Saturday

February 29, 2016 - Happy Leap Year Day!

Dear Family,

How does repentance help me every day? Well, it helps by giving me strength to do missionary work. Through repentance we access the atonement, and the atonement can strengthen us to handle trials and afflictions.

I titled this email Saturday because that's the only day this week that seriously cool stuff happened. Don't worry, I'll talk about the other days too, but they don't even compare to Saturday.

Monday
Sweet, glorious P-Day. I went to the local sports shop and bought a mid-range disc for disc golf. Like regular golf with its different clubs, disc golf has different discs. I bought one that'll be more accurate in shorter range. It really helped out because I scored 3 in today's game. That's a new record for me.

Tuesday
So for the past few days we've been trying people and not getting in. Today was no different. We tried a billion people and didn't get in with any of them. We stopped by a less active and read part of Jacob 5 with her. To be honest, that's my favorite chapter in the BoM. Later we went on splits and I went with the ward mission leader, Bro. Emmert, to try some less actives. To our much surprise, we didn't get in with any of them. I did get some good one-on-one time with him and was able to get to know him better.

Wednesday
I woke up with the feeling that Wednesday was going to be difficult. And it was. As I describe Wednesday, keep in mind that it was freezing, windy, rainy, and snowy, ALL day. We started off trying a LA who lives forever away. Didn't get in with her. Then we tracted around. Nothing came of it. Later we got in with our investigator Ms C. She basically dropped us. Ms C has a roommate named Ms M who is J's mother. J is 12 and he still wants to meet with us. In the few lessons we've had with him, he's always been asking about our beliefs and wanting to know more about the BoM. He's a pretty cool kid. He's actually a solid investigator. Next, we had dinner at the Capeners house. The Capeners are some of the strongest members here. They have 4 young kids. Sis. Capener asked us what our parents liked making at home so she could replicate them. I told her ours, and she actually wants the recipes for the peanut butter Hershey kiss cookies, chicken walnut, and dumplings. So please send those recipes and instructions to me. She fed us BLT's that had ham and eggs cooked in the bacon grease in them. They were heavenly after the day we just had.

Thursday
Elder Passmore and I went to Tell City, IN for the day. We were with Elder Holley, who's middle name is Sabian because his dad's a drummer. He's not though. The trend of the week continued to Thursday. That is, nothing happened. Few answered. We did some service for a member who's moving to Florida. Later we taught a woman named M the first lesson and it actually went really well. Then, as we were trying more people, we went to a potential's house who had a Coke machine on his porch. It said 50 cents per soda. So I got out 50 cents, put it in, and the machine spit them right out. This said potential didn't answer though.

Friday
We exchanged back at district meeting. Elder Gough is the district leader and he gave a good training. After the meeting, we started the day and the cursed trend continued. NO ONE ANSWERED! I did have a cool contacting experience though. I met a guy who had almost the same exact concern that one of the MTC investigators had. Which was his friend's mom died after much prayer, and he lost his faith in God because of it. It was kinda weird that he had that same concern. Instantly the Spirit took over and gave me a certain eloquence of speech that I only get when I have the Spirit give me what to say. At first he said he didn't believe in God, but a few minutes later he changed that to not knowing if there's a God. I bore a simple testimony and said it's our purpose as missionaries to teach people about God, and asked him to let us teach him. That's the first time I ever used that kind of wording, "Let us teach you." I know the Spirit had me say that because it struck him and he said he would like us to come by. After I said that, I could tell that he hadn't entirely given up his faith. He just didn't fully understand how God lets bad things happen. We set an appointment for Monday. Hopefully we get in. Contact experience like that are rare for me. When they do happen, I take it as a sign that God really needs me to help that person.

Saturday
The big one. There are 3 major events of the day so I'm going to have to break each one down.

Sidetracked
A few days ago we contacted a man named Chu. He said he lived in a certain apartment complex that's extremely diverse. So much so that almost no one there speaks the same language as the other people there. We set up a time for Chu and went by today to meet our appointment. When we got there, we contacted a young man who happened to be outside our car. He didn't speak English at all. He led us to a friend of his who could kind of speak English. This friend invited us right in. We walked in, the young man, his friends, and 4 other guys walked in and sat down on a huge blanket on the floor. So there we were, 3 missionaries teaching 6 guys and only 1 of them could kind of speak English. We asked what their names were and they all had highly unpronounceable names. They were all from Burma and they spoke a language that Google didn't know about. We asked what their religious background was and they said they were Muslim. So here we were, 3 Mormons teaching 6 Muslims and only 1 could communicate with us. We spent the lesson talking about similarities and how God called more prophets. We committed them to read the BoM. After the lesson, some lady and Chu walked in. We had no idea Chu had any relation to these guys before we got sidetracked with them so it was a surprise to see Chu there. He was the reason we stopped by in the first place. Afterwards we set up a new time with him. 

