Received Monday, Nov 26, 2012

Pictures we got from Zak's Mission President

That is him bending over shoveling sand out of someone's basement

 Here is the whole group. Ok, he is hard to see... he is kind of more on the center RIGHT 

about 4 or 5 rows up...in front of the guy with the big, wide, white headband

Wow, this has been the craziest email news week ever

Did you get any mail this week?

Yes. I got letters from you with many funny emails from nana and Bumpa. Also a few other people in the ward, including a separate letter from all the Jensens from Lydia down. Benjamin included a picture of a gross yellow slug in his.They were fun to get,

From griffin: do you get any money so you can buy stuff?

yes. Every month we get a whole 144 dollars we get to use to buy food and "stuff". When I buy clothes and other non-missionary/essential stuff we use our own money from home

Still giff: What do you eat?

Food. Duh!

Tell us about your thanksgiving day.

in the morning we played soccer with a few families in the ward, which was pretty fun. not nearly as competitive as the turkey bowl, but still fun to do some sporting on thanksgiving then we went home and showered then we went to The Spearin's for thanksgiving meal #1. They had all 6 missionaries plus another couple from the ward and 1 less active member (and their own family of 11). They had all the regular thankgiving turkey and ham and mashed potatoes and gravy and yummy food. Lots of pie. I ate some apple pie with ice cream and cool whip. No cinnamon rolls. Sister Spearin asked me if there was anything missing that I normally have at home for thanksgiving and I talked a little bit about your rolls and she said she might try to make them some time if you gave me the recipe.

then we went to another members house for meal #2. I didn't eat near as much there. They also had most of the regular thanksgiving food, plus some Cape Verde stuff. It was all good. After that Elder Beck and I went of to the Simpsons and helped them with a computer thing and talked to them about some of the less active members we visit with them. It was a good day.

I'm surprised I didn't hear more stats/personal accomplishments from the Turkey bowl. how much did the Oldersters win by? did Dad play? who scored the TD's? were there just not enough athletic/old YM to win even with Christopher gone and Chase gimpy?

That really is a bad day to get sick. At least he got that sweet job. What is an easy description of what Chase does/will do? is it just a coincidence he's ending up so close to home?

I feel like the Steven/Heather Cole Family will be so different when I get home. 2 (at least partially) walking talking babies by the time I get home! I bet Jayna won the prize for most exciting thing to be grateful for.

For us it was mostly another solid week. A few people who we thought would finally come to church didn't which was a bit of a bummer, but there are more sundays to come.

I still haven't sent home my flashdrive full of pictures. hopefully today.

Last week we were all supposed to report if we needed any furniture or anything for the apartment, so we requested a table and 4 chairs and got them, which was cool. Also we got a mini Christmas tree and put a bunch of junk under it (weights, a volleyball Halloween skeleton) to look like presents. It even came with lights, so that's cool

We have one investigator, Miranda, who I think may be willing/wanting baptism soon. She's been meeting with missionaries for like a year, but she's now reading and praying every day and keeping all of the commandments. The only tough thing is she's 16 and has no real family support, so she would have to be strongly converted to really stay with it.

We still are spending a good amount of time with Chris, and he's learning well. He should get the Aaronic priesthood in the next week or 2.

We continue to spend a lot of time with less active/innactive members, which is good, but i'll really be excited when they start coming to church/making tangible process. It's important to try and see the long term vision though. 

We just visited a family yesterday, where they aren't sealed in the temple yet because the father was just baptized a year ago, after 12 years of seeing missionaries. Now he loves the gospel and will get to the temple soon.

Early this week we were visiting people on the ward roster we didn't know about, hoping they would still live there and let us in (this is often what we do with time we don't have appointments. also we'll tract around the houses a little too) and we talked to this guy on the street who really praised us for what we do. He said he was Muslim but really appreciates that we actually live what he say we believe and go out to preach it. He took a book of mormon and said he would have it finished in 2 weeks because he loves to read. His name is rob. we told him we were looking for Bill Swan and Rob said that was his neighbor and introduced us with him. We then had a pretty good meeting with Bill, who seems to have a testimony but hasn't been to church in forever. Before we left Rob came back in and gave us a Red Sox jersey he says he doesn't use anymore! (Elder Beck and I will roll dice for it). We'll be back later this week to see both Rob and Bill.

Hopefully I'll have a good update on that story next time!

Love you all, have a good week!

