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Yea? ….. oh YAY!

We got transfer news!! Sister Young is getting transferred to the South Jordon, Utah :((( and Sister Healey and I are both staying on campus. Avery Park is being whitewashed with two new sisters! This next transfer every companionship in our zone is training except us, the Zone Leaders and one companionship in Waldport.  So we’ll have 5 new missionaries in our zone, 10 in training! Crazay! 
We also have a serious Jamba problem… The thing about campus is it’s really easy to get college students to meet up and get food.Monday night we stopped by after tracting for a little pick-me-up and the tumblers were only $10…. needless to say we have definitely been enough times to pay it back 

😬

 and pretty much all the workers now know us by name.
We had some really good lessons this week and some good commitments! Cody committed to live the Word of Wisdom and law of chastity! He also came down on Halloween to spend it with us but we passed him off to the Elders and had him be an honorary missionary for a day. He is so close to baptism! It’s just really hard for him to give up Catholicism. If anyone has any tips for teaching Catholics, send them our way! Pretty much everyone we are teaching is Catholic.
Kelly is still planning on being baptized the week after next transfer in Arizona! Yay! It’s really complicated though because we have to work through the mission President there even though she’s being taught here and her records are going to be here. We are stoked though! She came to a baptism that the Philomath sisters had yesterday and is even more excited for her own. The ward has been really good at fellowshipping her!
On Wedneday the Avery Park ward had a trunk or treat.  We had a couple people there that we invited so we went and decorated our trunk with decorations from the booth that day. We handed out little Future Missionary tags to all the kids including nonmembers 

😏

 sneaky right? 
This was actually just a really good week for missionary work! We had a TON of nonmembers come to volleyball this week. And then between the 2 wards we had 10 nonmembers at church this week! The Dahl family came to Avery Park which was so exciting! I’m actually really sad that we have to pass them off to the new sisters because they are so cool 😦
We had a 2 hour lesson at Chipotle on Saturday with Hallie (from Medford)! She had so many good questions!! She told us that growing up, her mom told her that in our church for every son we have, we inherit a planet. Sorry dad, you must not get any planets :). She is also Catholic (surprise) but had really good questions about the trinity and purgatory that I definitely wouldn’t have been able to answer had we not been teaching Cody for the past couple weeks. Funny how God works like that!
We were reading the Book of Mormon with Kelly and she was reading and the rest of the headline is pretty self-explanatory. 
And then we were at the baptism last night and Sister Healey said something mean so I punched her arm lightly, and she proceeded to slug me which caused Kelly to want to join in the fun, so she punched both of us. Then she turned to say goodbye to a ward member and gave him a hug to which I flinched because I forgot normal people can give boys hugs. Seeing that, Kelly goes, “I can give hugs AND punches!” 

😂

If you’re looking for some good reading material, give Your Four Minutes by Elder Stevenson a read. It talks about how this time that we have is not long and we need to use all of it preparing for the next ordinance on the covenant path! Or helping others prepare for their next ordinance. 
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2014/04/your-four-minutes

Love you all! Happy Halloween!-Sister Cook


Guess who we were for Halloween
Cody came to dinner with us
We went rake tracting on Saturday.
Fun fact: in Oregon you can rake the leaves into the gutter and the city will come pick them up because there’s so many leaves.
Matching pjs too!! Gotta love free clothing 
Sister Young
More Jamba
Booth on campus
Our trunk
I got to see my 3 favorite missionaries last week!Halloween dinner
Jamba… again

💁
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Church Pray Read and Brush your Teeth

What a week!

Last pday was crazy because we spent all day preparing for zone conference and then yesterday we had interviews so our pday is today 🙂

Right after zone conference on Tuesday, we scared the Waldport sisters out of their minds by driving the 1 1/2 hour to be with then for Sister Clark’s birthday on Wednesday and banging on their door at 9:30 at night. It was a party and a half, we got everyone matching pajama bottoms and worked our llama tails off.  And I am now convinced that the Oregon coast is one of the most beautiful places in the world 

Oregon State played the University of Utah this Saturday so before we went to dinner we went over to the stadium to proselytize before the game. It was so cool to actually have people want to tall to us… the Utah fans it made us a little homesick 😬 but also honestly made us want to work harder.

