It makes my life sound more cool if I say I´m from the center of the earth.
First I´d like to thank my mother for sending me an awesome package. You are so sweet to send all that stuff to me. My companion and I very much enjoyed the popcorn. YUM! Especially because I once again tryed to make it myself and failed myserably.
I never was good at spelling. Nowadays that I speak Spanish all day my spelling ability has lessened, which is pretty unbelievable that it could ever get any worse...
Hermana Morris is very awesome. I´d just like to say that. She´s hilarious and we basically spend our time walking down the street laughing our cans off about one thing or another. It´s great.
I tried very hard to send pictures, but the computer won´t take my camera. I´m rather upset about it, but I´ll live.
We have one baptism scheduled for this Saturday of a lady named Eudocia. She´s from Peru and her husband is a less-active member since a few years. She really likes the church and has been praying for a long time to find the true church and where she should be. She´s got two little girls that are absolutely adorable named Caty and Danielie.
We´ve also been teaching the familia Pambaquisbe. The parents are called Antonio and Juanna. They´ve got one daughter named Jessica too (I swear, every family in this town is named Jessica. It´s a little weird to hear my name called every five seconds but people don´t even know it). Antonio really didn´t have any interest in the church more than just the fact that his wife did, that is until he read the Book of Mormon. We taught them about the Restoration of the Gospel on night and gave them a chapter to read (Alma 7) for that night. The next Friday we had an appointment with them at the church. They had gotten there like, a half an hour early and when we called them and found that out we went running to the chaple. When we got there they were super excited to see us. We went in and sat down and started the lesson. The first thing we asked was, ¨So tell us, how did your reading go?¨ They started telling us that they read it together and had read more than what we had left for them to read and that they had liked it a lot. Antonio started telling us then that he had felt something special and had a real desire to learn more and more. Before this point he never really wanted to go to church or anything, but he told us straight up that after reading the Book of Mormon, he was going to talk to his boss and ask if he could get all Sundays off so that he could come to church with us.
That, my friends, is the power of the Book of Mormon. It moves people to change, to repent, to return to God. It helps people to feel a desire to aline their lives with what the Spirit tells them to do. A grown man, with lots of life experience and wisdom more than I have, wants to follow what a couple of young women suggest he do with his life. The Book of Mormon is so very true.
We´ve been trying to work with our ward here in Rumiñahui. They are a couple of lost sheep. For example: a near brawl started up in Relief Society yesturday over what song the choir was going to sing for ward conference next week. So we are working with them. We´ve been praying about what we should do and after a few visits with the members and the bishop we´ve decided to invite everyone in the ward to read the Book of Mormon together as a family before the end of the year. I know that the Book of Mormon is what this ward needs more than anything. After all, the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion, so if you aren´t reading the keystone, are you really living it?
We invited everybody yesterday in Sacrement Meeting and passed out one of those map things that you color in as you read. I´m thinking that it´s going to be pretty good if everybody does it.
Seriously, the Book of Mormon makes such a difference in the lives of the families that have made the sacrifice to read it. We can literally feel the difference as soon as we walk into the door of a house where the family reads and ¨feasts upon the words of Christ¨ together. The other houses feel like they have no hope. The member women sit and go on and on about their list of troubles and trials with faith or hope for anything better. They have no faith to go to the temple or share the gospel with their neighbors or make Christ the center of their lives.
I am so grateful for the chance that I´ve had to serve a mission. I never would have relized all this stuff. There is a serious spiritual reality that the world passes by as old fashioned or wishful thinking. Quite frankly, I don´t think that there is anything else that isreally worth living for. When it all comes down to the brass tacks, everybody is sort of the same. We all have the same worries and troubles. We all want to be somebody for Somebody. There is a natural inclination in everyone to look for something better, a better world, better life, something that really fills the soul.
That something is the Gospel of Christ and I know it. Everyone needs Christ. It´s what we were born to have and live. Everyone falls so short. Everyone needs the mercy that overcomes justice by the power of the Atonement. Everyone.
Hope you all feel inspired by my testimony to follow the Spirit and do what it is that the Holy Ghost is compelling you to do.
:)
Love. Love. Love.
Hermana Cooper
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