Snow!

January 25, 2016

Dear Family,

300 days. Wow! It does NOT feel like that long. And can you believe I hit 10 months in a few days? I can't. That's double digit months. I'm really close to my year mark.

This has been the best adventure I've ever been on.

What have I learned?... Well, it would take me forever to write down all that I've learned, but one of my favorite things would be... The Atonement's healing effect. Before the mission I knew that the Atonement freed us from sin and that it made it possible for us to return to Heavenly Father and that's why I thought it made people happy. While that's true, I've learned that the Atonement covers MUCH MORE than that. There's a line in the addiction recovery videos that says something to the effect of "because of the Atonement of Christ, you do not have to be what you've been." That pretty well describes the healing process. It wasn't until I read Alma 7:11-13 carefully and pondered on it until I realized that. 

    11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

    12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

    13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.

I was always thankful for the Atonement before, but after I read that, my appreciation became much more than it was. 

The snow storms made this week quite interesting.

Monday

We had a fun P-Day this week. It was really cold outside though. The Jenson's took us bowling. We played 2 games and went to Chick-Fil-A.

Tuesday

Tuesday was so cold you would freeze your body parts off like you had leprosy. We stopped by one of the sick members of the branch and gave her a blessing. She greatly appreciated it. Speaking of blessings, over my mission it's been absolutely insane to see how effective healing blessings are. Back in Corydon, there was a lady who hurt her leg somehow and she had to wear a brace all the time. We gave her a blessing and she was up and walking after a day like nothing happened. Here in Campbellsville, there was another lady who had some severe back pain. We gave her a blessing and it went away after a day also. The lady we visited today we've given blessings to before, and every time we do, whatever is wrong with her gets fixed.

Wednesday

Wednesday was the first snow day. We got like 4 inches over night. We went to a member's house and shoveled her driveway. Then we drove to Sulphur Well for a special district meeting. Getting there was an adventure. We drove to the Columbia elders and then they drove us the rest of the way. Getting from Campbellsville to Columbia was easy. Getting from Columbia to Sulphur Well was... scary. The missionary driving almost fell off the freeway with a semi truck behind him. Thankfully, we were able to get back on the road. *yay* Whenever you drive from Columbia to Sulphur Well, half of the drive is freeway and the other half is back roads. Once we hit the back roads it was a whole other monster. Here's 4 words to describe the back roads... They were not plowed... At one point the car almost slipped off the road into a ditch that was steep enough to flip the car. We had to stop the car. The car was in a position where driving forward would have caused us to go into the ditch. Thankfully, there were some natives in a truck who came by and offered a tow. But as luck would have it, the Cruze didn't have a tow point in the front. I'm never buying a Cruze. A cop showed up and started to help us get out. We backed the car up a bit and 3 of us had to push the car up the curved hill so it wouldn't fall back into that bad spot. We got the car out and made it somewhat safely to Sulphur Well. While there we had a special broadcast from Salt Lake to watch. It was 2 hours long and basically another session of General Conference but specifically for missionary work. The theme was "Teach Repentance, and Baptize Converts." They basically cited all the scriptures that say to teach repentance and told us to teach repentance more often. When the meeting ended we drove back to Columbia. The roads were plowed this time thankfully. Nothing eventful happened on the way back home.

Thursday

It was another freezing cold, leprosy-stimulating day. EVERYONE we talked to was seriously stressing out about the storm that was to hit on Friday. We visited Ms L and she treated it like we were about to go into WWIII. The gas stations were PACKED! There were huge lines to get a full tank of gas. The tobacco stores were also equally as packed. Everyone needed their tobacco for the storm :P. We kept hearing all these horror stories of what storms like the one to come do to Kentucky. Honestly, none of it fazed me. I was completely stress free :). Pres. Brough texted the whole mission and told us to stay in on Friday. I checked the weather radar on the iPad's and the biggest storm I saw wasn't that big. We came to the conclusion that the storm wouldn't be nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be.

Friday

We woke up on Friday to see... nothing. The storm hadn't hit yet. However, it started during studies. It was borderline blizzard ALL DAY! It NEVER let up. Not even for a minute. There was so much snow EVERYWHERE! We just stayed in until Elder Walker had the genius idea of running to the hospital. The snow was up to our knees at some points. And we were both in our PJ's for that run. Yeah... that wasn't the smartest thing to do...

