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