Received Monday, Nov 19 2012

Zak and his companion apparently helped build this shed

QUESTIONS:

Tell us your thanksgiving plans

This is my first major Holiday on the mission, so it should be fun and interesting. Someone told us they play soccer in the morning, and we were invited, i'm not sure if it's a whole ward thing, or just there family thing. Either way I think we'll go. At 1 we're eating at the Spearin's (Bishop) house. they've invited a lot of people (there family of 10, all 6 missionaries and at least 1 other family in the ward). After that we'll probably drive to another family who always feeds us a lot. In the evening we'll probably go to one last family who wanted us over, but saw we were already booked, for dessert or maybe just to visit.Lots of comida

Tell us how things are working in your apartment with Mr. Newbie

good. He isn't very shy or in shell shock or anything

Anything else you think you may want for Christmas?

I'll probably want some sweatpants, especially to wear when I trek across the frozen tundra to the gym in the morning. I'll let you know if I think of anything else. I already mentioned the eventual need for a GPS.

I thought of something:Doctrine and Covenants Visual Resource DVDs that you can get on store.lds.org. Elder Beck has a copy and we use it to show people Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration sometimes.

Are you allowed to have any instruments? (question from Griffin)

yes, we are allowed to have instruments. We have a guitar in our apartment that Elder Wilding borrowed from someone.

Also to Griffin: keep playing the piano! it is a good thing to learn. You can teach me how to play it when I get back.

About nana/bumpa's story: sounds awful for Bumpa. I am grateful my mission has been vomitless thus far, even though I DID get held up in the MTC

About Teo google chatting: last week while Elder Beck and I were at a member's house there 2'ish aged boy ran out of the bathroom with only a t-shirt on and the parents just said "he does this all the time" and mostly let him be. So, if Teo ever comes to SouthCoast they can be friends

This week has basically just been another good week. I confirmed Chris yesterday! it went well. I was kind of nervous  especially since it's up in front of everyone, but is ultimately just like giving a blessing. I was happy he asked me to do it. He said Either Elder Beck or I could, but we decided I should since Elder Beck has done it before. I'm also really glad he had a member baptize him. In the MTC (and in PMG) they talk about how converts are always more likely to stay active if they are baptized by a member, so I have a goal to have a member baptize every convert I helped teach.

Do you remember in general conference when Elder Nelson gave the "Ask the missionaries" talk? After that in Stake conference President Packard was there and gave a spoke saying a lot of the same things. since then 1 person asked us to go home teaching with him and someone else asked us to stuff PMG with them and both went really great. Also 1 other family mentioned he's want us to go over PMG sometime and another said they want us to come do a FHE.

Also yesterday, the YW president asked us to sit in YW class with them and talk about goals, which went really well. I talked about how in high school I always had a goal to get all A's, and even though I technically failed in my goal every time, it got me to work hard enough to achieve the larger goal of getting into BYU. Afterwards the president told us in 2 weeks in mutual they are going to actually make shirts that say "I'm a Mormon  I know it, I live it, I love it" and they want us to talk about how they should respond when people will ask them about it. Hopefully the YM will start asking us to help with things every once and a while too.

We've been listening to Elder Beck's MoTab Christmas CD's which I like I lot. I really like Christmas music. I have no shame in starting Christmas season before Thanksgiving. We would have been listening to them since Halloween if it were solely up to me.

My latest food update is that I bought turkey burgers that I fry and ground up and eat with eggs in a breakfast burrito. Also I put on "creole seasoning" and its highly delicious.

I have not received any of the mail you mentioned  I hope it is still coming. Usually when I say that I end up getting it later in the day.

It's too bad most of the football news is not good. The Rams still have a good 19 months before they have to be good, so it's ok. I'm curious to hear what's up with the Lakers though.

That's everything! Thanks for all the updates and good stories!

Much Love,
Elder Zachary Payne Cole

P.S. And I'll be excited to hear where Josh gets called to as well!

last things I forgot to add, I greatly enjoyed the updates on some people in the ward, it's good brother Mcintyre is getting healthy. and one other kind funny thing we did was go over to help the Simpsons get their printer working. (we downloaded the driver and then it worked). We are very lucky to have them around.

Received Wednesday, Nov 14, 2012

This is Zak with his 3 roommates. It was taken at a home where they had dinner. He tells about the picture at the end of this letter. Enjoy!!

I have lots of stuff to tell, and not much time to tell it!

Questions:

What happened with transfers?

Elder Concha is leaving! he's going to waterbury Conneticut, or something like that. He leaves tomorrow. The rest of us are staying. We were all very surprised and disappointed Shocked and appalled you could say. Elder Wilding is getting a new greenie who was called as a portugues elder like him. That is all we know.

