Hello Family &
Friends! I am going to try and make up for last week since the letter wasn't
that long.
Can I just express how
grateful I am to be serving with my best friend? There are not enough words to adequately
describe what it is like to share the gospel with my best friend Sister
Kloepfer. Wow. We find joy in sharing
the gospel in every detail. We have fun,
while establishing our purposes as missionaries. We exceeded our weekly key indicator goals. We work with each other in talking with
everyone and balance each other out. The
Ward sees that we are best friends, yet we are dignified and when we go into
their homes sharing 7 minute pamphlet lessons for our spiritual thought, they
comment how well we teach with one another and they give us solid referrals to
teach. We received 6 referrals this
week! It's not like they were handed out
like candy, we had to gain their trust by showing them we love the gospel and
love the Savior. They are not afraid to
bring us with to introduce us to their friends. I want to be like that when I return.
This week was the most
miraculous week of my mission. But it
was different this week. I learned a
very important lesson from this miracle I'm about to share. On Friday, we were driving out of our
apartment complex. The timing to this
was just perfect. While driving, in the
opposite direction I saw a vehicle with a U of A license plate. I couldn't
believe my eyes; I turned around to find that the license plate on the back was
Arizona. I excitedly told Sister
Kloepfer to turn around the car; we needed to go talk with them! So she quickly turned around and we followed
this vehicle (it might sound crazy but it was so worth it)! It was just a five minute drive. We turn to the street they live and she pulled
into her drive way. We parked just a
little ahead and get out. This woman was
still sitting in her car. We walked
right up to her and waved to her from the outside. I was SO EXCITED to meet her! Especially since she is from my home city. She came out and I couldn't help but
energetically talk about how she has all the signs of a family from Tucson. And we connected right then and there. I felt so much charity towards this person
named Rachael. She and her husband had
just moved from Tucson recently due to military. Get this, she grew up on the east side of
Tucson and went to Saguaro High School. She
was around friends who were members of the Church and they talked with her
about the church all the time. She was given a Book of Mormon but had never
read it before. I just shared my simple
testimony of the Book of Mormon and Rachael committed to pick up and read the
Book of Mormon for the first time. She
is going to read it, but is not ready to learn more yet. This point right here was a changing point for
my mission. I realized that I can have
that Christ like charity towards any person that I meet and that gave me so
much more of a purpose of sharing the gospel with that kind of attitude because
I know they will feel that from me and feel their Savior's love in an absolute
increased amount. I felt an increased of
love towards these people. What a joy. So I decided to try doing that with every
person I saw. It's a whole different
experience when I decided to truly make that person I was talking to, my world,
because I sincerely wanted them to have what I had. Not that I wasn't doing that earlier, my eyes
have just been opened to the capacity of what is possible. The difference is
either a good, better, and best approach. I learned what it was like to 'turn outward'
like Jesus Christ did towards others instead of being afraid of their reaction
or judgment towards what I had to say. This changed how I shared the gospel and I saw
a change in myself as well as Sister Kloepfer saw a change in me. I felt different.
I learned a lot about
faith in Jesus Christ this week as I focused my studies around this principle
that is the lead way for opening up the gateway to Heaven. I learned much about how faith and obedience
work hand in hand. We show our love for
the Savior and that we trust in Him and what He says by choosing to obey all of His commandments. When we have faith in Jesus Christ, we
understand that we can live the commandments with His help. And we gain a testimony about the truth and
reality of a commandment-along with its' promised blessings, when we experiment
with it. Do you see the believing,
action and power part working hand in hand? I'll share with you an example of
choosing to live a commandment that actually happened about 24 hours ago.
