Dear Family and Friends!!!
Wow! I'm just so pumped right now!!! We just had our transfer meetings today and Elder Goates and I are still staying together, woo hoo! And I know President really does receive revelation because the changes that happened throughout our zone (which President turned a lot around) is going to be perfect for what the Lord has in store for us. So with a new fresh zone and a new transfer we are ready to roll!! And we are gonna do it in a trio again!! Yep! President had a little surprise for the mission again and went back to having the zone leaders in trios. I understand because that way we are able to do more splits and help our zones out. But the thing that I'm SUPER stoked about is who we received!!!! Elder Smith is with us now!!! Woo hoo!!! Elder Smith, if you don't remember him, he was in the zone Ochagavia with me when I was in Clara Estrella. Actually Elder Goates, Smith, and I were all together in Ochagavia! And now we are all comps!!! Aww, I'm so stoked! As well, I'm pretty sure I sent a picture a long time ago with a guy in a 80's jumpsuit on Pday, well yep! That's Elder Smith! Really we have been good friends during our whole missions and now we are together!! Woo hoo! Dream come true! He reminds me so much of Austin Mills. And Elder Goates reminds me of Jacob Rogers, so I'm just in heaven with these awesome studs!!! :)
And on that note of excitement I'll move onto to our awesome week that we had! Woo hoo! Miracles!!! :) Well first off, I wanna say that I kinda feel for you guys that are sick because actually I got pretty sick these last 3 days as well! But now I'm all fine! But as I kinda talked about last week, Elder Goates and I were wanting to change the things up here in Talagante. So with a lot of meditating and pondering of what we should share with our zone when we would have our district meetings we decided to have an awesome meeting! After the missionaries finished their district meetings, Elder Gaotes and I moved all the benches in the sacrament meeting room back and just moved 3 benches to make a semi.circle. From there we started off with a prayer and Elder Goates and I then went off with our testimonies of missionaries work and about miracles. We wanted to start off with that right away in able to have the spirit present.
After our short testimonies, we opened the floor to the zone to do the same. And man, can I just say these missionaries are incredible! A lot of missionaries got up and bore their testimonies as well and others shared incredible miracles that happened in this past transfer. From there we were able to read a talk by, I don't know who, but it talks about our divine calling. And how we have been selected from eons of years to come into the battlefield now. That really made the missionaries feel good and then on that note we opened it up to a big zone council. We were all there sitting down (Elder Goates and I in the middle of the semi-circle) and we discussed what we did good and what we didn't do well this past transfer. Really the spirit was present because we came up with a new plan of action for this new transfer. A lot of new ideas that really is obvious to see that they came from revelation.
We then challenged all the companionships to come up and say in front of the zone how many baptisms they wanted. And that was the moment for each companionship to show their faith--to really commit themselves in front of the zone without fear of what they really wanted. Really the missionaries showed their faith and the meeting was very edifying.
During the week we focused a lot on the new families that we found on New Year's Day, who are Nora, and Diego and his parents. Sadly, Nora went to the beach this weekend, but we shared with her a lot during the week and she is progressing really well! And Diego!! Aww, I love Diego! He is only 14 years old, but it's because of him and his faith that he is leading his family to this wonderful gospel! We have been sharing with Diego and his mom, Angelica, for some time, but Angelica was pretty sceptical and nervous about a lot of things. Diego really has been trying to motivate her up until Friday where we were able to meet the dad, Juan. We were kinda nervous because we didn't know where to begin exactly with him, but to catch him up we basically taught lessons 1-3 right on the spot. After understanding it all he looks at his wife and says, "Why don't we go to church, love?!" We were surprised! It was pretty random, but we were so excited!
Saturday we tried to pass by EVERYONE! And that day we decided to fast to help us have investigators attend church and to have the attendance increase in the branch, (because it's been lowering every week) And Saturday was probably the hottest and most tiring days I have had in my life. But Elder Goates and I kept a good attitude and just soaked in our sweat. We would yell out, "It's just one of the wife-point days isn't it?!" Ha ha, we decided to shorten it and just yell out WPD! Ha ha, it helped us get along with the long day. Saturday was a pretty hard day as well because other than the terrible heat and on top of that fasting, we passed by almost everyone in our sector to invite them to church. We even passed by again to visit Diego just to verify and their family wasn't so sure if they were going to able to attend the next day.
We tried not to let that effect us and we kept going and walked all day long. It was pretty miserable, oh, and I was sick in the stomach. I don't know what it was but I was having to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes or so it was pretty bad. But at the end of the day I could honestly feel the love of the scriptures in 2 Timothy 4:7 which says "I have fought the fight . . . and have kept the faith." Even though we didn't have any straight signs of success that day, I had a feeling of comfort knowing we did our best. And that we really did show our faith that day.
And thanks to the action of our faith Elder Goates and I were in the sacrament meeting waiting and waiting and waiting up until the sacrament ended and we thought no one was gonna come. But! then Diego and his parents and his niece all showed up! You should have seen the look on the branch president's face as they walked in. Sadly, it has been some time since this branch has seen investigators in the church, let alone a complete family. And oh, how contagious it all spread throughout all the branch as the meeting left and they basically just encircled them and wanted to know them. Ha ha! It was incredible! We finally have baptism dates and investigators attending!! Woo hoo!!
But I know that was a miracle thanks to that powerful fast. Even though it was hot and miserable, and my stomach was killing me, we kept going and we didn't give in. I know fasting is a way we can manifest to the Lord our faith in Him. I'm truly and eternally grateful to my Heavenly Father to have let us have this family attend church with us! We are finally rollin' along with the things and I'm so excited what the Lord has in store for us!
Miracles do exist. Sometimes it just takes a good endurance through our trials that the Lord willingly gives us to make us show what we are capable of. I know He is hastening His work! And I know that work is gonna start to hasten a whole lot more this next transfer!!!
Love you all!!
Love Elder Cowan!
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