Hey! This past week has been good! I had the opportunity to go to an all day leadership training on Tuesday that Pres. Saylin held. It really strengthened my faith and learned a lot. Also this week I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with my district leader Elder Cowan. Since this is a bi-lingual district, he is English speaking. So it was me and him for most of the lessons. It was an opportunity to exercise my faith and we were able to teach 5 lessons that day, most of which Elder Cowan didn’t know what was going on. But it was good for me to use my Spanish without the help of Elder Jensen and I feel the Lord helped me tremendously to communicate the feelings of my heart to these wonderful people.  While on the exchange we ran into an interesting man who used the Bible to support his theory of aliens and a bunch of other crazy stuff. Also on the exchange we went to teach Angel, as we waited outside for the sisters to be done with their lesson. Quick background, Angel lives with Abraham Perez, a member from the English ward who speaks Spanish. Abraham is basically the best member missionary I have ever seen.  He was baptized 2.5 years ago and shares the gospel in everything he does. He tells us how he is just so full of the love of Christ and wants to share it with everyone; so sometimes he'll schedule lessons at his house for the sisters and elders at the same time so we started coordinating with the sisters. Anyways, the sisters were almost done so we waited outside. We see Angel walking up, staggering, calling us his amigos, and almost walked into the wrong door. It was pretty obvious he was drunk. As we talked with him I realized and gained a further testimony of how much alcohol changes people and causes them to not be able to feel the spirit.  So that lesson ended quickly and it was sad to see one of my investigators like that.

Other than that we have seen the heart of the stepdad of the familia Carranza be softened. He has told us how he loves coming to church and loves having us over. I love that family so much! It has been good to see them come to church and see the changes that have happened in their family.

Anyways for Christmas, we'll go to a member’s house and you can call us after 3 sometime. I'll have more next week like the number to call and what time exactly but that’s the basics. Anyways, love ya all and keep the faith!

Elder Cooley