Weekly Letter

Here's a message to put in your weekly email home :

Hello Cooper fan club!! This is Sister Schurger & Sister Stay (the Oakland Sisters), and we wanted to take over part of this email to tell you WE LOVE THE COOPERS!!! They won't brag on themselves, so we'll do it for them.

They have put so much time and effort into truly coming to love and know this Branch as Christ would. They are quick to serve, and we have adopted them as our home away from home. (We had German pancakes this week- don't be too jealous).

We have been strengthened and blessed by their testimonies, and their devotion to the gospel. We have loved getting to know them & serve with them. We know that they are doing the Lord's work and are blessing many lives.  Thank you for sharing them with us, we love them. 

We really love these sweet sister missionaries.  They have only been here a month and they have already transformed this area. Sister Stay is going home this week and we will really miss her.  But we have Sister Schurger staying here and we have full confidence in her continuing the work here with a new companion.

We had an interesting week. Tuesday morning we received a phone call letting us know that one of our long-time branch members died. Glen Piper was a Branch President and a counselor in a branch presidency for many years.  He has not been fully healthy since we got here but still came to church and participated in other activities as often as he could.  He and his first wife were some of the early converts in this area.  An interesting story - after his first wife died he married one of the sister missionaries that taught him the gospel. She had gone back to Utah after her mission and we don't know the story of how they got together after all those years, but somehow they did.  I had the opportunity to help dress him and put on his temple clothes.  I haven't ever done that before. It was a good experience. We had the viewing on Thursday and as we were talking to some of the family we discovered that Glen's daughter and son-in-law are in the same ward as David and Angie Reynolds.  For those of you not of the Whittier clan, David is Melanie's son living  in California. It's a small world. We had a good funeral on Friday and provided a really nice luncheon for family and friends.  The church is pretty much the same no matter where you go.

Wednesday we had a nice dinner with the Flanagans along with the sister missionaries and their investigator, Alex. Alex is really progressing. He accepted the challenge to be baptized on June 17. He attended church today for the second time and then we had another lesson this afternoon. The sister missionaries have him scheduled for lessons twice a week until his baptism.  It feels good to be a part of teaching him the Gospel. 

Mom was really looking forward to the Young Women's activity on Thursday.  They were going to some waterfalls close to us, but all the activities were cancelled because of the viewing and funeral. They are going to try it again in July. They finally called  a Young Women's class president but she said she wanted to thing about it.  Mom is hoping to get everything organized before we go home.  It's a slow process here. But we need to remember that this is the first time they have had a functioning Young Women's program in the history of the branch.

We have one other investigator that has been to church a couple of times. He is just out of prison not long ago, which is all right and he is all tatooed, which is all right except for the "f---" under one eye and "cops" under the other eye.  It's a little distracting. But our good branch members have been really good about fellowshipping him.

Our travel plans have changed a little.  We are trying to get to the baptisms for Olivia, Charlotte and Kylexie.  To do that without messing up other family plans, we have asked to leave for home on Aug. 22, two weeks earlier that our original date. We have already received the okay from our mission president.  We should be home, at least to somebody's home, on Aug. 31.

My scripture this week is from the Book of Mormon. It is found in Moroni 10:32.  This chapter contains Moroni's last words to us.  After all he has written to us, he finishes with this: "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by His grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God."

That's it for now. We love you and pray for you daily.

Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandad

Jamee and Kerry

Sister and Elder Cooper