Refiner's Fire

Nov 23, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, Thanks for sending me a third box. I didn't think I'd get so many boxes. I got your last two right when I got back to the apartment after emailing you last week.

I'll be at the Jensons pretty much all day. There's a branch party in the morning and they are having us over right after the party. 

This week shot by! It feels like just the other day when I last emailed you. It was a lot better and I learned a lot. I'm going to go day by day in this email.

On Monday we ate at Chick-fil-a again. Man, did I miss Chick-fil-a in Corydon. Then I got my suit dropped off at the alterations lady. I have interviews with Pres Brough this Friday so I'm going to try and get it back so I can look nice for President :). At night we had our last lesson with Little Miss R :(. She's moving to Idaho with her highly active member grandmother. It'll be a much better place for her to live and grow. We've already sent the missionaries their way. They gave us chocolate cake :)

On Tuesday we started visiting Sis G and continuing to help her through her recent trials. She was much happier today so that was good to see. After that we did more service for J & L. We started off doing wood things and then we did the storm shelter. It got pretty muddy. J was down in the shelter shoveling trash and dirt into a bucket that we would raise and dump when the bucket was full. Unfortunately we weren't able to get all the water out but we did get all the random crap out. It looks a lot better. They're going to have to vacuum the water out somehow. It was actually a lot of fun. I didn't mind the dirt at all.

Wednesday was another fun day. We did more service for that church we helped out with last Wednesday. One of the guys who runs the food ministry's wife is a member. They used to invite the missionaries over and feed them quite often. Elder Jensen mentioned how he's wanted try try squirrel in Kentucky and he said he has some that we can try. He plans on having us over to try squirrel at his house in a couple weeks. That will be fun. As far as the food service goes we helped with the other route they do. We delivered food to more poorer people. Saw a lot of gratitude from them. There was a kid on the bus with us who was probably about 10 years old. At the end of the route he was looking through the extra desserts and found that what he wanted was gone. To that he said "Aww man, they're gone. Oh well, they need it more than me." It kinda stunned me to hear a 10 year old kid say that.

Thursday, we had a great district meeting where Elder Caldwell trained on personal revelation. Elder Jensen hit his 20 month mark this day.

Friday was interesting. We had a guy call us on Monday and tell us he needed to inspect our apartment on Friday and that he'd be there between 1-5. So we had to stay in the apartment from 1 until he got there. He didn't get there until 5:30. He noticed all the glow paint on our walls in the bedroom and said we would have to paint the whole room. We didn't paint the walls with glow paint. It was some previous elders. They made it look like space in their at night. It's pretty cool actually. :)

Nothing special happened on Saturday. We planned more wood service for J & L but the rain stopped us from doing that. They gave us lemonade with passion fruit juice in it. So good!

Sunday I got to teach gospel principles for the first time. It was on Chapter 44: The Second Coming. It went really well. I still like getting up in front of the class to speak. Those Baptist tips you sent me really helped. That's actually how I prepared my farewell talk.

So that was this week in review. I realized something really cool this morning during my studies. Probably my greatest desire for my mission is to become the most Christlike I possibly can. Campbellsville has been trying and improving all of my personal Christlike attributes without me noticing until now. With all the trials I've had here, I've realized each one addresses one of the attributes. This area is further molding me to be more Christlike. There are 2 names that describe this area perfectly. The Refiner's Fire, and The Pride Destroyer. This place will destroy any remaining pride you have, even the pride you don't realize you have. It will humble you to a point where you rely on the Lord far more than you have before. I'm actually thankful for my experiences here. They've further turned me into the person God wants me to be which is something I pray for almost every night.

The story on Elder Jensen's koala: His koala bear came from another missionary named Elder White. Elder White is the guy who tp'd his own seminary building and blamed the rival school for it. The koala came from a 10 year old kid in Corydon, Indiana. When Elder White served in Corydon last year, the kid gave him the koala. Elder White wore that koala at every meeting. When Elder White went home a couple months ago, he gave the koala to Elder Jensen and told him to pass it along to the funniest elder. Elder White wants the koala to stay in the mission to designate who the funniest elder is.

