Multi-Zone Conference

Hello family,

How are you doing?  It is week five of the change, which means only two more weeks left.  It was a good but hard week.  Overall everything is going well in Paucarpata, Arequipa.  This Monday we went and looked around at the markets at things to buy.  I bought this little voice recorder so hopefully it works out well for the rest of my mission.  That night we had two family home evenings and they both turned out really good.  We did divisions with two young kids during that time.  One of the kids just got his mission call to go to Honduras is leaving in May.

Tuesday we had a good lesson with this couple whose names are Raul and Cynthia.  They are doing really great and are always excited to see us.  Hopefully they up the good work and keep progressing to become better.  Also we are teaching the less active Hermana Nilda.  She is going through some hard times so hopefully we can keep helping her and teaching her.  

We planned for our multi-zone conference on Wednesday, which turned out really well. We went to an ice cream shop after planning and ate.  We also had some good lessons that night.  We found a less active member named Rosel, who we taught, and he came to church on Sunday, which was nice.  Then we got to dedicate a member’s house.  So a lady’s relative died and they kept saying they were hearing stuff and were freaked out.  We had the opportunity to go with a member, Carlos, to dedicate their house.

On Thursday we had our multi-zone conference with us, Porcupata, Central and the president.  We got to teach our part in the very beginning, which was good.  We ended up being there for quite a while but were able to learn a bunch of cool stuff.  After we taught the Vega family, they are doing great and their daughter is starting to open up.  So in the Vega family there are three families.  One of the families is super active and the father is a bishop’s counselor.  The other two families aren’t active.  They all made an agreement that if one family didn’t come to church that family had to pay 100 soles, which is a pretty good amount of money.  It ended up being a good agreement.  We went and talked to the bishop about the training that we had and then we went and talked with Carlos and Christina.  They are doing a lot better.

We went and did service for a while on Friday.  We went and built a roof and the way they build roofs is with cement.  They have a bag of cement, dirt and rocks.  You mix it all in mixer and haul it up to the roof.  We did that for four hours.  FOUR HOURS!  It was bad I was extremely tired but we got to eat lunch there.  That was a hard day and we were very tired.  After we went and found a new less active member and he came to church on Sunday, which was awesome.

On Saturday we went to eat lunch with this family who isn’t very well off.  They are incredibly humble and even though they don’t have much they gave us all that they could.  That was a great experience.  When we came back there was nobody to teach so we walked around for five hours and couldn’t find anybody.  We knocked on a ton of doors and still didn’t have any luck.  Then we went and talked with Ronald and Maurido, which turned out to be good.

Saturday night we went with Carlos and got picarones, it’s like a donut kind of thing.  You guys are going to love it when you are here. 

Sunday came around and we were able to talk with the Stake President about the mission work and what we can do better.  After that we went to church and later we were able to help a member do some stuff for a family.  It was a good week and I learned a lot about the family.

Just remember to be happy about the little things in life.  We need to be like that one family I visited this week.  They don’t have a lot and they live in the middle of nowhere but they are very happy.  They just finished painting their house and are able to find joy in the little things.  Know that its important for us to focus on and be grateful for what we have and know what we need to do to become better.  Other than that everything is going great.

Tomorrow I don’t know what we are going to do but hopefully something fun!  

I love you all.

Bye,

Elder Cooley