The Work of the Lord

Dear Family and Friends!

Wow, what an eventful week everyone had this past week! So many exciting things! Way to go everyone! You're are amazing! Congrats to Trevor and Kiersten who graduated! I'm so happy for you two! And for everyone else! Seriously, I have the best family in the world!!!! Coming from the awesome Cowan/Macdonald side to the great Dennis Family! I love you all! And for all the rest that are reading this, we're brothers and sisters too, Don't you forget about that!! Aww, Heavenly Father truly is our loving Eternal Father! What a huge blessing it is to have someone so amazing to take care of all of us! He truly does have a plan for happiness!! I love it! This gospel makes us all so happy!!!

Well, I don't have a whole lot of time to write, but I want to thank you all for all that you do! You are all heroes in my eyes! 

But for our week it was a little bit slower. Elder Daniel and I aren't trying to let that affect us a lot because we know that the month of May is going to be incredible!! I know it! It is a hard feeling to know that there was a whole month that passed without the chance to baptize. But I needed to double it up now for May! The time is clicking and I don't want to waste any last bit of it!

One of the awesome things that happened this past week was the Rañiman family. They were a reference from about a month ago and the mom, Ana, is less active as well with her two sons Seba y Gabriel. The husband, Gabriel Señor, isn't a member and we had heard that he likes to drink a lot. But when Elder Daniel got here we have been visiting them every week and they are progressing so much! Yesterday we were able to sustain Seba to be a teacher and he passed the sacrament in a whole new suit! It was awesome to see how this family is pulling through and coming back to the Lord. 

There are some matrimony missionaries that live within our ward and normally they just work in the office and that's about it. But there is one couple that just got here from Brazil and they are not the office type people. They are called los Vedovi. They honestly don't know any English or Spanish and only talk Portuguese. They have been teaching me a lot and know I can talk to them in Portuguese a little. It's awesome! But since they don't like the office they have been coming out with us to visit people. And it's like the perfect team! We do the teaching and they do the sistering and brothering to whomever we are visiting. And they have been helping the Rañiman family soo much! We have seen a HUGE change in the husband, Gabriel, who now has come to the ward activities and we have had a FHE almost every night and now they have a date to get married and the ward is helping so much! It's awesome!

We also had another FHE ward activity last night and we were able to pull off another successful FHE. The members are starting to feel more and more of the obra misional and it's awesome! We had another 50 or so people in the church! And we received about 4 references and it's gonna be great! 

One night we were able to pass by Austin who is from Ecuador who was an old investigator from Elder Wagner and me. He's 18 years old and I really don't know what happened, but when I was with Elder Wagner we kinda just lost contact with him. But we were able to pass by and we taught lesson 1 and he just soaked it all up! Seriously! He told us that he wants to change his life around and we wants to become a new adult again. He accepted a baptism date for my birthday!! Woo hoo! HA ha it was an awesome lesson!

We are praying a lot that everything will go well with Austin. Other than him we are still in the look for new investigators! We are kinda drying out in our flow on investigators and we know that there are prepared investigators! We just need to find them! Ha ha! But I know the Lord is with us and guiding us! I love working side by side with Him.

I know the Lord is hastening His work! And we want to work as his servants in this part of his vineyard! I love His work! And I know we will be able to achieve a lot more for the month of May!

Love you all so much!

Elder Cowan

Temple Blessings!!

Dear Family and Friends!

Wow, this week was amazing!! Seriously! First off, all I just want to say is that I am so grateful to be sealed to my family! What an incredible blessing that is! As well, I'm so grateful for temples! What a blessing to have them so close in our lives! We were able to have a lot of experiences in the temple this past week! I LOVE THEM!

So to explain, President got the revelation from President Monson's talk that he should let his missionaries go to the temple more often to help us remember the covenants we have made with the Lord. He decided that each zone would go week for week this next month. 

