Things are still going great down here in Copa. It rained today, so that's always a huge blessing, it cools things off down to about 74 so I definitely can't complain there. It's kind of funny though because whenever it rains, everything gets flooded. They don't really have any way to take care of all the water. I imagine it's like when it snows in Washington, where everything just shuts down for the day because they have no way to take care of the weather. We heard of schools even being shut down today. We were going to play ultimate frisbee in the park, but it looked more like a lake than a park. Anyway, now that I've talked about the weather...

Interesting fact about Maricopa: We're in the middle of the desert.
Cool huh?
No but really, when we bike around there's always a TON of lizards on the sidewalk that scuttle and scurry away when you ride past. It's kind of fun. We'll be biking around and there's just constant rustling noises in the bushes from all the lizards running around. Even better than that, and way more magical, is bunnies. I don't know why, but there are SO many bunnies! It's the same thing as the lizards too. We'll just be biking around and there's bunnies on the sidewalk or next to it, and they'll run around the bushes or run away into their little holes. One time in particular, we're biking in a super uptight gated community that doesn't let us in unless we're having dinner with a member family and we see an army of bunnies infesting the grassy hills to the side of us. I only mention this so you can get the visual of the desert oasis that Magical Maricopa is. Lately we've had great sunsets too. Coupled with bunnies hopping around a grassy knoll, it's pretty magical.

So in a couple weeks we're having a member of the 12 visit our mission. I feel like they asked us not to give specific details so I won't, but we'll be getting an Apostle in our mission a couple weeks from now. I don't know if they keep sending us General Authorities because we're doing terribly and we need it or because we're awesome and we deserve it. Either way, I guess I won't complain. Sister Toone called me last night because apparently a "little bird" told her that I can sing. So for the Mission Conference that the Apostle will be at I'm going to be singing in a quartet, or double-quartet or whatever she said, I don't remember.

We were having dinner at a member family the other day and we asked about their neighbors and who they could share the gospel with. They mentioned their next-door neighbor to the west. Apparently he was a professional drummer for some well-known band, which unfortunately they couldn't recall. I haven't gotten the chance to meet with him yet, but we've tried by a couple times and probably will again tonight. Anyway, hopefully I can make quick friends with him and talk some music stuff and baptize him. And jam with him. Whatever comes first.

The Lord has blessed us with several new investigators this week. We haven't had a ton of teaching opportunities, but I think He's seeing our efforts and blessing us with people to teach. I wish more of our people were progressing, but I guess that's mostly our responsibility. We'll keep working hard, of course, and hopefully we can pick things up a little bit more.

Welp, once again, not a whole ton to report! Hope everyone has a fantastic week.


I forgot to send this picture last week after my "hump day". We took the picture at this angle so you could clearly see the still very long road ahead.

-Elder Cox

It's been a little bit hotter this week. By a little bit, I mean around 110. Still not nearly as bad as it has been, and I honestly barely even notice anymore.

We had another visit from a member of the 70 this week. We did what's called a "Mission Tour", which is basically a mission conference. We were visited by Elder Schweitzer who trained us on teaching to people's needs rather than teaching routine lessons. He talked about the importance of listening and asking questions, which is always good to hear more about. I don't really remember anything else that he talked about, which I guess explains how much it really "sunk in".

We had taco salad three days in a row last week, so that was pretty cool.

James came to church again! He's definitely getting fed a lot of anti material from his family, but for whatever reason it's not getting to him. He's still coming to church and wanting to meet with us, so that's definitely a blessing! We haven't had the chance to meet with him at all this week, but we'll nail him down for a couple days this week and see if we can put him on date for baptism. He's definitely our most likely candidate right now.

We had a bunch of opportunities to do service this week! It wasn't a great week as far as teaching goes, but we did tons of service! Service is still my favorite part of missionary work by far. I love helping people get their crap done. I just love getting all grubby and dirty and seeing their happy faces knowing that we've accomplished something. That's good stuff! If all I did every day was serve people, I think I'd still have a great time.

Looks like it's going to be another weak email. Sorry about that! Not a whole ton went on this week. In any case, hope y'all have a fantastic week.

-Elder Cox

Yep, just about a year out. Crazy stuff!

We have some pretty cool stuff going on in our area! We're currently working with the Mangan family which is a part-member family. We're having an FHE with them tonight at our Ward MIssion Leader's house to teach them how to do FHE. The adversary is definitely attempting to tear their family apart, so we're going to do what we can to teach them that through the gospel those threads can be resewn, so to speak.

