Ovidio Baptism

Dear Family,

So the ankle is doing better. It still hurts if I try to twist it or if I push on some spots, but the inflammation finally went down on Thursday. I'm feeling much better now. This past week was miraculous! We had a baptism and a variety of things happening! This week we are hoping for even more! This week is filled with so many events it's ridiculous. First off, we have a zone meeting, then a leadership council, I have my final interview with President Stapley, ward council, President Stapley goes home this week, I turn 21, and hopefully another baptism on Saturday! Wow!

So the miracle of the week was Ovidio. I honestly wasn't sure if he was going to make it to his baptism. As of Saturday morning he said that he was only going to go to see his daughter come from the west mission and then he was going to walk out the door and not do it. . . But then we went and ate with his family at lunch time and he started to change a little bit. Then, he came to his baptism at night-time and he was a totally changed man! So he got there before his daughter did and we were talking to him and getting him excited for his baptism when we heard the car of the west mission president, President Carter, show up. We ran out, greeted him, his wife, and the daughter of Ovidio and her companion, then we ran back inside and blocked the doorway so that Ovidio couldn't see anything. When President Carter showed up at the door, we pulled him inside and presented him to Ovidio first and asked Ovidio if he knew who he was. He said, guessing, "My daughter's mission president?" We affirmed his guess and then asked, "do you know what that means?" He looked at us and then said very nervously, "My daughter is here?" Right then we moved out of the doorway and they saw each other for the first time in about 6 months, since she began the mission. This hard, rough Bolivian man just melted when he saw her. He cried, and cried, and cried. He was so happy to see her and he was filled with love and emotion for his daughter. He was finally ready for the baptism now. He got dressed, along with his son, and then we started the service. It was one of the best services I've even seen! When Ovidio came out of the water, he seemed to be a changed man. His son baptized him perfectly in one shot. After the service, there was a small party and a cake. Ovidio was super happy and really enjoyed it! It was so great to see this man change the way he did. I'm so happy for him and his family because now they can go to the temple in a year to be sealed for all time and eternity.

Also, the Montaño family is still going firm. They are amazing also! They are secure baptisms for the 13th of July, my last weekend as a missionary. We've been teaching them very well and focusing on their testimonies. They are growing so much. Also, we are going to cook tacos for them tonight with a recent convert named Esperanza who is just amazing! 

We have a plan to get Maia Parodi baptized this weekend. We need one more for our goal and we have the opportunity! This girl wants to be baptized, but we need to teach her more. Her dad is a less active but he is starting to come to church again and he loves us. So we're going to see how we do this. Pray for Maia and that we can have a miracle!

Well, I'm kind of out of time, but I just want to let you know that I know that this work is true. It is the Work of our heavenly Father. The broadcast last night was absolutely amazing! I love how the brethren can drop the cane on the whole world and still be so loving at the same time! ha ha! I can't wait to see the changes in the mission field after that! SO many members came up to us afterwards and asked forgiveness for not having been more helpful before and many offered to help us with our labor. I hope they keep up with this desire to work with the missionaries!

I love this work. I love my Savior and my Heavenly Father. I love you all and I miss you. Thank you for all the prayers in my behalf and the birthday wishes. Having a companion who is 28 makes me feel really young only turning 21. :) ha ha! Till next week.

Love,

Elder Blake W. Cowan

Amazing Week

Dear Family,

Alright, so here's the news on my ankle. It's still fat like a balloon and it's bruised up a little bit. I have been taking care of myself, but I haven't let it affect my work. I keep working on it no matter what. I'm not sure what exactly will happen with it, but I'm able to walk. I sometimes get really swollen and I have to put icy hot on it and rub it down and ice it. It's about the same though after a week. ha ha! But better than when it happened last week. But I wanted to thank you all for your prayers. I definitely think the Lord has blessed me to be able to work strong until the end. He knows it's my desire and I feel like he's blessing me on behalf of all the prayers. Thank you.

So this past week was amazing! We got to work a lot more and I loved it! My area is so prepared! So here's an update on Ovidio; he finally made a decision!! He's getting baptized on Saturday by his son. His daughter in the mission will come home for the baptism and then return to her area. It's going to be really special. I'm very excited! It's going to be one of the best I've had yet. He was still uncertain with baptism until yesterday at church. Elder Romero looked at him in the eyes and said, "look, it's not a game, are you getting baptized or not?" He said he wasn't sure and then my comp, who kind of gets mad easily, said, "alright fine! We won't pass by anymore." Ovidio then looked at his wife and she told him, "You're just playing games here. Why don't you be a man and make a decision?" Then he grabbed my comp before he walked away and said, "Fine I'll do it this Saturday, but I want my son to baptize me." It was awesome! For a second I thought we had lost him, but he's super certain now!

