Alright so right into it. We ended up pushing Shane's baptismal date back to the 7th of February. He hadn't talked to his parents yet and he was just kind of panicking and feeling that he wasn't ready. After prayerful consideration, we felt the same way so we pushed it back. I've seen way too many times where people get baptized too fast and they end up going less-active immediately. So it should be good! He's still doing really well though and is finally back in town and everything's back to normal. He came to church and loved it, and is coming to FHE tonight and we're watching Meet the Mormons!
So we found this new guy Anil... we got a referral last Wednesday from the family ward missionaries and contacted him via phone the same day. It just so happened that there was a baptism going on that night at 6:00, so we texted Anil and said that we'd "give him the Bible" at 6:00, which the full intention of dragging him kicking and screaming into the baptismal service to watch it. We ended up being like 10 or 15 minutes late, just in time for everyone to be moving from the Chapel into the baptistry for the baptism. Well Anil just walks up to us and introduces himself, and apparently he just walked right into the baptismal service without us even being there. He's just like "yeah, there's this baptism going on let's go watch it!" So we did and it was great. Gave him a Bible and set up another appointment. We taught him on Friday and it went well, and he came to a Devotional last night and is going to FHE tonight! He's a sweet Hindu Indian guy.
We actually have added a lot of diversity to our teaching pool this week. We're also teaching this guy named Leo who is from Iraq and he's a Christian. I didn't even know there was such thing as an Iraqi Christian. Anyway, he's here studying and has been reading the Book of Mormon! So.. that's legit. We're also now teaching a Muslim guy and Shane is black. So yeah. I think we win the diversity award for the week.
I was on exchanges (again) for their lesson with Jeffrey, but apparently it went well and he finally prayed at the end! Woot! We haven't met with Gabe in forever but we're seeing him tomorrow sooo that's good.
Hmm.. well that's about all I got.
Welp, the Church is true and Jesus lives! That's all folks!

-Elder Cox

Let's see, so I guess we'll start with Janette. She got baptized! You probably don't remember Janette, but she was the one that was taking three institute classes, has a boyfriend on a mission, read the Book of Mormon a year ago and is converted to the gospel. Unfortunately, we had to pass her off because she's out of the boundaries on the weekends. But, either way she got baptized on Saturday. Wish I could say that we got to see it but we didn't.
Yeah, so ASU is finally not a ghost town anymore. Holy cow. Church was packed yesterday, which it's about time if you ask me. We got to see Shane at a devotional last night and set up appointments for us to teach him and such, and he still seems pretty solid for the 24th! But, pray for him anyway because the Devil loves to make people fall off date. He absolutely loves it. Shane is doing good though, he's read up to Jacob in the Book of Mormon which is further than a lot of converts read honestly. Solid fellowship and all, he should be good to go.
I missed our lesson with Jeffrey last week because we were on exchanges. I heard it went well though, and that he finally brought up his real concern as to why he is so tentative about baptism. Apparently his mom is like a super big anti-Mormon. Go figure, huh? Anyway, he feels like it's the right thing to do and something he wants to get involved in but he's afraid of compromising that relationship with his momma. Makes sense. We'll keep pestering him.
Jodie, our RC, has been super up and down lately --usually more down-- and recently she's back on the upward climb. She'll probably need some prayers too, while you're at it! Apparently she actually has some medical issues that make her so up and down. Anywho, she's solid again.
Gabe we haven't had a chance to meet with yet. We were expecting him at church yesterday but apparently he was in Ohio or something random. The day before school starts. So that was weird. He'll be good though! I feel like even if he doesn't get baptized he'll come to church as long as he's at ASU. He loves coming to church and loves the people here, he just doesn't feel the need to be baptized yet. We'll get him
In case anyone was wondering I'm still trudging through the Old Testament. I feel like I relate really well to it, somehow. I dunno, probably because it's crude and blunt and everyone dies all the time. I think I really like the wrathful side of God, as long as His wrath isn't pointed in my direction. I'm super weird.
Something I have been pondering lately is the "Golden Rule". Usually this applies in the sense that we "do to others and we want others to do to us", but I've lately been thinking about it in the context that Elder Holland sort-of referred to in his last General Conference talk, that is, "Do unto others and you want God to do to you." For me, it helps me be much more forgiving, merciful, charitable, service oriented, etc. Elder Holland talked about it in regards to giving to the poor, and that we're all "beggars in the sight of God", but I try to apply it to everything. Just a thought!
Welp, with school back in session you can plan on us baptizing nations. I'll let you know how that goes.
Until next time!

