WEll im here!!!
Its the end of my first week in the field and i will tell you right now it is nothing like i had in my mind. We all made it here ok but one of our sisters lost a luggage bag and and I lost my sidebag in a taxi. I was upset because it had all these things in it that i needed but then I kept finding them in other bags \. For some reason I took all the things that were really important out of it right before I lost it. They are trying to track it down but im not making a big deal out of it. The only thing of real worth in there were my lithuainian bible and book of Mormon. Both of with is easy to replace and I hadent marked anything in then yet. So if anything Somebody found the word of god. :)
Sorry im a little rushed to day we had apointments this morning and we have one at 6 so i have to hurry. But dont think that everybody here wants to get baptised...our appointments this morning stood us up and we the one tonight has stood us up once already. I was more than happy to scedual our appointments this morning on P day becasue its kind of important to take every opportunity you can get here.
Ok so now about some things I didnt know about Lithuaina.-The people here are very sad. Nobody smiles and they are very angry at people trying to share the word of God. It makes no sence to me. It might have something to do with the fact that I havent seen the sun in 8 days, (or even the sky...seriously, i havent) or the fact that Russia was here for a long time and did some major scaring to this place. 95 percent of people here are Catholic but the second we say Jesus Christ they get very busy or very angry. Its hard but I know I am doing everything I can and thats all the Lord asks.
The language is difficult. I spoke in church on Sunday and I hope I didnt make to much of a fool out of myself. I felt confident but who knows what I actualy said. I have had many blank stares on my face as I have tried to talk to people by myself on the street. I have been trying to go off on my own as much as possible and it is really helping, But when people talk it sounds like one big long word and they are talking through a trash bag.
My trainor's name is Elder Young. He is awesome. He is really helping my and and we are way alike. WE get along great and he is a great teacher. He witnessed that baptisim you saw a picture of. Luckily he didnt have to get in the water because it was frozen! :) how cool is that. Wish I could have done that. WE will see... :)
So I am serving in Vilnius, the capital. Its way neat. Its a bit different from american cities but I am trying to adjust. So more about RUssia. Russia destroyed everybody's homes and put in these things called domes. The are very tall ugly scary apartment buildings that everybody lives in. Its is good for harvesting (trackting) becasue you can hit hundreds of people very quickly and at least to this point only teach 1 lesson. But we will press on! I will have to tell you more about it next week, just to let you know anybody in our immediate family can email me and i can email them back. but here is my address.
A\D 3438LT-01011
Vilnius
Lietuva
Well I love you all so much I will have more time next week I hope. I am praying for all of you.
Myliu
Vyresnysis Kukas
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
It's "The Final Countdown"
Thats a good song by the way, it reminds me of wrestling. I hope Teton has been dominating. Speaking of which i havent told you about anybody i have seen here. I forget every time! Elder Golden (Treven) was in my zone! He left for Cali a few weeks ago. He roomed just down the hall from me. I have also seen Elder Cox (Shelley runner) and Elder Stephenson? I cant remember exactly but he was the Shelly 112 pounder remember. If you cant remember his face its probably because it was in the mat the whole time,jk ;). Oh and today I got a new neighbor. Elder Ward, the Bear Lake 119 pounder. Oh and cool story I met a senior couple and I was telling them about Kyle serving in Japan and they said their son served in Japan and he had a companion from Driggs Idaho! Elder Hungate? I don't know. Look into that i guess.
ok so some bad news first,
Last week i did my laundry and hung up 4 of my short sleeved white shirts. When I went to get them there were 4 different shirts in their place. short sleeved but bad quality and slightly bigger. I dont really know what to think. I can see that being an accident at first but it has been a week and they are still the only ones there. I have gone everywhere looking for them but I dont have very high hopes. So...yea am not sure what to do about that. They have the same ones i had here to buy and they are 40 percent off but I dont know what to do. I dont know how much i have on my card and i dont think i should because I wont be wearing short sleeved shirts until may or June. I dont know, tell me what you think. I have 1 short sleeved shirt left and i still have all my long ones. It is really inconvenient but worse things have happened and could have happened I guess.
