A Better Week!

July 7, 2014

Hey Family & Friends!!!

This week was a lot better than last week!! We were able to teach a bunch of lessons and help a lot of our investigators progress!! Peter is still planning on being baptized this Saturday and we are super pumped!! We had a fantastic lesson with him yesterday!! We had President come with us and be part of the lesson in the last hour of church. We feel that that was the changing lesson for Peter. We talked about Baptism after and we really helped him understand the importance of it and after that we were telling the whole ward and he was excited!! We showed him the font and he really enjoyed it. We still have more lessons to teach him, but hopefully we can get them all covered through the week. Peter is such a great guy and he really loves the Lord.

Monday: We did the normal pday thing and we tried to go out and find some people that night, but we didn't have any success.

Tuesday: I had a leadership training meeting to go to that took up most of the day. It was a fantastic meeting and I learned a lot!! We have solid leaders in our mission and we are really progressing. We have a bunch of goals for the mission for the year and we have been kind of low in the past couple months, but June we had the 3rd highest month in the history of the mission!! We see a lot of progress and potential in the upcoming months!! The only downside to the day was, Elder Peterson had to be with 2 new missionaries and since they didn't have bus passes, they had to tract a bunch of houses for most of the time. They got a lot done and found a lot of people, but it was rough. After dinner, we went up to area 4 and talked to a guy named, James. James has been progressing really well. We've taught him the first 3 lessons and he really likes it. He is just busy and his wife doesn't want to listen, so we have to kind of work around that. Hopefully we can help him come to church with his family. Him and Peter will be the biggest focus in the next transfer.

Wednesday & Thursday: We had a pretty solid District Meeting. I had a new Hermana give a training for the first time and she did a great job. We switched with the zone leaders after that for exchanges. I went to Antioch with Elder Harris (Different Elder Harris, we have about 3 in our mission haha). Elder Loveless came to Green Hills with Elder Peterson. We had a good exchange. It took up most of Wednesday and Thursday. Elder Harris is a great guy. He's from Orem, UT and he loves to play lacrosse. He had a couple mini lacrosse sticks in their apartment and we tossed it around a couple times. I learned a lot from him and I hope I helped him as well. Elder Peterson and Elder Loveless had a pretty good time in Green Hills. Elder Loveless was pretty impressed with how well we ran our area. They were able to have a pretty good lesson with Tyson.

Friday: We helped a member move to start of the day. It was pretty easy because we had a lot of help. We did our weekly planning. Then met some people down by the Green Hills mall. We went in for the night and we tried to see some fireworks, but couldn't see anything. Probably the worst 4th of July ever, but you know... whatever! haha. Elder Peterson and I had a pretty fun night.

Saturday: We went up to the North side of our area and we were able to meet a lot of new people. We met this awesome couple, Anthony and Winoa. We talked to them for a little bit about what we believe and about the Book of Mormon. They said they would use it for some of their personal studies. They also gave us a bottle of water... Thank goodness!! haha. It was pretty hot. Well, it's hot everyday!! haha. After dinner, we went up to area 4 and had a bunch of solid lessons. Met this one funny guy named, Tiger. haha. He changed Elder Peterson's name to Dixter because he thought he was a pretty funny guy. haha.

Sunday: We had an interesting Sunday. haha. Started off kind of rough because one of our members was giving us a ride to pick up Peter and bring him to church and they got a call from their grandson's boyfriend and he broke up with him and then punched him and it was a whole lot of drama... haha. Yeah there is too much to explain, so I hope you enjoyed that sneak peak. haha. Other than that, we had a great lesson with Peter. Met some cool people after church. Had dinner with the Myler Family. Tyson knows Bro Myler, so they invited him over for dinner. Tyson is so cool. We love teaching him. He makes us laugh every time we go over. haha.

Thanks for reading my emails. I hope you guys enjoyed! I love and miss you guys so much!! I hope you have a wonderful week!! Stay classy.

-Love Elder Cottam