Serving in Kentucky: Patience

August 22, 2016

Dear Family,

These last 3 weeks have been a good test of our patience. I've noticed that the Lord loves testing my Christlike attributes from time to time. This time it was Patience. Waiting for the Lord's promised blessings to be fulfilled. This week things started picking up a bit. Hopefully we continue to see an increase.

-> Large Plates <-

-Monday-

Another good P-Day. I got new brake pads for my bike. Now it stops faster than it did before. I got our District Leader, Elder Patten to buy me ice cream. I sparingly bugged him about it over the space of 3 weeks and he finally bought me ice cream. He said he didn't remember why he owed me ice cream. Lol

Our bishop asked us to give the sacrament to the Edwards family. Sis Edwards is sick often and Bro Edwards works a lot. We called Sis Edwards and she wanted us to meet her at a local martial arts studio that Bro Edwards attends.

When we arrived, Sis Edwards came out with Bro Edwards and their daughter to take the Sacrament. So we did the Sacrament outside in a parking lot. That was honestly, not the first time I've done that. What made it even better is this particular martial arts studio is a Christian-based studio. Normally in martial arts you start and end by bowing to the instructor. Here, they start and end with a prayer, and talk about Jesus throughout the whole session. They've got swords of every kind everywhere next to their crosses. It was pretty funny.

After we did the sacrament, Sis Edwards invited us over for dinner. She made this amazing Alfredo pasta with crab meat in it. It was heavenly! After dinner we gave Sis Edwards a blessing for her health. The Edwards are fairly recent converts. They've been members for about 4 years. It was actually a blessing that she received during her investigation that converted them because it healed her. They're a nice family.

-Tuesday-

We did a lot of biking. We tried peeps at the bottom of the area, and made our way to the top as we went through the day. At one point we had to backtrack a few miles because a shortcut we thought we could take wound up not existing. So... that was fun...

We were supposed to see the guy who was sustained a priest last week, but he had to cancel on us.

There was a professional cleaning crew that came this week and we found that the primary children had left Plan of Salvation drawings on the ground and on every board in the church for this crew to see and possibly become interested. It was cute :).

-Wednesday-

Service day! We went to Habitat for Humanity and served there. We moved a lot of stuff around in the store itself.

After that, we saw Eric and read Mosiah 2 with him and discussed the chapter. He loves reading with us. He's doing great. It's nice to see how well-received he is in the ward.

-Thursday-

Started off with district meeting. Elders Perman and Hopkins gave a great training on Patience and Diligence and Elder Patten tied it all together with Hope at the end. I love Christlike attribute trainings. I feel like they're the most spiritually powerful. They're like core workouts. Your core effects everything else. Like Christlike attributes, who you are effects what you do.

Later on we met with a LA named Charles. This was my first time meeting him. He joined about a year ago but something happened at his work and he shut himself off from everyone. We went over, talked with him, and got him to open up about the church very easily. We read 2 Nephi 31 with him and he loved it. He committed to come to church this week. However, Charles is going to be hard for me and Elder Williams. He's a huge gamer, and we're both gamers, so... It's easy to get off topic. :)

-Friday-

We had an interesting encounter in the morning. We met a couple that was arguing with each other. We asked them if they "had a minute for Jesus?" and instantly they broke up and said, "Yes! We need a minute with Jesus." Turns out, some crazy lady attacked this woman's car and was trying to get to her husband. This caused some contention with this couple. The crazy lady claimed she knew the husband. We talked for a few minutes and taught them how family-centered the church is and how it can help families. They loved the discussion and wanted a BoM. Hopefully we get to teach them more.

The rest of the day was #TryingPeepsForDays

-Saturday-

We had coordination with our mission leader. We talked about how we can get the members involved with Facebook. After that, we biked to the church in the rain again. That happens a lot here.

When we finished at the church, we visited the Barrington family. We met Bro Barrington for the first time last week. He was walking outside and we contacted him like normal. He told us he was the bishop before Bishop Finder. When we stopped by this day, we happened to get in right before a severe rain storm hit. Thankfully!

Here's another thing that was cool. Sis Barrington and I are Fb friends. When I redid my page I felt promoted to put my full name on it. Sis Barrington saw my middle name and asked me about it. She asked me if I knew an Elmer, Eva, Kent, and Carol. I was like "Yes! They're my family!" She said she grew up in the same ward as them. She would have been pretty young but she remembered them growing up. She used to commute to Salt Lake and back when Elmer was working with the sacrament cups. I told her about my plastic sculpture that Elmer made.

I thought it was awesome to meet someone who knew my great-grandparents. She said she remembers Kent but that he's a lot older than her.

We finished the night meeting with Charles again. This time we had a good discussion on why God gave us some basic commandments and the blessings we get for following them.

-Sunday-

We had a great Sacrament meeting again. Elder Williams spoke on the two great commandments. Bro Broadwater spoke on obedience, and Bro Ellis spoke on charity. I remember being on a bit of a spiritual high after that. I don't know if it's me, or if Sacrament meetings have been getting better.

Bro Broadwater had some good things to say about obedience that put a helpful perspective on things. He said in his mission they had a scale that literally measured obedience and at the end of the week you had to report how obedient or disobedient you were to the mission leaders. That would be way worse to deal with than the TWE accountability. He also told an experience on his mission where he and his companion decided to drive up a mountain to basically waste time and when they reached the top, a bolt of lightning stuck the ground in front of them. They saw the sand melting. They realized at that point that the Lord wasn't happy with them wasting time. They tried to get to the bottom of the mountain but it started raining so badly that their car got stuck. They had to get some members to help and tell them exactly what happened. So they got a bolt of lightning and the members calling them idiots to keep them from being disobedient in the future.

After church we went to the Mornins for lunch. They're a nice young family with 3 kids. They fed us spaghetti and we gave them The Brother of Jared Challenge. They loved it. This week we had more members sign up on our meal calendar than usual. Something we're doing is paying off. #Diligence #EndureToTheEnd

-> Small Plates <-

I don't have a spiritual message this week. Instead I would like to simply show that when we are persistent, the Lord will bless us. We didn't have much going for us in the first few weeks but now that we've worked hard and have started gaining the members trust, we're starting to have more happen. The Lord is blessing us.

-> Closing Remarks <-

Thank you all so much!

-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)