June 24, 2013

Hi everybody!

I hope you all had a wonderful week! We´ve had a pretty good one here. We haven´t had as much work in the office so we´ve been out in lessons and in the street quite a bit. We did 3 or 4 solid hours of contacting on Saturday and on Sunday, which was fun. It´s pretty sad how out of shape I´ve gotten. It´s been awhile since my feet hurt. But it felt good. I love being out on the street with the people. We also had a first lesson with a new investigator on Friday. Her name is Estefenia (Stephanie), she is from Ecuador but lived in Israel for 11 years, which is pretty cool. We taught really well, I felt, and she seemed at ease and committed to start praying everyday. We invited her to church and I really thought she was going to come, but she didn´t show. That´s alright though, I´m just super excited to have someone new to teach! 

I may have made a mistake in one my emails. Belen is scheduled to get baptized the 20 of July. But we are most likely going to change that since the Bishopric is now letting us baptize on a few other days of the month. He decided that the 12 baptisms we have planned between the 3 companionships would be too much for one day. So we need to talk to Belen and hopefully she will be baptized sooner. She is on vacation right now, so we´ve been sending her texts and we called her on Saturday, but this week she´ll be back and we can start meeting again.

Those are pretty much the highlights from the week. We need to find more people still. Another huge highlight from the week was my half birthday! :D Thank you so much for all the mail! That was so nice to get a bunch of letters, and they were so nice too. Thanks for making my week, you guys are the best! 

Thanks for the pictures! Those mountains are gorgeous! The warm weather has been making me want to go hiking too. That loop from Battle Creek to the top of Baldy and down Dry Creek is one of my favorite hikes. Did you guys go up to the top? Haha, everyone here is saying that Erin looks just like me! I never noticed that we looked so similar. 

How was the special broadcast? We are going to watch it next Sunday. Sounds like it will be really good for the members to hear. We´ve actually been really emphasizing that members have a responsibility to do missionary work in all of our visits with members and recent converts lately, so that will go nicely with what we´ve been teaching.

Well, I´ve got to go. Thank you again for all you do, for your love and support and for all the mail this week. You guys are the best!! I hope everything goes well with Sarah´s test and with your classes, Dad. I hope everybody has an awesome week!! I love you!!

Elder Cousins

June 17, 2013

Now, on to the weekly update: Transfers. That´s it. We´ve spent nearly the entire week running from place to place all over Madrid delivering, building, un-building, and cleaning furniture. Finally things are calming down. I do like helping out and serving the other missionaries, though. We did manage to meet with Belén a couple times. She is as awesome as ever, but she decided that the 20 of June would be a better day for her baptism. We feel like it would be good for her to have a bit more time preparing and strengthening her testimony as well. 

Other than that we are still looking for people to teach. Which we had no time to do this last week. It´s hard sometimes not really having any work. But we´ll find people. The ward here is pretty awesome, so we are really going to focus on getting references from them. 

Sorry that I really don´t have much to tell this week.

Thank you Mom, for all you said. That was really nice. I really like that idea that we have to be a holy place. It´s something we really have to work at all the time, but I think that is how Heavenly Father wants us to be. Thank you for teaching throughout my life how to be a holy place and for always striving to make our house a holy place. 

That´s wild that you are going to be alone! You guys are empty-nesters! haha, I´m sure you´ll find fun stuff to do. Wish Sarah luck with all she has going on and tell not to get stressed. No worries :D 

I´m sorry this email is so short, but know that I love you and that I´m doing well. I hope everyone has an awesome week and that the girls have a good time at girl´s camp. I love you all so much! Thank you for everything you do, for your love and support and prayers everyday.

I couldn´t do this without you. Love you!

Elder Cousins

Letters for Quinn

Friends and family:

Thanks for following Quinn’s mission on this blog and for all your prayers for him. We know some of you have written or emailed him, and that he has appreciated those messages of support. We thought it might be fun for Quinn to receive a bunch of letters from friends and family at the same time. We don’t want to draw too much attention to his one-year anniversary, so instead we thought we would use his half-birthday, which will be June 17. If you would like to participate, please send Quinn a brief letter in the next week or so wishing him a happy half-birthday and continued happiness and success in his missionary service.  The mission home address, posted just to the right, is the one that we use. Postage to Spain for a letter is $1.05. Feel  free to pass this invitation on to any of Quinn’s other friends that you might be in contact with.

