ELDER BEDNAR'S VISIT SEPT 2012

Hey fam!

It's been a pretty good week! The amazing highlight was Elder Bednar came to speak to us. WOW. I am still absorbing everything. We all went up and shook his hand and for the first hour and a half or so he talked about how agents vs objects. How we need to treat people like agents. Help them learn themselves. That's exactly what he did for us. We were told to read 2 talks by him before he came and when he came all he asked was, "what did you learn" As the missionaries commented, he would ask questions and teach from what they said. At the end he asked if anyone of us had gotten an answer to a prayer during it even if the answer wasn't said... every hand went up. I was sitting right in the middle about 3 rows back and I swear he only talking to me at certain parts of his teaching. He was reading D&C 80 and said "this was for you" and looked me in the eyes while he said it. 2 people from the 70 came too. Elder Pipper and... I can't remember the other one. Elder Piper told us how lucky we were to be there. He was right. Out of all the billions of people that have don't even know what an apostle is.. I got to personally meet and talk with one. Someone with the same authority as Peter, James and John. Elder Bednar said that since we have had the opportunity to listen to an apostle, we are more accountable and held more responsible. The last hour and a half he did a Q&A session. Coolest thing EVER. He taught us sooo much. He said that we would never have this opportunity do this in our lives.. so make it a good question. I knew I wanted to ask a question, but I didn't want to just ask one just to ask one. I wanted it to be lead by the spirit. I swear he was just waiting for me to ask a question because he kept looking at me like, "I know you have a question"... I think he waited, because right when I raised my hand out of the 50 hands that were up, he picked me, answered the question and then ended the meeting. I asked him what his definition of a consecrated missionary was. He said that it was dedication and devotion. He said, "To GET OUT OF THE WAY"... Give everything to the Lord. It's not about us. Get out of the way and let the Lord do his work. He said some other stuff, but told us not to write it down. It was amazing to say the least. I felt like Lehi after he had his vision and cast himself on his bed because I was so tired afterwards from feeling the spirit so strong. He envoked a blessing on our mission, which was powerful. And he thanked us for coming prepared so he could come and teach in his "true identity" because he doesn't "cast perls to swine." He is so inspired and truly called of God. I just thought to myself... this man is not a liar. How could any man deny that he is called of God to declare his word. It was a really special experience.

This week is my 9 months! Weird... i'm more than 1/2 way... Earlier this week we had a two day training for all the leaders in the mission. It was really good and insightful. It really humbled Sister Mendoza because that put her incharge of our area and she was lost all day. Transfers are next week but I am doing the 12 week program with Sister Mendoza, so it's expected that we will stick together.

Something cool that happed was that the night before we had set our goals to have a lesson with a member present, but we didn't know how it was going to happen because I had my meetings all day and then the VC all night. Well... this is a testimony to me that if you're doing your best, the Lord will make up for the rest. Not only did our investigator show up at the VC, but he came with a member... not only that... but the VC was so slow that we were able to have a lesson with him. hahaha the Lord does what he wants. So cool.

Anyway.. that's about my week. I am more blonde! I did it on p-day last week I will have to send some pictures. Thank you for all your prayers and support! Love you all!

The chapter is D&C 80 this week. How can you treat your children, spouses, friends and people around you like agents instead of objects that are to be acted apon? Elder Bednar said the secret to parenting or teaching investigators is to teach them to not need you and to be independent as soon as possible. It's harder and takes more time, but that is what is going to convert them and we need to be continually converted to survive. So true