We were able to find the Parodi family this week which is a miracle in itself, because they are always super busy with dance. We had an amazing family night and we shared a great story that teaches us that we are all children of a Heavenly King and for that, we have some attributes like him and we should become more and more like Him every day through small actions. Then, to our surprise, they came to church! If we could just have more time to teach them, we would have two, maybe three more baptisms.

President Stapley came to one lesson with us on Saturday. There is a poor lady, Hermana Ramona Montenegro, who is just a lovely person. She has been a member for 36 years and she does so much for the church. She washes our cloths, she is constantly sharing the gospel, and she always offers to help with whatever. She is married to a man who is not a member because he has a severe addiction to alcohol. He's not like other alcoholics though. He doesn't want to drink, in fact, he hates drinking. His body asks for it though, so every so often, he has to go and get a sip so that his body doesn't go into an attack. So this poor sister asked President Stapley about two years ago to give him a blessing and he finally made it around this past week! (We insisted a lot. :) ) It was a really spiritual event and it was really cool watching President in action. He's a very, very calm person, but he is very in tune with the spirit. Now we're going to see what happens with this man. We're praying that he'll be able to overcome this addiction and be baptized.

The Montaño family is amazing. Only they did not come to church yesterday and we think it was because of Fathers Day. We're going by in a few hours to see them. They are just an amazing family. I'm so excited for them. They will be getting married on the 12th of July, baptized on the 13th, and confirmed on the 14th. It's been my dream since the beginning of my mission to finish like that! A whole family, married and baptized on my last week! I'm so happy or them! Keep praying for them. There's still a lot of time left and I want them to make it so bad! They're so prepared, but I know the adversary will always try to get a hold of this type of situation.

So today my companion turns 28 years old!! He's such a funny guy. I honestly don't see the age difference. He and I are so alike! I've come to realize on the mission that adults are just like teenagers still. They just have more responsibilities and that makes them look more serious.

Before I sign off, I wanted to wish my fatty daddy un Feliz Dia del Padre! and a Feliz Cumple for my sister Kiersten! I hope you're still sane, I know Trevor is kind of nuts . .. :) And Felicitaciones Justin with the internship! I'm proud of you!

Well, I better get going. I love you all and I am so grateful for your prayers, but pray more for my investigators! They need more blessings than I do.

Love,

Elder Cowan

Great Area & Ward

Dear Family,

Well, today we were playing soccer as a zone and I was super excited to play! In my last zone I played every p-day with a few professional soccer players and I was getting really good and able to compete with them. So when I got here I was sure that I was going to tear up the field! ha ha! So I was playing really good and making a ton of goals and making people dance when I had the ball, but in the very last game, I went to steal the ball from someone and another elder kicked my foot and I landed on it wrong and I fell to the ground and heard and felt a crunching sound from my right ankle. My comp came over and tried to stabilize my foot and just him touching it made me scream. After keeping it elevated for a bit, I was able to start moving it again. I'm walking, but it is pretty stiff and it bothers me quite a bit. I'll be fine, though.

Now the only other bad news is that this past week we had a lot of meetings and errands to run so I didn't get to work like I wanted to. Other than that, everything is doing just fine! I love my new area! I was absolutely amazed at how the members understand the gospel here! The members want to work! They want to see growth and they love the missionaries! My comp had an assignment to go talk in another ward in our stake. So we had to do a division and I stayed with a member here and I presented myself in sacrament meeting and then gave the lesson in quorum. The members received me amazingly! I could feel the love of the Savior radiating from them. We also had six investigators in sacrament meeting and the members came and became their friends and offered their time and advice. It was amazing to see! Now I understand why President told me that he wants me to just enjoy my time here because I deserve it. I am so glad to have this area as my last.

So first off, I have a golden family!!! :) The Montaño family is my favorite. I'm definitely a fan. They are just so willing to do the commitments and are looking forward to baptism! Johny and Nancy, the parents, need to get married. They said there was no problem and decided to go and take out the turn this morning. Tonight we're going to verify to see if they really did it. The kids, Dilan (12) and Brian (9) are studs! They know all the answers to all of our questions because they read and fill out the questions in the pamphlets. The whole family is amazing. The only weird thing is that Johny is about 40 years old and Nancy is 19. They truly love each other though and it shows in their eyes. It's just an odd age difference. But they are our number one priority.

Another great investigator is Ovidio. He's the husband of one of the sisters in our ward and he has always been a very violent and slightly nuts man. He has a history of drinking, smoking, beating, and cheating. But since the elders have been teaching him he has learned to love and how to be patient. He had dropped everything. He's now a very quiet, humble person. He still has a strong character but he tries to be loving. He now washes the dishes and tries to clean up along with his wife. Tonight he will tell us if he wants to get baptized this coming Saturday or not. The best part about this is that his daughter is serving a mission in the Buenos Aires West mission and if he is going to get baptized, she and her mission president will come to see it!!! What an experience that would be! I'm praying that he'll have a complete change of heart once he's baptized.

