Week 72

This week was an interesting one! We have been working for the last 6 weeks (and other missionaries for the last year) to help a women be baptized. After a year of coming to church we had helped her stop smoking and helped her move out of her boyfriends house! She was so excited (as were we) for her baptism this last Saturday! It was wonderful! And then Satan worked overtime.... In a court case with the boyfriend, our investigator was told that if she didn`t move back in with him, the judge would take away her rights to their daughter. So like any mother, our investigator moved back in with her boyfriend to keep her daughter. It truly was a heartbreaking experience and it pulled her back into smoking a little bit. She still has the goal of being baptized! It is just going to take a little more work.

We saw another miracle this week!  We are teaching another woman who is living with her boyfriend and has been coming to church for over 3 years, she just has to get moved out before she can be baptized. Her boyfriend is into drugs and is a little abusive. So over the last couple of weeks we have really focused on the topic and have really motivated her to think about the importance of baptism. She told us this week that she will be moving out!  We are super excited for her to take this big step with faith that the Lord will help her not only be baptized, but to continue being blessed after! 

The mission is full of ups and downs and this week was no different. I am really glad to be here and for all the Lord has done through me to help the Uruguayos in Rocha! 

Love yall!

Love,

Elder Cole

Week 71

This week was fine. I had the chance to go to a place called La Paloma and it was super cool! La Paloma is where all the tourists go on vacation and it was really beautiful! It was kind of hard to find people to teach since most of the people there were only in  town for the week and then were headed back to Argentina, but it was still a cool experience! 

We also saw a huge miracle this week with one of our investigators! She has been coming to church and trying to be baptized for about a year now, but hasn`t been able to stop smoking. This week she hasn`t smoked a single cigarette (I`m not sure anymore if that`s how it is in English)! We are super excited for her and grateful for the Lord`s love and power acting in her life right now! 

This week we also got to watch the announcement of the new President of the church, President Nelson! I am super excited to hear more talks from him. Since I have been on the mission I have really loved listening to his words! He truly is an inspired man and I really look forward to learning from him during his time as President of the church! 

I love y'all! I hope your week is a great one!

Love,

Elder Cole

Week 70

This week was pretty normal..... We really saw the Lord working in our area and helping the people take those steps they need to to be baptized! For a little over a year the missionaries have been visiting a lady named Sandra. She has been coming to church and has already read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, but she hasn`t been able to be baptized because she smokes and is waiting on a legal paper that kicks her boyfriend out of the house. When I showed up she would let us talk to her, but she never really worked too hard at quitting smoking. So we started really helping her, calling her everyday, visiting her even a little late at night before we went home and we gave her a blessing that she would quit smoking. She finally started to quit smoking and the Lord responded to her efforts by blessing her. Then the problem was that she is living with a guy who she is not married to and does not want to marry him, but has to wait for some legal paper to come through so he leaves the house. About a week ago Sandra fought with her boyfriend and left the house. She says that she refuses to go back. Sandra is now really close to being baptized and she is super excited. I know that the Lord helped Sandra make the decision to leave that house. 

I know that the Lord is working in each of our lives! Maybe we don`t understand why things happen in our lives (like getting in a fight and moving out of the house), but the Lord always has a plan for us and in this case I know that the Lord has been preparing Sandra to be baptized! 

I also had the chance to watch the funeral of President Thomas S. Monson. It was great! He was truly a prophet of God! He will be missed, but his stories and teachings will always play a part in my life!

I love y'all! Hope all is well at home!

Love,

Elder Cole

Part of the family email:

Hey Ma! This week was good! Sorry I am emailing so early, we traveled today and I won`t be able to write later. We had a little bit of a tough week, but all in all it turned out well.  I feel like the days just fly by and there is never enough time to get everything done, but I guess that is good haha. 

Today we are in a place called Chuy, half of the city is in Brasil and the other half is here in Uruguay. Its cool! It rained a lot this week.... not much else happened.... we have an investigator that moved out of her boyfriend's house so now she can get baptized! She just has to quit smoking, but she is working on that! Please pray for Sandra! 

Week 69

This week was exhausting! We had a great week and I feel like we were just going 100 mph all week! I had the chance to work with almost half the Elders in Rocha this week and it was so great to get to know them, guys from all over the world, and learn from them! I am really excited to see what we can do here together these next few months to help the people in Rocha! 

This week I have no doubt that the Lord was going before us and preparing the way. It just seemed like everywhere I looked there was another little miracle, and there were times when I felt the Lord tell me directly, "talk to him" or "knock that door".  We didn`t always have success or find someone that wanted to hear the gospel, but we did leave every situation knowing that in someway we had helped that person and had done what the Lord needed us to.

This week we heard that President Thomas S. Monson passed away.  He always had the best stories and I loved hearing him speak! I know he was a prophet of God. There is one quote from him that I have always loved, 

"Dare to be a Mormon; Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose firm; Dare to make it known."

