Transferred

Sept 28, 2015

Dear Family,

Yes I'm getting shipped out of Corydon on Tuesday. I don't know where I'm going. I'll find that out on Tuesday. I've spent 6 months here. I'm a little sad to leave but I guess I'm needed elsewhere right now. The branch is sad to see me go. Half of them wanted to feed me right then and there.

It's crazy to think I've been out here for (almost) 6 months! I already have the tie I'm going to burn picked out. Elder Lynch left me with the ugliest tie I've ever seen. So I'm going to free the world from the pain of looking at it :)

When I saw that Elder Richard G. Scott died I was like "What the? Another one?" He was only 86. He has a quote at the end of my favorite Mormon Message. Speaking of which, I showed that Mormon Message to the members who own Max, the dog, (DON'T GET A DOG!) and they cried. I didn't think they would cry over it. If you ever want to watch it it's titled "Enduring Love". It's about 4 minutes long. I think it's one of the best examples of charity I've ever seen. 

I don't know where I'll be for conference. I can watch it on my iPad though. I watched part of the Woman's Conference on it. And with the new iOS 9 multitasking features I was able to watch it AND do missionary work at the same time :). Speaking of which, we have permission to use Skype now.

I had a good District Meeting on Thursday. Elder Money trained on effective goal setting. In "The District" videos you should have seen missionaries talking about "Key Indicators" (Goals). Up until this District Meeting I didn't think much about them. They were just numbers. Now I view them as a means to further the work. It's kinda silly it took me that long to realize that. I understood I needed to have a name behind every number but that didn't sink in until this meeting. Elder Money helped me realize that the goals you set should be the Lord's goals. You pray to God and ask Him what goals you set and the numbers you get are what the Lord want's for that week/day. The cool thing about knowing your goals are the Lord's will is you know you'll be able to achieve them. He'll be there to help you. 

Goal setting is a principal that is highly universal in everything you do. In order to achieve something, you need goals to get there. You need to work your way to what you're working for. In missionary work, it's baptisms. You need to find people and teach people in order to get that. In life, you need to achieve something one step at a time. And when you set goals that are the Lord's will, He will help you achieve them. 

There was one moment where I felt the Spirit strongly in that meeting. Elder Money asked us to think of our life's greatest accomplishment. He then asked a few members of the district what theirs was and all the answers he got were school related. The answer for me was my Mission. I consider my mission my life's greatest accomplishment. Everything, including the drum performances, and the Eagle Scout, is second. I realized how much this mission has meant to me. When I was thinking about that, I felt the Spirit very strongly. I knew God was pleased. Although I'm not a perfect missionary, I know God is well-pleased with me. 

Sorry if this email seems all over the place. My mind is everywhere at once with the transfer meeting coming up. 

Keep being an awesome family!

-Elder Ben

Soda!

There are a lot of these here...

Yeah... With the voltages and all the candy you send me
I'll be sure to come home with diabetes.

Oh, just me trying to "study" the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thanks for the cars, Bro!

Rollercoaster

Sept 21, 2015

Dear Family,

It's cooled off a bit. The leaves are starting to fall. We might get one or two more 90 degree days. Mr R and Ms A have been on a bit of radio silence lately. I called him a couple days ago and he's still super interested. Ms A has been having trouble balancing her home and work life so she's hard to meet with. Ms G started progressing again. We were concerned for her because we almost dropped her but she's pulled around and started progressing again. 

Pumpkin ice cream is AMAZING! I first tried it at JCW's with caramel mixed in with it and I thought it was so good but it wasn't until Emery's pumpkin pie ice cream where I completely fell in love with it. The pumpkin, chocolate, and caramel combination is so good! With October coming up you should drop by and get some. You NEED the caramel. It will greatly enhance the flavor. Chocolate is another thing that greatly improves its flavor. 

Have you seen the Mormon Message "Lift"? It's about serving others. There's a quote by Elder Christofferson at the end that says something to the effect of "When we serve others our own spiritual substance increases. It's easier to find ourselves when we serve others because there's so much more of us to find." Ever since I heard that I've been finding a lot of scriptures that back that up. Serving others heals us.  

In answer to your teaching skill question, Chapter 10 in PMG is all about that. Teaching, like everything, improves with practice. The amount of knowledge you have is important but being able to display that knowledge in a way that people can understand is a skill on its own. From what I've learned there are 3 main components to successful teaching:
1- your own knowledge. You have to know the stuff you're talking about. 
2- you need to be able to have the skills to display the knowledge you have in a simple, easy to understand way. 
3- the Spirit. It's not you who teaches people, it's the Holy Ghost. If you have the Holy Ghost with you then what you say will be carried to the hearts. I hope that helps. 