Elder White's words of wisdom he gave at his last transfer meeting: "Mark Newman said, 'To say your mission was the best 2 years of your life is a bit inaccurate. It's OK to say it was the toughest, most challenging, yet most rewarding 2 years of your life.' The mission was the BEST 2 years of of my life, and it can be the best 2 years of your life too, if you do these 4 things. 1st - Let the Atonement change you. Who you are is God's gift to you. Who you become is your gift to God. 2nd -  Never go home - even if you get diabetes! 3rd - Talk with everyone! 4th -  Elders, remember how important the Priesthood is. That's what separates you from all the other preachers on the block. Elder White is preachin' out."

The diabetes thing is funny because he got diabetes on his mission but did everything he could to stay out. Salt Lake wanted to send him home but he did things like delaying his test results so Salt Lake couldn't get their hands on them. It's weird he got diabetes because no one in his family had it.

Well keep being awesome. I love you all! (I still haven't started using "y'all" yet) Bye!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox

Look at this nice photo of the Vegas temple that now serves as my iPad

background.

Remember that storm shelter pic I sent you a while ago? Well we finally got around to cleaning it. This is what came out.

This is Joe in the shelter.

Joe was down shoveling garbage into a bucket that was attached to a rope. 
When he would fill it I'd pull it up and dump it in the wheel barrel. 
Elder Jensen would then cart it away :)

Yuck!

This stuff was so good! It was lemonade with passion fruit juice mixed in. Yum!

Celebrating a Hard Week

Nov 16, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, this weeks emails are shorter because not as much happened. I do have two videos that are really good. The first one is of us drinking out of the well again because it was the first week of a new transfer. The second one is what Elder Jensen and I did to celebrate the end of this week 1.

Here's something cool. Do you happen to remember Elder Caldwell? I went to school with him. We were never really friends but I still knew him. He's my district leader now. It's weird having a familiar face from PG around. 

The Jenson family in the branch invited us over for Thanksgiving. That will be fun. :)

This week was a bit of a struggle. It was hard to find new people to teach. We spent hours finding this week and didn't get anything out of it. But, instead of rambling on about the bad of this week I want to talk about the good. On Wednesday we did one of the best service projects I've done on my mission so far. We went to one of the biggest churches in the area and helped them with their food ministry. Every Wednesday they prepare and deliver food to the poorer people in Campbellsville. We went over to help with that and it was a fantastic experience. The members of that church were some of the most Christlike people I've met out here. They were so kind. As we delivered food they were asking everyone if they had any prayer needs. The people we were delivering to were also very kind. They were grateful for the service we were doing for them. It was a great experience all around. They drove us around in their church bus :).

What prompted us to do service at that church? Well 2 main things. 1- The lady who owns Mitchell's and gives us all the nice discounts is high up in that church and she invited us over for that service. 2- President Rodenberg also asked us to go and do service there and see if it's something the youth from our church can do too. So we went. We were able to leave a fantastic impression about the church and the missionaries when we went there. They were thankful that we came to help. We talked about how we wanted the youth from our church to help with the food ministry and they said that would be great.

Other than that the rest of the week was less eventful. I got sick Monday night and had to stay in Tuesday. It wasn't bad. It was a minor stomach sickness. We also stopped by Sis G's and taught her the plan of salvation. She was happy for the comfort it offered.

I like what Pres Sodders said. He was a great guy. I'm glad I was able to leave a good impression.

Well, keep being awesome!

-Elder Ben

I got the suit. Thank you!

Cider and shot glasses

Cider again...

More cider

We did this to celebrate the end of this week. It was a hard week.

Here are the 4 ties I've bought at Mitchell's so far with the new knot on them :)

I bought 2 more ties at Mitchell's.

Sulpher Well District meeting

Celebration

Service

Nov 9, 2015

Dear Family,

I'm not getting transferred. Elder Jensen hasn't had any headaches lately. He's been drinking more water lately.

Jesus Christ is about to become Kylii and Ian's best friend. The MTC has a tendency to "force" a testimony into you. I think that's because you spend all your time studying the word of God. If you remember my scripture plaque, the scripture on it talks about how powerful the scriptures can be. As you study in the MTC and have the spirit of the MTC magnify their impact, a testimony of Christ almost seems forced into you. At least that's what happened to me. I feel like studying scriptures in the MTC is comparable to studying in any Celestial room. Just think of how much studying the word of God in an area where the Spirit is as strong as a Celestial room for days would impact you.

