Dear Family,
Another busy week here in Scottsburg. I was bitter cold for most of it.
-> Large Plates <-
-Monday-
This was the busiest P-Day I've had in a long time. We spent a lot of time cleaning the apartment and I spent a lot of time maintaining and cleaning my bike. This poor apartment has been hashed by years of missionaries living in it. I'm probably going to be working on it until I die here.
In the evening we taught a lady named Ms J. She's one of our baptismal dates. She has a newborn baby that she kept talking about. It was hard to teach her. Sis Boettcher was also there. She tried to help us teach but Ms J was more interested in talking about her concerns with her new baby than talking about the gospel. This is her first kid so she's figuring out the whole mom thing.
After Ms J, we saw the Hyde family. Bro Hyde was baptized about 6 months ago. His 16 year old son was recently baptized. We went in with a plan to teach something but wound up giving service by helping them put their Christmas tree up. It was nice to be able to do that since missionaries don't get many chances to set up a full tree on their missions.
-Tuesday-
What better way to start a day than with rain? We walked around and biked around in the rain for the first part of the day. There's a tiny man-made lake that we go to occasionally. We found a paved trail that led into the woods from the lake that we never noticed before. We went down it. It was a fun mile or so adventure bike ride through the woods. The trail ended in the northern part of town next to the hospital.
We went to a nursing home to help old people play Bingo. That was fun. The two old ladies they had me sit next to wouldn't stop talking. Elder Kloepfer would call out a number and I would help these two find them. One of the ladies got to a point where she had 4 possible Bingo's on her card but none of the 4 numbers she needed would come up. She almost covered her whole board before one of those numbers came up. It was funny to see how close she was.
We visited this LA named Bro L. He's been a member for a few years. Loves the church. He's your normal LA that wants to come back to church and get to the temple but lacks the full desire to do so. This was my first time meeting him. He wanted to read out of the BoM. I felt impressed to read Mosiah 4 with him. It basically threw down on everything he was doing wrong. Now he seems to have more of a desire to come back.
We finished the night with Mr M. We found out he's on probation which means he can't be baptized until we talk to President Brough.
-Wednesday-
We saw Ms J again and had a much more productive lesson this time. We actually made it through the first lesson. Although it took 2 hours. She has some member friends who found out about her baptismal date and told her she couldn't get baptized because she's not living all the standards. We were planning on addressing those concerns later down the line but wound up addressing them then and there. Ms J was great about it. She still wants to learn and eventually be baptized. She just has some things she needs to fix. So her baptismal date dropped too.
Afterwards, we biked around in the bitter cold. Sounds fun right? It's not. Don't do it. We decided to take a rest on some benches by that man-made lake that I mentioned earlier. While we were sitting this guy came up to us and asked "How long has that eagle been there?" We asked "Eagle? What eagle?" He then pointed out this huge Bald Eagle that was sitting in a tree not far from where we were sitting. I had never seen a wild Bald Eagle before so I naturally shot out of the bench and tried to get close to take a pic. It flew off before I could get close enough to take a decent pic. Dang!
We taught Miss B, the 9 year old, at the church. This time we went over L3. She seemed to understand it well. She's on track to be baptized on December 31. Elder Boettcher was there and offered some great input.
-Thursday-
Thursdays are our service days here in Scottsburg. In the morning we drove with the Boettchers to this place called the "Clearing House". It's where local stores donate food. All we did there was stock shelves and sort cans. It was easy service. They let us raid the place when we finish helping. #FreeFood
After that we walked around Austin in the bitter cold for a couple hours. Bitter cold = Unimaginable amounts of fun!...
After the "fun" we helped out at a church food kitchen called "Food 4 R Souls". It's similar to the Pitino Shelter in Owensboro and the Methodist Church in Hurstbourne. We help serve food to people who need/want it. We probably fed the whole town with how many people were there. It took almost 2 hours. There was a near constant stream of people. I helped people get drinks. I served two things. Lemonade and coffee. Guess which one I emphasized more. There was a surprising number of kids ages 5-10 who got coffee. Like all my other food kitchens, we ate there too when everything was done. Honestly this place has the best service food I've had. It's quality.
We finished the night with Bro Lloyd again. He wanted to read again. This time I was impressed to read Alma 32 with him. Again, it was directly applicable to him. He seems to have more desire to come back.
