Monday, February 29, 2016

Heating up in the Mission Field!

Man, it was getting hot this week. Saturday was about 71 Degrees, which was great! Almost all the snow is gone from that big storm 3 weeks ago. I'm surprised that there is still some left but it's mainly the stuff that was frozen solid at the bottom of a big snow pile of in a place that is always in shadow. 

Anyways, This last week was a pretty big deal! There was Spanish Conference! That's where all the missionaries in the mission that speak Spanish get together and have special training from the Zone Leaders and Sister Missionary Leaders that speak Spanish. That's me, my companion and the sister missionaries in Sioux City. So yeah, I TRAINED ALL THE OTHER SPANISH MISSIONARIES. It was stressful. And Normally, we have someone named Brother Miranda help us out and train but he called AT 6:30 AM AND CANCELLED. He was really sick. So we were STRESSING OUT TO THE MAXIMUM. Luckily, we were able to get another member, Brother Dallon, to help out and that worked out perfectly. But it was so stressful!!!!!!!!!! The most stressful event of my life up to this point. Like I felt sick it was so stressful. But it all worked out in the end and it was a great conference. 

Otherwise, we were able to find a lot of new people to teach this week. like 11 people, and most of them are just the family of those we have already taught for a little while. It's awesome. In fact, one that we found was an awesome miracle. So, we found this name in our records a few weeks ago of someone who really like having missionaries visit but went on vacation to Mexico and there wasn't anymore records of anything happening. We tried her like 2 times before but both times, she was about to leave for work and there was not a man in the house (we can't be in a house with out an adult of our same gender). So skip forward to Thursday. We had a lunch with a member at Taco Bell and he said he wanted us to visit one of his friends, Marthita (Martha-ita or Little Martha: It's like an affectionate way to call your friends to show that you care about them), but he didn't tell us where she lived. He was going to tell us on Sunday. So we finished the lunch, he went to buy some tacos for a friend, and we went to go see  Martha, the person we found the name of before. Turns out that when we got there, the member had just got there with the tacos he just bought; they were for her! She was the person he wanted us to see, and we didn't even know it! And then we had a great lesson with him, Martha and her 2 kids! It was awesome! So yeah, there can be miracles, even if it as simple as getting to teach someone that you normally wouldn't be able to. 

Yeah, this week was great. I hope you are all having a great week!!!!

Peace.

Elder Cox

Monday, February 22, 2016

A good week man.

Apparently, not everyone got an e-mail from me last week. I don't know what happened, since I did in fact send an e-mail. I'll attach a screen shot of it to this e-mail. 

but yeah this week was great! It was my birthday week! As a hispanic tradition, my face was shoved into a cake (la mordida or the bite. It's where you are supposed to take a bit of the cake but while doing that someone pushes your face into the cake). There is a picture of it attached. I want to send the video but it's much to big to send sadly. But it was awesome! I got a sweater from one of the sisters in the congregation and my brother sent me a tie and a watch!  They are both awesome! 

So yeah. This week was good for the work too. We found some awesome new families to teach. We found them because we have been asking more often "Who do you know that we can teach?" Well, not exactly that question but basically that question. It's been really successful. People are telling us to visit their family, friends. neighbors, and anyone they know that needs an uplifting message about Jesus Christ. And we really enjoy being able to talk to them about it! so yeah, good stuff is happening. 

This week, Rodolfo (the one I mentioned last week) has started going through a really rough time in his life and we are really working on trying to help him. We can't do much but we are involving his friends from the congregation to do things that we can't a lot of times. It was really sad to see him in a bad situation but we hope that the congregation can help him where we can't. We are praying for him!

so yeah. That's my week. Hope you all have a good one!

Elder Cox

Monday, February 15, 2016

The week in which there was no snow

So yesterday, we were supposed to have like 1-5 inches of snow. We didn't have any inches. It was great! 

Otherwise, this week was pretty great. Rodolfo, who we have been teaching a lot, is doing really good! He is reading from the Book of Mormon and praying to see if it is true! He has been to church the past 2 weeks and that means that he is well on his way to being baptized on the 27th of February! It's awesome! 