This week was a bit of everything. Monday was normal P-Day stuff. Shopping, emailing, napping, etc. We have a Family Home Evening group out here that's for single people or empty nesters in the branch. We go to teach lessons occasionally. We taught a quick L1 and talked about missionary work. They all launched into ways they can do missionary work.

Tuesday was interesting. We had service with J & L planned but some emergency came up and they cancelled. Later we went to visit the home of some less active members who have been trying to come back to church. Recently, one of them, Bro G, was diagnosed with some severe form of cancer. We went to the hospital when he was diagnosed to visit him a few weeks ago. Unfortunately Bro G passed some time Monday night. We found that out when we visited them today. It was a bit awkward at first. We walked up to their house not expecting anything different. We knocked and Sis G answered. She looked depressed and exhausted as she walked outside to meet us. Right away I noticed Bro G wasn't in his usual chair. I was about to ask where he was when Sis G told us what happened. Some friends of hers showed up and were there for her for the evening. We stayed as well. Sis G was still able to laugh and smile. But she was still pretty sad. We stayed for most of the rest of the evening giving her uplifting messages. She liked that. The funeral was on Thursday. I unfortunately didn't get to go because I was in Glasgow on exchange.

Wednesday was actually pretty fun. We used a lot of miles to go see people in Green County we normally don't get to see because of the mileage limitations. This is the day we took the car through a river :) We began the exchange with Glasgow at night. They wanted us to meet them in a Baptist church's parking lot half way between Campbellsville and Glasgow. When we got to the church we found it was packed with cars. We found an empty spot and waited for Glasgow. They were an hour late. Exchanging in the lot was awkward because when they got there, whatever was going on in the church ended and everyone was leaving. We were surrounded by hundreds of baptists. We had to exchange quickly and get out of there before any one of them challenged us to a bash. I hate bashes.

Thursday was also fun. I spent the day in Glasgow with Elder Hammond. Elder Hammond's only been out for about 4 months. We drove a lot. Tried a lot of people. We had some really solid lessons. We met with a man who's my age named Mr Gr. We taught him in the local library. We had a fantastic L3 with him. He told us his dog ate his BoM. Mr Gr asked for another one. Later we met with a woman named Ms A who is getting baptized this Sunday. Our lunch and dinner hours were both very interesting. Lunch was fun because Elder Hammond took me to a Japanese Hibachi place called Shogun. Man, Shogun was good! I ordered this steak and shrimp meal and it was absolutely fantastic! Dinner was fun because of what happened. I went to the bathroom in one of their toilets in the Elder's apartment. For some reason it wouldn't flush. When I saw it would overflow, I tried to open the top to stop the mechanism but the lid slipped out of my hands, fell into the back tank, and broke the bottom corner of the tank out. Tap water went everywhere. As the water in the back tank gushed out the water in the bowl flushed. Thankfully the Glasgow elders have 2 bathrooms like we do. (I just think it's funny both of my exchanges to Glasgow had disasters in them.)

On Friday we exchanged back and had zone meeting. Because of travel time and how long the meeting was, we didn't do much else today.

Saturday we had more service for J & L. It was more splitting and stacking wood. They had us organize a large wood pile they had in their barn. Many insect homes were destroyed. There were some massive spiders in that pile too. I'm surprised I didn't get bit by something with how much I handled that wood. They took us out to eat at Campbellsville University afterwards.

Sunday was church. Well, that was this week. It had some ups and downs but it was a fun week. 

I was able to master that tie knot fairly quickly actually. That picture I sent you with the multi colored tie is my 2nd or 3rd attempt at it. The knot is basically a backwards double windsor. It's very simple to tie. You can take it off exactly like a double windsor. Just take the small part out, pull, and it'll unwrap itself.

I like what Pres McFarland said about drifting away. It can be easy to judge where you are based off of where someone else is. In all things we shouldn't judge ourselves with the worlds standards, we should judge ourselves with the Gospel's standards. What's right is what's right and what's wrong is what's wrong. Traditions or culture do not effect that.

