Baptism of Erlipper

Dear Family,

Well this week was ridiculously fast. . . Each week I am having a harder time trying to remember all the things that are happening. Really everything is passing by like a big blur. But as always, it was amazing! :)

Surprisingly, the Lord is blessing us so much with finding new investigators. This whole transfer almost we have been able to find 10 or more investigators each week! Which has been a surprise to me thinking in comparison of how much time I have here. But I'm so grateful to the Lord for helping this sector to continuously progress.

Wednesday we had our go-homer group go to the temple and lunch with Presidente. The temple was really nice and I just love going there so much. I felt a little weird though since I know that won't be the last time I will be there. There were a lot of missionaries crying and all and I imagine it was hard for them. But knowing that I will be here one week more with my family, I didn't really feel like it was my time to rendir mis cuentas al Señor. It was a weird experience but I know it will hit me one day. . .

Right after the mission and lunch, I went on divisiones with a new missionary in Parque O Higgins. I was there from Wednesday afternoon till Friday night. These two missionaries are doing whitewash there and sadly the sector has been dead for some time! It was a little sad to see how negative the other missionary was being during the whole division as he just whined and dragged his feet. But I knew that wasn't going to affect me! Even though he is a greenie, I just went overload on animo and just tried talking to every person in my sight! For every negative comment he made, I would bounce back and make it into a positive situation. He started to check in a little bit later on and right as the two of us started to be positive, we turned the corner, and talked to the first guy in the street that we saw. And he let us in! 

The greenie missionary was so surprised as this nice gentlemen let us into his house and he even stopped washing his car to let us in. We were able to teach him the first lesson and the spirit was really strong. As we left, the missionary that I was with was just stunned, he turned to me and asked, "It's that easy?" As I just smiled and replied, "As long as you're happy, yes!" You could see how it just clicked in his mind and I was able to teach him the importance of our attitude that we show to the Lord. I shared with him the quote that I have kept with me my whole mission which is, "Your attitude determines your altitude." 

I loved seeing the change in this new misisonary as the two of us were able to keep finding news and having lessons. In which for the first 4 weeks of his mission, he has just contacted and walked all day long without having lessons. It was a dramatic change and I can't wait to follow up on him!

I love working side by side by my missioanries! They are so special to me and I know I have this big responsibility to help them make the best of their missions. As I am finishing the misison, all I want is to help my misisonaries to enjoy their misisons to the MAX!

Other than that, I was able to get back into the sector as we had to go straight into divisions with greenies from the CCM again! And it was awesome being with Elder John from Mesa Arizona! That Elder is going to rock it on his mission! He's such a stud!

Then finally came the weekend! We had the baptismal service of Erlipper and wow! It was amazing! Sadly, there weren't a lot of members that came to the service, but all the family of Erlipper came! And wow does he have some prosperity! His famliy is huge and it was awesome to see how this seed that we have now planted and nourished in Erlipper is going to bring more fruits through his family members! His wife has already attended church 3 times now so we are excited to see what more we can do for them!

Then comes the miracle! Gabriel!! We had a lesson with him last night and we read Moroni 8:24-26 We talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and were really direct with him. We invited him to get baptized just as we have done a lot of different times. But he started to ignore it. That's what Elder Cowan's patience ran out, I think, and I was really bold with him and told him that if he wants the spirit in his life then he better be humble. We talked a lot about humility and how we need to trust in the Lord. We invited him to get baptized again, and he accepted!!!!!! And he accepted to get baptized next weekend!!!

Awww! IT was so powerful! And the family was so emotional at his response! Truly, all the fast and prayers that we have done have really paid off! Thank you so much for all your help guys! We are just hoping that he can stop smoking this week!

I'm so grateful for this moment to keep baptizing in my mission. It really is a special experience that I will never forget!

Love you all! 

Elder Cowan

Updates on Investigators

Dear Family and Friends,

Wow entonces, we had some difficulties in the Internet place today so I have been trying to write this letter for sometime now and now it's finally all working out! So this might be a little shorter of a letter but it's alright! You guys will be able to hear everything personally in only 3 weeks! Wow soo weird!

But to give an update right away of our investigators. We have been able to focus a lot more on Erlipper this past week and we were able to have him accept baptism! Woo hoo! We were pretty frank with him but he understands that through this whole time we have been sharing with him, he has realized how much he really has learned. 

So he attended church yesterday and he liked it a lot and as well his wife came with him too! So we put the date for his baptism for this next weekend the 25th! Wooo hoo! We're gonna start off and finish the month with a baptism! Woo hoo! So we are really excited for Erlipper! 

Another cool thing is that Shirley who just got baptized a couple weeks ago, already has a calling in the young womens and now is attending our missionary meetings with the zone! Ha ha, she loves it! We are hoping that she will be able to like it enough to make the decision to serve a mission! She is amazing and she is progressing so fast! It's amazing to see! 

