Change Is Good!

Hello family and friends!! 

My "Brother"- Elder Cox trained us both!

Thank you to all those that sent me packages and gifts! The Institute YSAs sent me a package with lots of letters and it was really great!  What a surprise!  It was very kind of everyone who sent somethingl!! It's been a really good week and full of spiritual experiences!! 

We had some great lessons this week and it's been amazing to see our friends progress and live the Gospel in their lives!! So to start off this week, we had a great lesson with one of our friends Rosemary! We have had a few lessons with her and this week we set a baptismal date with her! She is going to be baptized December 21st! She is super excited! We had a lesson at one of the member's house and taught her about the covenant of baptism and what the blessings are- it was really good! 

We also had a great lesson (first lesson) with this guy named Jose! He was invited over to a dinner by a member couple and we got invited as well. We had a great dinner and afterwards we showed him the trailer video for "The Christ Child" (which is a new video about the Savior's birth!).  And he loved it!! We asked if we could come over to his house later in the week and show him and his family the full video and he said we could!! So we went over and showed him and his wife the video. They loved it and the Spirit was so strong! We talked to them about what our purpose was as missionaries and taught them about the Book of Mormon! He was super pumped to read it and Tuesday we are going over to have our first official lesson with them! They said they would love to learn more and that they were very interested!! So I'm excited to see what this next lesson will be like! 

We had some other great lessons as well!! But I won't go in depth with those. The other super-cool experience was an Area Seventy came to the mission and taught us about a few different things! An Area Seventy is a man that has a high position in the church that is over a specific area and is there to help all of the members in his area.  Well, this Area Seventy came to help out us missionaries in the Tampa Mission.  It was really cool! We talked about councils and how councils are so important in missionary work.  He talked to us about how as missionaries we need to always be counseling- with each other in companionships, in Districts, in Zones and in the Wards we serve in! So with that we are going to have a change in our mission! We have split Zone Leaders right now and it's going to change so that Zone Leaders will be companions! For example, as you know, I am a Zone Leader and my companion is Elder Hatch.  My Zone Leader companion is in another part of our Zone and has a different companion.  We try to counsel together as much as possible but it can be difficult because we are separated.  As a result of the Conference with the Area Seventy, the next transfer (Dec. 10) the Zone Leaders will be put together in companionships.  I'm pretty pumped about that! It should be good for the mission! There are going to be a lot of movement this next transfer with all these changes! 

Have a great week.  Love you all and hopefully everyone is doing great!! Thank you again for the packages and gifts!! 

Elder Cahoon