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!

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