What day do you get notice of being transferred? Tues? Mon?

**no answer**

Are you still at the same address; if different, please give your knew one.

same

HOW is your weather?? Cold? Wishing for warmer clothing?

cold. not terrible right now though. I will explain more below

Have you been a “helping hand” yet? If yes, where and how did that happen.

yes! last weekend we all went. Every missionary from the whole mission went over to Connecticut to help. Friday night the whole Packard family spoke and they all did a great job. That night all the elders slept in the chapel and the 20'ish sisters went somewhere else. The next day we went to work. I got a shirt! it's XL, but i'm still glad I have it. The first thing we did was shovel sand out of someones property away from the house where a bulldozer can get to it. Ever since that summer I dug the ditch in our yard I've liked shoveling, so that was good. After that we did a few other random things, stuff like cleaning a ton of isolation stuff from someones house. We drove home saturday night and Chris, one of our investigator was baptized.

Any great food you ate this week?

The food is basically always good, nothing comes immediately to mind as amazing.

You hearing any election/results talk?

Some. It's hard to stay neutral about it. I think most people could kind of figure who I voted for. The Cape Verdians are so so so happy. Mostly they can't understand why someone (except for the exceedingly wealthy) would ever vote against Obama

I think I have sent 2 items of mail since we last “spoke”, get them? I don’t even

remember what they were...

ummm it's been a long week. I wish I could remember though. I think I got at least 1 thing and I really liked it. Did you send more pictures maybe? or maybe a letter with more updates.

When you go into people’s houses, is the TV on? What are they watching?

Sometimes. On sunday sometimes people are watching the patriots. This Cambodean lady we visit is always watching tv from that side of the world. She turns it off when we ask though. One person insisted her put on The Best Two Years for us while we waited another 20 mins or so for dinner to be ready. It is far funnier to watch as a missionary. Chris is always watching a movie. Changing his movie standards was tough for him, but he was willing to make the change which was great.

Anyone try to listen/talk to you while the TV is going?

they usually are willing to turn it off.

I did see one time that the Laker just fired there coach!?! what is going on there? We should be winning 3v5! I haven't heard anyone talk about the celtics at all yet. Did i ever mention about when someone at a store called me out when I used my Dodgers debit card? I thought it was very funny.

Yes I do have a scarf. I have yet to put it on

I already talked about the service in conneticut. That might be the only time in my mission that all the missionaries are in one place. apparently mission presidents are told not to call mission conferences. Also while we were there the mission sent us lunch in brown baggies which was nice, but also random people fed us free hot dogs and dunkin donuts. It was very cool.

So, just a few days after the hurricane we had a "nor'easter", which means we had a bunch of freezing cold wind from the freezing cold north eastern part of the freezing cold continent. It was not fun. I had on my full suit coat, sweater, trench coat and everything. I didn't think about the scarf. That's over now, so it's back to regular sweater weather that's not too bad. When winter really starts to come in i will find something to cover my ears, and find the best warmest gloves. I came out with no gloves and just bought some.

Chris' baptism on Sunday was great. a decent number of people came and we had food afterwards which was great for him to talk with other members, normally he's pretty shy. Alex, who is a 22'ish member we take with us to a lot of lessons baptized him, which is great. He asked me to be the one to confirm him (this sunday). We're still going to be visiting him often, he's made a lot of changes, but he still is going to need a lot of help to stay active. We are slightly worried we baptized him a little early, and that he did it for the right reasons, not just because his missionary friends wanted him too. I think everything will work out though. Also it was his birthday that day!

something I just remembered, something I want for christmas is some (legal) music. There's no specific rules about it, except what's in the white hand book (it has to be uplifting, not make you lose focus, won't drive the spirit away with beat, or anything, no romantic overtones). Elder Beck has lots of cd's we listen to, but eventually when one of us is transferred I want to have a few. Some Mo-tab is fine. hymns by other people are good too. One cd I like a lot is the The Work by A Nashville Tribute.

today we were in franklin for a district pday. We played football, it was fun. I am sore. I wish I had more time! I think we may come back tomorrow because Elder Beck's computer wasn't working well, so I might be able to send another quick email then.

Thanks for the great update, that was lots of exciting stuff

Love you all!

also about that picture, Brother Mello took it and he took a bunch of pictures and it kept not working, or he didn't like them for some reason, until he took that one in which half of us weren't paying attention. Very funny.