Another investigator that is progressing really well is Maria Ignacia. I don't know how much I have written about her, but her dad is a recent convert and her mom is inactive in the church. She isn't a member and is deaf. But even though she is deaf, it is AMAZING to see how the spirit really touches the hearts of people. Elder Daniel and I have been learning Spanish sign language and we can do a lot of stuff now so we're pretty impressed at how fast we are learning. And what's even more amazing is how much Maria Ignacia wants to learn! She is reading the Book of Mormon and is communicating with sister missionaries in the States that talk in sign language! 

She has had a lot of things happen in her life that have really helped her to learn that God really does exist and loves her. She even has had a couple near death experiencias (diagnosed with a disease as a kid, and a couple months ago she was in a very serious car accident) but in each experience she has explained to us at how she really has felt the Lord protect her. 

I love teaching her! Because it really is 100% depending on the spirit! Aww its so amazing! And it was awesome to see her come to church yesterday! She has so much faith! She even wants to serve a mision that way she can come back to Chile and teach everyone else the gospel here since there are really no recourses to help deaf people here in Chile. But she wants to be the first! She wants to be the pioneer for the church in helping everyone possible!

And another amazing thing is Gabriel. Aww, this man is sooo close to getting baptized. I was on divisiones with another elder and we went by the family and found out the Gabriel had snapped and gave into the temptation of smoking and smoked a whole box of cigarettes, but since he has been barely smoking his body reacted really bad and made him sick, which really was a tender mercy because now he can see literally how smoking is hurting him. I was able to give him a blessing and it was really powerful. 

He stayed in bed and I felt prompted to share something with the rest of the family. We read Ether 12 and talked about the faith. I invited them to show more faith to stand up against Gabriel to really help him accept baptism. They all got really motivated and in the next lessons that we had on Saturday and Sunday, it was amazing to see how his sons and wife started to double team against Gabriel and really stand up and testify to him of the truth and importance of this gospel. Usually Gabriel has a strong character, but the sons didn't have any fears and had the courage to testify back to him.

Last night we was accepting almost everything and really was leaning more to the idea of getting baptized. He is soo close! Really! I can feel it! Please be praying for Gabriel! We are gonna see if we can challenge him to get baptized this weekend with Erlipper!

So that is a quick update of our investigators! It seems like we will be having a couple baptisms these last couple weeks of my mission, which I'm truly grateful for! I love this mission so much! I'm grateful for each and everyone of you too! Justin and Stacie keep getting better! Trevor and Kiersten! Hope everything is well  with the pregnancy. Blake! Be safe out there in the Philippines. And Mom and Dad thank you for everything that you do! I love you guys so much!

Love

Elder Cowan

Hablar Con Todos (Aun en Lluvia)

Dear Family and Friends!

Wow, well just about all of you mentioned in your letters today, yes I only have 1 month left in my mission. Even though inside I can't get myself to wrap my brain around the concept. I know that everything has to come to an end! 

Now it's the last round and I'm stoked to give it my all! Winter has fully kicked in (sorry mom, it might be pretty cold here for ya) but it's game time!

So this week started off with a lot of fire, I guess you could say coming from President. On Tuesday we had consejo de guerra with him and he sure let us feel the pressure of the importance of this month. Sadly, the week before the mission only baptized 5 people in the whole entire mission. One of them being our baptism. President told us that that has never happened! So he was freaking out a little bit. He even called the district leaders to come to the meeting later on and gave a really clear vision for all of us to achieve. 

So we left the meeting pumped and ran straight to Erlipper's house, who we taught and taught a lot about what is Fe and how he really needs to show it. After our powerful lesson about faith, we invited him to get baptized and he accepted for the 18th! WOO HOO por fin! He finally accepted a baptism date! But the only down side is that he couldn't attend church yesterday and since he still needs one more attendance at church to get baptized, we are gonna pass by tomorrow to put a fecha with him for the 25th! Please pray for him that he will be able to be baptized that day! President is putting a lot of pressure in that everyone baptizes this month. And even though we baptized Liceth in the first week of this month, we know that we can show a bigger example to keep baptizing more and more!

Then the next day we passed by Gabriel who has received most of the lessons now and he is SOO close to getting baptized! Aww, we taught the Word of Wisdom and he has been able to stop drinking now, but he has a pretty strong addiction to smoking. He usually smoked about a pack full of cigarettes at least every day. But we were able to set some goals with him on Tuesday to start dropping one cigarette every day. We weren't able to pass by much during the week, but we passed by Saturday and he couldn't quite meet up with the goals, but he has dropped down to only smoke 4 a day which is still a huge progress! We taught him on Saturday about the importance of the Holy Ghost in our lives and how we need to endure to the end. We challenged him to get baptized but he doesn't feel like he is ready. He wants to get baptized but doesn't feel like he's prepared at all and still needs help with his smoking problem and doesn't want to fail after getting baptized. We explained about the sacrament and more of the confirmation of the Holy Ghost but he was being a little stubborn.