Thanks!

The Cousins

June 3, 2013

Family! 

Good morning! I hope you all had a good week. It´s been a pretty good week for us. Elder Stephens and I are getting a lot more work going on here, but we´re having a hard time finding new people to teach. Which is what we need most of all. But the investigators we do have are doing really well, so things are good.

This week we set 2 baptismal dates for the 15th of June with Belén and with Mayte! Super cool! Belén is doing great. She has started reading in the Book of Mormon and is praying to know if it´s true. She says if she feels it is right by the 15th she will get baptized. I´m almost positive she will. I don´t remember if I´ve told you anything about Mayte before, so here´s a quick profile. She is 16, has been investigating for about a year and is amazing! She does everything! She comes to church every week, by herself, goes to mutual every Thursday, reads the BoM every night, everything! She is even going to EFY! But she hasn´t been baptized. So we had a really awesome lesson with her and José Montoya, who was one of my teachers in the MTC. The truth is he really taught the lesson and we just followed along. He did an awesome job! We repassed the Restoration and found out that she has a doubt about Joseph Smith. She said she is not sure if he was a prophet. We committed her to pray about it and promised that she would get an answer. We also talked about the importance of having goals, and she agreed to set the 15th as a goal to be baptized. She also has to get permission from her parents, which could be hard for her. Her father wants nothing to do with the church and her mom used to be an investigator, but got hung up on Joseph Smith, which might explain some of Mayte´s problem. But we challenged her to talk to them and we are doing everything we can to keep her excited. I really, really hope everything goes well. She is such a good person and it´s obvious the church means a lot to her. One time she told us that her friends were mad at her because she wouldn´t come with them to do the kinds of things they used to do together. She has definitely changed and the gospel means enough to her that she is living it. She is so ready for baptism. 

Those were the 2 big highlights for the week. Other than that we have been in the street talking with people a lot more. We have gotten some really good references, people who seem to have a lot of potential (one guy told us after talking to him that he had been a little bit down in the dumps, but that we had helped him feel a lot better. We told that was why we are here), but we haven´t managed to meet with any of them yet. This month has been designated the moth of invitation by the area presidency, so we are really focusing on inviting people to church. We have put together a good lesson about "feed my sheep" using the story from the Bible and the talk by Elder Holland 2 conferences ago to help get members sharing the gospel with their friends. Elder Stephens drew some sheep to give to each person. We want them to think of one specific person to share their testimony with or invite to church and then write that person´s name on the back of their sheep. We created a calender with ideas of how to share the gospel and the challenge to write what day they are going to talk to their sheep. It´s been really good teaching it to people (Elder Stephens and I teach really well together) and this week hopefully we´ll see some results. 

The office has really taken a backseat to our missionary work, which is great! It still keeps us busy, but now it´s more of something we do in addition to being missionaries instead of the other way around. We really have an awesome area here and I want to make the most of it. 

Thank you for praying for the people we teach and for me. I honestly know it makes a difference. And feeling the Spirit is the most important thing. For the people we teach and for me. I had a really good personal study this week reading in 1st Peter and in a talk from Elder Bednar from the last Conference. It was all about how the body and the spirit (our spirits) are always fighting each other, always in opposition. The natural man is an enemy to God, while our spirits want to follow Him and His Spirit. The good thing is that our spirit is more powerful. It is an eternal being fighting against a fallen creation. We can always overcome the desires of the body and the natural man if we choose to follow the spirit.

Haha, sorry I forgot to tell that story [about why I'm the designated driver] after all. Basically, I was in exchanges in Alcalá and Elder Stephens tried to come pick me up. But he got on going towards Madrid (the opposite direction he needed to go), got totally lost, and killed the car a lot of times. Finally he just gave up and called the other elders to come and get him and then get me. It was a long night and now it´s just generally assumed that I drive.

Well, that's about it for today. Thanks for everything you do, especially for your prayers. I couldn´t do this without all your support and love. Thanks again. I love you!!

Elder Cousins