So, surprisingly I'm actually back in my old ward in Maricopa. I've really never heard of missionaries re-visiting areas except for maybe the very last transfer of their mission, but now I've revisited TWO areas. I've been asked to step down as a zone leader and asked to be a district leader again. What they didn't mention over the phone, as I found out at transfers, is that I'll be second-half training. It's almost like deja-vu. Anyway, just in time for the warm weather coming in I'm back to biking all day.We had a baptism on Saturday! Obviously I didn't really know the kid because... I just got here. His name is Dierre. It's just like Pierre, only with a "D". He seems pretty cool though! His mom is still not a member although she was very supportive of him being baptized and was even crying and everything. We'll get her pretty soon I'm sure.
Apparently we have a couple more baptisms coming up too! One is an unbaptized daughter of an active family. I guess the family was just waiting for the dad to get the priesthood back before she was baptized so that he could baptize her. Makes sense. We don't really have to do much for it, but as far as statistics go...
There's this other lady that I only met one time who is on date sometime in april. Her name is Mardi if you want to pray for her!
Oh yeah, my new companion's name is Elder Mason and he's from Fairfax, Virginia. Seems like a pretty good guy.
Other than that, we have like a billion investigators, especially in comparison to where I just came from in Chandler/Gilbert area. After I left the Elders that were here were together for 6 months in this area so they were actually able to get things going. It should be looking good for the next few months I reckon.

I wish there was more to talk about, but I haven't really gotten my bearings on the new area yet so I'll have to be more informative next time. Sorry!

Jesus lives
Love ya'll
Elder Cox

Transferred again, his new address:

Elder Dylan Cox

45175 W. Cypress Ln.

Maricopa, AZ 85139

 Lessons!  We got some!  Woot!  Only like 4... but STILL.

So the first was an older couple who are neighbors to our Bishop.  The guy recently lost his sister in an unexpected accident.  She was around 70 and she was carrying pizza up the stairs and fell backwards and broke...important stuff, her neck or something.  Anyway, tragedy is a perfect opportunity for missionaries so we took advantage of it and was able to talk to them about opposition being a part of life, Jesus Christ, the Atonement, etc.  It was superb.

So because of lack of teaching pool, we're trying different tactics to try and soften people's hearts.  One of them is service tracting.  Basically we dress up in p-day clothes and knock on people's door offering to do community service.  We've only done it a couple times, but we actually found someone!  She met with missionaries before when she lived in Mesa.  She said she felt bad making us pull her weeds, but I was pretty persuasive and she let us do it.  Long story short, we have some teaching opportunities coming up.

We taught this young guy named Mike.  We're going to have to refer him to the YSA missionaries but first we're going to baptize him.  Just kidding, we're just going to spark his interest a little more before handing him off.  Not too much to talk about other than we shared a video with him and I'm pretty sure he was drunk.  Woo!

  We taught another couple yesterday about the importance of reading the scriptures.  She tried to give us some crap about how she doesn't have time and blah blah blaah, so we told her that God recognizes the sacrifice when we make it, even if it's just 5 minutes and that he'll bless us even more.  By the end, they committed to read the Book of Mormon as a couple every day and pray too!  Pretty neat!

Still don't know about transfers, but I guess I'll let you know next week!

Love y'all

Craziness, March already!  Time just keeps flying by

Well, I wish there was more to report but sadly we literally didn't teach any lessons this week.  100% zeroes all across the board.  We're pounding the pavement, mind you, but the fruits haven't quite been seen yet.  

We did get a chance to stop by Rose, the lady that we helped move.  She was really excited to see us and gave us hugs when we showed up at her house.  That was pretty awkward.  She's Italian so she's really expressive and funny.  Anyway, her house is still an absolute mess from the move, and we got to just chat with her for a few minutes.  We tried to slip in some Gospel conversation but for the most part she dominated the conversation, which is fine.  She is interested in having us over although I'm not sure she quite understands the purpose for our visits.  That can come over time, so I'm not too worried about it.

We had Stake Conference this weekend and had a visit from Elder Pino of the 70.  The adult session was really interesting because they actually talked about Ward Council for the entire session.  They even addressed the fact that it seems more fitting for a leadership training sort of setting, but that the direction given from Elder Ballard was to train the entire Stake about how to have an effective Ward Council.  It was pretty interesting.  President Toone was there as well standing next to our Stake President.  It was pretty funny because our Stake President is probably around Rick's height, and President Toone is 5'24" as he would say.  

We got to go on a couple exchanges which are always good.  Still doing a ton of service which is pretty much the best thing ever.  Hopefully it can soften some hearts and lead to some baptisms, but we'll see.  Maybe the Lord has plans for us other than baptizing people.

Other than that, transfer calls are next week so we'll see what happens there.  Our mission gets brand new iPads this Wednesday for... some reason I guess we'll find out.  They're changing a bunch of stuff about how we do online proselyting and such.  President Toone will also have god-like control over our iPads remotely, which is also pretty cool.  He basically has a "big brother" program where he can watch our every move and turn off certain functions of our iPads remotely.  So that's pretty neat!

I don't think I'll know by next Monday if I'll be transferred or not, so it'll actually be a couple weeks before I can let you know.  They're changing a bunch of logistics about transfer week so... yeah.  Anywho,  have a good week!