Saturday

The storm stopped and we tried to dig the car out. We failed at getting the car out. There was NO ONE who plowed our street for either of the storms. That meant we had a TON of snow to deal with. It took me a solid 30-40 minutes to get all the ice off the car. When we got the car out, we tried driving it out. That didn't happen. The car got stuck about 5 feet away from out driveway. We had to pull in and stay home again. Later we attempted to walk places. But the roads were such that we couldn't walk on them or we would get hit. We tried to work but we were confined to about a 1 mile radius around our apartment. Sidewalks are virtually non existent in Kentucky and the ones that did exist were covered in snow. Since we couldn't go anywhere, we took photos of us in the snow :D

Sunday

Church was cancelled because of the poor road conditions. We spent the whole day shoveling people out of their houses. There were very grateful for our service. The Columbia elders came up and helped us shovel for the whole day. It felt good to finally get out and help people again. The natives weren't kidding when they said that snow like this will shut Kentucky down.

That was basically this week. It was fun. Even though we had 2 dead days we were still able to help a few people yesterday. Thank you for everything!

-Elder Ben

This is what I ate for most of the storms. I made myself Fettuccini Alfredo.
It turned out pretty good. 

A new warm scarf

     This is our street after Wednesday's storm.

This is the front of our Duplex.

This is our street after the big Friday storm. Elder Walker's digging our car out of a ton of snow. It was half way up our trunk.

I've never had to scrape so much ice off of a car. There was probably a quarter of an inch on it. It took about 30-40 minutes. The car heaters were on for a long time before I could scrape it off. The ice scraper wouldn't even dent the ice by itself because of how thick it was.

Walking...

Exhausted...

Frozen... :)

This was taken at a random intersection. All the trees had snow on the branches.

Saturday

Winter panorama

Tracting

January 18, 2016

Dear Family,

Well this was another fun packed week with a lot of work getting done.

Monday
P-Day! These are sacred days. These are when we get to unwind and have a bit of fun. As we drove to Walmart in the morning, there was a large herd of Seagulls in the parking lot. I drove over to them, expecting them to scatter like the Utah Seagulls do. They didn't... laziest Seagulls ever! If I were going any faster I would have killed ten of them. They barely moved. They couldn't care less that a 2000 pound car was coming to run them over.

Tuesday
We washed the car in the morning because we had Zone Conference on Wednesday. It was extremely cold. Later we saw Sis Gr. Still trying to get her to come back. Her grandson was there. He's 3. He's the happiest kid I've ever met. He's incapable of being sad. He's a good comfort for Sis Gr. He went to get me a drink and threw it on the floor in the other room. I heard it hit the floor. His explanation was "it just jumped out of my hands." Read that in a 3 year old hick accent.

Wednesday
We had Zone Conference on Wednesday. We drove up to Elizabethtown early in the morning. When we got there I may have slightly... locked the keys in the car... yeah... I had to call a locksmith to fix it... *sigh* that was a great way to start Wednesday... At the conference, Pres. Brought talked a lot about repentance. A LOT about repentance. Transfers are next week. Pres. Brough is going to come to talk in church. Yay!

Thursday
We started Thursday with going out with Pres. Rodenberg to give a blessing to Mr J, who moved here a few weeks ago with his mom. His mom is highly active but Mr J stopped when he was about 15. He had a car accident a while back that has caused his body to hurt near constantly. We gave him a blessing of healing and according to him the pain became much easier to bear. His girlfriend had a lot of Q's. We answered some of them and said that we can visit regularly and teach her more. She was all for it. She even said she wanted to have us over for dinner. Apparently she's an amazing cook! 
After that, Pres. Rodenberg took us to a Chinese doughnut place called "Best Doughnut." They literally had some of the best doughnuts I've had in Kentucky. Later we started tracting it because... (wait for it :D)... We felt like we needed too. So we did. We actually found a couple people who were fun to talk to. No one wanted us to come back though. :( But that won't stop us from going back! Later we met with a LA. We tracted into her a couple weeks ago. She's related to Ms D in the branch. (Ms D is the one who bakes us the fantastic bread most Sunday's.) We talked with her on her porch. She said she wants us over for dinner because she still likes the missionaries. Her concerns are with very basic, easy to solve doctrinal concerns. Two of them being adding to the word, and saved by grace vs. works. It'll be fun to teach her and bring her back to church.

