Last week on Monday night we had dinner appointments with a brother in the ward, Joey Green, and he made us an awesome craw fish dinner! There were literally hundreds of them. They took these craw fish and dumped them on the table, and to eat them you break the tail off, peel apart the shell, and push the meat out of the tail. I've never done anything like this before at home, but it was fun to stand around the table outside and get our hands covered in craw fish juices.

Tuesday was an awesome day which reaped lots of fruit for our work. We ran into Ted, and were finally able to actually have a lesson with him! We met him a few weeks ago while tracting and he hasn't been able to sit down and talk with us because he's really busy renovating his house, but we were able to teach him about the restoration. There was also an older lady we've swung by a few times, but from the way our last encounter with her went, I'm sure she doesn't want to see us anymore. As soon as she opened the door a little, we said "Hey Ms. Douglas, how's..." and she shut the door. Well, I guess we won't be seeing her anymore :/ We also met up with Wanda again, but her house was a wreck because her friend gave her a bunch of stuff because she was moving, so she was trying to figure out where to put it all. We asked if we could help in any way and she said jokingly "Yeah, y'all can do the dishes if ya want", so we did. She was joking, but we assured her we were more than willing to do her dishes and she was completely caught off guard. Her friend gave her a bunch of dishes, so we literally did her dishes by hand for an hour and a half, and you wouldn't believe how baffled she was that we did that for her. We talked about how church went and she said she really liked it and wanted to return for relief society/"Women's bible study" as she called it, but that's really awesome that she's so open to coming back to church!

Wednesday we had interviews with President and Sister McDonough in Clinton  (about an hour away) basically all day from 10:00 - 6:00, so we weren't able to accomplish much. We did go out with Ben Boone, a member of the ward to do a few lessons, but that was about it.

Thursday we met with a Catholic investigator named Nancy. She likes her cigarettes but she is an awesome lady who loves doing volunteer work. When we went to visit her she opened the door and said "Y'all like pizza?". So she ordered a pizza and we ate as we taught her about how the Book of Mormon was translated, and I showed her Joseph Smith History 1:63-65 and then Isiah 29:11-12 and those two scriptures together really got her thinking about the Book of Mormon. She said she'll start reading, but that she's always really busy with studying for the Mississippi State Guard tests and work, so she might not be able to.

Me mowin' Wanda's yard for some service!

Friday we found a few of our investigators who apparently know each other in the back yard of their house smoking weed, so that's always fun, especially when one of them has a baptismal date. Their reason was "Where in the bible does it say I can't smoke weed? Since it doesn't say that, I can smoke weed". Next lesson: Word of Wisdom hahahaha. As we were driving to go tracting we saw Wanda again drive past us, and she had a lawn mower in the back of her car, so she saw us and put her car in reverse to pull up next to us! Here in Mississippi people will always just stop their car in the middle of the street to have a conversation with people, so it's pretty normal. So long story short we put tracting on postponement and headed over to her house to do some more service for her. We mowed her front and back yard for about half an hour, and she was nice enough to give us some water and paper towels to wipe the sweat off our faces. The funny thing about mowing her lawn was that since I trimmed David Malone's bushes by myself a few weeks ago, he wanted to do the lawn by himself.
He's never used a gas mower before, only the ones that you sit on and I had to help him start it, and it kept dying on him, so I did the front and half of the back yard, and he did the other half of the back yard. This is the second time this week we've dropped everything to help Wanda, and now she loves the both of us. She don't hate me no more, she don't hate Elder Hill no more, she loves us. We just explain to her that as missionaries we emulate Christ by helping everyone as much as we can whenever we need us. Her biggest obstacle right now is that Joseph Smith isn't mentioned anywhere in the Bible. It's going to have to be a leap of faith for her to understand, but we'll be as patient as needed. Cecil Williams also told us not to come back, and he has these HUGE mood swings when it comes to religion, and for the past few lessons he's become borderline atheist, so he wants us to not come back at least for a month or two. It didn't make me mad or anything, it actually made me really sad, because I know that the gospel can really bless his life because I've seen how it's blessed mine and others around me.

Saturday we met with Chris Jenkins who actually has a baptismal date, but I'm sure we'll have to reschedule it :( When we went to visit with him he didn't say much because his 40 year old friend decided to take over the conversation which kinda sucked, and saying that when God wants him to stop drinking he'll come down and tell him and that two "kids who claim to be disciples of God" can't make him change his mind. Hopefully next time we can teach Chris when his buddy isn't there. I also got the news that L. Tom Perry died at about 3:00 that day. Noooooo! He was honestly one of my favorite apostles next to Holland and Bednar.

Sunday we had Stake Conference, so we spent the night in Clinton with the Zone Leaders that stay there. I also say Elder Babnuea at the Stake Conference and we talked for a bit, and he told me his visa came in on Saturday, so he'll be leaving June 16th for Australia! Hopefully mine comes in soon enough so that I can be on the same flight as him, that'd be awesome! After church there was torrential rainfall that lasted a few hours, and a few of the members had provided lunch for the missionaries that were there, so we had lunch under a canopy at the edge of the parking lot under the crazy rain, loud thunder and close lightning. We still had tracting to do, so after lunch we drove back to Hazlehurst and luckily the rain had stopped and we got a few new investigators while tracting! That was pretty cool"

Mom,  thank you a TON for sending over my sheet music!  I played and practiced at the church building in Clinton and this is a little excerpt from my journal about it: "It felt SO GOOD to play again.  I mean if I were to compare it to anything, it was like eating a Little Debbie Swiss Roll Cake after being on a diet for 3 days (because at this point it's been day 34 of my mission) "it felt awesome playing some real music again!"  Also thank you for those bible highlighters, I love them and use them quite a bit.  You are the BEST for getting those pens for me too!  They come in different thicknesses, and the thicker ones I plan on using mainly for my journal, and the thinner ones I've been using for my Book of Mormon for underlining and making notes on the sides of the verses that I've highlighted.  very useful, I love them!

So that was my week so far, and it went by like "speedy race car" in the words of Elder Kulu. Hopefully my visa comes in soon, and that I can head out to the land down under. But if not, it's all in the Lords hands. A few of the Elders here don't want me to go, and I'm not sure if it's because they love me or are just jealous that I get to leave here hahahaha. But I love it here, and keep praying for me the same way that I pray for all of you! And as always, God be with you till we meet again

-Elder Cook

(P.S.: more pictures will be coming next week, the missionaries that let me borrow their SD converter are not here)