October 12, 2015 ~ Week 67 ~ Pictures

Marcos, will be going to the temple at the end of the month,

for his own sealing and to be baptized for his father

Cristian's birthday lunch

October 12, 2015 ~ Week 67

So la gran zona de Huntendo finished up the week with 0 confirmations and  7 Rescues!!

Elder Pascual and I had an eventful week, we have been helping a lot of members do their temple work, so its sweet, there’s a Peruvian man who is in charge of the family history work for the Hunter Stake and he and his wife lived in Utah for 20 years and now they live here and
they are awesome, he is working with President Zobrist and with the whole Hunter Zone to get our converts and rescues to go to Lima in the beginning of December, right when they put the temple lights up.  They will be going to the temple and bringing their own names!!!
Our goal is to fill up 2 buses of 54 people each (so 108 altogether)!!

The Hunter stake will be an example for the entire area because no other zone in Arequipa or in any other mission has ever done something like this in Peru, so it’s a lot of pressure but what we need to do is get the converts and rescues to fill up their “My Family” booklets.  If they do that and print their names, they get to go to Lima for free, and just maybe us missionaries will get to go to Lima with them as well.

This past week we had our mission conference as well and it was awesome to be able to see all my old friends again.  Elder Pascual and I have our work cut out for us, we are so excited to work with Mollendo now, we are the only zone in Arequipa that is working with another zone that is outside of Arequipa.

Tomorrow we will be heading out to Mollendo to have our zone conference with all 28 missionaries.  It’s going to be sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.


Elder McCook

October 5, 2015 ~ Week 66 ~ Pictures

Elder Pascual and I helped the Navarro family with a

fundraiser, I was in charge of coating the chicken in flour.
I am a pro.

We had a sweet family home evening with the Navarro

family, and their son in the middle is preparing to go to Piura

in Peru for his mission. 

They invited us to the lunch... I love Black
Socosani, its like coke but Peruvian.

October 5, 2015 ~ Week 66

Thanks for all the Disneyland pictures, all the Latin missionaries want me to take them to Disneyland when I get back home, I tell them to learn English first then I’ll take them.  Seems like a pretty good tradeoff to me.

After conference Saturday night there was a baptism.  Afterwards we got the changes, and what happened is that the mission Arequipa, Peru went from 15 zones, to 9.   A lot of zone leaders are now district leaders or senior companions, but I’ll continue as a Zone Leaders with my companion, however instead of being 16 missionaries in our zone, we are now 28.  We combined with Mollendo, yeah that’s right, my old zone!  I was there for 6 months as a district leader and I’m so excited to be with them and get to work with the whole zone this time.  There are no Zone Leaders in Mollendo, just 2 district leaders and then 2 district leaders over here in Hunter.  We will be working a lot with the District Leaders as were not able to go to Mollendo every week (3 hours bus ride.  I use to say to President Zobrist, that he has got to look out for the Hunter Zone, (cause we on the up and up) but now I tell him to look out for HUNTENDO.  That’s the names of Hunter and Mollendo combined.

Love y’all

Elder McCook

September 28, 2015 ~ Week 65

As September comes to a close the great zone hunter finished up the week with 1 confirmation and 2 rescues to finish up the month with 6 confirmations and 9 rescues...

On Monday Elder Lorenzo and I were just roaming through the Plaze de Armas, the Plaza de Armas is actually a super touristy place and I feel like I see gringos all the time and I just want to say “hi” but
then I overhear them talking in Swedish or something so I can’t really say “hi”.

We were roaming and this American couple said “hello Elders!” That took us by surprise, so we got to chatting and they are the Marriott’s and the husband served his mission in Arequipa sometime in 2000 and ever since the Arequipa temple date was announced they decided to move over here to Peru and wait for it.  In the meantime they own a bakery place with pizza and burgers and donuts.
They live right across the street from the only Family History Center in the whole mission and it turned out great because we had a Family History and learning English training this past Thursday for the zone missionaries, so with permission from President and with everyone in the zone bringing money, we got to eat pizza and had the best donuts of 2015.  Sweet maquina these things were so good, and the last time I ate  donut was almost over a year ago...