Friday
Started Friday with more tracting. We met a couple people who were genuinely interested and both of them are good people. The first was a woman. She had a large pit bull guarding her door but he was actually a very friendly dog. A friendly dog is a good sign of good people. A mean dog is a good sign of mean people. She was all for us coming back. The second was another woman named Ms B. When she first answered, I wasn't too sure about her because she had black hair, tattoos and piercings but after a few minutes of conversation, and a few observations of how clean and organized her house was, we found she was actually a really good person. She's a young mother of two kids. She was also all for us coming back and visiting. 
Later we met with Sis Ba. When we first pulled up, we noticed she had new neighbors. We spent a few minutes in the car deciding on a lesson and these new neighbors were just staring at us. They were staring at us because we looked like cops. This is actually an issue we have to deal with here. People keep mistaking us for cops. It's because we're well-dressed but have large black coats on, we drive a nearly black Cruze, and we have a Tiwi and a GPS that give us the appearance of having equipment in the dash. After a few minutes, they went in and we went out to meet Sis Ba. She complained about how her new neighbors were very... loud... Sis. Barbour dared me to put a pamphlet on their door. So I did. :) 
Later we met another LA named Mr P. I've heard a lot about him but didn't meet him until today. He stopped coming to church because he was getting a lot of persecution for joining the church. It took us about 20 minutes to fix his concerns and have him accept an invitation back to church. And he actually came on Sunday. At the end of the day we went over to the Jensons to help them bake cookies for that other church's food ministry. That was fun. Part of the meals that church delivers includes cookies and we coordinated with them so we would make them this week.

Saturday
We started Saturday with more tracting. The first door we knocked on, this woman answered and invited us in. She was super nice and genuinely wanted to know more about us because she had "never found a religion that fits" her. We taught her the first lesson but the whole encounter caught us so off guard that the lesson was only ok but she still liked it. The odds of you getting a lesson out of the first door you knock on in the morning are non existent. She wanted us to come back and teach her kids because apparently they've strayed from the church life. One's 16 and the other's 20. She literally told us to "come back anytime" like five times and she said it in a way that said "I really want you to come back." It was a cool way to start the day.
Later we met with a LA. We had met her for the first time last week. She was happy to see us. She'll said she'll come back to church eventually. She just needs to warm herself up basically. 
Then we met with Mr Z. He gave us a full discourse on truck driving because he's a truck driver. Another family in the branch, the C's, also tell us a lot about trucking. Between Mr Z and the C's, I'll be able to go into trucking when I get home. :)

Sunday
Mr P came to church. There's a returning LA named Cl who lives in Columbia and happens to be good friends with Mr P. He didn't know Cl was a member. Mr J and Ms Cora came as well. Church this week was a special area conference for the south-eastern area. Elder Robert D. Hales spoke. After church, an 8 year old in the branch, was baptized. That's the 3rd baptism I've seen on my mission. After church we visited the C's and got another discourse on truck driving.

Well that was basically this week. A lot happened. I had a lot of fun. I felt a greater amount of the Spirit this week. Thanks for the support. Have an awesome week!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox

Here's a miniature monster truck. The truck part wasn't all that big.
The lift and the wheels were huge. We spotted this guy driving back
from Elizabethtown.

Sunset

Busy Week

January 11, 2016

Dear Family,

This was actually a really fun week. A lot happened. 

Monday. Normal P-Day stuff. At night we had an... interesting... family home evening. Elder Walker and I about had a heart attack. Over the past few weeks we've been reading out of this Mormon history book that has a bunch of facts that most people don't know. Tonight's topic was... African and Native Americans. 

Tuesday. Sis. Rodenberg referred us to a good friend of hers who's been friends with the Rodenberg kids forever. They've had multiple gospel conversations and this referral agrees with everything they've talked about. Sis. Rodenberg told us to go to her house and literally ask her why she's not a member. So we did. We went up to her house, knocked on the door, she answered, we had a fun conversation and we asked why she wasn't a member. It actually went really well. She basically said "I don't know" so we offered to teach her the lessons and she accepted. We told Sis. Rodenberg and she offered for us to teach her friend in her home. So we should be teaching more member home lessons soon. Yay!

