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

1st White Christmas

So it was my first white Christmas which was the best thing ever! I can’t believe that it went by so fast though!  Christmas day was the best day by far! We stayed over on the Southside at a members home and the branch is just so awesome! We woke up that morning to presents that the branch had gotten us and it was just awesome!

Time does go by way to fast though...Skyping with you guys...holy cow...40 minutes is never enough!  Other than an awesome Christmas with the branch we had some awesome miracles this past week!

To kick it off we got to see President Burt at a specialized training! So good to see him! God just sets up miracles for us along the way though! Especially that day! A member took us the whole way and back to Prince George which saved on out K's! He then had some errands to run while he was in Prince George so we went with him. So while we were in good ole Canadian tire I saw one of the employees and I just felt like I needed to go and talk to him. Well, he actually has one of the coolest names...Blessing...that’s right...I’m a missionary, and I received a blessing by finding Blessing..  Anyway, super cool guy! Turns out he is from Africa and the Prince George elders should be seeing him soon! He gave me his phone number and he was so down to meet!

Another amazing miracle! We have not had a single person at church ever since I got here...so the members get people to church for us!
We showed up to church and there were a ton of people there because family was in town and stuff and we pick out of the crowd 4 people that were not members and we also had a couple less actives there as well! Gods just so good! All because of member work though!

Sure love and miss you all! Gods work is moving forward...and it never going to stop! Love you so much!

Love

Elder McCown

Christmas Miracles

So this past week was awesome! We spent almost all week out of our area but that’s still good!  I was on exchanges with Elder Buchanan and he is so awesome! We taught quite a bit which was a nice change from tracting in the snow for hours! Anyway, there was this one lesson that we had, their names are Mark and Jacqui! So we taught the plan of salvation and they are so interested! The wife had not said a single prayer the whole entire time the missionaries have been meeting with her, but that did not stop us! She is from the Philippines and we asked her to say the prayer in Tagalog. She flat out said no! So, I guess you can say that missionaries are pretty persistent and that’s when I said that I had never heard one in Tagalog and that I won’t ever be back again! She thought about it for a moment and then she just started saying the prayer! It was so awesome! Probably one of the best prayers I have heard even though I could not understand a single word!  So that was awesome!

We then took the nice long drive back to Burns and we found some people along the way that will let us come back after Christmas!

Another miracle we had this past week was Ian! Ian we tracted into a couple weeks ago. Of course his girlfriend was just about to have a baby so we had to wait a couple weeks. Anyway, we dropped by a couple nights ago and he was outside cutting wood and we started talking to him! Had a really good gospel conversation with him and it was just awesome! We talked about families and how we get guilt in this life and that it becomes baggage, and basically how awesome the gospel is! So we talked about that for a little bit and he just opened up and he is just so cool! We then helped him out with splitting and stacking his wood which was fun!

Not much else happened though. Dad, you would be so jealous...WE SAW THE NORTHERN LIGHTS!!! It was too far off for us to get it on our camera but they were so cool! Just dancing all over the sky in the distance!

God has been so good to us though! It’s been cold, but is been awesome, and I can’t wait for Christmas!

Sure love ya'll and can’t wait to talk to you in a couple days!

Love

Elder McCown

Gospel Is Rolling Forward

So...I’m in the best place ever!  Crazy week! We have been working so hard to get people coming to church! Gah! People are so stubborn though! We have been working with less actives and trying to get them out of the mud pit they are in trying to get them to church. They are so cool though! Just...dont want to come to church :(...

Coolest miracle this week though! There was someone that the missionaries had been teaching about a week before I got here and lost contact with her. So she fell off the grid for a while, but, we decided to drop by and see them and she just let us in! It was awesome! Her husband is less active from Alberta and he is so cool!  We did not get to talk to them much but they invited us to come over today and to go sledding and split wood for them which is awesome! We are just curious how he feels being around missionaries and all...he was less active for quite a while...but he is super chill and they seem to like us!

We were also able to teach this cool old native dude named Ken. He is progressing and he reads the Book of Mormon every night! God is just so good!  Christmas is just terrible here though...the members just huck cookies and desserts at us all day and I dont know if I will be walking out of a members house this month without them stuffing us...I may just be rolling everywhere from now on...

The work is so good though! I just think of Daniel and how he told King Nebuchanezzar of his dream, and how we are the "stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold". The Gospel is rolling forward and we are that stone that will roll forth until it encompasses the whole earth! God is just so good and love each and every single one of us!

I sure love and miss you all!

Love

Elder McCown