Talagante Legend

Dear Family and Friends!!!!!

How incredible it is to hear from you guys! You're all just sooo amazing!! Love you all soo much! Wow, I hope you guys all had an AMAZING week! Because Talagante is exploding with success! Truly, I have been humbled a lot this past week seeing how the Lord is leading through with His work in this part of His vineyard! What an amazing feeling it is to be one of His servants! I love my mission!!!!!!

Okay, well to start off! Tuesday we had a "consejo de guerra" as we call it where all the zone leaders meet up with the assistants and President for a council. I love those meeting and I love President! He is such an inspired man! We usually have these meetings every Tuesday but this last Tuesday, President was really stressed about the status of our mission. Ever since we hit 92 baptisms we just still haven't gotten back up to that level of success. It turned out to be a long meeting, basically from 10 to 2 in the afternoon and it was President teaching us one on one about one of my favorite topics, The FAITH! It was incredible! You could just see that President was just riding along with the spirit! It was amazing!!!!!! Really he told us a lot about the faith but really just how we can exercise levels of faith so that we can have the power to perform miracles! Truly, I know God is a God of Miracles! There is no doubt in my mind about that! Truly, I know the faith, properly understood and applied through our attitude and actions, brings powers from on high, where truly we can see the power of the heavens descend upon us! How incredible!

With that meetings President challenged us to find this power of Faith to pull off a couple more baptisms for this last weekend of the month. So we prayed, looked at all the investigators in our zone that have attended church and we felt strongly about some names and then we went to work! Right off the back the next day went on divisions with the sector Talagante 1-3. They have Jose, a young many in his 20's that has attended church, and his mom is less active. Before the lesson I pulled the missionaries aside and told them we are gonna shoot for this miracle power. I told them they can't doubt ONE bit in this lesson and then I challenged them that we were gonna get this guy baptized this weekend, even though he didn't even have a baptism date yet. But we entered the lesson pumped and ready with the spirit. 

Jose showed us where he was reading in the Book of Mormon and he was already at Jacob 5!!! And he read it twice just to understand it!!! Ha ha, I was so shocked! Normally, that never happens with investigators! I quickly started to ask Jose the questions for the baptismal interview and he testified to every one passing the questions with flying colors. Being a little curious of why I was asking so many questions, I opened my agenda to the part that has the questions for the baptismal interview and showed to him that he was ready to get baptized! He looked up and down the agenda stunned and trying to look for something that might have been wrong, but then you could just see that it just clicked and looked up and started to share his doubts. 

Unfortunately, we really didn't have a lot of time to be there with him, but we testified about the power of the faith and how it's the opposite of fear and just how he needs to step it up and do it. We left without a firm yes on accepting to be baptized but as we left, I put my hand on his shoulder, looked at him and told him that he needs to pray tonight. And not just like any normal prayer, but that he needs to pray for 5 minutes and really open his soul to the Lord. He said he would do it and I responded saying we would wait for his call. And then we left!

We continued that day with a lot of success and then got to the pension. I was helping the missionaries plan for their next day when the phone rang. . . . . and it was Jose. He told us that he did pray and prayed for a lot more than five minutes, and then very humbly told us, "Elders. . . . I'm ready to get baptized." WOOOO HOOO! After the phone call we all got stoked!!! It was incredible! Really it was a short day in that other sector doing divisions but it was a powerful day with them! A day full of miracles! I am so grateful for the power of the faith, prayer, and the spirit, the three strongest things we have!!!

Then the next day we had a training meeting with our zone and two others zones with President. The topic of the meeting was consecration. Ohh it was a powerful meeting! Really there's a ton more that we can do as missionaries! I think that is every missionaries goal is to be a consecrated missionary 100% and for sure that's my goal as well!

The next day we had a tender mercy with Mary and Scarlet. They were two new investigators that we found at the beginning of December thanks to the video initiative of "He is the Gift" But they live soo far. But one day we were walking up close by where they live and we saw Mary who at first I didn't even recognize, but she yelled out, "Oh no!!! Sorry, sorry, sorry! I didn't read the pamphlet!!!" She was devastated! HA ha but it was great to see how serious she was about fulfilling her commitments. I wouldn't blame her, it's almost been two months since we saw that little video with her and it was mostly our fault that we didn't pass by again. But we entered and met her daughter, Scarlett and taught lesson one. At the end of the lesson, Mary told us, "I pray all the time, every day almost, but every time I pray I feel like something's lacking, like there's something else I need to do, like I need to act more or go to a church, or get baptized!" We were happy to tell there that that gap she was feeling could be filled thanks to the Restoration of this gospel and that she truly could get baptized. Right after they accepted baptism dates for February! :)

Then we get to Sunday! A day where we were fasting again as a mission for more miracles and I just love fasting!! It strengthens my faith so much! And truly the lord blesses us. Just like the last time we fasted Diego and his whole family came to church. (A quick update about them is that we haven't been able to teach them this whole week, we aren't sure what happened, but we will keep going along). And truly it happened again this Sunday. Do you guys remember Rodolfo and Loreto, like some of my favorite investigators ever? Well! They came to church! Woo hoo! With their 9 year old son Benjamin! Woo hoo! Finally we have been trying soo hard to get them to church and it finally happened! And it was a great day to come because President and Hermana Barreiros came to our branch too! So it was a powerful meeting! 

And we had another miracle at the last 15 minutes of the sacrament meeting when our phone started to ring. And it was Ines! I don't know if you guys remember Ines but she was one of the new ones we found when we could only teach her for 15 minutes last Sunday and we put a baptism date. Well, it was her calling asking where we were because she was out in the foyer! HA ha! It was great! We ran out and she was able to hear the last part of President's talk in the sacrament meeting! We haven't been able to teach her other than that one 15 minute lesson! But she came alone! She truly is prepared! :) So all in all we ended up with 4 investigators attending church! That hasn't happened for some time here! It was great!

Truly, Talagante is exploding! We have kept the challenge with our zone to always do 100 contacts every week and it's truly changing everything! We almost found 100 new as a zone in just this last week! Incredible! That's so many people! And we have been blessed with more investigators attending church! We are preparing a lot for the month of February! Keep Talagante in your prayers! We are receiving a lot of blessings right now and I know we can pull off a lot of miracles for this next month. Truly, as the title is, Elder Smith, Elder Goates and I are trying to pull off everything we can do for this zone. Truly we want to leave this zone with legends! Not legends of us, but of the miracles that can happen throughout the hearts here in Talagante to see a truly increase in this zone, because this little district needs it and we are ready to do what the Lord calls us to do! Onward to victory! And Onward to Zion! 

I love my mission! I love Chile. I love my Savior even more. It's in Him who I put my trust, and I know He loves us and is always blessings us. Oh how grateful we should ALWAYS be!! 

Love,

Elder Cowan