The more important thing is to pray for my Visa. We still dont have them and we wont when we get there. I will tell you the specifics of how it works when im IN THE COUNTRY! :)
Ok so...I GOT MY FLIGHT PLANS! We leave here on the 20th at 3:00 am. We leave Salt Lake at 6:00 and get to Denver at 7:32. We only have a 1 hour layover so dont expect a call there. WE then fly to Washington DC and arrive at 1:52. I have a 4 hour layover so thats when i will be making all my calls. We then leave for Viena, Austria (austria! well then! ga'day mate! lets put another shrimp on the bar'bei!) sorry, I get there at 9:00am on the 21st. From there we fly to Latvia. I will spend the night at the mission home with Presidant Dance and then the next morning get assighned a trainer and take a bus to one of the 4 open cities. I dont care what one because they all sound absolutIy amazing. I will just be happy to start teaching. I have started packing somewhat. I am so excited!!! Its kind of weird and I dont know how ready I am but I know the Lord will qualify me.
Sorry I cant tell you about the amazing expiriances I had again this week. Long story short I am pretty much convinced three people I called yesterday at the RC are going to be babtised. I am super stoked.
THank you so much for the package and the letters. Tell Angela she totally blew my mind and I am mad at her. The hats rock, especially Grandpas hat. I am going to send all my letters back home and my memory card with pictures on it. I have another 1 so no hurry to return it.
I love you all so much. THank you all so much for all you love and prayers. I am so ready to start serving. I cant wait to talk to you all.
Vyresnysis kuk
ok so some bad news first,
Last week i did my laundry and hung up 4 of my short sleeved white shirts. When I went to get them there were 4 different shirts in their place. short sleeved but bad quality and slightly bigger. I dont really know what to think. I can see that being an accident at first but it has been a week and they are still the only ones there. I have gone everywhere looking for them but I dont have very high hopes. So...yea am not sure what to do about that. They have the same ones i had here to buy and they are 40 percent off but I dont know what to do. I dont know how much i have on my card and i dont think i should because I wont be wearing short sleeved shirts until may or June. I dont know, tell me what you think. I have 1 short sleeved shirt left and i still have all my long ones. It is really inconvenient but worse things have happened and could have happened I guess.
The more important thing is to pray for my Visa. We still dont have them and we wont when we get there. I will tell you the specifics of how it works when im IN THE COUNTRY! :)
Ok so...I GOT MY FLIGHT PLANS! We leave here on the 20th at 3:00 am. We leave Salt Lake at 6:00 and get to Denver at 7:32. We only have a 1 hour layover so dont expect a call there. WE then fly to Washington DC and arrive at 1:52. I have a 4 hour layover so thats when i will be making all my calls. We then leave for Viena, Austria (austria! well then! ga'day mate! lets put another shrimp on the bar'bei!) sorry, I get there at 9:00am on the 21st. From there we fly to Latvia. I will spend the night at the mission home with Presidant Dance and then the next morning get assighned a trainer and take a bus to one of the 4 open cities. I dont care what one because they all sound absolutIy amazing. I will just be happy to start teaching. I have started packing somewhat. I am so excited!!! Its kind of weird and I dont know how ready I am but I know the Lord will qualify me.
Sorry I cant tell you about the amazing expiriances I had again this week. Long story short I am pretty much convinced three people I called yesterday at the RC are going to be babtised. I am super stoked.
THank you so much for the package and the letters. Tell Angela she totally blew my mind and I am mad at her. The hats rock, especially Grandpas hat. I am going to send all my letters back home and my memory card with pictures on it. I have another 1 so no hurry to return it.
I love you all so much. THank you all so much for all you love and prayers. I am so ready to start serving. I cant wait to talk to you all.
Vyresnysis kuk
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Pictures
Here is a little snippet from Elder Cooke's letter to Leslie & Family:
Dear Family of my sister,
How is everything? I am glad Christmas went great. I heard about the bike from everybody. I can't wait to see it. Send pictures!!! ...Tell the kids I say ,,labas" {law-bahs} Funny story - Lithuanians put the first " on bottom in front when writing so when they do ,,Air Quotes" with their hands, they do the left ones upside down...
