My First Baptism!

Well I have just finished my first transfer so that is exciting! One down and many to go haha. But it's all good because I am now not the newest one in the mish. There will be newbies flying in today so that's pretty dope. They will be having the same feelings that I had when I first landed, like, "what am I doing here??" But it's all good I think after six weeks I have figured out why I am here haha. I better hope so. 

Just like usual we have been teaching quite a lot of people this past week. Still can't really remember them all just because there are so many! Which is a good thing. On Tuesday we had zone conference for my zone and the zone above my zone. We talked a lot about service and how we should conduct service and how we should find more service opportunities in our daily missionary lives. President also talked a lot about how we need to find service opportunities where we are not just trying to serve them to teach them. He told us that we should find service opportunities to serve people because we genuinely want to serve these people rather than just serving them because we want to maybe set up a return appointment to teach them. That was the main point from zone conference that we talked about what stuck with me the most. 

Later that night I had the opportunity to participate in my very first baptism! We got to baptize the family that we have been recently teaching, you know the family that we were offered beers at..., yeah that family. But anyway it was a great baptism and I was able to baptize the little boy whose name was Alex. He told me he was nervous to do it and I just reassuringly told him that I was nervous too! Don’t know if that helped him or not but at least we were on common ground haha. The rest of the week was a bit of a blur and don’t remember a whole lot but it was a good week!

Oh ya, except today we were able to visit the Indy 500 museum. Kind of a cool place. Pictures down below.

Hope all is well back at home and hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Hilburn

Indy 500 Race way museum 

Elder Hilburn's First Baptism!

Same Firemen Different week!

What is up y’all still out here in Indiana as usual just kickin’ it and preachin’ the gospel. This week has gone by pretty fast but like at the same time it has gone slow. It's a weird feeling. It is crazy to say though that my first transfer in the field is over in one week. I've already been out on my mission for just about two months but it feels like I have only been out for a couple of days. It is pretty radical. To be honest I can't really remember all that much that happened this week. It's all a blur just because of how many people we teach a day. 

We are still teaching a heck of a lot of people, and the baptism that was supposed to be like two weeks ago is actually happening tomorrow so that will be tight. It's the Wood family that I have previously talked about. They are a pretty interesting family, but you know, everyone is entitled to the gospel so more power to them.

We had the opportunity to go back the lady’s house(Where we got in trouble with the leaf burning) to do some more service for her so that was nice. We were there all day Saturday and cleaned up the rest of the leaves and DID NOT burn them... we just bagged them up and called it a day. It's always nice getting out of the collared shirt and tie and get into my normy clothes. 

Fun story,, so on Thursday we woke up to the sound of the fire alarm blaring in our ears and apparently there was a fire in the building. So we got up and went outside to the freezing cold and sat out there till the fire department showed up. Funny enough, the same firemen that reported to the so called "house fire" last week showed up to our apartment again. So these boys must really love us haha. It turned out to be a false alarm and luckily there was no fire. 

Other than that not much else exciting has happened just keeping the work moving forward.

Oh actually it finally snowed here. Today was the first day that we had some real snow!! It is wet snow and not very pretty. It's nothing like Utah snow that's for sure but it's still snow so there's that.

Well see yeah later everyone have a good week and share the gospel!

Elder Hilburn

 

Same Firemen as last week!?

Elder Hilburn's District being goofy

Indiana's First snow fall

Last Week Wuz the Police, this week Wuz the fire Department...

Well hello ladies and gentlemen it’s been a pretty solid week out here in the field. The week hasn't been too eventful. Had some pretty usual days out here just teaching nonstop every hour of the day which I know sounds weird for some people that know and who have been on missions. But yeah I literally teach every day of the hour and it's awesome. I have already learned so much from it and having the opportunity to teach so much. It has really grown my testimony for just the month that I have been out here for. Just seeing these people change from the very first day we met them is rewarding in its self-it’s pretty cool.

There's so many people I'm not even sure which person I should talk about but I guess I will just pick one. Kavonea is someone we have been teaching recently and we came across her walking around Westlake where she was smoking. We asked if she would like to hear a message about Jesus Christ and it has only gotten better from that point on that we first scheduled an appointment with her. She is about 24 and has two little kids. Her little son has severe autism and it is really hard on her. We have been meeting with her regularly, about two times a week. Me and my companion both have seen such a change in her it is just incredible. We asked her to be baptized on just the second meeting with her and she was ecstatic and expressed to us that she does want to be baptized so it's pretty cool. We have been continually meeting with her she is attending church so we hope to see her get baptized within the next month or so!