This week was an adventure and a rollercoaster! On Monday I got another Emery's pumpkin pie thing. That's still the best thing I've ever got there. For the last 3 hours of the day we walked and saw everyone we set out to see. We walked so much we had to walk back to the apartment in the dark. It can get pretty dark out here. There was one point where I couldn't see anything. We won't be doing that again. :)

On Tuesday we happened to tract into Mr Ry and his wife. Mr Ry was a man we met contacting in D-Town Corydon. He wasn't really sure who God was because he's had a lot of trials in his life. We talked and testified and talked about the BoM. We lifted him and his wife's outlook on life. Unfortunately we didn't get his contact info so when we parted ways we had no way to find him and teach him again. We actually tracted into his house today. We had a solid first lesson and he was super happy to see us. The Zone Leaders called later and told us they wanted to do an exchange on Wednesday and that they wanted me to go to Jeffersonville with Elder Davidson. They told us they wanted to begin the exchange in the middle of the day. 

On Wednesday Elder Shelley and I started of with being farm hands for a local farmer. We helped him feed some of his animals and clean up his yard a bit. Dad would have been proud of me. We're set to go back soon. I'll try to get some pictures. In the middle of the day we started the exchange. I went with Elder Davidson to Jeffersonville. We had a great time! Elder Davidson and I just clicked together. We were able to bounce off of each other like we had been companions for 2 months already. We taught a really solid lesson to one of their best investigators who's been struggling to accept a baptismal date. Her name was Ms Ra. We actually didn't do a whole lot of talking in the lesson, the member who was present did 90% of the talking. She and Ms Ra just clicked together and were able to get along. We still weren't able to get her to accept a date but she did accept an invitation to pray about one. I had a cool contacting experience at the end of the day. We were walking through some apartments and we saw these two groups. As we were walking towards them Elder Davidson said "I'll get the group on the right, you can take the one on the left." You know me and contacting, so when he said that I had a small heart attack. I went anyway. I did it. I got them to accept a return appointment. I was quite happy with myself that I was able to pull that off. 

On Thursday we had an interesting morning. We got kicked out of two apartment complexes within 20 minutes of each other. The Zone Leaders have had problems with the manager of the first complex. She's tried to kick them out multiple times but the ZLs have investigators there so they've kept returning. She caught us this morning and re-expressed her desires to have us leave in a not so nice way. We actually went back later in the day to try and make peace but she wouldn't have it. The second complex was more of a joke. Right when we got out of the car we started walking towards this lady who was walking her dog. We had a great conversation with her. We found out she wanted to talk to us a while ago but didn't get the chance. In the middle of the conversation a manager came up and very kindly told us we weren't welcome on the property. Apparently someone complained. Oh well. We tried a few more people but the time came to end the exchange. Not much else happened the rest of the day.

On Friday we had interviews with President and Sister Brough. I got to know the Broughs more. President Brough thanked me for being the kind of person to allow the Lord to change my heart. 

On Saturday we taught a lot of lessons and did a lot of walking. One of the lessons I remember the most was with someone named Mr Ty. He reminds me of my 2nd drum teacher. He's had a lot of trials in the past but he's always known God has been there for him. He loves God and he knows we're on His errand. We taught him a quick L1 and he loved it. He asked us why people where so mean to us and I told him it's because we exist. 

On Sunday we had church. Church was great! We had a great sacrament meeting. We had a lot of less actives I've never seen in church at church. The Stake President happened to be there and he talked for a few minutes. Later we ate at the Parkers. They're the ones who own Max, the dog. They really love having us over. At the end of the day we got kicked out of another apartment complex here in Corydon. Only this time it was by the same angry lady who kicked Elder Davidson and me out of the one in Jeffersonville. She recognized me. I think it's funny I've met her as much as I have. 

That was this week. It was crazy. A lot of good and a lot of adventure happened. I know the Lord had our back all the way. He's blessed us so much. I'm happy to have a Savior and a God as great as the one's we have. They truly are watching over the church. I know this is the true church of Jesus Christ. I've had too many experiences to even come close to denying that. 

Thank you for all your support.

-Elder Ben

Elder Shelley

The Hand of God

Sept 14, 2015

Dear Family,

With 90% of everyone down here being baptized into some other church we get asked about baptism a lot. When we get to baptism in the first lesson, most people say something like "Well, I've already been baptized." That's when I have to remind them about Priesthood authority. Surprisingly most people will accept a baptismal invitation. Even when you say their former baptism wasn't valid in a nice way. 