Modern missionary miracle of the week: we had a bunch of lessons set up for yesterday and randomly they all fell through for a bunch of different reasons, so we were texting people and Kelly responded after being MIA this weekend. So because our night had been cleared we were able to visit with her and she told us that she talked about baptism with her boyfriend and they decided to shoot for this Christmas break! It was so amazing because the spirit was so strong! She is such an incredible person and she is so excited to be baptized! We were all just on cloud 9! I know with all of my heart that this church is true, I know that the spirit bears testimony of that truth and as we search for knowledge and a greater understanding of our spirit that we can and will understand. We were talking to a recent convert and she was telling us how one of the reasons she joined the church was because it is one of the few churches that has a strong correlation with knowledge and faith. The more knowledge you gain either secular or spiritual your faith is strengthened. Which is something I’ve really loved about being on the mission, is really getting to study and seek to answer questions and without fail, every time my questions are answered in a way that strengthens my faith. 

God is so cool! I love the spirit!! If you get a chance and you haven’t already, read/listen to the talk that President Nelson gave during the Women’s session of conference it was amazing! As women we do have power! That is something that has been so obvious on my mission! 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2019/10/36nelson?lang=eng

Love you all!! Have a fantastic week and don’t forget to share what is in your heart!

-Sister Cook ♥️♥️♥️

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Prophets and Nigerian Soccer

WOW! Sorry this has been a crazy day/week!!!! We spent all last pday planning a segment to give in zone conference but I did write up a weekly, I just never sent it in time 😬 so here it is:

GENERAL CONFERENCE WAS AMAZING!!!!
We were so blessed this weekend to be able to listen to a living prophet and apostles this weekend! We had a family that we are teaching watch it with a member this weekend and we had a few others that came to watch it with us at the institute!! It was so inspirational!
There was one day this week where we were walking on campus and there was a skateboarder coming towards us and I turned to Sister Healey and was like, “Watch, I’m going to give this skateboarder a high-5”. FYI most skateboarders on college campuses are pretty competent and are aware of the general laws of physics. This skateboarder in particular was satisfied with a small wave in my direction and a swerve out of the way.
Then we were walking back to the institute and there was a girl walking towards us who had this beautiful long blond hair. I was on the outside of the three of us and as she passed us, I turned towards her and complimented her hair and as my body turned my foot got caught on Sister Young’s foot and I totally tripped up almost face planting in the middle of campus, the key word there is almost.
Despite my awkwardness, somehow people still like to listen to us and let us teach them 🤷🏼‍♀️ thanks to the spirit
Because of some emergency transfers our first week this transfer we have been chilling in a trio the past few weeks and covering both the YSA ward and the Avery Park ward which has been so much fun because there is always work to be done! And we get to mix it up with knocking doors and talking to people on campus!
We met some cool people this week too. It’s funny how God blesses us so much for every small thing we do in the right direction. One of our first days on campus when we had no idea what we were doing we were walking in aimless circles trying to stop people, a girl approached us and asked us if we were the sisters. After chatting for a minute about her plans for a temple marriage and her application to BYU she told us that she wasn’t baptized! She had been going to church the past little bit with her boyfriend though and loves the missionaries. We have been meeting with her the past little bit which has been such a miracle. Even though we were kind of struggling to talk to people God put someone in our path to talk to us.
God is so good!!
Love you all!
-Sister Cook
MLC with the trifecta
Sister Healey and I on campus at a booth
🙂
Planning for lessons
MLC part 2
Our groceries last week… don’t worry mom, we had lots of fruits and veggies left over from the week before… although that’s probably not a good thing either…
Don’t est milk ladies and gentlemen
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Go USA

Sorry, today has been a crazy day so I don’t have much time to write at all! Campus is popping! School started this week so we had a booth on campus on Friday which was super fun! We were able to meet lots of people and get a lot of return appointments super fun! The past two days have been insane but moral of the story, I’m now in a trio and covering Avery Park and College Hill ward!

