Month: August 2019

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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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