-Elder Cox

Welp, here it is! . Happy New Year!

So last Monday we played basketball with President Toone's sons and sons-in-law. Fairly needless to say, they were all GIANT and really good at basketball. I'm still pretty terrible, so I wasn't much help to any of the teams I was on. It was still pretty fun nonetheless. We also "played" soccer with all President's grand kids which if you ask me was much more fun than basketball. Me playing soccer with those kids was probably a lot like those huge dudes playing basketball with me. Anyway, I got some pictures of it! Finally...

So other big news is that we put Shane on date! Woooot! We had a Skype lesson with him because he is in Nebraska or something for the break. We went over to a member's house and had a sweet lesson about the gospel. We invited him to be baptized on January 24th and he says, "Yeah that sounds great." Simple enough I guess! Yesterday he asked us what Kolob was so who knows where he got that from... but either way he's getting baptized.

We had another lesson with Gabe in which we invited him to be baptized AGAIN. Usually he tells us yes in a roundabout sort of way, but this time he flat out told us that he feels if he was baptized now that it would diminish the significance of his previous baptism. So finally the real concern comes out and we were able to talk to him about the Priesthood, etc. etc. and we're still going to work really hard with him to help him progress. As of right now, he'll probably just keep coming to church for a few years even if he never gets baptized. I guess he has sort-of a non-denominational outlook that he knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet, the Book of Mormon is true, the Church is true, BUT that other churches can be true too. So that's what we're working with. Pray for him!

With Jeffrey, we've been teaching him for a while but for whatever reason haven't invited him to be baptized! It was driving us crazy -- probably the Spirit constraining us -- but we couldn't figure out why. Well we had a lesson Saturday and found a solid fellowship for him. Invited him to be baptized and --BAM-- he said yes... but after he reads the whole Book of Mormon... so we'll see. Anyway, the fellowship is the people that we have dinner with every Sunday and they invited him over and he came yesterday! So hopefully that'll be key in his conversion by making new friends and such. Good stuff.

My companion has gotten on a real family history streak... have any of you RM's used family history as a finding tool? We're trying to figure it out to try something new. Elder Erikson found some sweet stories about his ancestors like guarding the Prophet Joseph's house, healing people, and crazy stuff like that. Pretty cool stuff. We're hoping the Spirit of Elijah can just push people into the font. We'll see how it goes!

Welp, that's all this week family. Until next time!

-Elder Cox

Last year around this time one of my zone leaders told me that 2014 was going to be the year I would be a missionary ALL YEAR. At the time, I thought it put into a dizzying perspective of how long I'd actually be here, but now here I am in the blink of an eye at the end of the year. Part of me feels like I was born a missionary, will always be a missionary, and will die a missionary. That my family is actually made up and I was created as a robot strictly to do missionary work with fabricated memories of childhood and youth. The other part of me feels like I've been here for a couple months and it's flying by. I'm sure my brothers understand what I mean.

Anyway, not much has changed since Thursday! We got to have a Skype lesson with Shane while he's in Nebraska. We Skyped in his member fellowship from Mesa on one iPad, and Skyped him on another, faced the iPads toward each other so they could see each other and taught him the Plan of Salvation. It was pretty sweet!

I guess I did forget to talk about MLC too. So on Tuesday we went to the temple as a mission and by 1:30 were expected to be at the mission home dressed in p-day clothes. Long story short, President didn't get out of the temple until way later and so we left by 3:30 ish. He wouldn't tell us where we were going or why we were in regular clothes. So, we drove in a caravan for THREE HOURS until we arrived at Hyder branch in the middle of nowhere. There's just a tiny little church building in the middle of the desert. We ended up having a 40 or so minute training followed by dinner and stargazing and then we drove back. We got home at like 1:00 in the morning. It was pretty funny to drive for a total of like 6 hours for a rushed training and dinner but hey, I'm not complaining.