Love you

SFTE

Sister Cottrell 

Hermana MEndoza's Birthday 9-18-12

brandon & molly

Great WEek! Sept 18, 2012

Hola
This week was pretty good. Hermana Mendoza hasn't been feeling well though so she's been sleeping a lot. EVERYONE is getting sick :/ guess it's that time of year. We've got the cold and the pink eye going around.. great. Yesterday I woke up with my eye hurting a little and this morning I woke up sneezing. I guess it's my turn. 
This week was Hermana Mendoza's birthday! No pressure. The night before her birthday after she fell asleep I went into the bathroom and had a big banner and presents and balloons and a bunch of fun things for her and then at district meeting I brought a pinata and pizza and we sang and then we had a service day. We wore pants and showed up at members houses and investigators and did service. We painted, did dishes, helped with homework etc. It was really cool too because all of our investigators got something for her too! I think we had cake 7 different times that day... I was dying. Never. Eating. Cake. Again. But... she had a good day. We had dinner in the park with some members and the members even brought their non member neighbors too :) cool. Glad that's over. I feel like birthdays on a mission is much like a wife and husband. When it's the wife's birthday.. the husband makes or breaks the whole birthday. She said she had a really good day though :) So that's good.
Brandon received the priesthood on Sunday! I wanted to cry. He drove to the VC with his gf and came and saw me too. He went to go give me a hug.. and I stuck my hand out in front of him.. awkward. But he looks so happy! 
We had almost alllllll of our investigators at church on Sunday! We were so happy! The only bad thing though was... it was realllly boring...like... bad. Is that bad to say, especially as a missionary? For reals though... I will be happy if any of them decide to show up again. Hopefully they realize that the church is perfect and not the people. 
We were able to have 3 FHE's yesterday that went really well. Rayna is our most solid investigator I think.. she signed up to feed the missionaries yesterday and so we decided to make it into an FHE :) It was really good, we won over the kids and played games and then ate and then taught the plan of salvation with pictures that we made at the vc. We then had one with Lula and the kids at a members house... they were an hour late. And then one at our mission leaders house with Javier. It was cool because the fhe was at the same place with the same family when it was my first night here and I didn't know anything... But Emanuel (the guy that was investigating the church my first night here) was actually the member present for Javier last night! Cool how that worked out. 
Elder Bednar is coming on Saturday!!! So cool! They are telling us all to look our best! This calls for getting my hair done, right? It's been toooo long. I am excited to let you all know how it goes :)
I feel like I have so many cool/funny stories.. but I forgot to bring my journal to remember everything! If it's super cool... I'll tell you next week :)
Love you all!
The chapter is 3nephi 30...2 verses :)
Love,
Hermana Cottrell

Marshmallow Wars and Rain

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU....

Hola familia,
I have some good stories today.So earlier this week was not good. Allergies in full force again :/... but it's starting to be better again so it's fine. For zone activity we had a marshmallow war! Funnest thing EVER! It was like lazer tag but with marshmallows and we had dart guns and the church gym was set up so cool. The only bad part was that the gym floor was soooooooooo sticky and hard to clean up.. but it was worth it. The elders were starting to get annoyed with me I think because every time they would talk or try and explain the game I would shoot them in the face haha.
That night we went to the vc and I had a VERY interesting call on the computers. This jewish man from England (but now is a doctor in cali) called in and he kept asking me if I believed in Isreal and in the Jewish God and a bunch of weird stuff. I told him that I didn't really know what he was talking about but he sounded really sad while he was talking to I stopped him and asked what was wrong and that he sounded distrought. He said, "ya know that just really touched my heart, no one ever has cared about how I have felt before and my wife died and my parents disowned me so I have no one... but you have just touched my heart." I told him I was glad... but then he kept saying that i had touched his heart probably 50 times. i didn't know what to say. After about 10 min of complementing me he said, "I... I think i have just fallen in love over the phone."... NO! STOP! No you haven't. He argued with me for the next forever until I finally just had to hang up on him because he wouldn't take no for an answer and i wouldn't give him my number. He told me that I was going to convert to be a jew and he would convert to be a mormon and he's a little bit older.. but he's a doctor so that's okay.. I was dying. Lets just say i have been talking in an english accent for the passed 2 days.
For one of our investigators (Lula) we brought over a cake and presents.. It was really fun and I was so glad we did it because we found out that no one else celebrated it. 
For ZTM we had Bob Worsley come speak to us he is running for senator and he is was the founder of sky mall and he has won all these awards for business here in az. Maybe you know him? Anyway... it was pretty cool. He talked about having a vision
On friday it was raining really ... really.. REALLY hard. i thought it was the coolest thing ever so i told hna mendoza that we should take a bread from studies and go take a picutre out in the rain. Big mistake. We took the pictures and hna mendoza had shut the door hehind her... locking ourselves out. i didn't even have shoes on. I've never seen it rain so hard and we were stuck! We said a little prayer to which house we should run to and so we knocked on the next door neighbor and a young couple with 3 kids opened. They didn't seem too happy to let us in but they could see that we looked cold so they helped us. Apparently they were former members and both had beef about the church. As i talked though, I could see the yearning on the womans face. She asked why i had decided to go on a mission and she told us why she stopped going and why her husband doesn't want to go. I guess he feels like a hypocrite by going because he doesn't follow all the "rules" anyway.. if that wasn't a miracle enough, the day before, the elders had knocked on their door and for some reason gave them their number.. so we were able to use their number to help us because we had left our phone in the car and the VC phone was off. 
AHOY! Brandon Ross was baptized.. I repeat.. Brandon Ross was baptized on saturday! Finally of six months not giving up on him over the phone even though his elders did.. he got baptized. His family says they are kicking him out.. :( .. but he is strong and knows it's true and sticking to the gospel. I am so proud of him.
Anyway.. there was some more cool stuff, but i don't have much time.
Love you all! This week is 3 Nephi 11. Great chapter.
Sister Cottrell

