ELDER COOK

Posted by Jacquelyn Lois November 04, 2018

ELDER COOK

Sziasztok!

So this past week was INCREDIBLE; debatably the best week of my mission!

Mostly this was because of the visit of Elder Cook, a current apostle on the earth and a special witness of Jesus Christ. So on Tuesday morning we all were able to head to the stake center in Pest to begin a personal study at 9 am before Elder Cook came at 10. All the missionaries in Hungary came up to the stake center. During the personal study I was playing a soft prelude. Then Elder and Sister Cook and Elder and Sister Sabin of the Seventy came in and shook all of our hands. We started the meeting with a special musical number, A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, that I accompanied on the piano while 4 sisters sang. It was so powerful! Pretty much everyone was crying after the number, the Cooks included. When Elder Cook stood up to speak, he said that though he had heard the hymn many times in many different settings, the one we did was the most powerful rendition of the hymn he had heard EVER. So that was really cool.

I guess that people who aren't familiar with the idea of living apostles would think that they are super charismatic or have some great showy personality traits that would make people want to follow them and heed their council. But really it is quite different. When an apostle speaks, instructs and bears his witness that the Savior lives, it is done humbly, simply, and beautifully. You can tell that he stands just as much in awe of our Savior's love as we do. You can feel through the power of the Spirit that he is called of God and is used as an instrument in His hands to proclaim Christ Jesus to the world. Because of the hymn, which was the Prophet Joseph Smith's favorite, he explained the many trials that the early Saints went through as they were eventually exiled to the west. He told of the importance of inviting the Spirit into our work and of focusing on the Savior. He then bore his witness of the Savior. The room went even quieter than it was before, and he bore a simple and powerful witness of the reality of Jesus Christ. My testimony of the Savior grew a ton. I felt so powerfully of His divinity and His love in that room, and my life was changed.

Ever since we've been using the full name of the church when introducing the church, my testimony that Christ's church is once again on the earth have been growing so much! Even as a missionary, sometimes I've fallen into the trap of thinking of the church as just "another religion", while in reality it occupies so much more meaning in my life that just a "religion". I believe with all my heart, now more than ever, that the Church of Jesus Christ was restored to the earth and is led through a modern prophet and apostles.

In any case, the rest of the week was pretty good. We went to Széll Kálmán square in the 12th district to use the book of Mormon banner and talk to people. We found a lot of new people to teach this next week and taught a lot too. Yesterday we had a pretty long training with all of the new missionaries and their trainers from Hungary and Romania. There are a ton of awesome missionaries in our mission currently and they're doing awesome work!

We also had a cool miracle when a young guy we had taught about 10 weeks ago walked past us while we were sitting on a bench studying and we ran a bit after him to see if we could set up with him. He was in a hurry so he couldn't set up anything, but later that night he called and we were having the YSA halloween party. He was able to meet then, so we invited him and he had a great time. Then we were able to meet with him again that week; he called us to set up. So sometimes running after people works!

I love being a missionary and I'm excited to see what miracles will happen these next few weeks!

Love,

Martin elder