Speaking of pizza, there are two pizza places here that I've heard so much about but haven't been able to go to. I've only heard of them being in Lexington KY and Louisville KY. They are Mellow Mushroom and Mad Mushroom. Apparently they make pizzas that have different ingredient combinations that actually taste good. 

I'm going to tell you Ms A's story. Our branch second counselor, Sal (the amazing cook who made those pastrami burgers), is a manager at the local O'Charlies. One of his coworkers was having a rough time so he pulled her aside and with branch president's permission, gave her a blessing. Some time goes by and she starts to get interested in the gospel. The first time we went to her house she opened the door with excitement and asked "are you guys from Sal's church?" We've had a couple lessons with her since and she's retained everything. She remembers what we teach her and loves learning about the gospel. She said she's been struggling with her faith lately because life's been weighing down on her. She also expressed the frustrations she's had with her former church not being willing to answer her questions. She would always be in trouble because she asked "why?" a lot. We've answered a lot of her questions and she's diving right into the BoM. Her mom tried to "anti" her by saying "they have other books" so when she asked us we told her exactly what those "other books" are and why they're important. When we said that, Amanda asked "do I need to read those to know if this stuff is true?" We said it would be good to read them too but to finish the BoM first because that's the main one. The thing that impressed me the most about her was how intelligent she is. We asked her what she thought the meaning of life was and she said she didn't know. We showed her 2 Nephi 2:25, "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" and asked her what she got out of it and she went to town picking that one sentence scripture apart. She gave the kind of explanation someone who's studied the Plan of Salvation would give without even knowing what the Plan of Salvation was. 

I like what Elder M. Russell Ballard said with the tree. That principle is described in Alma 32. It's so true that if you don't nurture your faith it'll die completely. I've seen that with multiple people out here. It's sad really. But I have seen people out here with tons of faith. Let me tell you about Mr R. I don't think I've talked about him before. Here's his story, it starts with the Hermana's. The Hermana's were tracting out an apartment complex one day a few weeks ago. In one of the apartments a lady answered. The Hermana's asked if she wanted a message but she was apprehensive. A few moments go by and the Hermana's heard a man's voice which said "let them in". The lady let them in and the Hermana's met the man who invited them in. His name was Mr R. The Hermans's talked with Robert for a good while. They gave him a BoM that had Ether 12:27 and Moroni 10:3-5 highlighted in it. 

Moroni 10:3-5, "Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

They also prayed with him. Some time passed and Mr R gave us a call. He said he wanted to meet. Neither Elder Shelley or I knew who he was but we agreed to meet anyway. When we met him we found that he had read those two highlighted scriptures every day for personal strength. We found out that he's been wanting to change his life for the better for a long time. He told us he was getting to the limit of what he could bear right before the Hermana's gave him that BoM. We found out he had experienced the power of the Holy Ghost testifying of the truthfulness of our message through those two verses alone. We found that he had hungered for the gospel. We taught him most of everything in 2 weeks. The sad part is he's now moved. He wanted to get away from the place that had been the stage of his problems. We contacted the missionaries of where he's moved to and told them everything they needed to know to continue teaching him. When Mr R moved he found that one of his childhood best friends had joined the church a year prior to him finding it. He's now literally running to the font. The first time we met him he was sad and depressed. The last time I saw him, which was 2 weeks after our first visit, he was near exploding with joy. He testified to us that he knew God had reached out to him through us. He knew that God still cared for him. He said he used to worry about what would happen in life but now he's not worried because he knows God will take care of him. At first Mr R was unhappy. But one miracle after another, and now he's completely happy. It was amazing to watch his story unfold. From the Hermana's finding him, to him demonstrating his faith by calling us, to his diligence in studying the gospel, to his testimony of the truth, and to his childhood best friend becoming a member a year prior, I truly feel like I saw the hand of God. It's hard to describe his story in detail without spending 2 hours on this email alone. But I know that God was there for him. I saw it myself. There's absolutely no way that the gospel isn't true. If it wasn't it wouldn't have changed Mr R like that. I already knew the gospel was true from my own experiences, but now I know even more. 

The simple truths of the gospel will lead you to perfection if you let it. I've seen God's hand in the work this week in so many ways. It's been amazing. 

I had a great week. See ya in 18 months!

-Elder Ben

This is the best thing I've ever gotten at Emery's!
I got it my 2nd time there and I finally got to get it again because Emery's changes their flavors out a lot.
It's Pumpkin Pie flavored ice cream with chocolate, caramel, Italian caramel (there's a difference),
and whipped cream. It is absolutely heavenly!