Thank you for your letters and support... Elder Cooke
Week 7: Bitersweet Symphony
Labas S'eima ir Drauga
How is everybody? sorry my letters got out late there was a lot of random stuff that kept me from getting them sent. ok let me get out some chores first
first and most importantly- MY gaffer caps! apparently i need my sweet golf hats in Lithuania. i need those sent asap so you dont have to send to them to lithuania. I dont want all of them obviosly, but i would like grampa Huntington's green-ish one and any other missionary appropiate ones you can find. I hid them in the attic in one of the tubs i put up on the vent sharing the wall with mom and dads bathroom. I dont know which 1 but i think the one on the right. if they arent in either of those i have two more all the way in the back of the attic and some under the stairs. Thank you love you.
sencond- Mom can you get me a book with family photos. I would at least have something to show president Dance because i probably wont be seeing him very much.
third (not so important)- i will want some address stickers when i get my address in lithuania, i dont know if the return address is the mission home if it is then just do that. Thank you :)
other than that- i am all set. We are expecting our flight plans soon and we are so excited. We have been guessing where each of us will serve in the 4 cities in lithuania with missionarys. After i get my flight plans I will make sure to tell you next week so you can know when to expect my call. I was on the fence about it but my district presidence highly encouraged it because we didnt get to call on Christmas. So if its ok with you i would like to give you all a litte ring. There arent any rules for time so i guess we can just feel it out.
Ok, so. This week in the MTC. Had its ups and downs. A ton of growth though. I had to mediate some district "frustration" this week. We hit some snags in our companionship. Me and Elder Gearheart have really gotten close and it has been really good. I have learned so much from him. But for some reason Elder Dellinger started to drift away from everybody this week and was kind of leveling off in the work. And then he became my new teaching companion. I was not to happy about that because he hasn't been doing so hot in the language. And some nit-picky stuff had caused some rifts to form. But I was not going to take a back seat and just "bear" it for the next two weeks. I dont want to go stumbling into Lithuania just trying to escape spirit prison here. I want to be running at full speed into Lithuania so i can get right into the work. I went straight to Elder Dellinger and had a companionship inventory. I told him everything that was going on and we learned some things about each other. The next day we went and taught what I felt was the best lesson i had taught so far. The amazing part is that it was the SECOND lesson. It was the first time we had taught that lesson and it uses some rediculous words like "Ikiz'emis'kasis-gyvenama" (pre-earth life) so i had no idea what to think before we went in there. But I realized that when i have fear all I am doing is doubting the Lord. All I have to know is that in the last 7 weeks I have tried to be as obediant as possible and have worked my bum off. And if i can confidently say that I should know that God is going to be there for me, and he will qualify me to do the work he has called me to do. We must not doubt ourselves, we must mearly obey with exactness and be dilligent in the work and he will always be there to make up the slack.
As' myliu jus so visas mano s'irdami
Vyresnysis Kukis
p.s. I am serious about those hats ;)
How is everybody? sorry my letters got out late there was a lot of random stuff that kept me from getting them sent. ok let me get out some chores first
first and most importantly- MY gaffer caps! apparently i need my sweet golf hats in Lithuania. i need those sent asap so you dont have to send to them to lithuania. I dont want all of them obviosly, but i would like grampa Huntington's green-ish one and any other missionary appropiate ones you can find. I hid them in the attic in one of the tubs i put up on the vent sharing the wall with mom and dads bathroom. I dont know which 1 but i think the one on the right. if they arent in either of those i have two more all the way in the back of the attic and some under the stairs. Thank you love you.
sencond- Mom can you get me a book with family photos. I would at least have something to show president Dance because i probably wont be seeing him very much.
third (not so important)- i will want some address stickers when i get my address in lithuania, i dont know if the return address is the mission home if it is then just do that. Thank you :)
other than that- i am all set. We are expecting our flight plans soon and we are so excited. We have been guessing where each of us will serve in the 4 cities in lithuania with missionarys. After i get my flight plans I will make sure to tell you next week so you can know when to expect my call. I was on the fence about it but my district presidence highly encouraged it because we didnt get to call on Christmas. So if its ok with you i would like to give you all a litte ring. There arent any rules for time so i guess we can just feel it out.