It must have been weird looking through stuff that was in your old house. I actually googled that house this week and thought "Well, I won't be going back there anytime soon." It's cool that Mr. Guinn was able to provide a lamp.

I love your "Oh, the joy" thing :). J's job is to fix washers, dryers, stoves, etc. He always has a million different dish washers, stoves, cloth dryers and washing machines around his house. I could probably talk to him and get what the best washing machine in the world is. L is a lawyer who is normally stationed in Los Angeles.

Thank you for all you do. Thank you for supporting me. Well, take care. I love you.

-Elder Ben

Country roads in the fall.

We received a referral for this address some time ago. The house was abandoned.

This is a river we came to.

Another angle on the river.

Halloween

November 2, 2015

Dear Family,

My Halloween was a little boring. Holidays in general are hard to work as a missionary. Everyone's gone, with family, having parties, etc. etc. We can't really go knocking on doors because we'd be mistaken for trick or treaters. The Rodenbergs invited us over at night though and we played some board games. 

On most holidays we get 6 to 9 off. That means we stop doing missionary work when the trick or treating starts. The only two holidays that are different are Thanksgiving and Christmas. We get the whole day off for those two.

Why is work an important gospel principle? Well, one of our purposes here on earth is to learn to be happy. Learning requires acting/working. It's best to learn something by doing it. When you work with the gospel i.e. keep the commandments, you learn of its blessings and grow as a person. I've seen so many blessings from my service here. It would take too long to list them all.

The many pictures I sent basically depicted all the major stuff that happened this week. One thing I didn't get a picture of was we had a first lesson with this woman named Ms C. She's met with missionaries before but she never seriously investigated. We took one of our members over, had a great first lesson, and committed her to baptism. It was great to have a member there because it's harder to get members out here in Campbellsville.

Instead of recapping my week to you I want to talk a little bit about what I've learned on my mission so far.

One of the first things I learned on my mission, and I still continue to see day to day, is how All-Powerful God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are. Back in the MTC and the early days of my mission I prayed that God would turn me into the missionary He needs me to be. I realized every trial I went through was necessary to turn me into the person I needed to be. I guess it's more like God's been turning me into the person I needed to be my whole life. I just didn't realize how involved He was until my mission. When I realized that, that's when I changed. That's when I progressed. I've been able to see that same change in a few people's lives out here. There's nothing like the mission to help you realize how real God is. How real His Son Jesus Christ and His Atonement is. And how real the power of the Holy Ghost is.

Something I've been hearing a lot lately is "There's nothing like the mission to help you appreciate your parents". That is very true.

Well, that was basically this week. It was a good one. Love you :)

-Ben

This is the best store bought chocolate milk I've ever had!

Yay! Look what I found at the local Kroger.

We had District Meeting in a suspended cabin in Sulpher Well this week.

More cabin

"Ski" soda

The area surrounding the cabin.

This is the outside.

These are the cars.

The Cruze

Elder Bennet on the Cruze.

The deck

More deck

Cool chair

This is what driving in Sulpher Well is like - dirt roads and brand new cars. 

Elder Jensen on the lawn mower.

These are some of J & L's 42 chickens fighting over an apple.

We had to build our own wood ramp to unload the thing.

We had to use a train jack to get it completely down.

This is a storm shelter J & L have in their back yard. We have the joy of cleaning out on Tuesday morning. :)

Our service project of the week was helping load, transport, and
unload an $8000 hot tub for J & L.  All the rednecks
on the street were double-taking the truck.

Elder Cox

 J & L driving the hot tub away.

Deep South District Elders

Deep South District

These are my shoes after 7 months of use. This was taken right after I shined them this morning :)

Stake Conference

Oct 26, 2015

Dear Family,

I'm doing great this week! I loved my box! There were so many cool things in it. The Tiwi is evil. Just imagine having Hal 3000 in your car all the time.

This week was eventful. Monday was a normal P-Day. We got our heater fixed because it had been out for the past few days.

On Tuesday we had to get an oil change and tire rotation. It took the car place 2 hours to do that. After that we stopped by a less active named Bro P. He had like 6 dogs and they were crawling all over me and Elder Jensen. (DON'T GET A DOG!). After that we stopped by J & L where they showed us their Passion fruit trees.