Ms Al
After the 6 Muslims, we met with a lady named Ms Al at the library. Now Ms Al is a special kind of investigator. She's 18 and grew up with 2 atheist parents. However, she always felt that God was there. She started researching religions and when she found ours she said "it made the most sense." So we met up today and taught the first lesson. She didn't know anything. All she knew about Christ was that he was a man who was important. We had to start from the absolute bottom to teach her. Thing is, she's smart, so she was able to retain and understand everything we told her. We had an absolutely fantastic lesson with her. It's difficult to describe how prepared she was. In her research, she encountered a lot of anti-material and it didn't phase her at all. She wondered why people make that. When we committed her to be baptized, her concern was if she was going to be in town that day or not, which is an extremely good sign. PMG wants us to extend baptismal invitations to people in the first visit and no later than the second. Surprisingly most of the time, people accept. But very, very few, or none in my case, actually make it. Just to recap Ms Al. She grew up with atheist parents but always felt God was there. She researched religions and found ours to make the most sense. She sought us out on Mormon.org and requested visits. We taught her and she soaked up everything like a sponge. That was definitely in the top 5 of the best lessons on the mission.

Missionary coordination
I don't have a whole lot to say about this. After Ms Al, we went to Bro. Emmett for coordination. He prepared a fantastic dinner. He cooked pork chops that were absolutely fantastic. They were some of the best meat I've had out here.

Sunday
We had a good church service. After church we ate at the Fuquas. Then we taught Mr C. Unfortunately his baptism date dropped because he's not ready, but he still wants to meet with us. Later we ate dinner at the Fedors. And that was this week.

I definitely saw an increase in testimony this week. Even though it was hard, I feel like I've grown closer to God. I love being a missionary.

Thanks for everything!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)

A Good Week...

February 22, 2016

Dear Family,

Here's this weeks email.

Monday
It was my birthday! We went disc golfing for a lot of the day. It was really fun. Elder Gough bought my Chick-Fil-A. That was nice of him. I wasn't able to get the box because the post office was closed. It was an interesting birthday. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday.

Tuesday
We biked around most of Tuesday. Owensboro is very flat so it took little effort to get places. We taught Mr T who has 3 young kids. We taught him the first lesson and it went really well. He spoke with missionaries in the past but didn't really go anywhere. Now he wants to learn. He had 2 huge dogs in his backyard. Later I went with Bro. Swope to see a less active. They fed us dinner and we had a good scripture discussion.

Wednesday
I finally got my box in Wednesday. I was so happy to get it. I loved everything in it. Thank you so much! We got to teach an English class again. That was fun. It's an interesting experience. We ate dinner at a members house. This member only speaks Spanish so Elder Gough and I can't really communicate that well with him.

Thursday
We did more service at the homeless shelter. There's always a special spirit there. Then a member who looks exactly like Santa bought us ice cream at Sonic. Later we went to the Swope's house and had dinner.

Friday
We had district meeting and then we went with the Jasper Elders to a local burger joint. The wind was strong and we were sitting outside. The wind decided to throw my trash in the field next to us. The wind was too strong to do anything about it but Elder Passmore decided to try and chase it down anyway. He chased that stuff for a good quarter mile. We were dying laughing and the best part was the people next to us were dying laughing too. Then Elder Gough went to Jasper and Elder Gunnell came here. It was cool to be on another exchange with him. I got to help a member with his home teaching. Some time ago, this member spent a lot of time in St. Mary, GA while he was in the Navy.

Saturday
We exchanged back in Santa Clause IN. Yes, there is a town called Santa Clause in Indiana. The whole thing is Christmas themed. All of it. Later we went to Bro. Emerges for missionary coordination. He had cranberry grape juice there. I used to hate cranberry juice, but for some reason over the course of my mission, I've grown to love it. I'm going to buy some today.

Sunday
We had a fantastic church service. Bro. Swope gave a good talk. Then we ate dinner at the Fuqua's. Later we taught a lady named Ms C. Right when we started talking about baptism, her kids started acting up. It happens every time.

That was this week. I love all the support you gave me. Thank you so much!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)

B-day lunch at Chick-fil-a with Elders Passmore and Gough.

Loved everything in my box!