We have another baptism coming up. Her name is Micaela. She's the grand daughter of a lonely old widow in our ward and we went to visit her and she decided to invite Micaela to church. She absolutely loved it!!! She wants to be baptized before the month is over. The only problem is that she lives far away and only stays the weekends with her grandma. We will have to shorten our lessons but have more content to see her get baptized.

We have another part-member family, the Parodi family that has been progressing very well too. The only problem is that they are all like professional dancers and have no time to talk with us. The daughter really wants to go to church, but her parents don't wake up on Sundays. . . We're going to see if we can go pick up the whole family and get them to church next week.

We have several other families that we can get baptized too, we just need time to go find them and start teaching. I swear, I've never seen an area so prepared in my whole mission. It's almost too easy to find people here! I'm super excited for this last bit of my mission. I just wish I could have more time here in my area. I would have loved to have been here 3 transfers or even more!

Yup, so that was basically my week. I'm super excited to work this week and have more time to visit more people. I love you all! Pray for my ankle and my foot so I can finish my last month without anything impeding the work.

Love,

Elder Blake W. Cowan

New Area: Quilmes

Dear Family,

Well, the biggest surprise of all is that I got transferred!! Yes, For my last transfer, I will now be serving in Quilmes. If you search Quilmes Buenos Aires stadium in google images, you'll see what I see from my window. I live on the eleventh floor of a tower right next to the stadium and I can watch soccer games at night now! :) ha ha! My new companion has been a good friend of mine since day 1 in the mission home, Elder Romero from Mexico City, Mexico! He's 27 years old and got to Buenos Aires the same day as me. He finishes one transfer after me. He is one of the best missionaries we have in this mission and I'm with him for a reason. I felt very consoled by this change. My last area was very tough and I worked extremely hard every day I was there, for example, for the 111 days I was in El Triangulo, I committed 60 people to being baptized. That's better than one every two days, and in the end, I only was able to baptize two in that area. I'm sad to leave the people for this last stretch of my mission, but I'm very excited to be in Quilmes! 

By the way mom, "Quilmes" is pronounced, "Killmes." ha ha! And the phrases you asked me to translate are as follows:

"I am happy to meet you" - "un gusto para conocerle"

"Thank you for helping my son" - "Gracias por ayudar a mi hijo"

"You are wonderful people" - "Ustedes son gente muy buena"

"I am grateful for all that you have done" - "Estoy agradecida por todo lo que han hecho"

"Keep the faith and stay strong and you will have great blessings" - "Tengan fe y sean fuertes y tendrán muchas bendiciones"

And yes, I know that if you try to speak the language just a little bit, they feel much more special. With my last comp, I was learning Portuguese so that he would feel special and it worked really well!!

So this past week was kind of tough. I got sick, again!! I had a cold all week and on Tuesday I was sick with the stomach flu also. I decided to sleep on Tuesday and see if I could sleep it all away and I slept from 2:30 in the afternoon until 9:30 in the morning the next day!!! My companion couldn't believe that I slept that much! I guess the mission just drains you of all your energy sometimes. I think sometimes I might over-push myself as I try to work here. I really just want to give all I have to the Lord so that I bless other people. I just need to realize that I need to take care of myself.

On Wednesday we had a special meeting with Elder Cook of the twelve and Elder Gonzalez of the seventy. It was great to hear their advice. They really helped me understand some things. They decided to shake every one of our hands too! It was kind of a hectic day though. So we originally had planned to have the meeting in capital in the afternoon until they figured out that riots had broken out in capital and they picketed all of the streets and so it was impossible to get there. We made an emergency change and decided to go to the west mission instead and have the meeting with just two of the missions instead of the three and changed the time to noon! SO we were advised last minute and we had to leave running and we barely made it to the meeting. It was a miracle that so many missionaries were able to make all those changes so quickly and were all blessed to be able to hear the words of an apostle of the Lord.

Then the other few days of the week were spent doing exchanges. So I barely got to be in my area this week. I taught several people in other areas, but I was only able to teach a few of my own investigators and now they're not even my investigators anymore! But I'm very, very excited to be where I am now. The missionary I'm replacing, because he just left for home, and my new companion worked very hard and the area is very prepared. My companion told me that we have a very, very good possibility of baptizing 6 people at least this month!! :) I'm way excited. It looks like I'm going to have the opportunity to baptize an entire family too! I've never been able to do that! I'm very excited and I know the Lord has blessed me for my efforts to improve my last area and zone, which I left very well prepared too.

Well, I better be going I have to get learning my new area! I'm very excited to get to work now and visit all these new people! I will probably have lots of stories for you next week. I love you all and am grateful for your prayers. I really feel them. I know the Lord answers our prayers and also helps us with our problems. I love this work so much. I'm going to make the best of it I can this last transfer.

Love,

Elder Blake W. Cowan