Really his whole family wants him to get baptized and he acts as if he is going to get baptized, but he just puts himself in a stubborn mode sometimes and sometimes it bugs the crap out of me! Aww! Ha ha, we are going to have a FHE with the Cruz family who are really good friends with them and we are hoping that he will get baptized this weekend or the next one with Erlipper!

Other than that the Lord was really merciful with our zone this past week. Our zone hasn't been progressing a whole lot. Month for month the only ones to baptized is us. We have tried so many things to try out for our zone, but it has seems that nothing has happened. Elder Daniel and I both decided that we needed to focus on talking with EVERYONE. We realized that the zone is barely finding any new investigators and obviously if we aren't finding, we aren't teaching, so we aren't baptizing! So we excited the zone this week to "open their mouths" and told them that if they wanted to be obedient we have to! We challenged the zone to talk with everyone possible! And this week there was a big rainstorm that started Friday night and lasted till Sunday afternoon. In which during the storm a lot of the companionships just stayed out in the streets getting wet because a lot of their appointments had fallen through.

But just by all of us opening our mouths the Lord truly did put people in our path. In our sector we were able to find 12 news! Something that we haven't been able to achieve for a long time. And as a zone we were able to find almost 70 news! We we were averaging achieving only like 25 a week. So that boosted a lot of the missionaries excitement and now it's just time to baptized them! The best part! Woo hoo!

Really, it was amazing to see how many tender mercies happened to us as we were walking in the street and so many families let us in. There was one case where we were able to find 4 news just by going into one pasaje in our sector, entered and taught in the first house, when we finished, we asked them for referencias, and they told us to talk to their neighbors, so we did! And we repeated that process for the first 4 houses! Ha ha, it was amazing! Enter, teach, ask for referencias, and we were able to find a lot of news! IT was amazing!

Truly the Lord is preparing a lot for us for the second half of this transfer. Even though it was a little slow this first couple weeks for the rest of the mission and mostly everyone, I know we are setting the building blocks for a lot of future baptisms for the end of this transfer and for the month of Agost! 

We are really focused on baptizing Erlipper and Gabriel since they are the only ones that could get baptized this month. We are pumped to see what miracles we will be able to see for the rest of this month!

I love this work and I know miracles exist!

Love you all!

Elder Cowan

Bautismo Gratis!

Dear Family and Friends,

Wow, I can't believe it's already July! Happy 4th of July to everyone!! Woo hoo! The 4th of July here was crazy! And that's because of the Copa America soccer tournament! And guess who won!!! CHILE!!!!!!! Oh YEA!!! CHI! Woo hoo!! It was crazy! Obviously we had to stay in the pension all day that day but after the game ended there was an endless night of celebration here in Chile! Wow! It sounded as if the whole entire country was celebrating! HA Ha it was insane! But it was an awesome experience! I love CHILE!!!! (p.s. sorry Blake about Argentina ha ha). 

So it was awesome to be here in Chile when Chile made some records with experiencing this country winning the cup for this soccer tournament! 

Bueno, this past week was awesome! I love being a missionary! Really the time seems to be going super sonic speed now since this is my last transfer! But I'm trying to give it my all!! And really, I just can't stop testifying about how many miracles there are! Wow! This week the Lord was really merciful with us again and I'm so eternally grateful to be serving in this great work! 

One of the awesome things that we were able to see this past week is how this ward has changed soo much! Really, when I got here it was a little "frio" you could say, but it was awesome to go to the church Tuesday night to have our weekly meeting with our leader misional as there were a lot of members that came to the church to see if Elder Daniel and I had changes or not! And it was nice to see how much love we have been able to develop for this ward! I think every day this past week, members gave us food to bring home to eat in the night, ha ha. Tuesday we were able to receive a bag full of oranges, a 2 liter of Sprite, bread sticks, and 2 boxes of pizza! Ha ha!! I love the members here so much! It's amazing to see the relationship with the members now as Elder Daniel and I both already have a good amount of time here and how they really establish mucho cariño!

Wednesday was just a miracle day or I guess I should say that is when the miracle started. It was the first week of the transfer, so for the weekly meetings that we usually have we wanted to get the zone pumped for this next transfer and month. So we decided to talk a lot about miracles! And how we show our faith to receive these miracles through our obedience. Really, I love being obedient! Aww! I don't know what I'm gonna do after the mission with not having so many rules to obey! I love feeling the spirit and the confidence that one can have with our Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ truly showed the perfect example as he always taught that everything He does is what He had seen by His Father. I love looking up to our Savior's example to be obedient just as He is.

