Cole's Mission: Happy 8 Months!

Happy 8 months! Only 16 more to go! Can you guys believe I have been here that long? Sometimes time flies and sometimes it stands still. This transfer is going by a lot faster though! It's because Elder Saure is a goof and we just laugh and have fun all the time!

Elder Saure and I are having an absolute blast being companions! He is so funny and so enthusiastic about the work, that it is hard not to have fun while we are working. This week was kinda tough though. I was fighting a cold that just wouldn't seem to go away. Our proslyting hours were a little lower this week because on Friday I needed to sleep. I felt like I was a zombie going through our weekly planning session and I knew that I would be a little better than a dead body in the room if we would have tried to teach any lessons at that time. We still got to proslyte for five hours that day and got some good work done.

On Wednesday, we had exchanges with Elder Pulsipher and Elder Castillo. It was fun to go and work with Elder Pulsipher. It was the first time my whole mission that I have proslyted with an American. That was a little different, but fun nevertheless. We also got a bunch of lessons taught. We reached my high for lessons taught to investigators with a member present! I also think I may have learned more from him then he did from me. During one lesson the spirit was very strong and it shocked me when he bore quick testimony and ended the lesson. I kindly told him after we left that there was still more we needed to teach. He then said, "Elder, one thing I have learned is when the spirit is strong, end the lesson and leave. When we leave, the spirit will leave and when they feel that difference they will know there is something special about us and our message." I thought, wow, that is so true! That is something I had never thought about. I will definitely try to use that in some of our upcoming lessons with investigators and try to see if it really works as well as he says it does! We will see. He is a very scripturally (is that a word?) brilliant missionary. He is someone I would feel comfortable with if we were in a room with a bunch of preachers!

This week we also had the opportunity to baptize a woman. The best part was that her husband was the one to baptize her! We returned him to activity and then we were able to baptize his wife. Now we start to prepare them for the temple. They are excited and seem willing to do all that is necessary to get there.

I showed a family picture to the young men and young women in our ward and Kody and Logan were huge hits! I was pretty ticked when one of them said that they were more handsome than me! If just goes to show that Filipinos are crazy! Not in this world or the next will they ever be better looking than me! Haha!

One cool thing I thought of this week is making a mission bucket list! I will take pictures of me doing each one of these things. You probably won't see some of them until I get home because I am not sure how legal some of the things I want to do are--but it's going to be a blast!!!!

Love you all!