Serving in Kentucky: 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.