Ok, so. This week in the MTC. Had its ups and downs. A ton of growth though. I had to mediate some district "frustration" this week. We hit some snags in our companionship. Me and Elder Gearheart have really gotten close and it has been really good. I have learned so much from him. But for some reason Elder Dellinger started to drift away from everybody this week and was kind of leveling off in the work. And then he became my new teaching companion. I was not to happy about that because he hasn't been doing so hot in the language. And some nit-picky stuff had caused some rifts to form. But I was not going to take a back seat and just "bear" it for the next two weeks. I dont want to go stumbling into Lithuania just trying to escape spirit prison here. I want to be running at full speed into Lithuania so i can get right into the work. I went straight to Elder Dellinger and had a companionship inventory. I told him everything that was going on and we learned some things about each other. The next day we went and taught what I felt was the best lesson i had taught so far. The amazing part is that it was the SECOND lesson. It was the first time we had taught that lesson and it uses some rediculous words like "Ikiz'emis'kasis-gyvenama" (pre-earth life) so i had no idea what to think before we went in there. But I realized that when i have fear all I am doing is doubting the Lord. All I have to know is that in the last 7 weeks I have tried to be as obediant as possible and have worked my bum off. And if i can confidently say that I should know that God is going to be there for me, and he will qualify me to do the work he has called me to do. We must not doubt ourselves, we must mearly obey with exactness and be dilligent in the work and he will always be there to make up the slack.
As' myliu jus so visas mano s'irdami
Vyresnysis Kukis
p.s. I am serious about those hats ;)
Thursday, January 1, 2009
the most wonderful experience
Labas S'eimas! Kaip Sakasi?
How is everybody?
I hope you all had a wonderful new year. Its always refreshing to finally get to type. If you have seen my letters you will notice my handwriting is terrible. I am working on it. Anybody i am writing this week can expect some fancy cursive.
So write after i wrote you last week I went to the Christmas devotional and got to listen to Elder Holland speak! It was truely? truley? truly? amazing. We talked about the the different names of Christ. CHRISTmas was just such a wonderful expieriance here.
But I want to tell you all about my last couple days. I know i am not in the jungle fighting off wildabeasts but I have still had some crazy awesome expieriances. Our devotional this week was Elder Pierson of the 70. He was one of the best most energetic speakers I have ever heard. After that talk i got so excited to get out and work. I have been putting myself into this more than anything I have ever done before. BUT After this talk I had a new resolve to go all out. I worked my tail off yest erday and you wouldnt believe the return. I found that missionary work is not a equal return equation. YOu get out ten fold what you put in. So when i put even more than i thought i could it turned into one of the most productive days of my life. It seemed like i only had to look at a word once and i had it. The spirit was doing all the work and the more I see that the more help I get. Coming here is like getting kicked in the face with the humble shoe every ten seconds of your life. Any shortcomings are my fault and any success is the Lords. I love it! But when i worked with the spirit and felt the spirit and lost my self great things happened. .I went to the RC (refferal center) , if anyone reading doesnt know what that is, it is where we take calls and make calls to real people with real concerns. It was New years Eve and I made call, after call, after call. Nobody was answering. I started to get frustrated and I saw everybody else getting good contacts. I remembered hearing, " the lord sends his most prepared to his most prepared missionarys" and i felt pretty lame. But then I recieved a call from a woman who wanted a bible. I asked her why and she said ,"because i want to give it to my brother becasue i want somebody who knows what they are talking about to teach me about the gospel. You can imagine how excited I was. I told her about the missionarys and how they could answer any questions she might have. She got excited and i asked her why she felt so prompted to learn. She told me, "I am going into surgery in a couple days and i started thinking of what would happen to me if i died. I had a feeling deep down telling me to find out more but I dont know what that feeling was." I testified of the spirit and its wonderful influence in our lives. She seems like she is really prepared. It was wonderful. But you have a homework assignment. Her name is Angela and she said she needs all the prayers she can get, so if you remember to, pray for her. I know its just a RC contact but I feel like she needs this.
ok, I LEAVE IN 18 DAYS!!!!!! can you believe that. I think i could be a lot more prepared but I am getting so excited. We should get our flight plans next week sometime. WE are getting kind of antzy here. Also quick question, They told us we can call our families at the airport when we leave. I dont know what you think about that but let me know whenever so i can tell you when i will.