We also found a really awesome new person to teach this week! Her name is Joanna. She is the grand niece of a family who is in the congregation. The family is really old and has health problems so they don't come to church but we visit with them and Joanna was there this week! She said that she really wants to go to a church and to help her children grow up in a church with good values and knowing God. It's awesome! She is striving to be baptized next month already, even though we've only taught her this week! She is going to feel God's love as she begins to pray to him more often (daily) and as she reads his word. She has already prayed with us and she asked God for help as she prepares to be baptized next month. It was awesome! 

So yeah, we are seeing some great work go on here! And the missionaries in our zone are doing amazing! There is success happening everywhere! It's amazing!

I hope you are all having success in your daily lives!

Elder Cox

Monday, February 8, 2016

The Biggest Storm Up Here Since 1994 (-ish)

So, this week was very interesting. First and foremost, I was not transferred. I am in the same area and am with the same companion. I can't say that for the rest of our zone. Out of 10 areas, 8 were changed. Lots of changes. But they are all awesome. It's gonna be great. 

Second and not so foremost, We had a huge storm! We had 16 inches of snow! It was way to much snow. The worst part: the truck we usually have was in Omaha for the week. 2 elders who were ending their missions drove it there and we were stuck with a Chevy Cruze. Luckily, the Cruze is surprisingly good in snow weather. We only have to shovel our car out and put wood planks under the tires twice. The other times, we were just pushed out. Only like 3 or 4 times, which is better than I thought. 
The storm started on Tuesday and was a white out blizzard. despite it being a blizzard, Elder Peters and I walked about 1 mile to an investigators' house at 10 a.m. When we were there, we found out we were suggested to not leave our apartments unless we had an appointment. Gotta tell you, it was REALLY FUN to walk in snow that you could barely look into >.<  we walked and got back to our apartment and decided it would be best to stay in, as it was actually really hard to walk through the amount of snow that was already on the ground (the snow had been falling since 12 a.m.). So we clean a lot and studied some. And that was our day. Pretty terrible. The next day, we were gonna do a lot of stuff but the Transmission the car (of the other set of elders in Sioux city) died. It was just ruined. so we helped them out getting to someone who could drive and then had to drive down to Norfolk to interview someone who was about to be baptized. With usual drive of an hour and a half, it took us 2 and a half hours to drive there and 2 hours to drive back. There went that day. That was a pretty annoying 2 days. 

But the rest of the week was awesome. (except for when we had to leave our apartment building because all of the fire alarms were going off. That was pretty annoying too). We weren't really able to see many people but we still had a great time with those that we did see. The storm really messed up our week. And we have one happening today! But it is not as bad, so i'm not worried. 

I hope you all have a great week! I'll have more to say about the people I teach next week so be ready for that!

Elder Cox

Monday, February 1, 2016

This week wasn't even that cold! TRANSFER WEEK! 11th Transfer

This week was like mostly above 30! But, tomorrow or tonight, we have a great chance of getting much snow like 8 inches of snow! This is exciting too because we have a Chevy Cruze instead of the Chevy Colorado truck that we usually have. the mission needed it for when new missionaries will come up here this week, because this week is the week when things change! 
TRANSFER WEEK! Every 6 weeks (or in this case and the case for next transfer, 7) we have changes around the mission! I could get changed (although it is not likely)! So yeah, it's an exciting week. 

This last week was pretty sweet. First off, Angel (the one I talked about last time) decided to be baptized in Tijuana, Mexico where he is going to move in like 2 weeks. Kinda sad that I won't be able to see it but that's ok. There, he will be able to have his dad support him through the things that he will do, so that' s awesome. Hopefully, his dad will want to be baptized too!

Otherwise, this week we are starting an awesome project. So, to preface this project, I need to tell you some facts. So, every member of our church has a responsibility to help other people get closer to Jesus Christ. We call this Missionary Work, which is what I do "full-time" during my mission. the work of the "Full-Time" missionaries is really hard to do alone. It is much more effective and simple when the full time missionaries work with the members of the local congregation to do this "work". So, we saw that we were not able to work very well with the members of our congregation, since most of them only recently join the church. so, we starting a project to train them how to help us, just as we were trained on how they should help us. We have started to form a plan to visit the members of our church and help them know how they can help us do our work and also how we can effective work with them to help them in their responsibility to help their friends and family come closer to Jesus Christ. So yeah. It's gonna be really awesome. It's a long project, but it will really help everyone involved. 

Anyway, that's about it for this week. Love you all!

Elder Cox