This is Elder Shelley in a food contest with a local member. Elder Shelley lost.

Afro chickens.... enough said.

This was taken after 3 hours of walking around in the heat.

This bunny is one of those solar ray dancing things. We have it taped to our car :)

This is Max. He's a dog. He's 7 months old. He's a member's dog.
These members have us over a lot. I see Max a lot. He's still growing.

Elder Shelley is only an inch or so taller than me.

These are the military-sized scriptures on top of the scriptures you bought me. Aren't they cute?

Fun exchange

Sept 7, 2015

Dear Family,

This week was a bit of a ride. It started with a bang, had a great exchange, taught the gospel, became indebted to senior missionaries, tracked in 90 degree weather, tracked in 93 degree weather, tracked in 95 degree weather, walked, suffered near heat exhaustion, and moved one of our best investigators out.

Blowing up Elder White's suit was fun. We went to President Sodders, he fed us pizza and doughnuts, we set the suit up, put a half pound of explosives in it, and watched President Sodders's son blow it up. It was the best explosion I've seen so far.

On Tuesday I exchanged with Elder Money, our District Leader. We stayed in Corydon. It was a busy day. We got a lot done. It was refreshing to be with Elder Money because he's similar to Elder Lynch. We started the day off meeting with Mr R. This was our 2nd lesson with him. He is a man who the sisters met first. The sisters knocked on his friend's house while he was there. He invited them in, they prayed with each other, the sisters gave him a BoM and our number, and later he called us and asked to meet. When we got there we found the sisters had highlighted Ether 12:27 and he's read it every day for personal strength. He used to suffer from some addictions but has since cleaned his life up. He loves that verse because he feels that it applies to him which it does. The lesson with Elder Money went really well. He loved every second of it. He even brought up baptism. Elder Shelley and I set a date for him on our first lesson and he's still excited about it. 
Afterwards we pulled weeds for a lady for about 2 hours. It was easy because her ground was abnormally soft. Later in the day we contacted a member referral. This referral is named Ms A. She works with Sal (the member). Lately Ms A's been struggling with life in general. Sal, being her manager, talked to her at work and got permission from the president to give her a blessing. Sal gave her a blessing and got her permission to send us over. When Elder Money and I got there the first thing she said was "Are you guys from Sal's church?" We talked and she flat out asked us for a copy of the BoM. That's only the 2nd time I've had someone ask ME for a copy. She was super happy over that. We finished the day by teaching our downstairs neighbor who from long strange series of events Elder Money knows. It was interesting because I've seen her almost every day since she's moved in but I never talked about the gospel to her. Because Elder Money knew her, he wanted to talk and now she's an investigator. She wanted to know how she's forgiven of her mistakes so Elder Money pulled out Mosiah 26:30, "Yea, and as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me." That scripture really hit home for her. Between the major events of today we walked around and talked with people. We got a few potentials out it. It was a great day.

Because of the exchange and the mileage limitations on the car we had to spend a few days where we didn't use the car as much. We spent a good chunk of 3 days walking in over 90 degree weather. It wasn't the smartest thing.

On Saturday we helped Mr R move out. We just barely found the guy and now he's leaving. The funny thing is he's going to the area where Sis. Orton's niece, Sis. Webb is serving. We contacted them and they got members to help Mr R move in on their side.

I became indebted to senior missionaries this week. The senior missionaries in our district do a lot of things with military relations at Fort Knox. I ordered a set of military sized scriptures ($17) from them and they bought me some food at O'Charlies ($8) this week. I now owe them about $26 *yay*.

This week was fun because it has trials but it also had successes. I know I'm where I'm supposed to be. Thank you for everything.

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox

So with today being labor day that means the library is closed. Which means I don't have a way to send photos. I took one yesterday you'll like. In the mean time, here are some photo booth selfies.

Ferengi

Circle head

Derp

Those steaks were seasoned with that Montreal Steak Seasoning that we use on our hash browns. 
They were delicious! I was lucky because I was on exchange with the Brandenburg KY Elders that day.
That's Elder Gunnel next to me.

Giant porterhouse steaks!

Blowing up suits!

Aug 31, 2015,

Dear Family,

Hello :)  Life is going great! 

The bike used to be Elder Lynch's bike. He gave it to me. Bikes stay with the missionaries. 

Satan's been hard at work this week in Corydon. We've had a lot more appointment fall through than normal. Weeks like this happen every once in a while. As I've said before that just means something good is about to happen. Just yesterday we had 2 member-present lessons set up and both of them fell through. 