Love you all and have a great week!!

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Whitewashing part II…. kind of

This has literally been the fastest transfer of my mission!

On Friday afternoon we were sitting in a lesson talking about God when our phone starts ringing.

Drum roll please….. 

To preface: Sister Griffitts and I really weren’t expecting a call because we have both only been in the area for 1 transfer

Sister Griffitts is staying in Avery Park and getting Sister Young and I am transferring 15 minutes away to be a campus missionary! Which means all my work will be on Oregon State University campus with the young single adult ward. I am stoked! And I’m getting Sister Healey who is coming from Santa Clara and so technically we’re whitewashing because neither of us has been on campus before.

Anyways, this week simultaneously flew by and was the longest week of my life! On Tuesday, we went out to the coast to go on exchanges with the Waldport sisters. Tragedy struck however because I left my phone in Corvallis and wasn’t able to snag any pictures 😦

Thursday is our weekly planning day and so we stay in a lot of the day and plan for upcoming lessons that we have. The whole day I felt like we should go see this one family who we had been trying to reach literally all transfer. The only problem with that was that the YSA sisters had the car and it was over an hour walk and about the same bus ride. So we sat and stewed and decided to go tracting instead. Sister Griffitts however was struck with inspiration and we called a member who was available and was able to give us a ride to this family’s house. When we pulled up we both got super disappointed because there was only 1 car in the driveway and it was the same car that was always there whenever we stopped by before. But we decided to try anyways and miracle of miracle they answered! And we are going back on Wednesday to have dinner with them!

One night, we were wrapping up and heading to bed when Sister Griffitts spotted a spider. The end.

We ran into some Jehovah’s witnesses at Panera Bread on Saturday 🙂

This week I’ve been studying a lot about humility and learning with a balance between heart and mind. I think back to when I have learned the most and it is always when my mind and heart work together. If I am too passionate about something then it clouds my judgement and if I think about a subject for too long I can usually talk myself into circles. But it’s a struggle finding a constant balance between the two. There’s a great talk about this called “Humbly Combining Heart and Mind” by Legrand R Curtis Jr

Humbly Combining Heart and Mind

Also if you haven’t seen it, the church just released a video visualization of the first two chapters of the Book of Mormon. It’s SO good! 

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-episode-book-of-mormon-videos-series

Love you all!

-Sister Cook

There’s a spooky half-finished baptismal font in the basement of the institute

One of our friends introduced us to this Sushi place that is literally so good! We definitely did not go back a couple times this week and I am definitely not broke. 🙂

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Miracle succulents and tomato plants

We literally had such an amazing week! I love Sister Griffitts and I loveeee Corvallis!!

On Monday night, Sister Crystal and I left to go to Waldport for a mission leadership council on Tuesday. Waldport is about an hour and a half west of Corvallis on the coast but it’s technically still in the Corvallis zone so we stayed with the Waldport sisters Monday night which was so fun! The Oregon Coast is soooo pretty, like I can’t even describe it in words so you’ll have to scroll down and see the pictures. 
We spent all Tuesday in meetings which was super inspirational and great and then we grabbed dinner, went to the beach for some ponder time and then headed back to Corvallis just in time to play soccer with some members and investigators in the YSA ward 😉

Thursday was kind of a really crazy day!!! Lots of bizarre things happened that made it kind of funky and we ended up running around a lot of downtown Corvallis. But then we went tracting and found this really cool lady named Pam (I’ll talk more about her later) and then after our member lesson we were walking around contacting because we didn’t have the car. As we were walking down a street, this guy gets out of his car with a suitcase and earbuds in and starts heading into his house. We made eye contact and exchanged cordial greetings when he drops his suitcase and rips his earbuds out and jogs over to us. He then proceeds to tell us how much he loves our church and all the members and how he’s always wanted to be a member but his wife doesn’t want to join. But he was just raving about how amazing we are and how he wants to be baptized and we were all like, “yo we can help with that!” So we exchanged numbers and arranged to help his wife clean their house. But turns out they’re moving so they won’t be in our area anymore 😦 Then, later that night we were on our way home he texted us telling us he had free tomato plants and pepper plants for us. Literally made a kind of bad day into a really good day!!