After the meeting ended, I pulled out our phone and realized that we had a missed call from our ward mission leader. We called him and he yelled out, "Elderes! Tengo una referencia de ORO!" Ha ha, we got so pumped as he went on to explain that there was a family from Ecuador that we knew and who are active in the church, but that they still haven't baptized their daughter! So he, taking the initiative (aww, I love seeing members taking the initiative in the work) set an appointment for us to pass by that same day at 4! 

We were so thrilled! We were able to go their house where the Chiza family lives. We had already met this family a long time ago but surprisingly there was some confusion with the bishop and their daughter Liceth still hadn't gotten baptized. We started talking and they told us that Friday, Liceth was going to turn 9 years old and that they wanted her to get baptized that Friday! My comp and I both started at each other just surprised! Knowing that from 9 and above is when the missionaries come in to play! So we talked to Liceth, who is so adorable! And we were able to set up a baptismal service for Friday!

So starting Wednesday in that lesson and the second lesson we had with her Thursday we were able to teach all the lessons! We taught L1-L5 to Liceth! Ha ha, it was amazing! She has been attending church her whole life so she already understood everything! Then right after that lesson we met up with one of our district leaders, had the baptismal interview, we got baptismal clothes and got everything ready for the baptism Friday! WOOO talk about miracles! 

Friday came along and we were able to help Liceth's dad learn the prayer for the baptism and taught him everything he needed to know to be able to baptize his daughter. There were a lot of members that came and we were able to have another beautiful baptismal service! 

My feelings were overwhelmed of gratitude as I realized that we didn't hardly do anything. That was a miracle in itself and I am so grateful that we were just able to help this family receive all the blessings as being members of the Church. Really, It was all so fast and I think that must be a baptism record or something because we met her, taught her, and baptized her in only 3 days! Wow!! It was a miracle!!!

So we were able to have Consejo with President and then Saturday morning we had a zone conference with our zone and it was amazing to be able to testify to them of the power of miracles! We had no idea that we were gonna have a baptism that day. Actually, when it was Monday of last week we realized that the week before we put the goal for 1 baptism but on Monday we realized that there wasn't really a potential of anyone getting baptized so that same day we changed the goal to zero. But wow! Were we wrong! The Lord had other plans for us! 

I'm just so grateful to have been able to be the Lord's instrument in that miracle. It's been a wonderful feeling helping people receive this covenant in their lives. It was another miracle to have been able to have another back to back weekend with baptizing! Aww, I love this Lord and this work soo much!

There was another miracle too! The Family Rañiman were able to get married on Wednesday! And it was a huge celebration! There were about 60 people in the church and it was a big event! I love this family so much! Ever since the first day, helping the mom and her 2 sons to become active now and now to see the dad, Gabriel, get married and is now attending church with us! He is soo close to getting baptized! But during the marriage ceremony, Ana and Gabriel wanted us to take a minute to say a few words. Ha ha, Elder Daniel and I were a little nervous at first to have to go up in front of all these people with most of them not being members of the church, and to give a few words. But we were able to pump each other up as we realized that we had this moment to testify to EVERYONE! Aww, it was incredible! Elder Daniel and I were able to testify in front of everyone about the power of the gospel and how it blesses the families and how the families can become eternal. I put Gabriel on the spot as we were talking about the importance of temples and told him that when one is a member for more than a year then is it possible to get an eternal family. 

I think he got the message that we were talking about because yesterday they invited us over to eat and he offered to say the first prayer! Now that was a miracle! Because he has only prayed twice in front of us and usually we have to have a really spiritual lesson for him to commit to pray. But he willingly offered the first prayer and basically admitted to us that he knows he is going to get baptized but he just wants to make the decision himself.

Woo! IT was an amazing week! And to end it, Sunday we were able to have a mini MTC program with the members of our ward and we got together in the night and we were able to teach them how to do contacts and teach and everything! There was a lot of excitement and it was contagious to everyone! I'm so excited to follow up with our ward members to see how they can do this in their real lives! Woo hoo! 

But another miracle that we were able to see started 2 Sundays ago. The bishop read off a letter from the First Presidencia inviting all the Chilean members to fast this next Sunday specifically for this country to receive rain. This winter has been a really dry one. Especially in comparison to last year, last year it was already raining from May till August. But this year there hasn't been anything.

So as Saturday came my comp and I were able to start our fast as well with all the members as we were united in fasting for this purpose that the prophet had told us. And it was a miracle! With not seeing rain for a long time, we went to our lunch Sunday afternoon, broke our fast, ate lunch, and as we were leaving the house, it started to rain. And it rained almost all day long! Aww, IT was amazing to see!!

I love this work! I know and testify that God is a God of Miracles! He just wants us to show our faith to Him, and we do that by showing our obedience. I love my Savior so much! I love being able to save people and help them come back into His fold. The mission is the best!

Love Elder Cowan