And since we are the closest to the temple we had the blessing of going to the temple first! We were able to go Tuesday morning for an endowment session! Wow, it's been almost over a year since I have done an endowment session! Oh, how I love the temple so much!! As we approached the temple grounds I just felt like my soul was longing to be inside. As if it had been too long and just as a lost kid wanted to return back safely home. So even before entering the temple I was getting emotional! HA ha! But it was amazing! The session was so beautiful and I learned so many more things. I know that the Lord is the Lord of Covenants. He has so many promises for us and He loves us so much and wants us to return back to Him. Temples are the gates to heaven and I am so grateful that we had that blessing to be in there. IT was amazing to feel the peace again and to just have a stop in life! It was so needed!

Then we were able to go to the temple again on Saturday as the assistants called us to let Elder Daniel know that his converts from his 1st sector were gonna get sealed in the temple!! What a blessing! So we went to the temple again on Saturday and we were able to be present in sealing of these two young adults. It was so powerful! That was the first time I have ever seen a sealing in live action! And the spirit was so incredible! I was thinking of Trevor and Kiersten and Justin and Stacie and how powerful it must have been you guys! Aww!! I just love the temple!! And it was even more powerful when we brought in their 1 year old baby! And from that point I think everyone was crying! It was amazing! We were able to talk to the guy in the changing room as I saw him talk with Elder Daniel as he hugged him and thanked him for leading him to this gospel. That was such a powerful moment for me to literally see the outcome of all that we do and to see this brother of ours in the temple now getting sealed in the temple! What a miracle! This gospel changes lives! And blesses them for an eternity!

Well, that was a little about our experiences in the temple, but now I will go on to how it went during the week. We were also privileged with a new experience that happened on Friday. The secretary of the mission called us and asked us if we could do divisions with some Elders in the CCM. And al tiro we responded yes!! So Friday afternoon we were able to have 3 Elders that have been in the CCM for 5 weeks. IT was amazing to be with them! I don't know if you guys remember but they always let the American group of missionaries to do these divisions there last week in the CCM. But since I got changed into a Latin district I wasn't able to participate. But I guess the Lord has a time for everything and who knew that I would have the chance to be on the other side leading these new missionaries and showing them around of what missionary life is really like! 

Elder Daniel was with one elder and I was with two others. Their names were Elder Stevn Taylor form Mesa! HA ha, it was cool to be with someone from Mesa again. OH! I almost forgot when I was in the temple of Saturday I saw Elder Isaac Strong too! Another buddy from Mesa! HA ha and I was with Elder Parker Spanbauer from Idaho. Both of them aren't coming to our mission, but it was amazing walking around with them as they were experiencing real mission life for the first time! And we were able to take out the trash too! We were only with them for about 3 hours, actually a little less, but we were able to have 4 lessons with 4 new investigators as well! IT was such a blast! I was trying to give them all the advice I could possibly give them in that short amount of time! They are going to be great missionaries!!!

Thursday was a little weird for us since Elder Daniel and I both got a little sick because we ate stomach for lunch. That was a first time for the both of us and it didn't go so well. As well, there are a lot of universities in our sector and there was a student riot going on so we weren't able to do a lot of stuff. Ha ha.

What was cool, was our lesson with Regina who is reactivating really fast! She is awesome! She told us that she got a lot of revelation in the general conference about the importance of an eternal marriage and families that now she wants to get married to her basically husband and she wants them to start participating in the church. A about two days later, we were able to teach her husband, Pepe. And we read 1 Nephi 8 and read how Regina wanted her husband to participate in the fruit as well. He was really open with us and about the idea, but still hasn't committed to anything specifically. But I'm excited about the future for that family.

As well, Sunday was an awesome day! They let Elder Daniel and I both give talks in sacrament meeting and they were great! Elder Daniel talked about the Holy Ghost and I talked about Obedience! All the members really like our talks. And then we had a ward family home evening at 7 that night where over 50 people came to the activity! WE were not expecting that! But we were able to pull everything off and it was amazing! The spirit was so strong! A family brought their next door neighbors who aren't members and they had a great time! We are going to have another FHE with them next week! So we are stoked!

