Serving in Kentucky: So Many Thunderstorms!

July 11, 2016

Dear Family,

"This town is crazy" -Elder Salazar

-> Large Plates <-

-Monday-
This is weird because I already talked about last Monday in last week's email. This was the day we got into a 3-car accident. It happened at about 12:45 PM. That was a great way to start the 4th of July! #America. We also went to Jason's and played board games and burned suits. It was fun. :)

-Tuesday-
It was weird having P-Day on Tuesday this week. It didn't feel right. We got another estimate for the car damage and it added another $5000 on top of the existing $8000 so $13,000 total. I doubt the church will pay for that. The car itself is only worth about $8000-$9000. Somehow the car is still driveable.

Apart from that it was a pretty normal P-Day. We had lunch, shopped, and frolfed. Because it was Tuesday we went on splits. I went out with Bro Emmert and we had a really successful night. We saw the Cl's. They're LAPM (Less Active Part Member). I've seen Sis Cl at church a few times but she doesn't come often. We went over the First Presidency Message and had a great discussion. They loved it. Later that night we met Sis Tre. She's one of Bro Emmert's home teaching families. We went over the First Presidency Message with her too and had another great discussion.

We finished splits by seeing the old Tin family. Bro Emmert got to know them better. We didn't share a message because we were short on time but we left them with a prayer. I finished the night talking with Bro Pursley about music. I found out we have very similar music interests.

-Wednesday-
It rained a lot. Yahoo! said we were going to have "isolated thunderstorms". I didn't know what that meant until Wednesday. It means you work for an hour or two and then take shelter because thunderstorms here are wicked. They tear trees apart like they're nothing. If it's raining a little bit you can still work, but if it's so bad that your car wipers at full speed can't keep the water off your windshield, then you might want to consider taking shelter.

That's how Wednesday was. We worked for the first couple hours of the day, then it stormed for about an hour, then the storm left and we worked some more, then it stormed again. Thankfully it didn't storm for the last part of the day. We had Missionary Coordination at the
church in the evening. We had a great discussion with Bro Emmert and the ward missionaries about how to get more member present.

Afterwards we helped the Capeners move. They're moving to New York for Bro Capener's residency. There were a lot of people there because they turned it into a Wednesday night youth activity. We got most of it done but there were still a few things that needed to be packed so we came back on Thursday to finish. The Capeners ordered Domino's for everyone. I pigged out. :)

-Thursday-
The Tell City elders came down to do an exchange with the "Belders" and they invited us all to lunch at Chick-fil-a so, of course, we went. After lunch we went to the Capeners to help them finish moving. It was just us, the "Belders" and the Capeners this time. About 30 minutes into the move there was another severe thunderstorm that came in. Without question we had to stop for a while. While nature was tearing Owensboro apart for the 3rd time this week Bro Capener adjusted all of us for the last time. I love getting my back and neck pushed back in place.

The Capener's move and the storm wound up taking most of the day. By the time the storm finished and we finished packing everything, we didn't have much time left in the day. We tried a few peeps but that was about it. Bro Capener left us with one of his chairs.

-Friday-
During personal study we had another severe thunderstorm! Yay! This was probably the worst one this week. It left trees and power line poles ripped out of the ground and on the road. No homes were destroyed but a lot were damaged. It was almost as bad as that tornado hail storm from a couple months ago. It only lasted about an hour.

We had district meeting. Elder Blake's training was about helping our areas individual concerns. He had every companionship share a concern with their area and he spent the rest of the meeting talking about those concerns. It was pretty cool. Either he did a lot of
preparations for this or he didn't really prepare a training and made one up on the spot. Either way, it was good.

The Capeners left half way through district meeting. They had me take some final family photos before they left. Sad...

Later on we Weekly Planned. Made some good plans as per usual. Then I went to Bro McKinnon's for some "service". He bought some new heads for his drum set and needed me to tune them. :D While I was doing that, Elder Salazar was playing basketball with some of the neighbor kids. It was fun watching him.

As we drove home there was another severe thunderstorm. The 5th one this week. This is when Elder Salazar said "This town is crazy. I've never had so many storms." I didn't really notice it until he said this, but we have had a lot of storms in Owensboro. More than usual.

-Saturday-
We started Saturday by teaching a man named Jim. He was one of the 1000 referrals the "Belders" sent us. He's a really nice guy. We had a fantastic conversation with him. He already shares a lot of the same beliefs as us. We introduced the BoM and he wanted to read it. He wants us to come back. I haven't had a first lesson as good as this one was in a while.

Later on we visited Jo brothers. They happened to be having a Mexican backyard BBQ so we got to eat. That food was some of the best Mexican food I've had in a long time. In the middle of our visit, their dog came over and smelled my right pocket. That's where I keep my pepper spray. I think it smelled the spray because it ran from me and didn't come near me for the rest of the visit.

