Serving in Kentucky: Storms

May 16, 2016

Dear Family,

This was one of the best weeks I've had in a while. I learned a lot and grew a lot.

Monday
We frolfed a lot. Elder Salazar threw his disc in the creek and in the process of getting it, we all got exposed to a whole lot of fresh, new poison ivy.

Later, we taught Mr Ro, a Spanish LA, about the BoM. He joined the church ~20 years ago but never really had a testimony. We've been meeting with him lately and he says he believes the church is true and good. We're working with him to bring him back.

Tuesday
#StormsAllDay. That about sums Tuesday. In the morning, the maintenance man came to fix our dryer because it hasn't been working at all lately. He found that a bird nest had clogged the vent to the outside, which caused the dryer to clog itself. He fixed it, *yay*. He warned us about a storm that was coming. We didn't really heed his warning.

We started off trying Mr Cep but he wasn't home. We then started observing these wicked looking clouds in a light green sky. They were heading towards us. I got a really strong prompting that said "Get in the car, Ben!" I soon found out why. About 3 minutes into our drive, it started raining so hard. Our wipers, at full speed, couldn't keep the water off the windshield. We slowly made it back to our apartment at about 5 MPH and when we parked, marble-sized hail started falling from the sky. A lot of it too. There are now several small dents in the car. We had to stay in for about two hours until the storm was calm enough so we could go out and work. Well, the storm didn't really stop. It just went in waves throughout the day. The tornado sirens sounded several times throughout the day. It was crazy!

Later, we got some food at Domino's and the manager gave us a discount because we're missionaries. We finished the night teaching a man named Mr G. He was a referral for us from the "Belders" but we soon found out he was actually a former some previous missionaries taught. He was grateful to have us back. He thanked God for bringing us to his house again. Missionaries dropped him in the first place because he moved and they couldn't find him.

Wednesday
We started off on our bikes. We met someone named Ms Eli and wound up teaching her half of L1. She loved it. She has super strong faith in God and loved talking to us. She easily accepted a BoM and the invitation to read it.

Later, we met with Maku for 5 minutes. She said she really enjoyed our last discussion and wants us to come back. She gave us water. We got a lot of bottles of water throughout the week from people.

Later, the Gomez's fed us Mexican-fried chicken. It was very similar to American-fried chicken. Later, we went to church for missionary coordination. It was storming bad outside. We finished the night visiting Ms Aust. We found our she was never baptized so she's actually an investigator, not a LA.

Our dryer broke again after 1 use. :(

Thursday
This is where things get awesome. We woke up early to drive 2 hours to New Albany. Elder Koposchke of the Seventy came and instructed us similar to what Elder Zwick did last year. This conference was absolutely fantastic. There was so much good to it. What I'm doing now is basically forcing myself to remember what I read in the BoM in my studies. Several times throughout the day, I'll run through what happened in the chapters I read that morning, and remind myself what I learned.

I also finished the BoM highlight activity this week. I've started it over now but am paying even more attention to what happens, and what I learn from it. At the end of the activity, I asked God if the Book of Mormon was true. I got a very simple answer. There was a voice that was so quiet in my head. It was probably more of an idea. But what it said was still just as profound. It said "Ben, you know what's in it. You know it's true." As I thought about that, I realized that what the Book of Mormon teaches is true. Even if it wasn't evidence for the restoration, its testimony of Christ is true. What it teaches is true.

I've replaced TWE's from being #1 in my mind to pondering the scriptures and remembering the Lord. I have become far happier, and I have felt far better. Thank you for all of your prayers and advice. At the end of the day, we drove 2 hours back.

Friday
We saw Mr Ga again. Unfortunately, he doesn't understand the concept of 1 true church. We taught him L1 and committed him to pray. Then, we weekly planned at the library and finished the day seeing Ms Des in the hospital. She's a LA we visit weekly. She was put in the hospital for bronchitis. She's doing okay.

Saturday
We went to the BBQ festival for lunch. There were so many people and so much food! I absolutely love BBQ pork! Later, we saw Elisha and her fiancé Cameron and taught half of L1. They enjoyed it. They have views that are very similar to ours. They still want us to come back.

Then we went back to the BBQ festival to attempt to talk with people there. It didn't work out as well as we wanted. People weren't really in the frame of mind to listen. Something Elder Kopischke said that made me feel really good was when he was talking about TWE's. He said, "This is not a game of seeing how many uninterested people we can talk to. This is not a numbers game. This is about finding the elect." We realized TWEing at the BBQ fest was "seeing how many uninterested people we could talk to." That quote helped me forget about TWE's.

Then we taught Mr Ro again. We read from the BoM with him. We finished the night at the Quintana's house. They are good active family.

Sunday
I had one of the best church services ever. I remembered almost everything. Along with my forced pondering I'm doing, I write down what I learned from my pondering every night. This has helped my retention. I was able to easily focus on, and remember what people were saying. It was a cool experience. It helped me keep Christ on my mind

Later, Rhett showed up out of nowhere as we were walking on a street. He just keeps doing that. He showed us his church. We happened to be really close to it.

We then ate pulled pork sammiches at the Fedor's. They're always nice to feed us often.

We finished the week at the Tins. We finally managed to get their entire family together and teach them about the BoM. It was a great experience. Bro Tin is the only member but he's LA. He still has a testimony, though. They said they were going to come to church for Memorial Day weekend. His wife and his 3 kids are all baptismal age. They're super nice people. I feel like it won't be to hard to reactivate Bro Tins and get his family baptized. They even fed us ice cream. I love ice cream.

Well, that was this week. It was an adventure. Full of healing and happiness. Thank you for all your support. You really helped. I feel like I gained the strong testimony of Christ. Not only gained, but it was made stronger because He made His goodness known unto me.

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)