It's Hot

Hey everyone,
So its starting to get really green and beautiful here. The smell of beer and cigarretts are ocaasionaly interrupted by wiffs of the sea and blooming trees. Its quite nice. Me and Elder Cox taught 19 lessons this last week. It was awesome.
We extended a babtisim date to one of our investigators, Saulus, and he accepted! He is planning on June 24. We have another investigator, Robertas, who wants to get babtised but he is living with his pregnant girlfriend. They are going to get married later in the summer so unless he moves out, he cant get babtised until then.
I had a realy great expieriance with contacting this week.
It had been a rough morning with contacting that morning. I had some Russian men get mad at me on the bus. One saying, "Look! I found a priest!" After that, right when we got off another man got mad at me on the street. I was walking with my companion and I saw another man who didn't look too happy. I wanted to think that he would get mad at me just like the others but I knew i needed to talk to him anyways. We started talking and I asked if he would be interested in our message. He said he wasn't babtised so I asked him if he wanted to be. He said, "Of course i do! Can you do that?" We are planning on meeting with him in the next day or two. It was just really a testament to me that I can never let people who aren't ready to hear the gospel afect the chance for those who are ready. We will see how this goes i guess.

WEll fam thanks for everything. I love you.

Thats it for me

Viso Gero
Elder Cooke

Putting the mettle to the peddle and the thing to the floor!

Hey!!!!!!!!
How is everybody? Im just great. Things are going good. Me and Elder Cox have gone strait to work. We are trying to teach three lessons each day and we are on schedule so far. I never taught anything close to that in Vilnius. I met my new english class yesterday. That are way nice. All the women think that mom is 35 and had plastic surgery to look so young. And when they heard how young Leslie was with four kids they were very impressed. It should be fun. We have had some interesting expieriances so far here in Klaipeda. We had some girls tell us the love us in english, then they said they worship us...yea it was way awkward. Then we knocked on a door and a man was just standing at the end of a long hallway shaking his fist at us. So we just closed the door and walked out. We left the dome and he was just at the window behind the curtains and watched us all the way around the corner. On the way here there were some kids making fun of me in Russian. I understood enough to catch that they were saying it was funny that I couldn't understand them(kind of ironic) and then some irreverent words in Russian. They thought it was hillarious. Cool thing is, however is when they got off this old lady was not very impressed and told me how the kids these days have no respect for holy things (I think she meant me) and I simply told her we still need to love them because that is what Christ would do. She was very impressed with that and wished me well. Remember how important it is to always represent and exercise belief. If we all threw out a few more seeds then a few are bound to hit good soil. Here in Klaipeda we do street lessons. We dont have a teaching center like in Vilnius so if we can we just teach them the lessons on the street then have a prayer with him. I thought that was a great idea and started doing it on busses as well. It blew my companion away when I told him I asked a guy to pray with me on the bus. Yea it is kind of awkward sometimes but why should that matter to us. I never thought I could do stuff like this but anything is possible when you are doing the Lords work.(You dont have to be a missionary to do the Lords work). Let this gospel shine through you so everyone can see. This gospel brings joy. I can see it so much here. I got to meet a whole new bunch of members on Sunday. It was awesome. I spoke in church and when I said I had been out for 3 months I saw some wierd faces in the congregation. After the meeting they came up to me and told me they had been thinking I had been out for a year! It made me feel a little better about this whole language thing. Now dont think I am over here speaking fluent beautiful Lithuanian. I still sound like a fool a lot of times. And I dont always understand everything. I am, however, very confident in the language. I am confident because I know as long as I put all of myself into this work, then the language will come. And I will understand what I need to understand and I will be able to say what I need to say. I am not confident in myself but in God. I love this work, I love these challanges, I love each old lady and drunk bum and angry Russian. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love you all

Viso Gero (I wish you all that is well)
Vyresnysis Kukas

OH and my new address is:
A/D 408
94198 Klaipeda 10
Lithuania

Labas from Klaipeda!

Hey Fam
Well I got transferred to Klaipeda (Kl [eye] peh-duh). It’s a little city on the coast of the Baltic Sea. I am way excited to start work here. It was hard to leave Vilnius (I got kissed by a drunken man on my last day) but I just hope that I accomplished my purposes there. My new companion in Elder Cox of Hooper Utah! He is a way solid missionary and I am excited to start learning from him. In Klaipeda we have 3 Elders who speak Lithuanian 1 Elder who speaks Russian and 2 sisters (both Lithuanian) It is a lot smaller here than Vilnius. I am excited, however to run on the beach in the mornings. It is getting way hot here. It sounds like you are under 10 feet of snow. That’s awesome. Here we are just waiting for President Dance to tell us we can take off out jackets. But when we do I won’t have any short sleeved shirts. I need some money in my account so I can buy some. Other than that everything is just dandy. Our apartment is a lot nicer than the one I had in Vilnius. I am way excited to meet all the members in this branch.
We got to watch general conference this week! It was so amazing wasn’t it?! I loved Elder Holland’s talk on the Atonement. And I think President Eyring had me in mind personally when he wrote his talk for Priesthood meeting. Ingrida came to 2 sessions! They really helped her. I am going to miss teaching her but she is in good hands still with Elder Young.
Well fam I hope all is well. Thank you all so much for all you do. Love ya!


Vyresnysis Kukas

Labas visiems!