-Elder Cox

Okay, so I guess I'll start off with the audition.  I was wiggin out on Monday night and essentially having a panic attack.  Okay... not that bad, but I was psyched out.  So I get to the place and it's this rundown "art school" for Junior High and High School kids in the middle of Tempe, which is pretty ghetto in and of itself.  I get in there and we end up having to wait for like... an hour or something because we were so early because I was so psyched out.  So they take me to the warm-up room and they actually had the "sight-reading" material in the practice room and they let you look through it, which was a blessing.  So I look through it and it's all easy stuff.

Then I go to the audition room.  It's dark.  There were two judges.  They asked me who some of my bass influences were so I told them.  I gave them the CD and played the song Almost 12.  One of the judges was a percussionist and I could see him trying to tap along with the beat trying to figure out what time signature it was in.  He couldn't figure it out.  I did pretty well with that, and right when I finished they said, "Alright sweet, let's jam". 

Uh, what?  Sweet!  So the one hops on guitar and the other on drums.  They ask me what jazz standard I want to play and I told them Donna Lee.  I was impressed to bring my Real Book with me, so I had it all ready to go.  They ask me if I can play the head (melody) and I tell them that I can.  So he tells me to play the head the first time through, then a walking bass line, then solo.  I felt pretty good about it.  Then they had me play some arpeggios, no problem.  Then they just had me play a couple different styles in a 12-bar-blues starting with Funk, then Bossa, and Samba.

Next they had me "sight read" the stuff that I got to look through in the practice room and It wasn't hard.  Then the guitar-man said he would sing phrases and I would have to copy them on the bass.  100% flawless.  Then he had me sing the phrases back to him.  100%.  Then he clapped complex rhythms that I also mimicked, 100%.  After that I was on my merry way!  There was an interview as well that wasn't too bad.  It was cool because for the first time on my mission instead of representing Jesus Christ, I represented myself.  The reason I say that's cool is because I could tell that Elder Cox and Dylan Cox aren't two different people.  I see a lot of times that it's almost like a switch goes off in people's heads when they're in missionary mode vs. non-missionary, or even gospel mode vs. not gospel mode.  I got to clearly see that whether I have a name-tag or not, I'm still a disciple of Christ and will gladly represent Him.  I even got to share a portion of my testimony about serving others during my interview.  Good stuff!

Whew, that was lengthy.  Anyway, other than that we've been picking up on the service hours.  It's been awesome! Saturday we helped pull weeds for a former investigator who we're going to start teaching again.  We did that from 10-12, and then from 12 to like 5 we helped someone move with our WML.  This was probably the hardest move I've ever had to do.  This lady had the nicest furniture I've ever seen.  And it.  Was.  Heavy.  She had a dresser that had a granite top and was made out of solid... really heavy wood-stuffs.  It took forever and I've been walking very gingerly since then.  But, we asked for service opportunities and we got some! This lady is a non-member too, and she invited us over sometime!  Service is legit!

Other than that, we're slowly getting this steam locomotive running.  Slowly but surely.  We have found a couple people and we're making progress!  Until next time, keep on keeping on!

-Elder Cox

So yeah, teaching pool! We had the opportunity to teach a former investigator named Jesse. He hadn't actually met and had a lesson with missionaries, he only had talked to them. This time around he figured he'd let us teach him. Basically he told us about how he doesn't want to be a part of organized religion but if he ever did it would be for his kids. By the end he basically told us that he might start going to church a couple years down the road when the kids are older. He did say that he wants to do family history so that his kids can have an understanding of where they come from. So hopefully we can have an in with that!
Speaking of family history... Did I ever mention that I found a line in our tree that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve? So that's cool.
Other than that, we had a couple teaching opportunities with less active members but that was it. We're just in hardcore finding mode right now.
The other night Elder Erikson called me about people in the University Ward. Apparently a guy named Vincent, who we only taught twice, resurfaced after like 4 months of no contact. Remember me telling you about John? Probably not. We were sitting at the institute doing FB and a member knocks on the door and introduces us to John who just walked in wanting to learn about the church. Anyway, the last lesson we taught with him we taught the plan of salvation and he was just eating it up. It took forever. We actually had another appointment that Elder Erikson went to midway through the lesson with another member. So after he left the lesson I finished the Plan of Salvation with another member there. We weren't planning on extending a date to him, but I got the impression that I should, so I extended February 28. He declined it, but said he would pray about it, and did so at the end of the lesson. Well Elder Erikson called me and told me that apparently John is planning on being baptized on that day! Sweet huh!

Lastly, I held a macaw (big parrot-like bird) last night! The owner of it was seeing if the bird was in the mood to be pet, etc, and it was pecking at his hand. I held out my hand and the bird put it's talon up towards my hand. The owner said "that means he wants to climb on you", so the bird grabbed on and I was holding it and petting it. I guess I'm a bird whisperer. The bird even said "hello".

Anyway, all is well, the church is true, God lives. Till next time
-Elder Cox

Well... Not a whole lot going on.
Basically we spend all day every day with members. We've been setting up family mission plans and following up and hoping for referrals. We've gotten a couple, but it seems like a lot of people are hesitant in their involvement. They'll basically give us a name and an address to go by and say "good luck". Essentially that's just as good as tracting except that we can drop the members name. We're going to work on having the members introduce us to their friends instead of us just going over to their house. We'll see how it goes.

We did get a chance to do service for one of the investigators named Chris. He's in a part-member family and his wife isn't active. We helped him pull weeds in his backyard for over and hour and we were able to have a good talk with him about where he's at. Come to find out his member wife is a main reason that he doesn't come to church more regularly, so we'll have to get her on track ASAP. Other than that, I think we have an appointment tomorrow night with him.

Welp, wish there was more to report but we're working hard, so just know that. Love y'all!

-Elder Cox