and how there really was a pueblo here in the Americas that Jesus Christ needed to visit. Then, to continue with the analogy that we were using, I asked if she really would like to hear from them every day, but they only wrote the same letter or answered the phone and said the same thing every day, I asked her how she would feel about that. She chuckled and understood right away that our Heavenly Father is always listening to us and really wants to hear how we are doing. After that she just popped her head up and told us, "I believe the Book of Mormon is true!" Ha ha, it was awesome! With that answer, Elder Kimball right away fired out the baptism invitacion which they accepted right away!! :) Woo hoo!!! 

During the middle of the week we had a lot of meetings for the leaders, and Elder Kimball ha a special meeting with president with all the new missionaries that just arrived in the mission and I also had to go on splits with the elders in my district for a day and to help them out because their companionship is pretty bad right now. They don't like each other and don't want to work together. With all the other meetings and technical stuff I had to do this past week, that just added on the stress. But I love helping people. I went on divisions with them and really helped them to chill and to focus on the work! After that they both really trusted in me and now I have a great relationship with them!

But as two weeks ago we hardly had any new investigators we decided to go knock on some more doors! We have been knocking on a lot of doors in a lot of different parts of our sector. But Elder Kimball and I were talking in the street as we were starting the day and that is when both of us had the same impression to change things up a little . . . to be a little different . . . to take a little risk. So we thought and thought about our sector and were we could go! Then the answer came bright and clear! In the corner of our sector there is a HUGE Catholic church! Ha ha ha! So we thought to ourselves that the past missionaries probably haven't contacted a lot of those streets close to the big church. So we ran over there right away! We almost contacted all night long and we weren't having any success! And that is when we decided to go a little bit closer to the Catholic church, actually the street in front! Ha ha, and that is when Alan yelled out to us! Alan is a new investigator now and he saw us and yelled out to us if we knew English. We told him we did and he opened the door and let us in right away!!! HA Ha! It was awesome! We found out that his sister Carla, another new investigator, speaks English! Ha ha soo we got to teach and meet them in English! Oh, and did I let you guys know that they have their whole family that was listening and is willing to listen to our messages?! That was another family of 4 that we found!! Woo hoo! 

We have really seen the Lord's hand in blesisng our sector with new investigators, but not just one or two but complete families!!! Aww they are my favorite to teach! Alan has a friend at his school that is a member in this ward! So he told us that right away and told us that he would love to attend church with us with his friend next Sunday!!! Woo hoo! That is the power of members!!! Members just being an example to the world helps the missionaries find new investigators!!! Aw this kid is a stud! Alan is only 15 years old, but is awesome! His whole family is too, as well! 

The Lord is really hastening His work family and friends. I hope you all know that! The field is white and ready for the Harvest! Just as DyC 4 says! That TIME IS NOW!!!!!!!!!! I have seen soooo many miracles and the Lords hand in our missions! I know these are the Last Days! And what a blessing it is to be serving at such a pivotal time in the world! Try all you can possibly do to share the gospel. I know the Lord loves us and is preparing people FOR EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU READING THIS RIGHT NOW! GO AND FIND THEM!!! This is the best time of my life and I am sooo grateful for each and every one of you! I don't know who reads my letters, but for those that are reading this, I love you. And I thank for with all the energy of my heart for everything you have done for me! Especially my closest best friends and of course my brothers and parents! You guys are the best! 

Have a successful week! LOVE YOU!!!!

LOVE, ELDER COWAN! 

Faith vs. Fear

Mis queridos amigos y familia!!!

Wow, okay, so this week went by incredibly fast again! Woooo! My mind is blown! I can't even comprehend how time can go so fast! Well, this week was awesome again! I love this new sector! I love being up to the challenge of having to keep finding new investigators. In general, we are progressing. The only thing we would like to work on is to gain more of the trust of the members! There are about 3 or 4 families in the ward and we got along great right away, but I know the rest of the members will just come in time! 

Well, first of all I just want to explain the picture that I just sent to you, Mom, about my last ward's bulletin board! The ward, as we know, is called Clara Estrella, which in English is Clear Star. So Elder Hatch and I more than 6 months ago when we arrived there decided to raise the excitement of the members and we made a cheer. We would just yell out "Clear Star Cuatro Unite!" And then each missionary would run from wherever they were to form our hands into a star. We really wanted the members to see our faith and excitement we had in their ward. Well, in time the 6 months passed and all the members heard us do that all the time. And now Elder Alcaraz just sent me a picture of the new ward bulletin where the members changed Clara Estrella to "Clera Star in honor of Elder Hatch and Elder Cowan!" Woo hoo, we left legends there! And I saw so many miracles in Ochagavia!