-Friday-
Had a Zone meeting in New Albany. I've had a lot of those in New Albany. There were two trainings. Elder Irwin trained on the mission culture and the Zone Leaders trained on desire vs. motivation. The desire vs. motivation training was interesting. It was based off of something Elder Bednar recently said. One of Elder Bednar's sons is a bishop over one of the wards in our mission so Elder Bednar visits our mission a lot more frequently than other Apostles do. Elder Bednar just doesn't hold mission conferences every time he comes to visit his son.
About 3 weeks ago Elder Bednar spoke in his son's Sacrament meeting. I think about 6 missionaries from our mission were present in that. One of those missionaries asked him what the differences between desire and motivation were. Elder Bednar's response was "desire is worldly". Based off of that statement and other statements he made, the whole mission is now training on this.
Sis Tindall, from Owensboro, tagged me in a post during the meeting. It was her recounting of 2016 and all that happened to her. She mentioned how Elder Salazar and I started teaching her family and eventually, they got baptized by the sisters that were transferred in. It was special to be acknowledged in her conversion. It was also Elders Passmore and Gough that started teaching them too, but it wasn't until I left that they become full investigators.
We had a fantastic Restoration lesson with Mr A, the only Hispanic in Scottsburg. The Boettchers and us were basically pounding him with the Spirit and the truths of the Restoration. Our efforts paid off a bit. He still won't commit to a baptismal date but he's quite a bit closer now. He'll probably accept one in the next week or two.
We finished at the Hydes again. We helped with their tree some more and taught Mr A some of the new member lessons. He's about done with the new member lessons. He just has a few more principles to go.
-Saturday-
What's the most effective thing to do in the morning in a small town? Why, bike around of course! In the bitter cold! Yeah! That's exactly what we did! I can't tell you how "fun" it was! I learned something new about my bike as I was freezing. If you ride through a puddle and get your rims wet, the water will freeze instantly on the cold metal rims. Which makes the brakes entirely useless. I thought getting brakes wet was bad enough. Getting ice on them literally makes them so they're not there. They do nothing at that point. So now I know to avoid puddles when it's bitter cold outside.
We had coordination meeting with the mission leader, Bro Ponder, at the Boettcher's home. It was a good meeting. We talked about a lot of the individual members and how to help them. It took a while but it was good. During the meeting Sis Boettcher kept feeding us cake.
What's the most effective thing to do in the evening in a small town? You guessed it! Bike around! And don't forget in the bitter cold too! Not just regular cold. Bitter cold! The kind of cold that has humidity behind it that'll cut through all your clothing! Say good bye to your fingers and toes! You don't need those anyway.
We saw Ms Ro, one of our recent converts. We did what seems to be the favored thing with converts here, which is read out of the BoM with her. She works nights at Walmart so mornings are a struggle for her. We tried to help build her desire to return to church.
-Sunday-
Went to church, gave a decent talk, and had branch council after... yeah...
I saw the 3rd largest town in our area, Crothersville. Scottsburg's the biggest. Austin's 2nd. Crothersville's 3rd. We bike around all of Crothersville in an hour. In the rain. It wasn't bitter cold though. It was in the 40's. Bitter cold is below 32. I've become so accustomed to bitter cold now that normal cold doesn't bother me much.
After Crothersville, we went to Austin and did more biking in the rain. We actually met some cool people that might be interested! So, worth it!
We had #DinnerWithTheBoettchers. They fed us pork tenderloin. Man,it was good! They're quite the cooks. They're literally my second parents! They go home in March so my last month here won't be as fun. Unless another senior couple replaces them. Pray for that!
-> Small Plates <-
I noticed something interesting in the scriptures this week. As we were reading Alma 32 with Bro Lloyd I noticed that Alma used the phrase "learn wisdom" in verse 12. That reminded me of King Benjamin's use in Mosiah 2:17 "I tell you these things that he may learn wisdom..."
Our of curiosity I wanted to see how many times the scriptures use that phrase. There's not that many.
1 in the Old Testament. Proverbs 30:3.
5 in the Book of Mormon. 2 Nephi 28:30; Mosiah 2:17; Alma 32:12; 37:35; 38:9.
2 in the Doctrine and Covenants. D&C 97:1; 136:32.
I looked up the definition of "wisdom" and it basically means knowledge and good judgement gained through experience. Or in other words, knowledge through experience.
Well, that's perfectly applicable to the gospel. You learn more about the gospel through experience. As you experience the gospel you see how its teachings offer the best way to live. It's a sort of cycle of knowledge. As you experience, your knowledge grows. As your knowledge grows, you learn to stick to the gospel. As you stick to the gospel, you continue to have experiences in the gospel which will further your knowledge. Yay!
Cool! Right?
-Elder Benjamin Kohkonen Cox (GKLM)
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