That about wraps it up for me this week. I have a feeling this next week is going to be amazing, Its been the best one for me so far so hopefuly i keep rolling with that.
I love you all so much, Thank you all for your letters I hope I am writting to you all ok. Remember that when you loose yourself in God's work you find yourself.
As' z'inau kad mano s'eimas yra dauguasia yra tai nuostabousaia
as' mylu tave,
How is everybody?
I hope you all had a wonderful new year. Its always refreshing to finally get to type. If you have seen my letters you will notice my handwriting is terrible. I am working on it. Anybody i am writing this week can expect some fancy cursive.
So write after i wrote you last week I went to the Christmas devotional and got to listen to Elder Holland speak! It was truely? truley? truly? amazing. We talked about the the different names of Christ. CHRISTmas was just such a wonderful expieriance here.
But I want to tell you all about my last couple days. I know i am not in the jungle fighting off wildabeasts but I have still had some crazy awesome expieriances. Our devotional this week was Elder Pierson of the 70. He was one of the best most energetic speakers I have ever heard. After that talk i got so excited to get out and work. I have been putting myself into this more than anything I have ever done before. BUT After this talk I had a new resolve to go all out. I worked my tail off yest erday and you wouldnt believe the return. I found that missionary work is not a equal return equation. YOu get out ten fold what you put in. So when i put even more than i thought i could it turned into one of the most productive days of my life. It seemed like i only had to look at a word once and i had it. The spirit was doing all the work and the more I see that the more help I get. Coming here is like getting kicked in the face with the humble shoe every ten seconds of your life. Any shortcomings are my fault and any success is the Lords. I love it! But when i worked with the spirit and felt the spirit and lost my self great things happened. .I went to the RC (refferal center) , if anyone reading doesnt know what that is, it is where we take calls and make calls to real people with real concerns. It was New years Eve and I made call, after call, after call. Nobody was answering. I started to get frustrated and I saw everybody else getting good contacts. I remembered hearing, " the lord sends his most prepared to his most prepared missionarys" and i felt pretty lame. But then I recieved a call from a woman who wanted a bible. I asked her why and she said ,"because i want to give it to my brother becasue i want somebody who knows what they are talking about to teach me about the gospel. You can imagine how excited I was. I told her about the missionarys and how they could answer any questions she might have. She got excited and i asked her why she felt so prompted to learn. She told me, "I am going into surgery in a couple days and i started thinking of what would happen to me if i died. I had a feeling deep down telling me to find out more but I dont know what that feeling was." I testified of the spirit and its wonderful influence in our lives. She seems like she is really prepared. It was wonderful. But you have a homework assignment. Her name is Angela and she said she needs all the prayers she can get, so if you remember to, pray for her. I know its just a RC contact but I feel like she needs this.
ok, I LEAVE IN 18 DAYS!!!!!! can you believe that. I think i could be a lot more prepared but I am getting so excited. We should get our flight plans next week sometime. WE are getting kind of antzy here. Also quick question, They told us we can call our families at the airport when we leave. I dont know what you think about that but let me know whenever so i can tell you when i will.
That about wraps it up for me this week. I have a feeling this next week is going to be amazing, Its been the best one for me so far so hopefuly i keep rolling with that.
I love you all so much, Thank you all for your letters I hope I am writting to you all ok. Remember that when you loose yourself in God's work you find yourself.
As' z'inau kad mano s'eimas yra dauguasia yra tai nuostabousaia
as' mylu tave,
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