Later on we met a guy on the streets and got into the nicest bash ever with him. I say nice bash because most people who bash us try to prove us wrong but this guy brought up bash points because they were genuine concerns of his and he wanted to learn more about our church. He lives in the "Belder's" area so they're going to have to teach him but we gave him a BoM and he wants missionaries to come back and talk with him.

We had dinner at the Emmerts as per usual. We had Sloppy Joes. I wasn't able to eat much because we had just come from the Jo brothers. After the Emmerts, we finished the night with the young Tins. They were preparing to watch a movie outside in the dark. We shared
a quick video with them and had a great discussion about serving people. They said they've been thinking about coming to church more. We told them that would be great. They've started reading the BoM more. It shouldn't be long before they become solid investigators.
-Sunday-
We had a fantastic church service. I'll detail what I learned in the Small Plates. After church we had lunch at the Fuquas again. They're extremely nice for feeding us but sometimes it's hard to go over because they always prepare monstrous amounts of food. I'm actually
gaining weight because of that.

We had a something cool happen with Lan who is friends with the Emmert's son. They've been friends for a few years and during that time he's been to church almost every week and has taken several missionary discussions. He hasn't shown an interest in being baptized until this happened. He was sitting in Bro Emmert's Gospel Principles class and he felt the Spirit for probably the first time in his life. Bro Emmert told me about his experience and said I need to call him. So I did and told him he could feel like that forever with the Gift of the Holy Ghost and he accepted the invitation to have more lessons. I actually asked him a few weeks ago why he wasn't taking the discussions but he avoided the question and didn't give me an answer, but this time he said yes. We'll teach him this Saturday when we go to the Emmert's for dinner again. He's always there.

After lunch we studied. After studies we visited Ms Val but she wasn't available so we talked with her daughter. She's 11 and not a member. She got close to being baptized once but her father was against it so she didn't get baptized. Now that she's living with Ms Val and not the ex she might have another chance at being baptized. As we all sat on the porch we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The scriptures answer every question except why God created mosquitoes.;)

We finished the night by visiting P and his son C. P and C moved in right next door to the Capeners before they moved out and they got to know each other a bit. We decided to drop in on them to say hi and we wound up having a good visit. We didn't teach anything. We got our foot in the door, you could say. He's a nice guy. Single father. C is 9. He's another one of those kids who's grown up around trying circumstances (divorce) and is still somehow one of the nicest, normal, happiest kids you could meet.

I've met a countless amount of kids like this on my mission and they always amaze me when I meet one. Let me clarify the kind of kids I'm talking about. I've meet countless kids who had difficulties with one or both parents (drugs, divorce, abandonment, abuse, etc.) and somehow they stay completely normal, innocent, happy, and some of the best kids ever. You wouldn't think this would happen right? Kids usually absorb what their parents do, right? If one or both parents of a kid afflict their child with some sort of circumstance, you think that
child would tend to be negative, right? Well... I've met countless kids who are the opposite. They have affliction after affliction and they're still fine.

I've thought about this off and on for a while and I think I figured out how this happens. In all of these cases, there has always been someone who genuinely loves the child. That might be the other parent, a grandparent, an older sibling, etc. Where there is love, the Spirit is there also. The Spirit will guide and protect you even if you don't have the Gift of the Holy Ghost. The Gift of the Holy Ghost is a constant companionship but everyone can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost. Because children are closer to the veil, I'd say they're able to
tune to the Spirit easier than an adult. And because they can feel the Spirit they can receive greater protection. So much so that a kid can grow in the most trying of circumstances but if there's that element of love where the Spirit can be magnified then the circumstances really won't have much of a negative effect on the child.

If a child has no one to love them then yes, they'll probably go down a rough path. But if there's someone who genuinely loves the child, their love will radiate with the Spirit which a little child will be more receptive to. It will protect them.

-> Small Plates <-

Well, since I already talked about some Small Plates stuff with the whole children thing I'll keep this section shorter. As I mentioned we had a high councilor in church and he gave a great talk about being a valiant servant vs. an honorable servant. He asked "Why are we members of the church? Is it because we're here for our friends or are we here for the Lord because He wants us to be here?" He then went on to say if we're here for friends or any other reason, then we are honorable servants. Honorable because we're at least doing what the Lord wants but not for the entirely right reasons. But, if we're valiant servants, then we'll do everything we can for the Lord because we have a genuine relationship with Him and want to please Him. There were several other things he talked about and there were several things in the other 2 hours of church I liked. All 3 hours were good this week. But I'm going to stop here. My hands are tired and this letter is long.

-> Closing Remarks <-

This was a fun week. Go out and have a great week yourselves!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)