The Work Is So Good

Things have been going awesome up here in Burns Lake! We have been working so hard up here and have been literally running everywhere which has been awesome! Keeps me in shape!

To start off with the best of the best, Tom is so solid! He has been doing so well in progressing! He came to church this past week and we were able to teach him about the word of wisdom and he committed to live it! He is just so good! There’s a lot he does not know but he has already read the first 5 chapters of the Gospel Principles manual and has been reading the Book of Mormon pretty well! He admits that he does not understand it that well but is ready to go back and start rereading so he can understand it!

So Tom has been great and so has Megan! She is doing great! Progressing well, just has not come to church yet. She reads and prays though and we were able to get her a true friend this week which was great! They instantly connected and the member invited Megan and her family over for dinner sometime within the first ten minutes of the lesson! She is so good!

We have done a lot of finding this past week, which has been awesome! We were able to hit 140 QGC's which was even better! We worked so hard to get there! We literally ran from house to house and people have just been coming out of the woodworks which has been the best part!

God has been so good to us though! He has blessed us so much and the work just keeps on getting better and better! My new companion is Elder Lopez. He is such a hard working missionary! Pushing me to do better every day! Just keeps on getting better and better with him!
God's been so good though! The work is so good and Tom and Megan have been working out really well! Sure love and miss yall!

Love

Elder McCown

Mexicans In The Great White North

So this has been a fantastic week! This has to be the best week I have had in the past two transfers here in Burns Lake! So good!
So we were able to teach Megan and she is progressing really well! She read 3 Nephi 11 and understood it really well. We also told her about baptism, and shied away, but we committed her to pray about it as well as the Book of Mormon. So, so far, it’s going awesome with her! She understands really well and really soaks it up like a sponge.

Best miracle of the week though was this new investigator named Tom that one of our members found. He actually found her and told her that he wants to come to church, so that opened the window immediately for us. So long story short, he is this old scuba diver that dove around the world with some famous marine biologists. So he is super cool.  His wife just passed away. Well we came in and set expectations the first time and talked about the Book of Mormon. We gave him one and committed him to read it and he said he felt great! We come back Saturday and we followed up with him on the Book of Mormon and he has already read 17 chapters of it! We were so excited! He is so prepared! We taught the Restoration, and he loved it! Every comment was great! He felt happy and said he doesn’t feel depressed whenever we come over and whenever he reads the Book of Mormon! We then set a baptismal date for February 20th and he accepted! So miracles never cease, and I am so excited so I have to keep on telling you about them! He came to church this week as well and we were a little worried because we were teaching Gospel Principles and it was on exaltation. Well, needless to say, he is so prepared! He wants to get sealed to his wife! Talk about setting expectations! Well it is sad to say but I got a new companion! His name is Elder Lopez! SO excited though! Nothing like two Mexicans in the great white north! Sure love and miss all of you!

Love

Elder McCown

“What has the Book of Mormon done for you?”

I haven’t frozen yet so that’s good...  But besides that it was another great week! Just tracted like crazy!  Well, besides tracting we were able to teach Megan this past week! So awesome! Just taught the whole plan of salvation and she loved it! She listened and things were just awesome!

Oh yeah...so best part of the week, I got to hit cows with giant yellow sticks as hard as I could...yeah, be jelly...  So there is a member in the branch and he this super cool farmer dude. Anyway, missionaries go over and help him every year and we get to herd cows with giant sticks made of pipe while he sprays them down with this tick killer stuff and tags them if he needs to. Pretty cool, eh? Nothing like hitting a cow as hard as you can!

Other than that is been pretty cold...hit -11 the other day.  My studies have been pretty awesome though. I was reading a talk today all about conversion and after finishing it I drew a blank on what to study next, so I sat there for a good 5 minutes and a question popped into my mind on what I should think about. I never thought about this question before, probably because I could easily say how much good it has done for me, but once I thought about an answer to the question, I could not imagine the amount of answers that could be given, but the question was "What has the Book of Mormon done for you?" Think about that. I did not think that such a question could be so hard to answer, because there are so many answers!

Sure love and miss you all! Those who are reading this who have never read the Book of Mormon, read it, those who have read it aimlessly, read it again. I testify of the divinity and power that this sacred book has. God has given us another testament of Jesus Christ. Read it. Pray about it. God will tell you it’s true.

Love

Elder McCown

Ham Sandwhich

SO! It has been the coldest it has ever been in my entire life! We are driving down our drive and its about -6 degrees and we are just driving down our hill and heading out towards the middle of nowhere to find people, and by the time we get to where we are going to start finding, it drops to -11...FREEZING! A Mexican does not belong up here...

Well, besides the bitter cold and the frozen face and toes things have been great! I met a guy who told us his nickname was Wiener, and that’s basically how my week kicks off...

I guess I could be a little more spiritual than that, but it’s so dang hard to narrow it down because there are so many!  I guess we could start off with the McGloclins! So we were planning one night, just praying like a good ole missionary does and we just get this impression that we need to go by this particular family. All we had was a former status for this guy, so we go by and this older lady named Kate answers the door and lets us right in! So we start talking and turns out that she had a near death experience about 40 years ago and met the missionaries shortly after and studied with them for a year. She then sets that aside and then becomes a Jehovah Witness, and then gets disfellowshipped. Pretty rough. So that’s when we come in and just talk about that plan of salvation and the Book of Mormon and she was down for having us come back! What’s even better is that her granddaughter has been taken to church by some of the members! So that’s awesome!   That has to be the spiritual highlight of the week though because while we were there we were talking about faith and I whipped out good ole Alma 22 and the scripture that I shared talked about "exercising a particle of faith". Well she just went ham sandwich on that and just ate it all up! Turns out that she is super into physics and just struck a chord with the word particle. Dont know how it happened but that transformed into teaching about the law of chastity...weird eh?

So that has been great and we cannot wait to see them again this week! We are stoked to be able to meet with them because they have super close ties with some of the members!

God is just so good though! We have been in a bit of a rough spot but the past couple weeks have been full of miracles!

Sure love and miss you all!

Love

Elder McCown