We are really trying to work a lot with the members here! Because we have seen that with all the universities and businesses in our sector there aren't a lot of places to go contact. So we are trying to think of more idea of how to find new investigators with the ward. Please pray for us as we continue trying to find some more prepared investigators!

I have to go now! But I am so grateful for each one of you! Congrats to Justin and Stacie who are on that awesome vacation trip and congrats to Trevor and Kiersten who are going to graduate! Woo hoo!! And Blake way to go with showing your diligence in your studies! Push to the end buddy! And Mom and Dad I love you two sooo much!

Thank you for everything! I love Chile!

Love Elder Cowan

The Office Life

Dear Family and Friends!

Well! I honestly cant believe I'm at the computer again writing to you all again. . .I don't want the time to go away so fast!!

But I do love hearing from you guys! You're all the BEST EVER! Seriously!

So this letter probably won't be as interesting as my other letters have been. It was still an amazing week because 1. I'm a MISSIONARY and what's better than that??! NOTHING! and 2. I still get to preach the gospel every day!

This week was a little different just because President has put a lot of stress on making our new Rescate books and wanted Simi Squad to make, check, edit, and revise, over 100 books in this past week. It was pretty insane. And since there are only 2 missionaries in Simi Squad, and one arriving only the week before, the work process was going really slow. They called us and, holy cow, Elder Daniel is a boss with computers! I got to know him a lot better this past week and he was home schooled and graduated from high school at the age of 14!!! And then went to a Texas university for a year and at the age of 16 he was already going to BYU in Utah! It was insane! HA ha, so yea, basically he's a genius! And even a better missionary! He is a stud! 

With the huge work load that we had to do, they threw me into the mess with the computer and I was able to learn a ton of new things about computers this past week. We were able to have a normal day after Pday last Monday but starting Tuesday till Friday we were in the office all day and all night long. There were some pretty stressful nights! Luckily, President called us and was able to lower the project to only do 45 books that he needed ready for a training meeting for the stake of Olimpo. So the four of us missionaries just went to town and we took out all the records of all the members and made a new Rescate book. It's pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie! Elder Daniel has made a program that basically copies all the records from all the stakes in our mission. I have no idea how he did it, but it's awesome! 

We worked day in and day out in the office. I thought the "office life" would be a little bit more lame, but I had a good feeling throughout the whole week that I knew I was doing something good for the rest of the mission because I know these Rescate books are going to be a lot of success to the mission. So really we were pumped the whole week. But in the nights I was wiped! Luckily, we were able to finish the books by Saturday afternoon when we had to fix some things with the the print shop guy but everything worked out and all the stress was over.

So really we had Monday night, and Saturday night, and all day Sunday to work in our sector, which did take it's tole on the sector, but I know that we were sacrificing something bigger for the mission and for that I know the Lord will bless us with success.

One cool thing that happened was our Consejo with President which happened Thursday. The state of the misison made President really worried on what we should do. All the zone leaders were there in a semi circle as we discussed what we could do to achieve more in the mission. I had a strong impression that I have had for a few months, but I have always felt that I shouldn't say it. But in this Consejo the impression came so strongly that I knew it was my time to speak up. I raised my hand and president let me talk. I talked about the manipulation. There are a lot of times where we invite someone to get baptize and they say no because of some reason but as missionaries we will do anything to be able to have a baptismal date. So a lot of times we will manipulate the people in having them accept it, but not letting them accept it out of their will or agency. I told the leaders that our missionaries are looking in a prideful way at the manera we look at our fechas. There our a lot of times where we try to "show off" to show how many fechas we have. Even though we manipulated that person into accepting it and as well they never go to church. So we lose baptisms.

