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)