On Wednesday we helped the youth with a fund raiser of theirs. One of our members we talked with as we were working, "T" is the only active member in his family. For some reason his parents hate the church. Specifically Elders. Neither Elder Jensen or I have been able to get the full story out of him. Anyway, "T" is preparing to go on his mission. His papers are submitted and he talked about how much he hates the waiting game. He brought his sister, Miss E to the youth activity. It was her first youth activity. She's about 12 and apparently has wanted to be baptized since she was 8. "T" introduced us to her and said he wanted us to teach her. We just need to get permission from the parents which according to "T", won't be that hard.

Thursday was District Meeting in Sulpher Well. Later in the day we stopped by another less active named Sis B. We happened to stop by when she was helping one of her neighbors through a hard time. When the neighbor left, Sis B talked to us about sharing the gospel with her. She asked for a Book of Mormon she could give to her neighbor. She even said she wanted to take her neighbor to church. We stopped by Miss R and taught Mr R lesson 3. Let me explain Miss R, Mr R, and Ms K. Ms K is a less active, Miss R is her daughter, and Mr R is Ms K's boyfriend who's taking the lessons. After the lesson Mr R talked about an LDS church he helped build in California back in the 90's. He looked up a picture to show us and found the building burned down 3 months ago. It's not often an LDS church burns down. It's less often you have an investigator who built it only to find it burned down 3 months ago.

Friday was another sick day for us. Elder Jensen occasionally gets serious migraines occasionally. He said it was one of the worst ones he's had. It apparently hurt to move his head. I gave him some Excedrine but that didn't help. It was only a one day thing though. He was perfectly fine the next morning.

Saturday was fun. We had a member Sis X who's a really nice lady. She's fun to visit and she's a strong member. Elder Jensen got a call from Pres. Brough who told him that his grandfather passed. He gave Elder Jensen permission to call home like he did for me. His family has taken it surprisingly well. Apparently his grandfather wasn't in the best health. Later we got word that our branch mission leader, Bro Absher was in the hospital. We went and gave him a blessing. I've been to the hospital many times on my mission.

Sunday was fun too. It was Stake Conference. President and Sis Brough both gave talks on missionary work. They threw down because apparently the members in our stake have strong fears about doing missionary work. One of Sis Brough's opening remarks was "As members, it's our duty to share the gospel. Why is this so hard?" Pres Brough threw down even more by teaching everyone how to get rid of their fear. He said there are 3 things that members can do to get rid of their fear of missionary work. 1: Study the doctrine. 2: Fast and pray for missionary opportunities. 3: Trust the Spirit enough to tell you what to say. Campbellsville is kinda interesting for member missionary work. The Campbellsville branch itself is split up into two missionary areas. There's the Campbellsville area and the Columbia area. Most of the active members live in the Columbia area. The Campbellsville area has a lot of less actives. It's hard to get the members involved because we simply don't have that many. Fear is a big issue too. That's one of the first things that Bro Woodrum, the member who picked me up at transfer meeting, said. The Rodenburgs invited us for dinner. We taught them a quick L1 and they said they needed to be more involved with missionary work. They have friends they can work with and we helped them decide what the best thing to do with them would be.

Well that was this week. It was fun. Now that I look back a lot of stuff happened. Time in general is weird here. It feels like an eternity but at the same time, no time at all. 

As far as I know southern Indiana has part of 2 stakes in it. The New Albany stake, which is where Corydon is, and the Evansville stake.

Thanks for being an awesome family! Take care. Don't get a dog. :)

-Elder Ben

Our branch president, President Rodenburg invited us over for dinner last night.
His son was making these ghost cake things for his teachers and his home teaching families and us. :)

,

My ever growing tie collection.

Here's me and the new blue tie.

I love "studying" the gospel :)

See those round things in the trees?

The candy you sent me and the goldfish I bought.

I've written on the sides :)

Thanks for the box! Here are the two journals side by side.

A couple of our investigators, J & L are growing these in their back yard. They said normally these
grow in places like Hawaii but they think some birds must have dropped the seeds off in their yard.
Now they grow Passionfruit in their back yard. They're actually really good.
But they have the consistency of snot.

They're Passion Fruit :)

Thanks for the shirt! It looks cool. Perfect for Halloween this week.

Me and the shirt!