Elder Ben Hilburn: FIRST WEEK IN INDIANA!

What is up everyone this is Elder Hilburn here clocking in from Indianapolis Indiana!!! I finally made it here! The MTC was great! I loved it there and will miss the people there but I'm glad that I'm back in the real world.

My journey to Indy took all dayyyy longgg. We left the MTC bright and early at 6:45 MST time and didn't get into Indy till 7:30 EST. So it was a long trek to say the least but it was worth it. When we got there we were greeted by our mission president and his wife, President and Sister Page, and the two AP's. My mission president is super cool and really laid back. He is always cracking jokes with us and acts like an 18 year old sometimes, but I love that. His wife Sister Page is super nice and is always looking for ways to help her missionaries out. The AP's are cool and since I already knew one of them that really helped me to get a little more comfortable with the whole being a missionary. From that point on we just went straight to the mission home. They had planned to take us to the temple and see it but it was already like 10 o clock before we even left the airport so we just went straight to the mission home. When we arrived they had food all ready for us and that was a freaking blessing because I hadn't eaten all day and literally thought I was going to die. The food was pretty solid and I liked it. The next morning we were all taken to the mission office where we had some initial training and then we were hooked up with our companions and sent off to our areas. My new companion’s name is Elder Driscoll and he's from somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Idaho. So that's cool lol. My new area is called Avon, Indiana and it covers basically the western outskirts of Indiana. It's an interesting area to say the least. There is basically only a couple places we go though, because that's where most of the work is. There is a place called Westlake apartments that has basically all of our investigators. It is a legit compound. The place is enormous. It looks like a government built complex that houses thousands of people. But yeah that's mainly where we are everyday because most of our investigator’s come from there. The area that I am in has a big population of Africans in it and a lot of them speak Yoruba. So, I have been learning a couple phrases in Yoruba because they say it is an Ice breaker and if you say something as simple as hello in their language they will want to talk to you. So I have been learning little phrases here and there. I even get a name tag in that language which is pretty tight. There are a lot of people that we are teaching. There's probably 15 people that were teaching on a consistent basis and there about 8 on date within these next two months. So the work is not slow around here what so ever. My area is supposed to be a full time car area but we are actually sharing our car with another set of elders so we get the car three days a week and they get it three days a week and then we share it on P day each week. We are currently just using the other missionaries bikes until we get our own. But this area like I said is only supposed to be for a car so the boundaries are fairly big so when were on the bike we have long treks to everywhere we go and can't say that it's all that fun. Even though I love bikes and love riding bikes, riding them on flat ground with no jumps what so ever gets old pretty quick.

There is a man that we have been teaching whose name is Scott. Oh man he is a big job to say the least. A little background on Scott, he is about 26 years old who lives with his mom in her one bedroom apartment. He has no job. He has a huge problem with drinking and smoking. He also has a very big problem with the law of chastity. Almost every time we go over there he is hammered it's pretty sad but he absolutely loves the gospel. He has already told us that he wants to get baptized but he just can't get over the drinking, smoking, and chastity problems. On Thursday we thought it would be a good idea to just get him out of his house. So we went and got him and we walked him down to Wendy's and we got lunch together. Keep in mind he is drunk at the time so we had to manage him like a little baby. We gave him a small lesson on the plan of salvation and then after we told him that he needs to get a job. He agreed. So we decided to take him all around the area where he lives and have him apply to any place he can to try and get a job. One of the places we went he started to fill out an application and the lady told him that he has a warrant out for his arrest and that she could not accept the application. So we then took him back to his apartment and left him. The next day we wanted to go back and see how he was doing and we wanted to take him to a baptism so he can see what it's like. Sure enough he was completely wasted but we took him anyway. Yes we took a drunk man to a baptism. Great idea right? He actually really enjoyed it and towards the end he became sober when the alcohol began to wear off. He was very happy and thankful that we had been helping him. We took him back to his home and said goodbye. Before we could say goodbye he started yelling at us because he thought we took his cigarettes. He was going through a withdrawal and he was taking it out on us. He began throwing things everywhere and cussing us out. It was sad to see this all happen and we were really close to calling the cops but we didn't. We said goodbye to him and that was it. We hope that his heart can be softened and we can be able to come back and he can try to overcome his weaknesses. Everyone pray for him! That's the story of the week! Haha

I also had the delightful opportunity to ride my bike in the pouring rain so that was just wonderful. I think that was the first time I asked myself "what am I doing here???" But I know what I am doing is right and I'm glad I'm here. It has been a great learning experience and I'm am excited for what's the come. I love all you guys and hope you have a great week!

SEND IT FOR THE LORD

Elder Hilburn