On Friday, our member lessons were so far away, they were almost out of our mission. In fact, one of their houses was across the street from our mission border so if we crossed the street we would have left our mission. Kind of crazay!

Saturday was a really cool day, we had a lot of lessons and were able to do a lot of service. When we tracted into Pam on Thursday she was super adamant and firm about how she is never going to join our church and how she strongly disagrees with so many of our commandments and it got a little heated, but we offered her service anyways and she was like, ” yeah totally! Come help me plant plant succulents on Saturday” so Saturday night we went over to her house and we were just chatting and planting succulents and then the conversation turned super deep and she really opened up to us about how she’s really at a crossroads right now. We just bore testimony to her about how God has a plan for us and then invited her to come to church and she came!! It was so cool! 

This week both Sister Griffitts and I spoke in sacrament meeting, as we were preparing I read a really cool BYU devotional by J Scott Miller called “Humble Uncertainty”In it, he talks about how there are a few types of doubt that limit our ability to receive answers but when we combine our certainty and doubt and struggle that is when we receive the most wisdom.  https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/scott-miller/humble-uncertainty/

Love you all!-Sister Cook

Waldport MLC: all the zone leaders and Sister training leaders and President and Sister Orton
All the sister training leaders
Our sunrise hike this morning
Sister Griffitts and I
Almost out of out mission
Tomato plants
The beautiful coast
Funny story: Sister Crystal and I always unintentionally match. That’s called STL unity even when you aren’t companions.

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Angel Macaroni and Pearls of Wisdom

Welcome to the beautiful city of Corvallis! I love it up here! The whole town in general is a lot slower paced than Medford. Probably because it’s a little college town and school doesn’t start until the end of September.

Our area is huge! It’s so amazing!!! We have basically the entire downtown of Corvallis plus campus plus all the tiny farming communities south of Corvallis so depending on our mood we could tract the far boonies or we have LOADS of college dorms and apartment buildings or we even have family house communities. It’s literally the best! A little bit of everything. While campus is technically in our area, we don’t cover campus. There are two Sisters and two elders assigned specifically to campus and the YSA ward so we see them a lot which is fun but it also means that any YSA aged people that we find we have to pass off to them :(. 

This area is popping right now too, not only did they leave the apartment in really good shape (much to the surprise of the ward members) but they left us with a really good amount of work to do. We have 5 people on date for baptism this transfer right now, so big things are in store for this area! Keep Tiffany, Stephanie and the Mickulin family in your prayers for this week! Tiffany was the only one that showed up at church this week because Stephanie was sick and the Mickulin family is a little MIA but she’s excited to start doing family history and finding people to take to the temple after her baptism.

We had a lesson with a guy named Tim and he was asking us a bunch of questions and in the middle of it he goes ” every time I see the temple I look at the statue on top and I want to call it the angel Macaroni but I know that’s not right, but that’s all that I can think of!” We helped him out though. And then later on he was talking about “covenants and Pearls of wisdom and the Book of Mormon”. Let me know if you know what he’s talking about 😉

My new companion is named Sister Griffitts and we are having a blast and a half! She is from Mapleton Utah and is seriously amazing!!! We were tracting kind of in the farming communities in our area when we ran into a family that spoke Spanish and no English and after establishing that they don’t speak English in a perfect American accent, Sister Griffitts goes “si no hablo ingles”. The lady at the door kind of looked at her confused for a minute until Sister Griffitts realized that she just told the woman that she didn’t speak English. 

Love you all 

Love Corvallis!!

-Sister Cook

Get ready for some killer pics next week because we’re headed to Waldport which is on the coast tonight for MLC!!
Sister Griffitts (my comp)
Sister Crystal (the other stl)

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Started at the Bottom now we’re here

Hey hey hey transfer calls came and went! I am going to the good ol city of Corvallis! We are whitewashing an elder’s area which will be really cool. Lots of cool experiences this week, we found a trailer park in our area which was cool even though there was only 6 trailers but out of those 6 we made 4 new investigators and 2 didn’t speak a lick of English. Overall this transfer had been a lot of learning and growth but boy o boy am I going to miss Medford! I’m going from the bottom of the mission to the top which will be really fun! Get ready for some pictures!

