Elder Ben Hilburn: 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