Hermana Cox's letter... another view of life in Uruguay

Hi family!!!! 

Wow!!! Thank you so much for the letters and pictures!!! It looks like it has been a wonderful week! I am so excited for Nick! He is going to be a great missionary! He will be in my thoughts and prayers! 

Thank you for sending me the pictures and videos. We hope that the Hermana Conference that we are planning will be a good one. 

It has been quite the week!!! It definitely has not been the easiest week I have had on the mission. In fact, we have had many trials. We feel like Satan has been working on us pretty hard from all sides. But I am just glad that I can have these experiences here with Hermana Coon. She is such a great friend. We are so much alike. We are feeling alike all the time. We have had some trials with our health, weather, and with our investigators. However we have been working really hard, and in the end the Lord has blessed us with many miracles! 

As far as our health goes, we are pretty exhausted and I could use even more prayers for my stomach. It has been a hard week for my stomach. And Hermana Coon with her tooth. oh man!!!! It has been quite the adventure. Okay so on Thursday we went to the dentist because her front tooth was loose and President Cook encouraged her to go to the dentist. So we went, he took her tooth out to to look at it, put it back in, told her to go get an xray done and come back next Friday. But on Friday, it was even more loose andon Saturday night as she was brushing her teeth, she turned to me and told me that her tooth fell out!!!! Yeah, crazy!!! She is such a good sport. I wasn´t feeling well, we were exhausted and her tooth fell out! We were a mess!!! We didn´t know whether we should laugh or cry! But she always has such a good attitude. We just weren´t sure what we were going to do for Sunday until we could make it till today to go back to the dentist. 

Hermana Coon put her tooth back in and just had to be really careful when she talked. But it was our turn to teach gospel principles class yesterday about baptism. We began teaching and like normal we were taking turns talking. But her tooth kept falling out as she talked. So, she turned around really fast to pop it back in. After that happened a couple of times, she told the class that she needed to be excused because she had some problems with her tooth and I was left to teach the class. Poor thing!!!! I felt so bad! It was quite the journal entry for her! Afterwards, on eof the investigators in the class told us that she had some awesome glue stuff for teeth that works really well. So we went and picked it up after church from her house and her tooth was able to stay in the rest of the day. And just now, we went to the dentist and it should stay in for a while. It is just difficult because, she doesn´t want them to do anything permanent here, but just permanent enough to stay for another 5 months. So, yeah it has been quite the adventure as far as our health goes. 

It has been getting pretty cold here lately too! On Tuesday it rained pretty hard all day.On Wednesday, we did an intercambio with Hermana Denos and Hermana Johnson. I was with Hermana Denos. It was a great day! Hermana Johnson still has a lot of pain in her knees. But she has such a good attitude. I don´t know how she does it. Hermana Denos is so great! She is a bowl of sunshine. Even though, she struggles a lot with the Spanish, she has such a great love for the people and the work. It reminded me a lot of when I was an oro and how difficult it is at the beginning to learn and understand the language. 

Thursday, Friday and Saturday, we worked really hard to find new people and help them get ready to go to church. In fact, we found a lot of new people to teach this week! We just hope that they will be able to progress. The hardest part is once again being able to find them in their homes to have the second lesson. We committed a lot of people to go to church yesterday, and we did have 3 investigators at church! Santiago went! He is excited to get baptized. But we still need to work out the details of who and where he will be taught because he lives in the other area but comes in our area to stay with his grandma for the weekends. Dahiana also came again. She is so great and last night we had another family night with her and her daughter Antonella. 

The other investigator that we had at church was a miracle that we weren´t really expecting. Okay, so I think last week I told you guys about Gabriella, the less active that came to church last week with her young daughter. Well, we stopped by her house this week and she told us that she had two other sons carlos 14, and Facundo 10. Carlos was baptized but Facundo hasn´t been baptized because the last time that they had gone to church was before he had turned 8. We invited them to come to church and invited her to bring her children as well. 

Saturday night, we sent them a message reminding her to go to church with her sons.Sunday morning, as we were passing by some investigators, we decided to go knock on her door to see if they were going to go. As we were approaching her door, Gabriella and her kids walked out of the door. They were on their way to go to church!!! 

They really enjoyed church. But they were about to leave after the first two classes because she feels uncomfortable because she can´t take the sacrament because she is living with someone. But Hermana Coon asked the boys if they wanted to stay for sacrament meeting and Facundo asked if he could stay. So, he stayed and he liked it a lot. He is so well behaved and really respectful. He really enjoyed church! We stopped by his house after church to be able to invite him to be baptized and put a date with him. When we knocked on the door, no one was there and just when we were about to leave, he came walking up to the house. We sat outside with him and talked to him about baptism and he is now preparing to be baptized on the 9th of August. He is really excited! His baptism will be a great way to help reactivate the whole family and we really want to help Gabriella get married or get separated. We want to work with more incomplete families like them. 

So yep, the Lord has blessed us so much!!! 

Jose Martin is doing really well! He is 23 by the way Dad. And he taught his first class in Young Mens yesterday. Apparently it was about going on dates with members of the opposite sex and standards. haha I don´t know where he learned about that, because we haven´t taught him anything about that. haha but yep. He is doing super well and has an incredible testimony. We are going to have a family night in their house tonight with Hugo, Gissel and the girls and Jose Martin is in charge of the lesson. 

The family de los Santos is also doing really well. Daiana has an admirerer in the ward, his name is Robinson Sosa, and he looks a lot like Micah(16). Richard blessed the sacrament for the first time yesterday, and you could tell he was super proud of himself. He also taught his first young mens class too. They want to have us over for lunch on Saturday. We feel so much love from them. They are so wonderful! 

This week is going to be another great week! On Wednesday, we are going to do an intercambio with some of the Hermanas here in Melo. and then on Friday we have concilio in Montevideo. We are going to start music classes to teach how to lead music and maybe even a little bit of piano. (especially for the young men preparing for missions). We are also going to have a movie night where we are going to show the restoration video. 

So, yep........time is flying fast!!! I love the work!!!!! I love my companion!!! I love our area!!!!! I hope you all have a wonderful week. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers!!!! 

Have a wonderful week!!! 

-Hermana Cox :)