Wednesday. We walked a lot. We met with Sis. G and taught her about temples. Her new year's resolution is to not argue with anyone. We had a good temple lesson. She was baptized about 6 months ago after 20 years of investigating. She's super solid though. She makes birthday cards for everyone like 8 months in advance. And she puts a lot of effort into them. Due to a car accident she's confined to an electric wheel chair and she rode that from her home to the church yesterday in 19 degree weather. Apparently that's "not cold" for her. It takes her about 15 minutes to get from her house to the church in the wheel chair. Later we did service for that other church and they gave us shirts for free. They're high quality shirts too.

Thursday. District meeting at the cabin. One of the Elder's started a fire with gasoline (idiot). Afterwards I went on exchange with Elder Hammond. We saw Sis. Gr and continued to try to bring her to church. She's having a rough time with the loss of her husband. We went in without much of a lesson plan and we wound up having a fantastic lesson on how the Holy Ghost can comfort us. It's been a while since I've had a completely Spirit driven lesson like that. Most times we go in with a plan and teach the lesson. This time we didn't have much of a plan and wound up having a great lesson. We ate at Chick-fil-a because Hammond LOVES Chick-fil-a. Elder Hammond and I played chess at the end of the day and he beat me :(

Friday. Exchanged back. Did our weekly planning. And met with J & L. They don't really have much of an interest in the gospel right now but for some reason they LOVE the church. L ran most of the Christmas party we had a while back and it was a HUGE success. They do so much for us. We've talked to her about the gospel, baptism, priesthood, the BoM, etc. She knows pretty much everything we have to teach but for some reason she doesn't want to join the church yet. I have no idea what's keeping her. So far my working theory is that because she "has a degree in Theology," she thinks she's fine. We didn't know this until recently, but they actually don't read the BoM. They've said they do in the past, but when they were questioned about the Liahona, they didn't know what that was, meaning they don't read. It's kinda crazy how vital reading the book is.

Saturday. We met with a less active named Ms. C today. I've tried to contact her a few times but have been unsuccessful until today. She lives a little ways away so we don't get many opportunities to try her. But we tried her today and wound up talking for an hour on her porch. She's a super nice lady. She's LA because someone offended her but she knows that that's just one person and one person doesn't represent the whole church. Her house is an extremely old house. It used to be a Civil War hospital for both sides. She was completely fine with talking about church. I feel like we won't have to work with her very hard to get her to come back. Afterwards, we tried a referral in the same area. When we typed the address in my GPS it took us throughout a bunch of freshly paved Kentucky back roads. It felt like a race track. It was actually quite fun to drive. It was a 10 mile loop and when we got to the referrals house we realized it was just a quarter of a mile behind from where we started. The GPS took us on a route that didn't require a U-Turn. If we had U-Turned, we would have gotten to the referrals house a lot sooner but wouldn't have driven those fun back roads. I guess that's what you get when you buy a GPS.

Sunday. Elder Walker and I gave talks in church. They both went well. We both talked about how important it is for members to help missionaries. The Rodenbergs had us over for lunch. Later we met with Mr T. He was baptized about 4 months ago and he got the Aaronic Priesthood last Sunday. We went over and taught him about the sacrament prayers and got him to agree to help out. At the end of the day, Elder Walker and I played chess and I beat him. Yay!

Along with the BoM highlight there's an activity similar to it in the back on Chapter 10 in PMG. It says to go through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and 3 Nephi and observe the questions Jesus asked. I'm going through and noting questions Jesus asked, questions people asked Jesus, and the responses to both. So far I'm only a few chapters into Matthew but I'm having fun with it. 

I've reached a point where it's rare for me to find an awkward situation anymore. I've had so many awkward experiences, big and small, that I'm probably immune to awkwardness. But now that I've said that, something's going to happen that will tell me that I'm not done with awkward situations anymore.

Have a great week! I love you!

-Elder Ben

I got the shirt from that church we do service at. It has Isaiah 58:10 and
the words "To The Max" below it. They gave it to us for free.
The pants are a Christmas Eve present from the Rodenbergs. CLOTHES! :D

This is a glass chess set that we found in the apartment.

District Meeting again!