This last Wednesday I had the opportunity to go to what is called "specialized training" which is basically a orientation for all the greenies. It consisted all whole lot of preaching and listening to people talk all day long. I mean it was a good time but after the first three hours I kind of got a little bored and lost focus haha. But it was good overall. I got my "mission driver's license" haahah. So I have a little card that I have to login in to the car so it can track everything I do and can only go 6 mph over the speed limit. I gotta say its killing me. But.. there is this one road in our area that GPS does not recognize so we can go as fast as we want on that road it is pretty sick hahaha. On the subject of driving... the drivers here absolutely stink. They make Utah drivers look like outstanding drivers I kid you not. Here in Indiana when people see the yellow light they speed up and everyone runs red lights. Drivers here just are not good. They’re more oblivious then any Utah driver. No offense to all you Utards out there. My bad. No offense. 

Enough about the drivers. This week I got to go on exchanges and get out my area. So I got to relax for Halloween. I went on exchanges with the eagle creek elders and I went with Elder Plueger. He’s pretty dope and chill. He is yet another Utard but he’s cool. We really couldn't do much that day because it was Halloween but we still tried. In the morning we decided to go tracting on a little college campus that was in the area. We walked around for a bit and tried to talk to people but they kept giving us dirty looks. It wasn't till we got into the center of the campus to finally notice that the school is straight up a catholic school so we got out of there fast because it was a catholic school and it was a private school and we weren’t even allowed there so oops. After that we went to lunch then went to go visit some people. Our president didn't want us out from 6-9 so we were told to go visit a members house. So that's what we did. We went to this members home to just hangout. Now let me tell yuh this family is way into board games. They have hundreds of board games and a whole separate board game room with a custom table. So that's what we did... we played board games all night it was a pretty tight Halloween. That was how I spent my Halloween it was sick. Lemme know how you guys spent your 

Halloween hahaha. 

On Saturday we had the opportunity to do some service so I was blessed with the opportunity to wear regular clothes all day and it was amazing. I felt like myself again it was beautiful. This man that we have been meeting with is a less active and we have been trying to get him back to church. But he asked us if we would help him go out to his mom's house and help him do some yard work and help him move around some furniture inside the house. So of course we said heck yes we will come help you. We got over there and went into the house and oh my lemme tell you...I thought my dad had a lot of TV's in his house but I think this 75 year old woman has him beat. I kid you not there was a TV in every corner. And they were all at least 55 in TV's. They were all like brand new as well. My mind was blown. It was pretty hilarious. Anyway, we moved around some furniture for her to help accommodate her TV situation better. Haha. After we did that we went out into the backyard and began to rake up a whole crap ton of leaves. There was so many leaves guys its was crazy. (Side note: we were at these people's house literally all day) We didn't know what to do with all these leaves, there was so many we had built a huge pile it was taller than me. So we decided to burn the crap out of them and have a huge bonfire. Now in the back of my head I thought to myself "this might not be legal but we had burn days in California" So I just keep goin at it throwing more gasoline to the fire to burn these leaves to the ground. Well this huge bonfire was creating quite a consistent billow of smoke. This went on for about an hour or so before we heard the first set of sirens. Me and my comp looked at each other and just wondered if they were coming to us. 30 minutes went by and no fire fighters showed up. Then we heard the second set of sirens and then within ten minutes there were three firetrucks at the house. About eight fire fighters come ambushing around the back and tell us we can’t be doing this. I told the firefighter I was from California and he was like "then you of all people should know better" and I just laughed and he walked away lol. They had so many fire fighters on scene it was wild. They then pulled out there huge fire hoses and put out our hard work. Very eventful day to say the least. Pretty dope to be a missionary not gonna lie. 

It has been a pretty good week and I love the missionary life! I don’t have to worry about anything except bringing people to Christ. I love the gospel! See you all next week folks

SEND IT FOR THE LORD

Elder Hilburn

Brother Bronson Kelly In town on business From my ward in Alpine! Wow what a cool surprise!

prepping for a day of service

Well learned a good lesson not to burn leaves