Refiner's Fire

Nov 23, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, Thanks for sending me a third box. I didn't think I'd get so many boxes. I got your last two right when I got back to the apartment after emailing you last week.

I'll be at the Jensons pretty much all day. There's a branch party in the morning and they are having us over right after the party. 

This week shot by! It feels like just the other day when I last emailed you. It was a lot better and I learned a lot. I'm going to go day by day in this email.

On Monday we ate at Chick-fil-a again. Man, did I miss Chick-fil-a in Corydon. Then I got my suit dropped off at the alterations lady. I have interviews with Pres Brough this Friday so I'm going to try and get it back so I can look nice for President :). At night we had our last lesson with Little Miss R :(. She's moving to Idaho with her highly active member grandmother. It'll be a much better place for her to live and grow. We've already sent the missionaries their way. They gave us chocolate cake :)

On Tuesday we started visiting Sis G and continuing to help her through her recent trials. She was much happier today so that was good to see. After that we did more service for J & L. We started off doing wood things and then we did the storm shelter. It got pretty muddy. J was down in the shelter shoveling trash and dirt into a bucket that we would raise and dump when the bucket was full. Unfortunately we weren't able to get all the water out but we did get all the random crap out. It looks a lot better. They're going to have to vacuum the water out somehow. It was actually a lot of fun. I didn't mind the dirt at all.

Wednesday was another fun day. We did more service for that church we helped out with last Wednesday. One of the guys who runs the food ministry's wife is a member. They used to invite the missionaries over and feed them quite often. Elder Jensen mentioned how he's wanted try try squirrel in Kentucky and he said he has some that we can try. He plans on having us over to try squirrel at his house in a couple weeks. That will be fun. As far as the food service goes we helped with the other route they do. We delivered food to more poorer people. Saw a lot of gratitude from them. There was a kid on the bus with us who was probably about 10 years old. At the end of the route he was looking through the extra desserts and found that what he wanted was gone. To that he said "Aww man, they're gone. Oh well, they need it more than me." It kinda stunned me to hear a 10 year old kid say that.

Thursday, we had a great district meeting where Elder Caldwell trained on personal revelation. Elder Jensen hit his 20 month mark this day.

Friday was interesting. We had a guy call us on Monday and tell us he needed to inspect our apartment on Friday and that he'd be there between 1-5. So we had to stay in the apartment from 1 until he got there. He didn't get there until 5:30. He noticed all the glow paint on our walls in the bedroom and said we would have to paint the whole room. We didn't paint the walls with glow paint. It was some previous elders. They made it look like space in their at night. It's pretty cool actually. :)

Nothing special happened on Saturday. We planned more wood service for J & L but the rain stopped us from doing that. They gave us lemonade with passion fruit juice in it. So good!

Sunday I got to teach gospel principles for the first time. It was on Chapter 44: The Second Coming. It went really well. I still like getting up in front of the class to speak. Those Baptist tips you sent me really helped. That's actually how I prepared my farewell talk.

So that was this week in review. I realized something really cool this morning during my studies. Probably my greatest desire for my mission is to become the most Christlike I possibly can. Campbellsville has been trying and improving all of my personal Christlike attributes without me noticing until now. With all the trials I've had here, I've realized each one addresses one of the attributes. This area is further molding me to be more Christlike. There are 2 names that describe this area perfectly. The Refiner's Fire, and The Pride Destroyer. This place will destroy any remaining pride you have, even the pride you don't realize you have. It will humble you to a point where you rely on the Lord far more than you have before. I'm actually thankful for my experiences here. They've further turned me into the person God wants me to be which is something I pray for almost every night.

The story on Elder Jensen's koala: His koala bear came from another missionary named Elder White. Elder White is the guy who tp'd his own seminary building and blamed the rival school for it. The koala came from a 10 year old kid in Corydon, Indiana. When Elder White served in Corydon last year, the kid gave him the koala. Elder White wore that koala at every meeting. When Elder White went home a couple months ago, he gave the koala to Elder Jensen and told him to pass it along to the funniest elder. Elder White wants the koala to stay in the mission to designate who the funniest elder is.

Elder White's words of wisdom he gave at his last transfer meeting: "Mark Newman said, 'To say your mission was the best 2 years of your life is a bit inaccurate. It's OK to say it was the toughest, most challenging, yet most rewarding 2 years of your life.' The mission was the BEST 2 years of of my life, and it can be the best 2 years of your life too, if you do these 4 things. 1st - Let the Atonement change you. Who you are is God's gift to you. Who you become is your gift to God. 2nd -  Never go home - even if you get diabetes! 3rd - Talk with everyone! 4th -  Elders, remember how important the Priesthood is. That's what separates you from all the other preachers on the block. Elder White is preachin' out."

The diabetes thing is funny because he got diabetes on his mission but did everything he could to stay out. Salt Lake wanted to send him home but he did things like delaying his test results so Salt Lake couldn't get their hands on them. It's weird he got diabetes because no one in his family had it.

Well keep being awesome. I love you all! (I still haven't started using "y'all" yet) Bye!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox

Look at this nice photo of the Vegas temple that now serves as my iPad

background.

Remember that storm shelter pic I sent you a while ago? Well we finally got around to cleaning it. This is what came out.

This is Joe in the shelter.

Joe was down shoveling garbage into a bucket that was attached to a rope. 
When he would fill it I'd pull it up and dump it in the wheel barrel. 
Elder Jensen would then cart it away :)

Yuck!

This stuff was so good! It was lemonade with passion fruit juice mixed in. Yum!