New Year's Eve

January 4, 2016

Dear Family,

New Years Eve and New Years Day were interesting. There were no fireworks :(. The time difference between us and Sulphur Well kinda messed things up. We had district meeting at 4:30 (5:30 Campbellsville time) so we could play games from 6-9p. Elder Caldwell gave a training on Christlike attributes but because he wasn't feeling too well he assigned each member of the district an attribute to study for 10 minutes and prepare a 5 minute talk on. He gave me Obedience. After we all gave our talks, we started to play basketball. We played both basketball and volleyball for 3 hours. When we finished, the Sulphur Well branch members came in for an all-night New Year's party which included more volleyball. We got out of there and had to drive an hour to Campbellsville. We finally got back.

New Years Day was just a normal day. We did our 3 hour weekly planning session in the morning.

The rest of the week was a normal week in Campbellsville, Kentucky. We did get a member referral for a good friend of the Rodenbergs. It's someone named "Aunt Banana" as the Rodenbergs call her. We met her on Christmas at the Rodenbergs but we didn't know she was a non-member. Yesterday the Rodenbergs told us we need to go over and start teaching her.

I don't remember the Elder who had the Ogden Made bag. I think it was my 2nd or 3rd day in the MTC when I met him.

The Holy Ghost is interesting. He's helped me a lot. He helps me to know what I need to teach someone and helps me know where to go. Understanding the Holy Ghost is tricky at times. There are some promptings I get that are quite strong and then there are others I get where I don't even realize it's the Spirit. As far as strong promptings go, there are times where I feel like I NEED to do something such as talk with someone, or help them out, or go somewhere. Strong promptings will literally make you feel like you NEED to do something. And if you don't do it, you'll feel like what you'd feel like after fasting for 24 hours. Quiet promptings are the harder to identify and I feel like 90% of all promptings are quiet ones. You might not even realize most of the quiet ones. But a good way to identify them is to ask yourself if they're prompting you to do good. I love that scripture that says if it invites to do good, than it is of God.

I feel like if you "ponderize" that scripture for a week or two, you'll figure out how the Spirit feels.

Well, I love you. You're awesome!!

-Elder Ben

Thank you SO MUCH for sending the pizza!

Here's a basketball hoop we found outside a members home.

That's a storage trailer hanging over the edge.

This is a pic with Talon and me. Talon got his mission call to Lusaka Zambia, Africa a month or so ago and he leaves Tuesday! He is the only active member in his family. He's come to church by himself, he decided to go on a mission by himself, and he went to the temple on Saturday with a couple members. He's a cool guy and a great example to his family. I won't be too surprised if his parents reactivate themselves in the next two years or so. I haven't been by their house to talk to them because (1) they live WAY out there and (2) Talon has told us multiple times that if we go to their house "we'll be shot".

Here's a pic of Lucy, Joe, Talon, me, and Victoria.

        Look where I'm eating!

Here's a few pics of what we did on New Years Eve. We
had district meeting at Sulphur Well and played 3 hours of basketball
and volleyball afterwards.

Christmas 2015

December 28, 2015

Dear Family,

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D  There's isn't really a reason for those faces. I just though that would be fun. :D

A lot of not-missionary-work happened this week. Monday was the Christmas Conference in New Albany. It was fun going to New Albany again. We'd go there for Zone stuff in Corydon. President Brough gave a training on the 12 tribes of Israel. After the training we had the "GKLM Ultimate Challenge". The missionaries were split into teams and we played a bunch of games. There was one where every Zone Leader pretended to be a cow and the sisters were given ropes to rope the cows. That was fun to watch.

Tuesday was P-Day. We did a lot of... P-Day stuff.

Wednesday was one of the 2 days we got this week that was a full work day. I don't even remember what we did or who we taught. Probably because I don't have my journal with me at the moment to remind me. 

Thursday was Christmas Eve. We started off with another branch ultimate frisbee in the morning. Then we did our weekly planning, then we ate dinner, then it was 6-9 at the Rodenbergs. They gave us holiday snacks and had us open a Christmas Eve present. They gave us PJ bottoms.

 Friday was Christmas. I Skyped home and loved seeing all of you. I miss you all so much. Then spent the whole rest of the day at the Rodenbergs. They fed us Christmas dinner. There was a lot of socializing. I got to meet the older Rodenberg kids that live in other places. One of them lives in Provo with his wife. They were sealed in the Timpanogos temple.

