Reaching the heavens

Dear Family,

What a rainy week it has been! Sounds like its been raining hard at home as well! Hermana Cox and I have had quite the adventures in the rain this week. Proselyting and rain are quite fun. Like you pretty much all know, we are like twins...did you know that her favorite movie is "Singing in the Rain" too? So awesome! It is so fun to work with your best friend all day. I have never laughed so hard in my life.

I feel so blessed to be working in Melo with the growth of the church is so present. It really is so neat to be able to see the growth. When I got here in March, there were about 90 people going to church every week in our ward. Now, we have about 130 people every week at church! It is so awesome! We had our ward council last night. Our wonderful bishop asked Hermana Cox and I to speak about goals to the ward council. As a ward council, we set goals of what we want our Gianola ward to be like at the end of the year. We are aiming to have 150 people in attendance by the end of the year. It is such a cool thing to see the members get involved and excited about la obra misional! Vamo arriba! Dad, you were an awesome bishop. 

So, needless to see, the Lord is blessing us so much. We have had quite the trials this past week, but at the end of the day, it is so easy to see the hand of the Lord guiding us. We have worked so hard this week in the rain and every night we sleep like rocks. Then we wake up the next day and do the exact same thing. Sunday came and we had prepared all of our investigators to go to church, but like we all know, the Uruguayos hate the rain. They all told us that they would go to church...if it wasnt raining. We prayed so hard Saturday night that the rain would stop, that Heavenly Father would perform some kind of miracle. Sunday morning, we woke up to dark skies and a bit of rain. We left our home with faith ready to pick up some investigators to go to church. And you know what, they were all sleeping because it was cold and rainy. We went to church empty handed. We thought of our experience last week with Angel, so we did the exact same thing. We went in an empty room, bent our knees, and prayed asking for a miracle. We opened our eyes, and then saw an old investigator peeking in the window! His name is Miyal! He came all on his own to church...totally random! We couldnt believe it! As soon as we got up off of our knees, the lord answered our prayers. Rocke came to church too! It was amazing how the lord really does hear and answer prayers in his own time. Some answers to prayers are instant, and some we have to wait for. Its like in Enos, how he prays all day and all night and it says in the scriptures that his prayers literally reached the skies. I know that to be true.

Its a love, hate relationship with rainy sundays. I really love them because it really shows how converted our members are and our converts! I am so proud of our peeps.

We had an excellent experience with the power of the priesthood this week. Richard de los Santos has such a strong testimony...and he knows the power of the priesthood. I love them so much and what i love most about them is whenever they have a problem, they turn to the scriptures. This week, they had a little bump in the road as a family. They all turned to the scriptures in Alma 37:37 and decided that Richard needed to use his priesthood power. He gave his first priesthood blessing to Daiana. The way he described this experience was so powerful. He said that as he placed his hands upon his daughters head, the power of the spirit filled his whole soul. He told us that it almost knocked him over. With tears in all of their eyes, they bore a powerful testimony to hermana cox and i about the power of the priesthood. They teach us now! It is remarkable! We left that special home flying on clouds, filled with the spirit. 

I am grateful for the opportunites that lord gives us to learn and grow. Hermana Cox and I have been given many experiences this week to learn and to grow as we have been asked to speak in different meetings and conferences. 

We had a returned missionary come home this week. He bore his testimony yesterday in church. Wow it was a powerful. He was a powerhouse. Something that shook me to the core was that he talked about how we WAS a representative of Christ, not anymore, but he was. Then I thought, oh my goodness, I am his representative right now! I love this moment in my life. I am just going to embrace it until the very end. There is nothing like it wearing a plaque everyday and being his representative. I cant ever take that for granite. I am grateful for the ability to see the hand of the Lord guiding us, because he really does. 

Thank you for your prayers. They really do reach the heavens.

I love you!

Hermana Coon

This was after concilio with president! All of the sister training leaders...aka Hermana Viajantes!

 can you believe i am in Uruguay!?!?!

The best converts in the world! Never seen anyone so converted! Our future missionary...Marcos!

 Here is one of my roommates from honduras! she is the sweetest type 2 there is! I did an intercambio with her last week!

Rainy day sunday in our little home!

Hermana Cox's letter to her family

Hello!!!! 