Later today we're going to go to President Sodders house to blow up a missionary's suit. At the end of a mission it's customary to destroy a suit (shirt, tie, pants, and jacket). Most people just burn them but President Sodders offers to literally blow them up for missionaries who served in Corydon. We're blowing Elder White's suit up. He served here about a year ago. Before Elder Lynch left, he and Elder Spaulding got to blow their suits up. I recorded both. President Sodders put a half pound of explosives in the suits and shot them from a distance. President Sodders now has a .50 cal (a really HUGE gun). I hope he uses it today :)

We did have something rather unique happen last Monday. Ms G came over to Pres. Sodders house and we had a family home evening with her. Pres. Sodders talked about journaling and afterwards he passed out basically giant versions of the bare books we used to get at Manila school. 

We had a pretty cool experience this week. The sister missionaries contacted someone named Mr R, talked to him, gave him a BoM with some highlighted scriptures, and prayed with him. He told them that he used to suffer from alcoholism but has since turned his life around. The sister missionaries highlighted Ether 12:27 for him: 
"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

A few days later Mr R called us, which is extremely rare that someone calls us to meet. When Elder Shelley and I met with him we found that he had been reading Ether 12:27 every day for personal strength. We had a 2.5 hour long lesson with him. That goes WAY over the amount of time lessons are supposed to go but it was necessary for Mr R that we stayed there that long. We taught him L3: The Gospel of Jesus Christ. He just sucked everything up. He loved it. When we extended the baptismal invitation he easily accepted. He knows the BoM is the word of God because of the perspective that verse put on his former alcoholism. He knows that was a trial that was necessary to bring him closer to God. The sad part is, he's moving on Saturday to Charlestown. The missionaries will have to teach him there. :( 

I find what Pres. McFarland said about the Savior suffering for us individually to be very interesting. That's something Elder Lynch said too. He said, "I think time kind of stopped so Jesus could suffer for us individually. I think He was in Gethsemane for a lot longer than an hour." Elder Lynch told me that was one of his personal doctrinal theories. I personally don't know if time stopped or not but if Jesus suffered individually then something special would have to happen for Him to accomplish that. 

Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy is something that I've heard is going to be hit hard on in the next General Conference. I guess the church has been struggling with that lately. I like what you said about lists. Labeling things in general tends to mess things up and desensitize you to the fact that everyone's a child of God. Just like everyone's different and everyone is on a different path to perfection. The key to keeping the Sabbath holy is found in the sacramental prayers. I wrote out each of the sacrament prayers 10 times in an effort to improve my handwriting and I learned a lot about what each sentence means. I would urge the whole family to study the prayers and learn exactly what each sentence means. Another thing I learned about the sacrament lately is it renews ALL covenants including the temple ones. Not just the baptismal covenant. When I learned that, the sacrament became a lot more important to me. 

Two of my favorite scriptures have been on my mind a lot lately. They relate to a lot of things, even keeping the Sabbath holy. I often think of them at the same time. These two scriptures are how I know if something comes from God or not. They are Moroni 7:13 and Mosiah 2:17. When you pair them up they read: "...that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve Him, is inspired of God... I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." 

When I was younger, one issue I had was I always felt overwhelmed with how huge the scriptures were. I didn't want to read them because I didn't want to start something that would take me years to get through. I didn't realize how small the scriptures really are. It only took me a few weeks to get through the Book of Mormon my first time. That thing's over 500 pages long. In a weird way the scriptures are long and short at the same time. If you're diligent in reading the scriptures you'll have no problem getting through them. 

If you're still overwhelmed then use PMG as a guide. PMG was created so the gospel would be extremely easy to understand. The 5 lessons in chapter 3 contain pretty much everything taught in all the scriptures. Start with chapter 3. Read a section then read the scriptures for that section in the "Scripture Study" boxes. Repeat that until you finish the 5 lessons. 

Do that and you'll be led in all things. But so long as you're diligent you'll succeed. Notice how that's the 2nd time I've used the word "diligent"? That's because diligence will save your butt in just about everything. If you can master diligence you will be extremely successful in life. 

Anyway. Can you believe I'm almost 1/4th of the way done? I've been out for close to 6 months now! Tomorrow will be 5 months since you dropped me off at the MTC. I'm glad to see you're all still happy. Keep being happy. I hope you have a great week! 

I love you all,

-Ben

PS - Hey, sorry but I'm running out of time to send pictures. I'll have to send them next week. I'm going to watch a suit be blown up now!  :)