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