Journey scarf and t-shirt

We command all men, everywhere, to repent and be baptized!

Owensboro is Fun!

February 15, 2016

Dear Family,

Here's last weeks email. (the Church server worldwide was down last Monday for a week)

We've had a lot of fun covering all of Owensboro with the three of us.Surprisingly, and thankfully, we all get along great. We're all able to teach together really well too, so that's a plus. This was a busy week full of lessons and meals. Here's the breakdown.

Monday - my birthday!
We had a fun P-Day. Something new we tried was Disc Golf. It plays just like golf but with special frisbees. Instead of a hole, you try to throw the disc into a chain cage thing. It's actually a lot of fun. I did pretty good for my first time ever.

Tuesday
We started off seeing a former named Mr F. He's Spanish so it was another lesson where only Elder Passmore could speak. It's always weird having Spanish only lessons because I can't contribute much. Then we met with a lady named Ms C that we met a few days ago. We had a great first lesson with her and she accepted the invitation to be baptized. I'm 10 months in and I don't even know what it's like to baptize a convert. To be honest, it's starting to bother me. I really hope I get one soon. But that's not going to keep me from continuing forward. I'll always work hard. We had dinner at a Spanish members and then we went on splits with the members. Passmore and I went with Bro. Smith to a LA named Ms D while Gough went with the ward mission leader elsewhere. Ms D fed us too. That's 2 dinners in one night. We had a great reading lesson with her. Bro. Smith looks exactly like Santa. We finished the day listening to a talk called "Why 1820?" It answers why the Lord waited until 1820 to restore the church.

Wednesday
The first guy we contacted on Wednesday asked us why the Lord waited until 1820. That question is highly uncommon. Elder Gough's been out 20 months and he's only got that question a small handful of times. What are the odds we get that question the day after we listened to that talk? Later, we visited a member who had a neighbor who had the bunnies. We got the hold them. Later we contacted an old Catholic who's known missionaries for 40 years. He knew a lot of our beliefs. And he asked us "why 1820". What are the odds to get probably the least common question ever twice in the same day? And the day after we listened to that talk? It was crazy. We had a nice long discussion with him but he's comfortable in his church. We ate dinner at the Inmans. They're your typical retired couple. Bro. Inman used to own some college out in Utah. They fed us fettuccini Alfredo. We finished with meeting the Scudders. They're recent converts who were baptized back in November. They're super strong.

Thursday
We did more service giving food out at a homeless shelter. Then we did weekly planning which took longer than normal because we were planning for two areas. Then we saw Mr C. He's got a baptismal date for March 5th. He's 17 and a pretty funny guy. And he really wants to join the church. We finished the day with eating at Bro. Swope's house. Bro. Swope is the strongest recent convert I've ever met. He's only been a member since last April or so. If no one told me he was a recent convert I would have guessed he's been a member most of his life. We had a good lesson at his house. He has a little daughter who is the nicest little girl I've met out here. She loves the missionaries.

Friday
We had zone meeting in Evansville. It was pretty good. There were a lot of trainings and a lot of good things to learn. However, the AP's training was over the top. After the meeting, we went on exchange with Elder Peck, one of the zone leaders while Elder Gough went with the other zone leader. Elder Peck's been out for 14 months. We had a fun time with him. He's a good guy. We taught a few lessons with him. We finished the day with a whole lot of contacting. I hit another contacting milestone today. It took me and the Lord 10 months of working together to destroy my fear of contacting. And tonight I was able to contact about 10 people by myself. It was a cool experience.

Saturday
We picked up a former named Mr E. He's a Spanish guy who speaks great English. He fully believes in prophets and basically taught us half of the restoration. He even quoted Amos. No one quotes Amos. After his lesson we gave another recent convert, Randy, a blessing. Then we exchanged back and went to missionary coordination at Bro. Emmert's house. He fed us a lot of ice cream.

Sunday
We had a great church service and I got to help pass again, but it was cut an hour early because of the storm on its way. It snowed an inch in about 10 minutes. After church we visited the Q family and showed them my Christmas dance. They liked it. We ate dinner at the Fedor's and watched Hope of God's Light. After the video they talked about people we can visit and we got a few referrals. It was pretty cool.

Well that was this week. I really like it here in Owensboro. It's a lot of fun. I like staying busy. Thank you so much for the pizza tonight and for the box I won't be able to get until tomorrow because people are stupid. :p Have an awesome week!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)

Awww... Benjamin Bunny holding a little Benjamin Bunny.

It snowed!

We found a huge stump to call people to repentance from :)

Preachin'  the word!