Have I already mentioned our 15-year-old investigator named James? I don't think I have. He's a super solid kid. He wants to live a moral lifestyle, is looking for a good Christian church that teaches good morals, heard about Mormonism when he was living in Illinois, and when he got to Arizona he went onto Mormon.org and referred himself to the missionaries. What kind of 15-year-old does that? He's super awesome. Came to church yesterday, and loved it. Pretty neat!

There are a couple other part-member peeps we're teaching, mainly unbaptized youth that we're working with that are doing fairly well! Other than that we're really trying to get the ball rolling with member missionary work here in this area. It's just really weird because nowadays, people don't even know their neighbors. If you want to find out what's going on in their life you just get on Facebook and look through your news feed. The problem with that is that I really don't like using Facebook to proselyte. But anyway, hopefully we can get the family mission plans rolling out to generate some enthusiasm for missionary work. I think there's lots of potential fa' sho.

For whatever reason, I was invited to MLC again this week. I'm not a zone leader, but for who-knows-why President asked that I be there. It was a pretty cool training. We had Elder Lynn G. Robbins from the 70 train us about agency and responsibility. He wrote a list of things people do to try to shrug off responsibility, i.e. blaming, lying, hiding, procrastinating, etc. He said that in order to use our agency correctly and be in control we have to accept 100% responsibility. He even gave examples of accepting responsibility for others' actions when it's completely their fault. Kind of interesting. It's hard to explain the concept, especially because I don't understand it fully myself, but he essentially said that when you accept responsibility, you become in control. He said that people that master this principle are champions. "You will be a champion!" Sounds pretty sweet. I'm a champion. He also made references to a talk he gave in General Conference about "being" and "doing". In order to "be" something, we have to "do" things that that particular something does. Namely, if we want to be like Christ, we have to do Christ-like things, thus changing our nature. For half of the MLC he talked about how our missions prepare us for marriage, and that part of 100% responsibility includes accepting that your wife is always right. He said a phrase I like: "I'd rather be married than be right." All in all a pretty good training. I know you don't understand anything I just said because I can't put it in a way that makes sense, but it's cool nonetheless. Just take my word for it. It's definitely made a change already. It makes me much more humble and charitable. Pretty neat!

This member lady at Wal-Mart paid for our groceries today. Super awesome tender mercy. Guaranteed blessings will ensue.

Not a whole ton else. Seems like everyone's still doing decent as far as I'm aware. Hope it stays that way. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

-Elder Cox

P.S. Here's a picture of...us...

I'm now serving about 40 miles south-ish of the greater Phoenix area (where most of the mission is) in the magical world of Maricopa. It's an interesting place. You literally drive through the barren desert for 40 minutes to be surprised by a random "island" of houses. It's almost exactly like Laveen, in that all the houses look the same and they're all bunched together in little HOA communities, etc. There's pretty much nothing around here at all, just a bunch of random houses in the middle of the desert. In my mind's eye as I describe it, it sounds like a ghetto place, but it's actually a fairly decent area. It's really quiet and the houses are actually fairly nice.

Here's my new address:
45175 W. Cypress Lane
Maricopa, AZ 85139

My new companion is Elder Reed from Sparks, Nevada. He's a really hard-working missionary and is really dedicated already. He's one of those that came "pre-trained" so there's not a whole lot of work to do on him which is always good! He's a really nice kid, and we'll definitely see a lot of success together. I'll attach a picture of us that we just took. You can see my sick watch tan-line I've been working on! Also my... bodacious biceps...


So there's a train track that runs right through the middle of Maricopa. Cool huh?
But really, so we were biking home one night and in order to go home we have to cross the tracks. Well, right as we pull up to the tracks the rails go down and a big train comes to the tracks. And stops. It's a passenger train (apparently) that sits there right in front of the road and loads people up for like 20 minutes while all the cars pile up behind each other waiting for it. While it was parked, 3 other trains passed at various times, and right as soon as the passenger train starts going, just when we think the guard rails are going to lift up another train goes by for another 10 minutes. I don't know why I tell this story, other than I guess to say that this whole city revolves around those train tracks. I guess originally there was just a train station in Maricopa, but now it's just a huge housing...place. Wow, that was such a cool story!

