Stake Conference

Oct 26, 2015

Dear Family,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Elder Ben

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

,

My ever growing tie collection.

Here's me and the new blue tie.

I love "studying" the gospel :)

See those round things in the trees?

The candy you sent me and the goldfish I bought.

I've written on the sides :)

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

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

They're Passion Fruit :)

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

Me and the shirt!