On Sunday morning, Sister Kloepfer and I were making our final Church round up
phone calls and confirming set appointments. We confirmed an appointment made with Jim and
his family. He said yes, and then he
added this saying: "another thought, why don't we visit with one another
over going out and eating pizza." He even gave us the address and time and
everything. It was the Sabbath Day and
we wanted to keep it holy, but we thought, what would the Savior do? It's not something I would normally do. We would still be fulfilling our purpose
teaching a family the gospel. It
wouldn't be a bad thing...there were so many things to consider. We didn't feel
bad about it, so we knew without a doubt that Heavenly Father trusted us in
whatever decision we would make. He
wasn't going to give us the answer to everything that easily. We needed to
choose and act and learn for ourselves. We
decided to take this thought to church and ponder and think about what we
should do. There were goods but there
were also things that would be shaky. We
wanted to obey the commandments and do what the Savior would do. The thought came to me after church as clear
as day as though I could see the scene painted on my mind that what if down the
road when this family progresses we teach them about the commandment of the
Sabbath Day and invite them to live it, and they remember that we went out to
eat on Sunday with them? Right then and
there we knew our answer. The scary part
was, how are we going to tell them without offending them? I said, I wish we had a dinner appointment
planned for today that would really help with us letting them know. Then the thought came to me to check the
pictures on my iPad. I had taken a picture of the dinner calendar at church
just an hour before. To our relief and joy, a family who had us over on St.
Patrick's Day had just signed on our dinner calendar today for Sunday. It was the biggest blessing. Not only that, twenty minutes later, we
received a call from a young woman in our Ward who said that she has a friend
who wants to take the discussions that we teach and learn more about the Book
of Mormon next Sunday. Not only
that, when we had dinner with the family that signed up, they took us over to
their friend's house and introduced us and invited them over to their home this
Friday to have an Easter message given by us. This family accepted. The
blessings showered upon us instantly because we chose to keep this simple
commandment, the Sabbath Day holy. My
faith in Jesus Christ and living His commandments increased because of study
and experience. It is true that Heavenly
Father will pour out His blessings to all His children who keep the
commandments.
I have never gained such
a testimony of Golden Hours as I have here in Mandarin. Golden hours are one hour of inspired finding
usually by knocking doors. We NEED the
Golden Hours. This is what makes our work progress. So many miracles from being exactly obedient
to your counsel. I wish I took these
golden hours more seriously my whole mission because they are fabulous. So every night Sister Kloepfer and I switch
off with these roles. Either I pick the
area and she picks the street, or vise versa. We picked Cluster Oaks, this tiny street. Our
day panned out to where we only had 25 minutes of Golden hour due to a dinner
appointment we had to get to. We got to
this street and prayed. Sister Kloepfer
said we needed to park further down so she drove 50 feet haha. We tried any home we felt inspired to go to. With no success and only 15 minutes left we
had two homes left that we wanted to try. We paused for a moment and waited for where
the prompting of the Spirit. We both
felt like the blue home. We were going
to find one new investigator which was our goal! We knocked on the door and the first thing
this man named Jim says is, hold on a second I'm going to grab some chairs so
we can sit outside. We taught him the Restoration. We asked if we could come back on Friday and
he said,“why don't you just come back tomorrow”? We did, we taught his entire family. Best day ever!
Another Golden hour miracle
happened on the same day as we found Jim and his family on Wednesday. It is a 3 week long miracle. Three weeks ago before I came to Mandarin,
Sister Kloepfer and a new missionary went tracting down a street and found a
man named Tony. He wanted them to come
back and talk about the Book of Mormon but they got the impression that he just
wanted to Bible bash and didn't know his sincerity. Two weeks later, Sister Kloepfer and I do
service at the Seventh Day Adventist church feeding these families that they
were hosting. This family wanted to talk with us about the Book of Mormon so we
talked with them. This woman named Lisa
(she was leading this service project), who is quite amazing by the way, was
listening in but didn't really say anything. While there she met the Relief Society
President of our Ward and a few other wonderful women. Fast forward to a week later, this last
Wednesday. We decided to try Tony's home and guess who opens the door? Lisa!! We
were taken by a huge surprise. Of all
the homes in Mandarin, this one?! Happens
to be the one that Lisa lives in. Talk about
God's hand being a whole part of this work. We had the most normal teaching conversation
of the gospel and they invited us back for this upcoming Sunday to
teach them about the Book of Mormon. Wow. This
entire week was miraculous like this, there are no words to describe. I could go on and on forever.
I am enjoying each and
every moment of my mission. The weeks
just seem to fly by. I forgot to mention
that I went to Brunswick, Georgia two weeks ago and Jullington Creek for
tradeoffs! Doing the same wonderful work in different areas. My first time every really in Georgia!
Looking forward to the
Women's conference this Saturday and don't forget to surf on HeLives.mormon.org for
the greatest Easter Video that you can share with your friends!!
Love, Sister McCook
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