Facebook

August 8, 2016

Dear Family,

As the title suggests, we got Facebook this week. I never thought we would, but we did. We are 1 of 5 test missions for Internet proselyting. A few years ago when the church first tried giving Facebook to the missionaries, they had a million filters on it and changed the app icon to be orange instead of blue. However, this time they gave us the full, unfiltered Facebook and the Facebook Messenger app. I'll talk more about this in a bit but this was by far the biggest thing that happened this week.

-> Large Plates <-

-Monday-
This was my official 16 month day! Woo! We did all of our preparation stuff in the morning. Cleaned, shopped, washed clothes, etc. The Spanish Elders drove us around. We emailed at the church. Because there are several missionary areas around our church, there were  about 5 companionships there. In the middle of our emailing and socializing, Elder Williams and I went to go get Panda Express again.

There's 2 companionships that cover the Hurstbourne Ward (Louisville 2nd Ward as it's officially called). There's us, and there's the sisters. We spent the last part of the day helping a part-member couple move in the Sister's area. The girl is a LA member and the guy is a non-member. 15 minutes into the move, the Sisters had to leave for another appointment, leaving us to finish the move for their part-member couple. It took us about 2.5 hours to move everything. When we were all done, the couple bought us pizza and, of course, the sisters came back for that... ;)

-Tuesday-
This was an exhaustive day. First, we biked 20 minutes down to this old lady who needed some weeding done. That took about 2 hours. Then we spent the whole rest of the day biking around trying people. No one answered so we spent ALL DAY biking.

At the end of the day we wound up teaching PJ. I was so tired I honestly didn't want to teach him, but I pushed through anyway. We taught him L2 and he really enjoyed it. He said it made much more sense that what the Catholics teach. He said he would keep reading the BoM. When we got home, I laid on the floor and wound up napping for an hour there. You know you're tired when you fall asleep on the floor without realizing it.

-Wednesday-
I spent this day in Indian Trails with Elder Patten on exchange. Indian Trails was Elder Shelley's first area. It was fun to see it. Like what we've been doing in Hurstbourne, Elder Patten and I biked around all day and tried peeps. Nothing happened for most of the day.

Most of the people in Indian Trails are poorer/refugee types and they just open up to us. The people in Hurstbourne are mostly middle/upper class types so it's hard to get them talking to us for more than 5 seconds.

After dinner, we taught this lady named Sha the first lesson. Half way through, we found out that she has no religious background whatsoever and barely knows who Jesus is. It made it impossible to finish the lesson without going a completely different route. She was nice and is willing to talk more.

-Thursday-
This was the day... Everything changed... I thought I knew how to be a missionary but then this happened...
First, we drove all the way down to E-Town (Elizabethtown) for a 3-hour training meeting on how to use Facebook. Because we're a test mission we get access to the church's super secret information on interest proselyting. :D  jk.... They really don't have a lot. They have a couple booklets (Safeguards for Using Technology and Missionary Work in the Digital Age), 8 additional pages to the White Handbook that basically say "Don't be stupid", and half of the District 3 videos. Yes, they made The District 3 and it's all about internet missionary work.

When we got back, we spent the last 4 hours of the day with the Spanish Elders setting up and trying to figure out how to work Facebook as a missionary. We had to go through our profiles and "clean them up". During this whole process we were all freaking out over having Facebook.

With Facebook comes the option to teach lessons online. We can teach over Messenger, Facebook video chat, Skype, normal FaceTime, etc. A big reason people can't meet in-person is their busy schedules. However, this allows us to work around that problem. In the training meeting they said the missionaries in other test missions that have been doing this for longer "teach an average of 7 lessons a day". Obviously, Internet lessons can't replace in-person lessons. But I've noticed that a lot of people tend to be more closed off in-person but more open online. The goal is to teach personal lessons but sometimes we'll have to go through Facebook first, to get there.

There are many other benefits to Facebook that I could ramble on about. The Zone Leaders described it as a "nuke" in missionary work. That's appropriate for many reasons. This will help us reach more people, it'll help us teach more, it'll help us stay in contact, and it will help us find more. Also, in our online lessons, we can invite a member to join whatever it is we're on at the time and it'll turn into a "member-present lesson".

-Friday- 
We biked to the church in the rain to continue Facebook. We still don't know what we're doing. Later we visited a younger member named Andrew and taught him the first missionary discussion as a preview of missionary work. We spent the whole rest of the day biking around and trying peeps. Nothing happened.

-Saturday-
We did more Facebook in the morning. We kinda have an idea of what we're doing. Then we spent the whole rest of the day doing the same thing we've been doing. Biking around with no success. Something's got to change. We finished at Circle K buying soda and Doritos as a reward for making it through this day.

-Sunday-
2nd Sunday in Hurstbourne. It was much better than last week. I met several more members. Our bishop made a really cool point that I'll talk about in the small plates.

After church we did what we normally do. Biked around. No success. Obviously something's wrong. Right now, Facebook is looking like the only frontier we can do anything on because nothing is happening as far as in-person lessons. Maybe the lack of success this week was supposed to show us how badly we need to use Facebook in this area. Because we can't get anyone in person.

-> Small Plates <-

Our Bishop made this sweet comment that changed my perspective on the pre-earth life and this life. He said "You've already conquered Satan once before. You withstood his temptations and made a choice to come down here to this earth in the pre-earth life."

I enjoyed his wording with "You've already conquered Satan once before." I never thought about it like that before. It's true though. There are many times in this life where we (at least me) feel hopeless, discouraged, and troubled for one reason or another. Although life trials are a great source of growth, they often leave us discouraged and lost. These negative feelings of discouragement are not from God, they are from Satan.

God didn't set us up to fail. He set us up to grow. He set us up to succeed. But it's often easy to forget that and allow Satan's influenced to wear on us. But as our Bishop pointed out, we already conquered him before, and we can do it again.

I feel like this is one of many reasons why the phrase "always remember Him" is repeated twice in the sacrament prayers. In the bread prayer it says, "...and witness unto thee... that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember Him and keep His commandments which He has given them..." In the water prayer it says, "that they may witness unto thee... that they do always remember Him..."

Notice the slight difference between these prayers? In the bread prayer we witness that we are WILLING to remember Christ. In the water prayer we witness that we DO always remember Christ. If we always remember Christ, Satan's influences will have little, if any, power over us. We will conquer him again.

-> Closing Remarks <-

I have Facebook... this is so weird!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)

Enjoyed a delicious pineapple

Talking with everyone
#TWE

TWE Elders

Elder Williams

Elder Cox