Hey family!
Sounds like everybody had an awesome time at camp! And it´s also very good hear that Kyle feels better. Don´t worry, the only water I drink is either the water that I buy or I drink it out of the filter they gave me at the MTC.
Seriously Mom, don´t feel like you are going to bore me with your emails. I really love to hear about everything that´s going down at home. Especially since you are the only one that writes to me.
I now hope that everyone else feels a heavy pit of guilt and shame within themselves for not supporting the most awesome sister missionary in Quito, Ecuador. :)
I didn´t know that you were pulling all the grass out! That´s exciting. You´ll have to send me a picture of it. My hair looks awesome by the way. Finally it´s short and easy and I don´t look like a train wreck everyday.
I´m going to tell you all about Ernesto. I told you about him last week but I don´t care because he´s super awesome. He´s partially deaf and his wife, Beatriz, is a new member since March. She was a convert in the Evangelical church I don´t know how long ago, but her son is a stake president in Ibarra and had her listen the missionaries. She has the most awesome testimony and is so strong. I love her so much! Anyway, so Ernest is super smart and used to be a newpaper anaylist or something (his 80th birthday is the 27th of this month) and he also used to do dramatizations of books for the radio (he was the voice of Dracula. He´s still got the scary laugh). When we first went there to teach him, it was like trying to talk directly to a very hard heart. He couldn´t hear us because of his hearing loss and it was just a lesson of basically yelling at him and him basically contending everything we said. It was really hard and a part of me was wondering if he was just one of those people that would never accept the gospel. But Beatriz was also a new convert, and we have to visit them too to help strengthen them in the good word of God. So we kept going back and going back. We then at a training by the assitants that said we needed to focus on the gospel better and more, meaning faith, repentence, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. So we decided to invite him to baptism. And as a shock to the both of us, he accepted!
After that, it still wasn´t easy. We´ve had to have him sit right next to us and we´ve practically yelled the lessons to him. He loves reading in the Book of Mormon and can get so much out of one verse, that´s basically all we plan for every lesson. Little by little his heart has been softened and literally his ears have been opened. Just as Ether 12:27 says, that if men will come unto Christ, He will show unto them their weaknesses. I seriously believe that if Ernesto could have heard us from the beginning, he would never have gotten anywhere. But as he has come unto Christ, his weaknesses have become strong. Ernesto´s hearing has little by little started to return. It´s been such a miracle. We taught him the Word of Wisdom the other night and he was hilarious. He was trying to convince us to let him have just one more glass of wine before he committed to live the Word of Wisdom. But finally he gave in. He gave us the last of his coffee (which we dumped down the nearest swearer drain on our way out) but he wanted to give the wine to somebody. If you knew his wife Beatriz, you´d have no worries that he´d ever drink another sip of wine again.
And this Saturday is his baptism. He knows it´s the right thing to do and I think that he´s excited. I´m so excited for him. I have seriously seen the miracle of conversion with him. The Holy Ghost can really touch any heart that is willing to hear. Even the ones you never think will change. Even Ernesto, the 80 year old poet who always used to refuse to pray, but now knows what he needs to do to be truely happy.
Chirst really lives. This is reality. It´s not just some fairy tale or something that would be nice if it were true. It is. The gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I know it.
I love you all. I miss you all. Oh, and Zach. Don´t put work before family reunions. Take it from someone that wishes I had my priorities straight and didn´t miss out on all the important stuff. We´re on the earth to live the gospel so that we can have our family for eternity. Not our jobs. :)
Hope to hear from you all soon!
Love. Love. Love.
Hermana Cooper
P.S. Ecaudor Quito is the best mission in the world.
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