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| Say Hello to my first hijo! Elder Blanco from Argentina! |
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Overview of Camana, Peru!
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La Familia Camana after the Show we Performed!
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| I was Olaf in our Christmas show that our zone performed! |
Monday, December 22, 2014
December 22, 2014 ~ Week 25 - Pictures
December 22, 2014 ~ Week 25
This
week was such an experience. It all
started last Tuesday as I met the brand new missionary that I am going to train
for the next 3 months. Elder Blanco is
19 years old and is from Buenas Aires, Argentina. We have really hit it off and we had some
lessons this week where I thought he responded great!
His very first lesson in
his mission was with a less active member and an investigator. They are not
married, but have 2 daughters, and have been together for 17 years! The lesson was about the commandments and the
woman whose name is Isabel wants to be baptized and get married, but Renato (the
less active member) doesn’t want to be married.
The lesson went great
and we are going to try to help them realize the blessings of being called
husband and wife. I could not imagine
teaching something like that for my very first lesson but then again my Spanish
4 months ago was pretty rough...
On Thursday we traveled
back to Arequipa as a zone and met with 5 other zones to celebrate Christmas
with President Zobrist and his wife. We
ate some excellent food and had a great mini conference with the President. Then the 5 zones performed their shows that
they all had planned and rehearsed days before.
Our show was about Buddy
the Elf that lived with Santa until he found out he was a human. He left the North Pole and visited the worlds
of: Frozen, Scrooge and Grinch until at
the very end he met 2 missionaries who helped him to know his true identity. In the play I was Olaf from Frozen. Although I wish I could send the video of our
30 min long play so you all could watch it, the video is 4gig, or in other
words I can not send it through email. But
I will copy the video to a USB and send it to my parents so they will all be
able to watch it. And believe me; you
really want to see me as Olaf!
Here we are just 3 days
before Christmas and due to the high speed of the Peruvian Serpost I’m thinking
I will get my Christmas package sometime in January. But it’s all good, in the mean time I will Skype
my parents, and have a great time caroling with my companion outside of the
doors of our less actives, investigators and recent convert homes. I will have a happy New Year, but most of all
I will GO TO WORK. The field is Peruvian and all ready to Harvest!
Love you all!
Make this Navidad, Feliz
:)
Feliz Navidad
Elder McCook
Words of the week: Soy
Olaf y me gusto abrazos- I’m Olaf and I like Hugs
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
December 15, 2014 ~ last Picture with Elder Atencio
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At a beach hut with Elder Andersen. Felt like I was in a James Bond
movie or something
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Me and Elder Atencio's last photo as companions. He is getting transferred to a different area in Arequipa
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December 15, 2014 ~ Week 24
¡Cambios, Cambios,
Cambios!
After 4 ½ months of
being companions with Elder Atencio, he has been transferred to Arequipa to an
area called Zomacola, and I will be training!!! I am so excited, happy, sad, anxious, nervous,
and all that good stuff. For those of
you who are unfamiliar with the word “training”, it means that I will be training a brand new Elder
and will be welcoming him to the mission. We will be companions for a minimum of three
months and I am so excited!
In a couple of hours I
will take a 3 hour bus ride to Arequipa, where I will spend the night in the
mission house, and then Tuesday morning I will meet my new companion! I do not know if he is a Latino or if he is a
Gringo, I do not know what to expect over these next three months but what I do
know is:
That the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the
thing which he commandeth them.
(1st Nephi 3:7)
The Lord will provide
the way. He loves us. And I am happy to have the opportunity to
train.
Speaking of far from
perfect Spanish the “Mess up of the week” is.... as I was trying to describe
raw vegetables to my pentionista, when attempting to say the word “raw” in Spanish
I accidently said a bad word.... she laughed, Elder Atencio laughed, and I was clueless….
oh how I love Spanish.
This week will be fun and
this week will be great!! Being a
missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is the hardest
thing I have EVER loved to do.
Chao till next week
Elder McCook
Words of the Week
cambios- changes
hijo- son
padre- father
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Me and Elder Atencio's last photo as companions. He is getting transferred to a different area in Arequipa
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December 8, 2014 Pictures
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Elder Atencio and i bought some fake snow, we are pretty pumped for
Christmas
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¡Que rico el sol en Camaná! (translated) -How rich is the sun
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Elder Atencio and I after the Noche de Misional
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December 8, 2014 ~ Week 23
Hola
¿Que Tal?
