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