I can literally feel your prayers

It is so crazy to think I have been gone for 2 weeks. Only a few more to go! We got our ministers licences this week and so I can legally minister now! Spanish is coming faster than I could ever imagine. I can literally feel your prayers. 

On thing we have been told to do is ask our families to pray so that we can receive the gift of tongues. I love the MTC here. We literally live on the temple grounds! It is such a beautiful place. 

The members here are amazing too. Some of them travel all night 12 hours just to do one session and then go back on a very stinky bus. They truly love the lord. I love my district. We have a great group who all love to work hard. 

This week we taught all the latinos kickball which they now lovingly call footbase. It is so much fun to go to the parks and just play soccer. never in my life have I loved exercise so much. 

One thing we did last p-day is eat completos. They are hot dogs with avacado tomatoe and tons of other things. THEY ARE SO GOOD. another thing that our family would love is the strawberries and raspberries and the blue berries. WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW AMAZING THEY ARE!! I have never in my entire life had such good fruit for so cheap... only 2$ for a whole bag!! But in the MTC we get very little fruit and I think that is they are the main reason for all the digestive problems. 

I am so excited for my mission though!! Any time any one asks where I am going and I tell them Vina they go crazy! from what I have been told it is the ultimate vacation spot. My presidents name is president doll. Because there are so few of us we get to see him and his wife everyday. They really teach us to work hard though. 

I heard from hermana garces that mom and her mom met up!! that is so much fun!! I am so sad to hear about grandpa. Please tell him of my love and I hope that I will see him soon. I hope that all goes well with the medication. He will for sure be in my prayers.

FIRST EMAIL--"WE'VE GOT MAIL!"

Hey everyone! I hope this letter finds you well. I dont have much time to email but I will let you know as much as I can. My companions name is Hermana Garces and she literally lives like 2 min away from us. You guys will have to get together with her family. We are so similar it is FREAKY. I love her so much. This past week has literally felt like a year in itself. We are constantly speaking spanish. The hardest part is that we are learning spanish... IN SPANISH. not a whole lot of english is used to teach. We had to give our first lesson on the second day we were here. We didnt even get to change out of our clothes... its straight to work. I just have to remember not to get frustrated with my spanish... it will come. So there are about 60 people total here. Over half are latino elders and the rest are gringos... or americans. We are the only 2 american sisters though... there are 4 other latino hermanas though. I couldnt email yesterday because we recieved a whole bunch of missionaries from venezuela. Aparently they pulled out all the missionaries that werent natives because things are just so bad. Coming here though I have taken on a whole new perspective. Our roomates are 2 hermanas from argentina and bolivia. They really dont have much. Today one of them went through the temple and so me and hermana Garces did her hair and make up and let her use our clothing. She literally felt like a princess. I love it here though. My distict is amazing!! Two girls and 8 Elders. We all just love eachother!!! It kinda feels like EFY but on steroids. Oh but the food is killing me.... lets just say I have lost 7 pounds already. Good news though!!! We can recieve packages in the MTC!! So if I could have like 20 bottles of digestzen capsules that would be great!! Ya so just send the packages to the MTC they should get here!! I would love anything!! Oh there is so much to say. I love a mission. I love being an hermana. I just hope the language comes sooner.

Well I love you all so much and I can feel your prayers keeping me going.

Love

Hermana Cook

This is Julie Cook, Melissa's mom. I will be running this blog for the next 18 months to keep everyone updated on Melissa (Hermana Cook) and how the work is going. Today was her farewell and we are so thankful and grateful for all those who made it out to support Melissa. She is so overwhelmed with the love she feels from all of you.
The thing she is looking forward to most in the coming months is to bring some hope and the message of the gospel, to the people of Chile.