But that's not the only place where I have seen miracles in my mission and, as you guys have been reading my letters, I have already seen miracles here in my first three weeks! I can't really think of any specific miracles that we had this week but we almost had one. Like, I'm dead serious, we were ONE second from seeing a miracle. And it was with Alan, who is the investigator that has the problem about getting married. The last week we had a powerful powerful lesson with them. And just a couple of days ago we had a lesson with them again but we really wanted this to be the last time because we don't want to waste our time on people that don't want to get married,

So we passed by them and visited with them when we started talking again about the topic of baptism and how important it is. We then asked each and every one of them why they want to be baptized and why they think its so important. They both answered with great reasons of why they think it's important. And then right after we drilled them of why they haven't gotten married, they kept telling us that they weren't going to get married, but I just got so frustrated with them and demanded them to give me a real reason. Then they both kept coming up with excuse after excuse after excuse. But for every single excuse we were able to rule it out and convince them other ways. It kept going on and on up till the last thing that Alan told us. He had an accident about 6 months ago when he started to have like a muscle paralysis infection on the left side of his body and he can barely walk.

He then went on to tell us that he really wants to recover to 100% until he does anything or rules anything out. He kept saying that the Lord will help him recover fast and he will be able to walk completely fine again. He kept telling us that if the Lord wants them to get baptized and to get married then the Lord will help in his recovering. But inside I knew that was just another excuse, and then I started to think of the priesthood and following through on my impressions from the Holy Ghost it hit me like a wall that I needed to testify to him of the power that we hold. I then looked at Alan in the eye, and asked him if he really did know for sure that the Lord could help him with his health, he responded "yes" to which I threw another question at him and asked if he really had the faith that the Lord could do it. After thinking for some time, he looked up and told me that he does have the faith. At this point of the lesson, being overwhelmed from the Spirit, something that I have NEVER felt before, I declared to Alan, "Hermano, if Jesus Christ could perform miracles to the sick and afflicted through the priesthood who He himself came to establish His church, then why could His same church, just restored, not have that same power and authority today?" He nodded his head in agreement to which I responded to him, "If that is so Hermano, with the priesthood that I hold and according to your faith, I command you to raise and walk!" . . . . . . . . Then it broke into a powerful powerful silence where Elder Kimball and I were both overwhelmed from the Spirit. After a time of silence, I stared into the eyes of that brother with all the faith I had. Alan then decided to move. . . to which he used his crutches to get on his feet. We watched in silence if he was really going to act in faith and take the first step. I whispered to him to not have the fear because faith and fear can't dwell together. After what felt like an eternity, he dropped his crutches . . . just to sit down . . . . 

I know that Alan could have walked, even though he is half paralyzed basically. And I know without a doubt that my companion and I have the holy Melchizedek priesthood and we had the faith to heal this brother . . . but he lacked his own faith. He let the fear in and made the light of his faith diminish. It was really sad to know that if he would have had just one ounce of faith and tried moving his legs he could have been healed. I don't have one single doubt that that could have happened. And that is why I wrote before saying that we were just ONE second from seeing this spectacular miracle. But it is just like Elder Utchdorf and Elder Nelson said in the general conference about how faith and fear can't be in the same room.

Even though we missed that miracle, Sunday in the morning Alan called us and wanted to attend church, so we went in a car and picked him up which was great. And even though he didn't get healed, it was a 100% confirmation to the restoration of this gospel. And even more of a testimony builder to me that I really do have this holy priesthood. What a huge blessing that is. I know without a doubt that just as the scriptures say about how faith can move mountains it IS REAL! Anything is possible with the Lord's help. And I am so grateful for the chance to be His representative only when I am 19 years old. But I know I am called of Him, I know I have His trust and protection over me. I know He loves me and loves these people here in Chile. I am so grateful for my mission! I don't have any more time to write any more stories but I thought you would like to hear that. I hope each and everyone of you and trust in the Lord and offer yourselves to Him. I promise if you do, in that moment He will endow with power upon high. I love each and everyone of you soo much!

Have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Cowan