How are you all? Good?Good! So yea another wonderful week . This may be my last letter from Vilvius. Transfers are next week! I can't believe it. It went so fast, sventaiji Moze!(holy Moses) SO I might get sent to a different city. I dont know though. President Dance does some interesting transfers here. But wherever I go I know it will be where I need to go so im not worried. But that also means next week Preparation day will be on Thursday, so dont freak out if you dont get a letter right away.
Today we went to Trakai. It is a Lithuanian castle on an island outside of Vilnius. Way way neat. This week had some interesting experiences. Elder Young had to go to the dentist this week! We were way nervous becasue the dentistry here is kind of shady. But Sister Dance had a magical book that had a respectable place in it and he made out ok. He had part of his far back molar fall off and so they put a cap and filling on. And it only cost 220 liets! (about 100 dollars) No paperwork or nothing just walk in they do their thing and we payed cash. It was beautiful. He said that they wern't the MOST experienced but for that price how could we complain.
It is starting to get way hot here. The crowded buses are starting to smell very interesting with this humid heat going around. We can't take off our suit coats until we get word from the president so we are waiting anxiously for the call. You always have crazy experiences on the buses. I had a drunk man come ask me what I thought of the girls on the bus. He said that the Lituanian girls were just voted the most beautiful in the world- and he wanted to know my opinion. I said I didnt know and he responded with a nice big thumbs-up. Yea kinda random but thats how it usually is.
So this week I received my "permission to live" so its official now. I get to stay in Lithuania. Valio!
So I hope you all enjoyed conference. I have only seen one session so far. We watched it this morning. we are going to watch the rest every morning this week. Then it will be shown to the branch this weekend after it gets translated. We have one investigator (Ingrida) we feel it will really help. She needs help keeping the word of wisdom. We got her to stop drinking coffee but now she told she has picked up smoking! We are really working hard with her in any way we can.
Well fam i have to go for now. We will see where the Lord takes me this week. I'll talk to you next Thursday!

Elder Cooke

Bad News

Labas

Hey everybody so I had some major visa problems and now i am getting kicked out the country. I have been "re-assigned" and I will be in Tennessee by tomorrow morning. April Fools! Or as it's called here "Lairs Day!" Just Kidding, everything is peachy. I did a ton of visa work this last week and everything is going to work out. You dont need to mail anything I got the same letter here. All that is left to do is to pick up my "permission to live" card next week. That will be good for about a year then I get to do it all over again. Other than that, everything is about the same here in Lithuania. One nice thing is that it is seeming a lot more like spring. We had daylight savings time on Sunday so now we have tons of sunlight. The winters here are way dark all the time but in the summer we have a ton of sun. And its not as gray here anymore. It is already starting to sprout up green grass. Things grow here like crazy. So thats a nice change.
So we had a few cool things happen I guess. First off last Thursday during English class Elder young needed to go on splits with another Elder to get some stuff the district leader forgot at his apartment. So I had to teach English class by myself. It was kinda crazy but it worked out. I finished up teaching English and still had some time. I asked if they had ever learned about America and they said no because of the cold war and all so I gave them a little history lesson. Which mostly consisted of me telling them about how awesome Idaho is. After that I started talking about what our purpose is here on Earth. I pointed out that to many people spend to much time watching their life go by. How we forget what is really important in this life because we are to wrapped up in ourselves and in life. I said that I know I am younger and not as experienced as them but they can't deny the things that I was saying, and they couldn't, they agreed with me. I told them that they need to start to change NOW. Not tomorrow or next year. They need to walk out that door tonight and tell themselves they are going to be better people now! I told them to go home and tell thier spouse they love them, and to spend time with their children because they might not know it. Sometimes we think it's obvious but it ISN'T all the time. I finished by telling them that it all starts with humility. Admitting we dont have it all figured out. Not telling missionary's on the street that they have enough in their life and then wondering why life is so hard. ALL of us right now need to admit we can be better, then ACT on it- make the decision to be better. That is how you find happiness. Then I testified of service to others and just being happy people. It was awesome. I defiantly spoke bold to them- but I felt I had the green light from the spirit. I was in a room with a lot of older Lithuanians telling them to humble themselves and there wasn't a single thread of me holding me back. It was way cool. After the lesson my companion still wasn't back, but a man came up to me and said he wanted to know more about Joseph Smith. I asked if had time to talk now and then I ran and got the first Elder i could find to teach with me(by the mouths of two witnesses shall my kingdom be established) It was Elder Gabler. He is a German who got here a transfer before me. We started teaching and I had to teach parts of the lesson My companion had always taught and I have never tried before. He would speak in Lithuanian and when he finished I looked to Elder Gabler like I look to my trainer thinking he would understand and he was there looking right back at me. So I just spoke. I went all the way through that lesson and it worked out great. We gave him the Book of Mormon and set up another meeting. It was quite the deal. Way fun. It turns out When Elder Young got to the district leaders apartment the bathroom was flooded and the neighbor downstairs was way mad. So he had his own adventures that night. It was a fun day.
Some side notes is Sister Free and Sister Squires are in fact teaching that lady in our English class and she is awesome. We taught her a 'one on one' lesson last week because she missed a class. She is doing awesome. She is so humble and so loving. I know she is going to get baptized, I knew it from that first time we taught the gospel in English class. She rocks.
Oh I got your package. Thank Sister Carole Green so much! I forgot how amazing real peanut butter tastes like. I dont know if you sent a memory card with it. The package was part open when it got here so if you did send one it probably fell out.
well fam I think I am going to go for the week. Thanks again for everything you do. I am truly blessed out here in Lithuania. I love you all. until next week...