Well there was no church
yesterday because Peru had elections again, yup the same old same old. When elections are held every single store is
closed and every public building except for the building where you can vote. There is also a 1000 sole fine if you get
caught drinking. So it was pretty nice
to not see any drunks in the streets yesterday!
This past Tuesday Elder Atencio
and I did divisions, where he went with one of the young men from the ward and
taught some people, and I went with a young man named Edwin Mayo who is a
member of the church and is 16 years. We
went and taught the Romero family. I was
very nervous for the lesson that I was about to teach: the Law of Chastity. I don’t know exactly what to say when teaching
this lesson in Spanish let alone talking about it in English. So what I did was teach with authority and
through the Spirit. At the end of the
lesson I told the Romero family, that I am here to help them and that I would
like them to have a goal of a date to be married.
What happened next to me
was a scene from a Disney princess movie. Piter Romero grabbed Fransica’s hand and said
tomorrow? She was unsure…so he said the
25th? She was still unsure… he said the
31st? She was still unsure. They agreed that they would pray for a date to
be sure. I told them that I do not want
them to be married because Elder McCook is cool and “he” wants us to be married,
but I told them that they should be married because of the love that they have
for each other and for the love of God.
They agreed that they
would pray for a date, and I cannot wait for their answer :)
This past Thursday we
had a noche de misional in the church, and we had it all planned out as
missionaries. We planned to talk about Christmas,
watch some videos from the Bible, eat popcorn and then to conclude the night by
watching “He Is the Gift” video the church made. Well, gotta love Peru, the entire city of Camana
had a power outage, aka no electricity, it was very funny, so we sang 4 hymns
in hopes that the lights would eventually turn back on, well that didn’t
happen. So my companion Elder Atencio
read the story of the first Christmas that can be found in the bible in Luke
2:1-40. It was a very great experience
and the lights came back on as we left the church and locked the door. It was a very funny and yet Very, Very
spiritual experience.
I want to start a new thing that I will start
doing every email, (if it happens during the week), called “Mess up of the Week”.
The mess up of this week
was: when I was teaching; instead of saying “They Stopped” in Spanish, I ended
up saying “They Gave Birth”.... the words for the two are very similar... I was
laughing... everyone was laughing... oh Spanish how I love you.
Love you all and thank
you for your prayers, support, letters, and emails!
Chao
Elder McCook
Word of the week:
Navidad- Christmas
Elecciones- Elections
Matrimonio- Marriage
Monday, December 8, 2014
December 1, 2014 Thanksgiving pictures
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The result of hiking up the wrong mountain! We were on top of the
world!
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La Familia Camana (The Camana Zone) at our Thanksgiving feast.
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The Peruvian Thanksgiving was pretty bomb
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December 1, 2014 ~ Week 22
Every Wednesday at the
church we have English class. Yes I have
been teaching English. Maestro McCook
right? That’s Spanish for master by the
way.
Anyways, my partner to
teach English class with is Elder Andersen, who I have known since the Lima CCM
days. During English class I have come
to realize that the two favorite words in English that our students (that age
range from 15 to 25, also we always have a 70 year old member that comes every
week with his little notebook and he takes notes, he is so cute) use are: Dance
and Happy. So for almost every example we use it includes the words dance and
happy. They are used so much to the
point that me and Elder Andersen broke out and did a little dance while singing
Safety Dance by Men Without Hats. It was awesome and priceless.
As me and Elder Atencio
were teaching this last week in our area we had an appointment and once we
finished it we checked the time and our next appointment should have started
like right then and there. Yet we were far away from where we needed to be. Our area is so huge that I couldn’t even walk
to the end of it if I wanted to. Thankfully we had Rafael Florez with us,
(a 15 year old jovencito) who lives in our area. He told us he had a short cut
and to follow him. This short cut was
more of a joke then a short cut as we hiked straight up a dirt mountain. With my shoes sinking in the sand, Elder
Atencio and I could not stop laughing because Rafael kept on slipping and
falling. But once we made it to the peak
of the mountain we had to stop and take photos because the sight was so sweet. It was awesome to see all the lights on at
night, and to see pretty much an overview of Camana. We eventually made it to our next appointment
and were only a little late but covered in a lot of dirt.
The showers in the
morning are still very cold by the way; I have to psyche myself up before
hopping in the cold shower.
Chao Chao!
Elder McCook
Words of the week:
dance-bailar
happy- feliz
youth-joven
día de acción de gracias- thanksgiving
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