Soldier Monument

Soldiers from all the wars are represented.

A Steel Dinosaur

Crazy Week!

February 8, 2016

Dear Family,

Goodness! This week was insane! Again I forgot my journal back at the apartment so I'll have to write from memory. This week was so long! So much happened!

Monday
Last P-Day in Campbellsville. It feels like forever ago when I was back there. I got a really nice black button-up sweater from Mitchell's as my last Mitchell's purchase. I mostly packed on Monday

Tuesday
Transfer day. Elder Bennett and I drove the Columbia car up to Eastern Parkway. President Brough just had all the missionaries meet there and transfer without the meeting part. I don't know if that's how we'll do it from now on. I got there. Got my stuff out. Moved it into the car that was taking me to Owensboro and left. An older member drove me to Owensboro. His name was Bro McKinnon. He was a funny old guy. He loves music and Harley Davidson's. He has drums, guitars, harmonicas, and several other instruments. When we got to Owensboro, he took me to Wendy's and then dropped me off at the apartment with the other missionaries in the area. There are 2 sets here. Owensboro bike, and Owensboro Car. I'm in the car area with Elder Passmore. Elders Sorensen and Gough are in the bike area. The bike area covers most of the city, and the car area covers the rest of the ward boundaries. Half is in Kentucky, and the other half is in Indiana. To my surprise, it didn't take me and Elder Passmore long at all to recognize each other. We went to high school together. He was in one of my percussion classes. He was in Marching band too. The rest of the day was basically unpacking and settling in.

Wednesday
Wednesday was filled with introducing me to everyone. It was fun. The members here are great. It's weird to be in a ward, and it's even weirder where the members will come to us and ask us how they can help.

Thursday
This was the game changing day. We started off meeting the bike elders and taking them to a shelter where we do service by giving homeless people some food. It was really fun. A lot of them said "thank you." Later in the day, Elder Gough got sick and needed to stay in. However, a member in the ward needed help with more service. So Elders Passmore and Sorensen went to serve, and I stayed with Gough. While I was with him, he got a call from President Brough telling him that Elder
Sorensen was being Emergency Transferred. That means that Elder Gough, Passmore and I are going to be in a trio until the end of the transfer when President Brough sends someone here.

Friday
District meeting. President Brough came to pick Elder Sorensen up. After they left,we went to Chick Fil A. By the way, Owensboro has just about every food place possible. Papa Johns pizza will be great for my birthday. It's just down the street from us. We even have a Red Lobster. It's been so long since I've eaten there. After Chick Fil A, we moved Gough's stuff to our apartment. That took the rest of the day to make that transition.

Saturday
First full day as a trio. It was weird. A third person makes how we do everything a little different. Teaching's different, contacting's different, and riding in the car is different. Elder Gough wanted to
drive and Passmore wanted to be in the passenger. That means I get a whole back seat to myself! It's the best thing ever having that much space in car rides. We taught one of Gough's investigators, Mr C. His mom is preparing to marry a member. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and it went fantastically. We were able to do a great job at switching off and keeping it simple. We taught more lessons later and the same thing happened. We finished with missionary coordination with the ward mission leader, I forgot what it was like to have a mission leader. The only thing we talked about was who's fellow-shipping which investigators. That was the best missionary coordination I've ever had.

Sunday
I got to meet most of the members on Sunday. They're fantastic. They're all solid, great, Christlike people. It was a great fast and testimony meeting. After church we went to Bro. McKinnon's for a few
minutes. I tuned his drums :). Then we went to the Fuqua's for lunch. Then we went to another dinner appointment with the Abel's. I think this was the first day of my mission I had 2 member meals in the same day. The Abel's are a younger family who both went to BYU Hawaii. They made that place sound like the best place ever.

That was this week from memory. Crazy week. Another thing I forgot to mention, since Elder Passmore is a Spanish speaking missionary, we had several lessons where he did all the talking and I didn't understand anything that was said. We have language study in the morning, Hopefully I'll be able to pick something up.

You're awesome as always. Thanks for the support and thanks for the birthday box in advance! :).

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)

PS - Here's the address to my new place: 
            703 Princeton Parkway, #9
            Owensboro Kentucky 42301

Chillin' in saran wrap on p-day...
This is why you don't put Elders in a trio :)

Transferred... to Owensboro!