After my comment by heart just sank, I had been holding that impression in for a long time and I have never known how the mission would take it. I turned to President and told him that the idea I had was that we should teach the missionaries to not manipulate and to depend more on the spirit when they are inviting someone to baptism and that we shouldn't count the baptismal date until they come to church. Up until l they come to church, it will be a Fecha Real!

There was a little pause in the room as President thought the idea over. I was pretty nervous, but he turned to the rest of the leaders and asked, "what do you think?" And surprisingly they all agreed with me. So President ran over to the whiteboard and had one of his assistants write out the new standard for what a baptismal date really is. He said he liked the idea so much that we as leaders were gong to have a zone conference Saturday in the morning and that we would teach the whole mission on the new standard. I was pretty set back at how fast he responded to my idea.

Well, we had the zone conference and the whole zone liked the idea, but knew that it would be a little harder now for them to keep their baptismal dates, but as well it will help the investigators to progress faster if they commit to coming to church. So it's kinda cool to think that thanks to that one comment in our leadership meeting the standard of the whole mission has changed now! 

I'm excited to see how to will turn out for the mission! I have to go now, but I promise my next letter will be better! Please pray for us that the Lord will guide us to prepared investigators! There's still time in Abril to baptize and I don't want to miss one more moment! 

I leave with my testimony that I know this is the true church. This church and gospel is lead by our Savior Jesus Christ. It is a church of order and love. I love being one of His missionaries and blessing the lives of those that look for Him. I love this work and I love Chile!

Love you all too!

Elder Cowan

Revelation from the Prophets! GENERAL CONFERENCE!!

Dear Family and Friends!

Awww IMO in a little panic mode right now trying to think of literally where is the time going. I can't believe I just finished another transfer. And to think that I only have 3 more freaks me out. But I know everything will be fine! 

Well since transfers ended, Elder Wagner has gone and I have a new companion. But really I just wanna say that Elder Wagner is one of the best missionaries I have gotten to know. We are different and we had our differencias but truly he is true servant of the Lord. I know the Lord is so proud of all the work that he has done here in Chile! I learned so much from him!

So! Onto my new companion! I'm companions with Elder Daniel now! He is in the same group as Elder Alcaraz and he is a stud! He is from Texas and is a genius! Seriously, he programmed video games for Andriods before the mission and is his only 19 years old too! He is a stud! As well, I'm so glad he is here! Because in our ward and sector we actually share it with two elders from the office who are called the Simi Squad. With our Rescate booklets with all the registers of members in each sector they are in charge of all of that. The last elders had some complications and they weren't able to get the new booklets out. But now with Elder Daniel he will be able to take out the trash and finish it. So it looks like we will be in the office at some times during this transfer but that's fine! He is a great guy! Actually, this is his first time as a zone leader and he was the trainer of Elder Peterson! Ha ha, how ironic! We are soo pumped for this transfer! There are going to be amazing things that are going to happen! I know it!

Well, General Conference I will jut say off the bat was incredible! I loved it soo much! Really receiving personal revelation is one of the coolest feelings EVER!! This was an amazing conference personally for me! Truly one of the main topics was marriage and the family! Woo hoo but don't worry President already told us today that those don't apply till after the mission ha ha! :) Well, the part about marriage at least! I truly loved all the talks! There was soo much! But I focused on 3 things. Revelation for right now for me, revelation for after the mission since this would be my last one, and revelation for my investigators. And with the questions I brought to conference, and only focusing in those 3 fields helped me a ton! I loved it! Elder Holland's talk was amazing!!! Wow! And Elder Utchdorf's talk! That was probably the question that got answered most which was that I wanted to deepen my conversion of the power of the Atonement.

I testify that Jesus is our Savior! He loves us so much! Just as Elder Holland taught, we are NOT in a continuous and helpless freefall. I have witnessed time after time in my mission his arms around me. I know He lives! His mercy and love are so infinite that it's incredible to feel. It's for the Atonement of Jesus Christ that I'm here as one of His representatives! I love Him soo much! What a blessing it is to have this gift open to us 24/7! The love, peace, happiness, and forgiveness that we need and want is reachable! And it's all thanks to Him! I love my Savior so much!