We have some cool investigators though! There's this one kid named Kane who's totally prepared to be baptized, but the previous missionaries literally just went over there and talked about video games and junk every time. So I think as long as we do anything he should be good!

It looks like a lot of the work here is going to be focused around part-member families. Pretty much every investigator we have is in a part-member family! It's crazy. We have a brand-new ward mission leader which is really nice. Oddly enough, I think he was just barely the Ward Clerk...he was just called last week. I feel like there's some sort of conspiracy going on...hmm... In any case, I can tell already that he'll be a sweet WML. He's a really cool guy, and just happens to know everyone in the ward. He seems really eager to do whatever needs to be done, which is great.

You'll be happy to know, Mom, that our dinner calendar is absolutely filled up for August and even a lot of September already, so don't worry about that. My main problem isn't staying fed, but staying fit! I think it's a good problem to have though. I'd rather be fat than hungry.

Hmm, I dunno what else to talk about! There's really not a lot of variety at all to what I do, but I guess that's probably just because I take it for granted. The work is still good, church is still true, still having fun and all that. Love ya'll.

-Elder Cox

Aug 11

Yep. I'm going back to being a District Leader and training a brand new missionary. I'm being transferred again, which means that I'll be whitewashing AGAIN into a brand new area. For like, the fourth time. Super great.


Well, this week we started teaching another nine year old that will be baptized on August 30. I won't be around for that obviously, but she's pretty cool and knows she wants to be baptized. Her mom is a non-member and her dad is a returning member so it should be really good for their family. They have super solid fellowship whose home we teach them in. That didn't really make sense grammatically, but you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures... I made the worst mistake of my life last week. Attached to this email you'll be a picture of a burrito. But not just any burrito, it's a breakfast burrito. BUT not just any breakfast burrito... it's a breakfast burrito literally the length of my elbow to fingertip. Literally, this burrito is a cubit long. It's probably the equivalent of like... 3 Cafe Rio burritos. I got about halfway before I was full. 3/4 of the way my gag reflex started to kick in. I couldn't quit, I had to finish! I have never pushed the bounds of discomfort so much in my life, but I blew past the wall. I kept going, nibble by nibble. Bite by bite, gag by gag. I finished. I may have finished last, but I finished and that's all that matters. I think I deserve a gold star on my Man-Card. Literally have never eaten so much in my life. Good news is, I didn't throw up either, but I still had to bike around in the heat afterwards. Worth it? Totally not. Am I glad I did? No. Would I do it again? Probably.

More fun things, we went golfing again this week. I did a lot better than I did last week, but I'm still a terrible golfer. It was fun though, and very relieving!

Really not a whole lot more going on in my life. It's seriously been the most insane transfer of probably anyone's mission, but a good one. I haven't even mentioned a "hundredth part" as the Book of Mormon would say, but I supposed this transfer will make a good story later on. I'll let you know where I'm transferred to, my greenie's name, etc. etc. Wish me luck.

-Elder Cox

Golfing - how's his swing?

Hey ya'll! Yeah, the weather has been a lot better this week Momma. We had some rain, which I suppose helps a little, but really all it does it make it humid and muggy. I can't decide which is worse. But, it's been a lot cooler this week which is nice. Last night we had a random HUGE rain storm hit our area. We literally had been inside for 3 seconds and BAM, it started pouring rain. Apparently it was windy too, because when we got done with dinner we went outside and it looked like a war-zone. A powerline fell in the middle of the freeway and there were cars lined up for miles. There was debris of all kinds, and even a helicopter. Trees were fallen over in the street. The only thing we were missing was zombies. It was cool though.

So today we went golfing for our morning activity! That would explain why the email is coming a little later than it usually does. It was super fun. I'd send pictures, but the computer I'm emailing on is slower than... something really slow. And it literally took me 30 minutes just to get it up and running, so I don't want to try to load pictures. Remind me next week! I'm still terrible at golfing, but it was really fun, so there's that.

Transfers coming up this week! We're pretty certain that one of us is leaving, and Elder Francis seems pretty sure that it's me. We'll get the call Sunday, so stay tuned. I can't believe it's that time again already! Like you said Mom, in some ways I can't even fathom how fast it went, but for the most part it feels like I was born a missionary and that I'll die a missionary. Can hardly imagine "home life" anymore.

Not a whole lot to report this week! Sorry! But I'm still doing good and working hard and stuff. Love ya!

-Elder Cox