Lula and Leti and kids

Family,

Hello

Another exhausting week. But good. We had zone conference which was really good and we learned a lot. We split our p-day up because we had to work at the VC the rest of the time. I was so grateful that we talk to everyone this week. There was this guy on the street named Martin and we went to go talk to him and invited him to listen to our message and he said yes and that his friend, Pedro Vascez already invited him to have missionaries and he wanted them. So Pedro was going to tell us that he was interested but he went out of town and hadn't told us yet, but I guess God didn't want to wait. Anyway, he already went to church this Sunday.  So that was cool. We are making lots of changes in the ward. It's really hard to get members to help us and to help them realize that we need their help. With the new bishop though, we are changing a lot. We are FINALLY getting ward missionaries called and implimenting a lot of techniques that I have come up with... hope it works, cuz somethings got to happen. There's a new "Family Mission Plan" that I translated into spanish that Sister Mendoza and I will be stopping by a lot of the members houses and doing and also we made a sheet of all the members and all their information and what hours they are available. I'm pretty sure finding members to go out with us to lessons is my least favorite thing in the world to do, so hopefully this will help make it easier.

 

Another cool thing that happened was a couple days ago we were walking to a lesson and a lady rolled down her window from her car and said, "where am I?!" I told her she was on Leasure and 2nd streat. She said she was trying to get to the temple but her glasses broke and she couldn't see anything but she just HAD to get to the temple because she missed her ward temple trip. She stopped in the middle of her sentence and said, "Are YOU a missionary?" I said yes and she started to cry really... really hard. I asked her why she was crying and she said that when her glasses broke she said a prayer that the Lord would guide her car and the next person she saw was me! Way cool. She kept calling me an angel and that she was sooooooooo grateful that I had chose to serve.

 

We have been teaching Lula and Leti and there kids for a while now. They are so awesome. It's really fun to teach kids. I feel really bad though because they don't have the means to get them to school every day. One of the kids is like 9 or 10 and has never been to school. So the only teaching they get is from us. They love it, I bring them candy and pictures and stuff. When we knock on the door they all yell, "LAS HERMANAS, LAS HERMANAS!!!" We have had to start from scratch though because they really didn't even know who Jesus is.. so it's been really cool to see them learn so much.

 

Thats... about it. Hope everyone is doin good :) Read Helaman 10 if you can.

Love you,

SFTE

Sister Cottrell

HOme teacher visits Mesa

Our home teacher, Brother Robert Gilcrest had work in Mesa and so he took a package in to the VC for  Sara from the family. He met Sara and her new companion, Sister Mendosa and took pictures too!