Love you all!-Sister Kara Cook

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Locale

Welcome to the last week of the transfer! This week has been a wild one! We have had lots of impromptu service opportunities which has been a partay.

On Monday we were tracting and the air was getting bad so we were about to head in but we decided to tract one more house and then two huge moving trucks pulled up and people started unloading things to move them in. And us being the helpful people in dresses and a wrist brace offered our services. So we helped these people move in for an hour or so and then they tried to pay us but we made them take a couple pamphlets instead. So it was definitely a win win situation.

And then we were on exchanges this week and we went to go visit one of the 8th ward’s people and he was basically quarantined inside his house because he had this weird contagious disease so we bought his groceries at this cool little organic food market. Funny story, we were in this random little food market in downtown Medford that I’ve never been in before and we go to check out and just started talking with the cashier and he looks at me and says that he’s seen me around before. Definitely did not recognize him but you know you’ve been in an area for a long time when random cashiers at stores you’ve never been to before recognize you. 

💁

🏼‍♀️
Saturday day night we didn’t have a dinner appointment so we had dinner at our apartment and then decided to trust fate and started walking to see someone that had been on our mind but lived kind of far away. We hadn’t even been walking 5 minutes when a member pulls over and asks us if we need a ride, we graciously accepted and sat amazed that God obviously wanted us to see this person that night.  We got there only to realize that she wasn’t home and our ride had left us. So we were stranded in our area and it was getting dark but we started walking and then Sister Johnson and I turned to each other and realized that the name of one of the inactive members in our ward had been in both of our minds and she lived right around the corner. 

When she answered the door she let us right in and right away we recognized that it had been a rough week. Just lots and lots of experiences had left her in a bad situation Saturday night. I know that God guided our footsteps that night and that we were meant to be there. Simple miracles like that remind me that he always watching out for each and every one of his children no one is alone.

I read this BYU devotional this week that really struck me. It talked about the blessings of giving which was appropriate because we had so many opportunities to give service this week. It’s called Why Giving Matters by Arthur Brooks I’ll attach the link below, I love how true Christlike service has the potential to impact nations.  
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/arthur-c-brooks/giving-matters-2/

Love you all -Sister Cook
Sorry I don’t have a lot of pics from this week..

The guy we bought groceries for 

Exchanges 

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Awe Darby

This week was a little insane but a goodish insane.We had interviews with President Orton on Tuesday, which was just fantabulous. Afterwards the other sisters went on exchanges so we grabbed Sister Sykes and kidnapped her for a day which was fun to be in a little trio. And then later in the week we kidnapped her again because we had a lesson with a guy who makes custom guitars and ukuleles and she kind of wanted to check out his shop so she came with us.  So we got to spend a decent amount of time in a trio this week which was a good little change.

On Thursday, we were out tracting when we started to notice that it smelled a little like smoke and then not even 30 minutes later we could see the smoke and then it really just came out of nowhere. Because of the smoke, our mobility has been limited, we have been encouraged to stay inside as much as possible and since we didn’t have the car that meant staying in the apartment unless we had a designated lesson that we could get a ride to with a member.  But honestly it hasn’t been too terrible, in fact I feel like we’ve actually spent the same amount of time in the apartment that we normally do because we’ve had a decent amount of lessons this weekend. 

One of the highlights of my week was when we were teaching Phyllis this week and she told us that there is definitely something different about us. We have a light that no one else has, not even other religious proselytizers.  We were talking about the spirit and surprising as it may seem, she said that I actually made sense and that she could actually feel the spirit. Haha I love Phyllis!

The title comes from when I was texting someone this week and I said awe darn but accidentally typed in awe Darby so now that’s kind of the running joke, awe darby. 

Love you all-Sister Cook

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