Thank you Brother and Sister Marriott!

During this training we learned how to help the members send names to the temple and how to do their families history.  There is now a new church program on how to learn English.  It’s a super sweet program and if I was born speaking Spanish and wanted to learn English I would learn English.

My companion on the other hand is a pretty funny Peruvian.  He doesn’t have any motivation to learn English and so it’s kind of awkward when people ask him if he has learned it yet and he says no.  Being bilingual
is so cool.  The other day I was talking on the phone in English then I hung up and started speaking Spanish. que padre.

I’m stoked for this weekend with the General Conference sessions that will be going on.  Oh yeah the ironic part about being a missionary is that you are always the last one to find out if an apostle passed away.

This week is changes and president Zobrist said that there will be a bunch of changes.  That will be awesome!!

Elder McCook

September 21, 2015 ~ Week 64 ~ pictures

Sunday morning baptisms in the zone!!

Sweet waterfall pic

Casual hawk picture

Edgar Herrera (one of my old investigators from March)

got baptized 2 weeks ago!

I had the opportunity to go to his service because the

missionaries in my zone baptized him!

I'm not sure what this is but I wanted a picture with it

September 21, 2015 ~ Week 64

La Gran Zona Hunter finished the week off with 2 confirmations and 5 rescues! ¡sweet style!

Let’s start with Monday.  After writing we headed out to go and wait for a private bus which would pick us up and we would tour Arequipa.  The bus showed up and only had 12 seats... we have a total of 16 people in this zone..( I’ve noticed as a zone leader that if something like that then it’s always the zone leader’s fault).
After thinking what we could do, all the Latin missionaries bailed out on the tour so us gringos had a sweet time touring Arequipa.  That’s where my pictures come from.

Tuesday I went on divisions with an Elder to figure out the desires of some of his eternal investigators.  I don’t really have any stories about that however that night we agreed to do some sweet service in the morning.  Now in my mission I have made cement, sanded walls, and painted them too, I’ve moved loads of dirt but what we did was the hardest thing in my entire mission.  We show up at 6 in the morning to a forest and this dude is using an electric chain saw to chop down trees and then chop the bark.  Our job was to put the bark on our backs and walk it over to the truck.  We did that for two hours, I was actually surprised I could do it.  In the missionary handbook it says not to do service that will tire you out for the rest of the day.  After the project it was fun to work, but what was bugging me was all the bug bites I received on my legs.  It was like Camana all over again....

Sunday I gave a surprise talk but it was awesome and it makes me so happy for when I get back home and will give talks in church cause I used to be so nervous but now it’s not so bad.  Elder Pascual and I had a sweet week and sacrament meeting was awesome.  In the morning the Sister missionaries had 2 baptisms and then church started.  I was so excited with how many people came to church and that are investigating the church or are less active and are coming back.  In the evening our Bishop invited us to go to a funeral of a sister who was super active but as she got sicker went less active, and she passed away yesterday.  

Straight after the funeral we went with the bishop and other people to go and give a blessing in a hospital to this sister who on my first Sunday here would call me Bishop McCook.  apparently I look like a Bishop... idk she’s 79 and a super sweet lady who has also been strong in the gospel despite being the only member in all of her family.  It was the first time in my whole mission going inside of a hospital and it was like the very first episode from the walking dead. There are patients and beds in the hall way and there are about 7 sick patients per room.  We eventually found her and gave her a blessing.  It was my first time doing that and I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but people were looking at us ever since we stepped foot in that hospital, I wasn’t too sure if they were looking and my arm or my missionary atire.  Either way it was an interesting experience.

Love y’all, all of y’all

Elder McCook