Welp... more to come next week! Love y'all!

-Elder Cox

Dec. 15
Wooot Wooot! Just set a new record for longest consecutive area AND companion! Elder Erikson and I are stoked to say that we are both staying so there's that.
First item of business I guess would be Jeffrey. He's been doing super well and we had the opportunity to take him to the Mesa Visitors Center last week. We watched the Joe Smith movie and it was pretty good. It seems like they have a different version every time we go there, but whatever. He liked it, and he even came to church yesterday! For whatever reason... we haven't invited him to be baptized yet. That literally never happens. I always invite people to be baptized. For whatever reason... we haven't yet. We'll get on that this week.
As for Gabe, he apparently talked to his Dad about baptism and he said he's happy about it, but he still needs to talk to his Mom. I think he'll be good to go right after the break. He says he'll be back and forth between campus and home so I think we'll be able to teach him quite a bit. He doesn't live far from campus so that's a blessing.
As for Shane, he's doing well as far as we know. I think we'll have to Skype him and his member fellowship whenever we want to teach them, but that's still a huge convenience. Not complaining about that at all. #ipads
Those are our main people that we have. Last Sunday we were visiting a Recent Convert who's been less-active for a really long time. We see them all the time and we're way cool with them and they love having us over and everything they just... never come to church. Or read. Or pray. Or do anything. Well last Sunday we go to one of their apartments and we walk in and there's beer cans everywhere. They had beer pong set up, empty bottles of vodka, and trash all over the place. Needless to say, that was pretty awkward for all of us. We're just like... what the heck guys? Just... decided to throw a rager or what? Anyway, we're trying to keep them on track.
Our Mission Conference will start Sunday night at 7:00 with the Mission President's Devotional that we have once a month that we can invite investigators to and stuff. Then Monday we'll be chillin with the mission all day, and Tuesday morning we'll go do a session at the Temple. Then we have 2 hours of p-day, and for the leadership we'll have an MLC for the rest of that evening. THEN it's Christmas Eve, in which we probably won't do anything, then Christmas. Needless to say, next week is going to be pretty worthless as far as teaching opportunities go. Should be sick though!

Welp, I think that's about it! See ya'll next week!

-Elder Cox

Dec. 8

It's been a good week! We had a lot more productive of a week than the last few have been. We've been working hard and praying for more people to teach and we got some! Always good. We had something like 6 referrals this week, which is quite a few!

Let's see. This week we had our zone conference. It was pretty good, and the analogy was made between missionary work and war. The sense that we're fighting a battle and we need to be exactly obedient and what-not in order to conquer the forces of Satan. It was a pretty good training! A lot of times when President gets at the podium he's renown for making corrections. Like... every single training I've ever been in since last year he's done that. He really doesn't like to do that, so I guess he's trying to change his game a little bit. Anyway, it was nice to actually hear him teach and testify of different things. Living with the AP's, they got us psyched up for it by telling us he was going to delve into the scriptures for like 2 straight hours. Unfortunately, for our zone he ran out of time before he got to that. In any case, it was good. We have a missionary in the mission that served in Afghanistan and got his legs "swiss-cheesed" by a road-bomb. He now uses a cane, etc, but for the whole war analogy they had him going around to all the zones and talking about his experiences. It was pretty cool!

Okay, another awesome thing that happened this week was with a lesson we had with Jodie. She's REALLY hot and cold when it comes to the Gospel and her testimony. Well last week happened to be a "cold" one, so we had a lesson with her on Wednesday. Jodie's lessons are such that she invites her own "Member-Presents" to help us teach, so that's cool. She invited this guy named Thomas that is in one of the other YSA's on campus, the AP's ward, actually. The AP's warned us that Thomas would completely hijack our lesson if we didn't tell him exactly what to say. Honestly, we didn't really know what to say either so we were planning on letting him. So we did. In the lesson we got about 5 words in, and Thomas just went off for like over an hour. Now, usually my experiences with members hijacking lessons are terrible ones, but this was actually way legit. Long story short... his testimony of the Savior was way awesome and Jodie was completely content after. Not only that, but Elder Erikson and I both agreed that it was even more spiritually edifying than Zone Conference was. It was very refreshing, and one of the most powerful lessons of my mission. Can't really... describe it other than that, but you get the point.