As well, one one talks that hit me to the center was Michael T. Ringwood! Truly, just as he told in the story. "Heavenly Father knows He is successful, I know He is a successful missionary so. . . who else matters?" I want to serve and consecrate myself for nobody else except for my loving Heavenly Father! I serve to please Him. Even though that is hard at times and there is always the tentacion of comparison and pride, but that is one of my goals now: to do everything for the glory for Him and nadie mas! I really only have about 4 months and I want them to be the best that they can possibly be! I loved that talk so much! It helped me a ton!

But for an update for the week! We are still teaching the reference that Jean Paul gave us to his friend, Lyryel, and she is progressing really well! We had to teach her outside in a little plaza but it didn't matter at all! We told her that we could just reschedule for another day to come sincel she is having a lot of pain in her thigh and is about to go under surgery for it so hurts for her to walk. But on the phone she got mad and said, "No! I want you guys to teach me and I'll do whatever it takes!" Ha ha, so she walks all the way down from the building and we taught her in a park a block away! And even though it was in a park it was so spiritual. That's what I love about this gospel! In any moment or at any place, when we testify of this gospel, we truly become part of the world, but not of the world.

As well, we are teaching our investigator Savka. who is a girlfriend of a return missionary that we ran into last Sunday on a corner of a street when they asked us where the closest church is. Truly, this return missionary understands his duty! The mission didn't stop after the two years for him. He came to us! And now we are teaching his girlfriend and it's going great! It was a miracle finding them!

And our investigator from Colombia came to general conference, Ferney! And Soni, who is from the Dominican Republic, came to general conference too! They liked it a lot! They are progressing little by little, but its just a little hard for them to understand everything so things are going a little slow for them. But it's alright!

As well, our zone is so amazing and we had 3 more baptisms this Sunday! It was a miracle! I was on divisions with one of the elders from the office and he was telling me how one of their investigators wanted to get baptized, but that they had not been able to teach him everything. I immediately called my comp and told him to go with his companion, find this investigator and do a practice baptismal interview. Well, he went and did it and called me and said that he felt like he was ready. They told us that in the morning the next day which was Friday. I debated if we should wait for this Sunday or for the next weekend after general conference. The elder I was with told me not to worry about it and that he could just get baptized the next weekend. I was fighting with a strong impression and just told him, "If someone happens to this teenager within the next week and a half and he doesn't get baptized the next weekend, the condemnation will fall upon me, so . . .let's go." So we left early in the morning and I went into this investigators house without even knowing him and woke him up and told him we were gonna do an interview! Ha h, Alex is his name and you probably could have imagined his facial expression! Well, by about 9 in the morning we had the interview and he has such a strong testimony! And he was baptized yesterday! IT was amazing!

As well, it was another tender mercy yesterday as Elder Wagner had to go to Maipu during the two sessions so that way he could stay there for the goodbyes that were gonna happen in the night and I got paired up with Elder Ramierz and we went to his zone to go watch the last session of conference and can you guess where it was? It was in Ochagavia! My second zone! And I was able to see all members from Clara Estrella again! IT was the best!!! Aww it was so nice to see those members! They mean so much to me!

Well I'm super pumped for this next week! Please keep us in our prayers! There's a lot to do and we still got to baptize!!! Woo hoo! I'm so grateful for transfers and to continue working in the Lord's vineyard! 

I want each and every one of you to know how much I love you. (Mom, I got your letter that you gave to Elder Peterson! Thank you soo much!) I love you Dad and Mom, Justin, Stacie, Trevor, Kiersten, Blake as well as my future niece! HA ha And for all my incredible friends! I love you and I'm so grateful for the endless amount of blessings that the Lord has poured out upon us! I know families are eternal! I love you all soo much!!!

Love Elder Cowan :)