Received Monday, November 5, 2012

Have you done any work to help clean up from Sandy?

No, not yet. Elder Concha and Wilding were able to go last weekend but Elder Beck and I had set appointments we couldn't move. We'll probably get to go this weekend though on Friday and Saturday. We would stay Sunday too, but we have a baptism then.

Have you worn a yellow Helping Hands T-shirt?

No (emoticon: sad face!) last weekend they wore yellow vests that they had to give back afterwards.

How did you know to change your clocks on Saturday night?

we had stake conference and they announced it and we had a bunch of people text us about it

Talk about that newspaper article that you linked to last week.

that was back in my first transfer. The Staples were friends with this lady who wrote for the newspaper and she interviewed us. The article was about 75% accurate, which was about what we expected. I just didn't like how it said I started my mission with "resignation". I think I talked about how the start is nerve racking, but you know you should because a prophet said it, but then you learn to really enjoy it.

The NFL is changing a lot from when I was fully in the loop. It sounds like the Rams are due for a win. Do they still have a good shot at taking the NFCW? It's too bad the Eagles are the one team that keeps doing the same thing every year. Did the Bears find a way to protect Jay Cutler? how did a running back get 50 points?

This week seemed really busy. Monday was shut down, which made Tuesday weird, but we still got to teach the lessons we had pre-set. Wednesday (Halloween) we got to talk to a less active member, teach the 2nd lesson to Dave who we found not long ago and teach Chris, who's getting baptized this Sunday. We started teaching him basically every week. It's going well. That night we had to stop proselyting by 6:00, so we had dinner with the Simpsons (who treat us all like a combination of grandkids and missionaries) and then drove up to Foxboro. Thursday we had interviews with the mission president (in Foxboro) then got back to Southcoast where we ended up being fed 1 lunch and 2 dinners by members! Usually we're able to schedule better than that. We still got to teach Chris though. Friday we had District meeting, taught Chris and sort of taught a lesson with a part-member family, Saturday we did service for a part member family all the way up until we left to the adult session on Stake Conference (which is also near Foxboro. It's about a 45 min drive. Longer if the Simpsons are driving). Sunday we went to conference, did weekly planning and taught Chris a great lesson on scripture study, prayer and feeling the spirit. Today is P-day! Tonight after our dinner appointment we're driving to Josh's house. Josh is a 24'ish looking guy we found over a month ago because he is a neighbor to a member we were visiting. He is a pretty religious guy, so he let gave us a time later in the week to come back. It went pretty well, he had lots of questions and he read all the way through Enos in the Book of Mormon we gave him! I had really high hopes, but since then our appointments fell through and he quit answering our calls. Eventually we kind of gave up on him. We just found out from his neighbor (the member) that he is still kind of interested but his girlfriend (who he lives with) didn't want us to come back, and that's why he started ignoring us. Hopefully we'll catch him home some time when she's not there or something. Also we'll try to see how we can help his neighbor help him.

About kylie pen pal: I talked to one of the girls who said she would write (the one who I asked most recently) and she said she wrote her a letter, put it in the envelope and lost it! She planned on writing another one. Hopefully it works out.
basketball: just get all the rebounds

To Quinn: I know you're not super excited for BYU anymore because all the girls are leaving on missions, but you still have to fill out the application. You're allowed to sell your soul for a BYU admittance.

Next time I email we'll know our next president! It's kind of funny we go around to lots of members houses and some tell us about how they're hoping and praying for Obama (especially the Cape Verdeans always are) and then we go to someone else's house who's hoping and praying (and fasting!) for Romney. We always stay neutral.

Also, something on the ballot here has to do with assisted suicide/euthanasia and a first presidency message was read at stake conference saying we should all vote AGAINST it. I remember in 8th grade doing a debate and I chose to argue for it. I guess I was an unrighteous middle schooler.

Also, Transfers are next week! I won't email 'till Wednesday. Earlier I was pretty worried that someone in the apartment would end up leaving (most likely me). The other dorks in the apartment kept saying I'd get somewhere to train. On Thursday during my interview with President Packard I told him was going well and good, and I really hope we all 4 of us get to stay in Southcoast. He said he currently had no plans to move any of us, but if the Lord told him to change his mind he would though. I was glad to hear that. Afterwards when we all talked, all 4 of us had similar conversations. So, I'll probably stay, but you never know.

Also I’m going to load up all my pictures on to my flash drive now and try to send it home today.

That's all! Thanks for everything!

 Love you all!