We got a new investigator named Jeffrey! He was a referral from a member in a different ward, his cousin or something. Jeffrey has been around Mormons his whole life, a lot of his family members are Mormon, he's gone to Mormon church several times, and knows a bunch about it. Anyway, Jeffrey wants to settle down, get to know and socialize with the right kind of people. He came to the right place! We have only had two lessons with him so far, but they've been good ones. I bet he'll be super solid!

We took Gabe to the Mesa Temple Visitors Center to watch Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. It was like... way legit. He still wants to talk more with his parents about baptism, so it probably won't happen until after Christmas break, which starts this week. Apparently during break, instead of having 3 wards on campus, it turns into 1 Sacrament meeting where we all just combine. We'll see how that goes. Pray for me to stay in this area, pretty please? I really don't want to go. This is my 2nd consecutive transfer here too, and I've never thus far spend longer than 2 consecutive transfers in an area. I'm pretty superstitious.

Oh yeah! We have a new kid named Shane! Ok seriously, he's super solid! He met with missionaries in High School, had a baptismal date, and just... ended up not being baptized. Just fell through the cracks! Funny story, so we met Shane at an FHE when he was chilling with a member named Andrea. That was a couple weeks ago. Last week we got a referral from other missionaries for this kid named Skyler. We give Skyler a call and set up an appointment for right after last FHE. So we're waiting after FHE and Shane comes up to us with Andrea and just starts talking to us and stuff, we recognize him from the FHE that we met him at before. We give Shane a Book of Mormon and we're like man, where is this Skylar kid? He's not texting us back. Shane is about to leave so we grab his number from him and plug it in the phone. We realize that... we had already been calling and texting Shane, because apparently Shane and Skyler are the same person. SUPER CONFUSING. Anyway... he's legit. Probably didn't make sense but... that's alright.

Anywho, that's all folks! Love y'all!

-Elder Cox

This week was a little bit ( a lotta bit) slower than most simply because of Thanksgiving break. I think we got a good taste of what Christmas break is going to be like around here on campus. It's been a ghost town since around Wednesday, but we've kept ourselves busy!

Thanksgiving we got to have 2 dinners. One of them was at 2:00 and the other I thought was going to be at 5. Turns out it was at 4:00. The 2:00 dinner didn't start until about 2:30 and I thought I saved plenty of room for the next dinner. I was wrong on a lot of accounts. We finished our first dinner at about 3:15 and had 45 minutes to try and digest before the next meal. Needless to say, I couldn't eat very much on the second dinner. Didn't quite even finish the first plate. All well! We had our second dinner with our recent convert Jodie and her fellowship Sara and Sara's family. It was pretty sweet, and even taught a lesson after the dinner. Do work.

After that we gathered at the Institute building with our zone. We borrowed the mission projector, borrowed Frozen from Jodie, took all the soft chairs out of the lobby and put them into the gym and we watched Frozen. It was easily the best movie I've seen all year! Tons of fun.

Other than that, we were just anticipating Gabe talking to his parents about baptism. His report was that they were very open and receptive to the idea, but that they all want to pray about it and stuff first. I can't say that I blame them, I think it's a fantastic idea. Who knows, maybe we can rope his parents into it. Anyway, he's still doing super well and he's definitely ready, just a matter of a date at this point. We're really hoping for early December. We're going to take him to the Visitors Center in Mesa on Tuesday so maybe that will help him!

Have you guys seen the new Christmas initiative that the church has? It's called "He is the Gift", and they're encouraging all the members to #sharetheGift on social media and stuff. I guess a lot of our family aren't the social media type, but for those who are... hit it up! They have a cool little website christmas.mormon.org which has the cutsie li'l video.

Well it's December now... that's weird. I'm going to keep telling myself it's August. Partially because it's still like 75 degrees outside. Before you know it we'll get to Skype! Until then, have a great week!

-Elder Cox