Thank you thank you for your sweet letters and pictures! And thank you once again for the packages. We are really enjoying the packages here! I hope you are all doing well. Thank you for sending those sweet pictures and letters. I can`t believe that we are already half way through September. I try not to think about the date because the time is going by so fast. But then when I do realize what day it is, it always blows my mind. The house and the boys have changed so much! I hope it has been a great week for all of you! 

Here it has been pretty rainy almost everyday this week. It has been a normal crazy week. We are looking for our next family of oro! We have been finding a lot of new investigators but the majority of them aren`t married. When we meet them, they seem great and receptive and then when we ask them how long they have been together and how long they have been married, they say "oh no, we are just together". Ugh! It is so sad and so frustrating. It is sad how the world is so accepting of this kind of life style. The majority of the people that we find are living together without being married. But, we have found some good new investigators. 

On Wednesday, we had an intercambio with the Hermanas from Centenario B. Hermana Eddington came and worked with me in our area. We made the connection that her sister-in law Kim played viola with me at Weber and was Laurel`s roommate in college. Crazy! Hermana Eddington is great! She is from Roosevelt. We had a great day together. We found a couple of amazing kids named Emiliano and Abril. They are a brother and sister that we found. They are 8 and 9. I have never seen any little kids like them. They believe in God so much and they have a great desire to learn. We don`t want to baptize kids without their parents or at least the parents support. Their mom is living with her boyfriend but we are starting to teach the whole family. 

This week a missionary returned home from his mission in Argentina I think. His name is Mathias Suarez. his dad Jose Suarez used to be the ward mission leader here. We ran into him the day after he got home. That was really crazy. I can`t imagine that moment. I felt so bad for him. He was in his normal clothes and I am sure he felt like a little lost puppy. He just told us that if we needed anything he was willing to help. Before the mission, I couldn`t comprehend how it would be difficult to come home and get used to normal life, but honestly.....yeah that will be weird and honestly really difficult. But yeah.....I`m not thinking about that right now. It was just crazy to see a returned missionary here. You can just tell he was an excellent missionary. (side note: we are listening to YMCA in the cyber haha) 

On Friday, we stopped by the Familia de los Santos house. They are sooooo amazing! They were telling us of an interesting experience that they had had the day before. Apparently, Daiana had made a mistake. They didn`t give us details but they told us that everything is fine and she has talked with bishop and everything. But she had had a nightmare and in her dream she was at church, and Hermana Coon was playing the organ. But when Daiana went to grab the hymn book and sing, it was like she couldn`t open her eyes because they felt like they were burning. Then she went to the bathroom in the church and she said it was all trashed with mud and blood and she had an awful feeling. Well she told this dream to her parents and they knew exactly what it meant. (now playing is We will rock you by queen :) ahhhhhhh!!!!)   Anyway, they knew that Satan is trying really hard to distract her and trying to get to her. Richard took action. He used his priesthood for the first time. He gave Daiana a blessing. But the way he described the experience is incredible. he said that he could just feel the power so strong. He said it felt 10 times more powerful than when he received the priesthood. He could barely finish the blessing because he was so overcome. They were all crying and when he ended the prayer, he had to keep himself from collapsing. They were all overcome with the spirit and the power of the priesthood. I am so proud of them and how far they have come! He will be speaking in church on the 28th. :)

Saturday and yesterday we had ward council. The bishop had us speak about how to make and set goals and plans since that is what we do all day everyday as missionaries. The ward is really excited to get involved in this work. yesterday, we were making a mission plan for the ward. This ward has a huge potencial. Also, yesterday there were 2 ward missionaries called. 

Yesterday, none of the investigators that we were expecting came to church. But the Lord blessed us with a miracle. Miyal came to church again. And then Rocky came to church! He is a new investigator that we found this week. He is 55 and he lives alone. He really broke his neck in a moto accident and wears a neck brace. But we passed by his house yesterday morning as we were looking for investigators and he came to church with us. He smokes and doesn`t really know how to read. We haven`t really taught him yet cause we just found him on Friday. But we are hoping and praying that he will progress for the 27th of this month. 

But yep, we are excited for this week. We have some great plans to work with the members. We really want to focus on that more now! It is going to be a wonderful week! I hope you all have a great week! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers!!!!! I love you all so much!!!!!   

-Hermana Cox