February 1, 2016

Dear Family,

I don't have my journal with me so this is entirely from memory. This was a pretty fun last week in Campbellsville. I didn't even know it was my last week until Saturday. Because of the no-transfer meeting rule now, I know where I'm going and who I'm with. I'll be companions with Elder Passmore. He's from Elder Walker's group so he's only been out for about 6 months. He's a Spanish speaking elder. English is his first language but he was called to serve in Spanish. It's usual for an English speaking person (me) and a Spanish speaking person to be put together. Simply that means we'll be able to cover both languages. I'll have to learn a little Spanish but not enough to become fluent. 

Owensboro is in the Jasper, IN district. Elder Walker served in Jasper, IN before he came here so he knows a little about Owensboro. He said I'll have access to every food place possible. Including Chick-Fil-A and... Texas Roadhouse!! You can bet I'll be eating at Texas Roadhouse for my birthday in two weeks!

Here we go with the week!

Monday

Normal P-Day filled with Chick-Fil-A and washing clothes. Our usual family night was cancelled so we checked on a couple less actives. It was pretty weird not having church the day before. That threw everything off.

Tuesday

We met with Mr H in the morning. I don't think I've told you much about him. He's a good friend to the Rodenberg family and he's known missionaries for about 9 years. He loves the church. He's given out 2 copies of the Book of Mormon to co-workers. He loves the church-comedy movies like Church Ball. He believes every religion needs to watch those movies. Ever since he's known about the church, he's done a lot of research into its history. He knows a lot about what happened to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the persecution the early Saints had to endure. He said he doesn't understand why they were so persecuted. We asked him why he hasn't joined the church yet and he said he would, but his wife isn't on board yet. Apparently there was a missionary a while back who was a bit bold with her and kinda scared her off. We've been trying to mend relationships but it's been a slow process. He loves us, but his wife, not so much. She's really nice to us still, but she doesn't want to join the church yet. When we asked him if he would join he also said that he's found nothing wrong with the church. Even though he has to have been exposed to a large amount of anti-material in his research. Mr H is a cool guy. He's one of the several people here in Campbellsville who would join but for one reason or another, there's something keeping him back.

Wednesday

It was my last service day at the local church. They don't know I'm going yet. They'll be sad to find out. Later we met with Sis. Gr and watched "Choose Ye This Day" with her. She loved the video. Her grandson wasn't there to "give" me a drink.

Thursday

District Meeting. We went on exchange and I took Elder Caldwell up here to Campbellsville. We actually ran out of miles on our car today so we had to walk. Caldwell and I did A LOT of walking. We contacted several people and gave out 2 copies of the Book of Mormon. We got a couple potentials as well. It was nice to have a day like this where we just walk and try to do as much as we can. I went to Mitchell's and got my possibly last Mitchell's tie. :(

Friday

We exchanged back and did more... You guessed it!... Walking! It was basically the same as Thursday. We contacted several people and got a couple potentials. Walking, Walking, Walking, Walking, Walking, Walking, Walking, Walking, WALKING!!

Saturday

I got the transfer call on Saturday. It's pretty funny I got assigned to there because Elder Walker and I were just talking about Johnny Depp's mom a few days ago. I've learned there are a lot of famous people who have come out of Owensboro. We did more walking as the day went by.

Sunday

Sunday was filled with a lot of good byes. Pres. Brough is closing the Columbia area down. The Campbellsville elders are going to absorb it and work both areas from now on. That means one companionship will have access to ALL the members. That'll be nice. Elder Walker is staying and they're moving Elder Irwin up. Elder Bennett and I are going to drive the Columbia car up on Tuesday morning. Elder Walker knows Campbellsville and Elder Irwin knows Columbia. 

After church we ate at the Rodenbergs. They fed us curry and chocolate chip cookies. Sis. Rodenberg asked me what the number one thing I learned here was and I said it was Christlike attributes, specifically, Diligence. Campbellsville was a hard area to work. But I endured it well and will hope to be blessed for it. After the Rodenbergs, I met with Josh and Rod. Josh is a student at CU who has a full ride for soccer. He's the soccer team's goalie. He's from Nottingham, England. He has a THICK English accent. We just talked for a little while and said our good byes. Then I went around and said good bye to a few other people.

I'm happy I got to serve here. Even though there were days that just were flat out hard, this area provided me with the trials necessary to help me grow and progress further. I'd say this was well worth it.

Thank you for still being amazing! And thanks for the box! I love getting boxes!

-Elder Ben

Sis Brough: We have just finished another round of January 2016 Zone Conferences.
I have to say we have the BEST missionaries the Lord has right here in the GKLM!
The theme was REPENTING. Not just for our investigators, but it's for us as well.

There's a Cox Street here in Campbellsville!