Music is probably my biggest temptation. For a lot of missionaries they have their girlfriends, or some other hobby they left behind. For me it's music. I love music. Occasionally I'll wonder what my favorite bands are doing. My iPad gives me access to brows iTunes and see what's going on. I've been pretty good about ignoring the fact that I can do that and focusing on the work. On Christmas however, I thought I would treat myself and see what my favorite band's been doing... That was probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever had. I learned they have a double album coming out in January. When I saw that I thought "It's going to be a long time before I get to listen to it." I told Elder Walker about it and he decided to play the part of the Child of Hades and tell me that I can subscribe to iTunes radio (it's like $3 a month) and have access to ALL OF ITUNES! He said a lot of the missionaries in his last zone did that. They would sign up for iTunes radio and get whatever they want. That means... If I wanted to... I could get my favorite band's new album and listen to it. BUT I'M NOT GOING TO DO THAT! I'm not even going to sign up for iTunes radio.

Saturday was the other full day we had to work but we wound up spending most of it doing service for Bro Robertson. Bro Robertson married Pres Rodenberg's daughter. Bro Robertson's basement flooded so we helped him clean it out. We had to pick up a pump from someone. The pump was able to get most of the water out but it wasn't able to get the last little bit. We had to use a vacuum to get the rest. When we finished we went next door to the Jensons weekend home to pick up a carpet fan from their garage. Yes, Bro Robertson lives next to the Jensons. We called Bro Jenson and he guided us through his security systems. He gave me the wrong code to use on the inside to disarm the system so when I entered it, the whole house alarm went off. It was loud. He gave me the right code and the alarm shut off. We got the fan and went back to Bro Robertson's house to find that the basement had already flooded again. It had been raining for the last 2 days. We called it at that point. Bro Robertson gave us some PB&J sammiches for our help. We're probably going to go back and help finish the job. Thankfully it's only one room that's flooded and there's nothing in there. It's just cement floors and cement walls.

Sunday was church. We had a great sacrament meeting. Bro Robertson got to bless his baby. Bishop Robertson, Bro Robertson's father who's a bishop in Tennessee, gave a great talk. Pres Rodenberg gave a great talk, and there was a high council member who gave a great talk. We visited Sis G after church. She's doing a little better. Her Christmas was hard.
I was thinking about this during the Sacrament and it led me to the following realizations. The bread is symbolic of Jesus's body. Jesus suffered physically with being beat, cut, whipped, and tortured. Emotionally with the persecution and the betrayal of his apostles. And mentally with temptations and grief from all the other trials He went through. Because Jesus went through all of that He's able to empathize with us. He's able to strengthen us. He understands us. He knows how to help us perfectly. The water is symbolic of Jesus's blood. Freedom is bought, and paid for with blood. Jesus's blood was the only kind that could free us from physical and spiritual death. His blood frees us from captivity, death and the devil. His blood is the only kind that could satisfy justice. When we think about how the body and the blood, or symbolically the bread and the water, affect us, we realize that the bread can free us from suffering, the the water can free us from death. To me, that sounds like Eternal Life when you combine the two. Free from suffering and death. When we have Eternal Life our joy will be full. That's because there will be nothing to keep our joy from being full. No suffering or pain because of the bread and no death because of the water. There will be nothing to keep our joy captive because the Atonement will free our joy.

Anyway. This is a subject that's better conveyed verbally than through email. I'm sure you can figure out what I'm saying. I think it's cool that those thoughts came to my mind as I was pondering on the symbolism of the bread and the water.

Well that was this week. Like I said a lot of not-missionary-work happened. It was a fun week though. Have a nice week! I love you all. You're amazing!

-Elder Ben

I thought the UK (University of Kentucky) belt would be a great belt as it's cool, it's Kentucky, and it's real leather. 

Close up of whole thing.

I got this pink tie at the same time I got the belt.
The small part is a different pattern than the large part.
Mitchell's is awesome! 

Here's a Christmas ornament the First Presidency gave to all the missionaries for Christmas.

On Christmas Eve it was 70 degrees and sunny outside.

On Christmas day it was still 70 degrees but it was raining like none other.
You can't really tell how much rain there is in this photo.

Christmas Party

Where's Elder Cox?

Missionaries!