If all we can do is be an example for other people in our lives, the Lord will help them see the light of the Gospel and feel his love through us. As a missionary I have the chance to share the Gospel with everyone and it is something everyone needs! Others can be blessed as we "dare to be a Mormon" and "dare to make it known".

I hope your weeks are amazing! It is a blessing to be here! It has been getting a little hot recently, but it just means more tourists here in Rocha for me to teach haha! Love y'all!

Love,

Elder Cole

Week 68

This week was a really fast one! We saw a ton of miracles here in Rocha this last week and I really can`t describe what its like to be here. The area that I am in right now is not like any other area that I have been in yet. The people are still the same and the culture hasn`t changed, but there is a Spirit in my work right now that seems new. I had the chance to work with a few of the other missionaries in our zone this week and it was a lot of fun to get to know these missionaries better! I have really made so many friends here and not just from Uruguay, but all parts of the world! 

Last night we had the chance to spend New Year`s Eve with a nice little old lady in our branch! She has never been married, had kids and lives completely alone. It was really great just to spend time with someone that really needed the company, even if it was just for a few hours. I must have been feeling really tired last night too because I proposed the idea that we sing some hymns to end the year. I absolutely HATE singing with people, but the other missionaries agreed and I felt the Spirit incredibly strong during that time. I am sure we sounded like a bunch of suffering cats, but the nice sister said that it made her night haha! I guess I have been thinking a lot this week about how the little things we do make a big difference, in our lives and the lives of others! 

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year and I look forward to seeing all that comes in 2018! 2017 really was an incredible year of my life! Hope all is well at home! Love y'all!

Love,

Elder Cole

1. . My companion and I

2. The sister also gave us each a jasmine (is that what the flower is called in English?)

3. Just being missionaries (Friendly people working for you)  :)

Week 67 - Christmas Day

Feliz Navidad! This week was great! Rocha is really different from any of my other areas and its great to be here! I don`t have much time, but I wanted you all to know that I love ya and hope you have a Merry Christmas! It really is special to be a missionary during Christmas because I don`t have to think about any Christmas things except the reason we celebrate, Christ! 

“To catch the real meaning of the spirit of Christmas, we need only drop the last syllable and it becomes the Spirit of Christ.”  President Thomas S. Monson

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and can truly feel the Christmas Spirit today! Love y'all!

Elder Cole

1. I got to try cow tongue for the first time for Christmas dinner! It wasn`t too bad haha!

2. We also BBQ`d a nice lamb and it turned out pretty well for being cooked by four missionaries!

3. Just waiting to watch the fireworks at midnight! 

Week 66

This week was a good one! We had the chance to do a lot of work and see a lot of miracles! It was incredible to see the Lord going before us and preparing the way! I have no doubt that every time we had success this week it was because the Lord had guided us! 

This week my companion and I had the chance to work with the Assistants to the mission President. It was awesome because one used to be in Treinta y Tres with me and we are good friends! I got to work with him all day in one of the most dangerous parts of our whole mission and we survived! We started the day doing some service for one of their investigators, painting their house. I got to talking to the teenage son, and he explained to me that the stains that I was painting over on the door were from his blood because last Sunday he got stabbed in that house! Haha! The family was super great and the son is doing fine, he just had to go to the hospital for a little while. 

Then we worked like normal until 8:30 pm. We still had a half an hour and had run out of plans, so we decided to offer a quick prayer in the street asking the Lord to guide us to find one more person to teach that night. Then we took off looking. We knocked a few houses and they all rejected us, but told us to go to a specific house, where a family had recently moved into. When we finally knocked that door, they weren´t interested. By this point we had lost a lot of our motivation, and because it was so late we started to walk home, but as we left that house I felt the impression to knocked the door next to it. A little old lady answered and said she didn´t have time right then, but has been waiting for us to come by. She said that years ago she was just about to be baptized and her life fell apart and she lost everything she had. Now she wants to start talking to us again, be baptized and "come back to Christ" (as she put it). It was amazing! The very last door that we knocked that night ended up being the person that we had prayed to find! I have no doubt that the Lord answered our prayers and helped us find someone who as been looking for the Gospel!

We also got changes this week and I will be headed to a place called Rocha! It is pretty much all the nice beaches in Uruguay! My new companion is Elder Anampa from Peru! I got to work with him a little bit a while back because he was in my zone, he is super cool and I am excited to work with him! 

Love y'all!

Elder Cole

Parts from the family email:

Hey Ma! I am writing today because we are having changes differently this week for Christmas! Hahah! Surprise! 

This week was good! We got changes last night and I am leaving Maldonado.... I am headed to a place called Rocha with an Elder from Peru, Elder Anampa. I have worked with him before, he´s awesome! I am super excited! 

Rocha is kind of notorious in the mission because it is a super hard zone.... they don´t baptize hardly at all and there are only elders in the zone not sisters, because they need the priesthood to run the church meetings. I am actually really nervous to be honest, but I am also really excited because this is my chance to see the Lord work through me and make a big change in the mission! I have kind of been wanting to go to Rocha, but I know it will definitely be tough! I am excited to see what happens!