Teaching is Slowly Amping Up in Alexandria!

Hello everybody how is it all goin. It's been pretty solid out here in the field. This area is slowly ramping up. We are teaching more people so that is good. Still a lot of finding most of the days but we have a lot more teaching appointments now compared to the beginning of the transfer. 

I think I have talked a little bit about one of the guys we’re teaching named Jesse. He is a super cool guy and we have been teaching him and he is continuing to progress and it's awesome. He kinda looks like Post Malone without all of the tattoos haha. We started meeting with him twice a week so we can keep him on track and keep him solid. He struggles a little bit with smoking but he expressed to us that he wants to give it up. He says he only smokes two cigarettes a day so I figured that is not very much and that he should be able to break that habit. Overall though he is a solid guy and I love meeting with him!

So, funny story. On P-day this week we got rear ended so that was pretty lit. We were just sitting at a stop light and it was the four of us elders in the car then all of the sudden we just got nailed and all of our heads jerked forward and all of us were like "did we just get rear ended?" Sure enough we totally did. So we just pulled into a parking lot and a of course a teenager pops out of the car. Since it is a mission vehicle we had to call the police out and have them file a whole police report on it and get it all filed. Both cars were lucky because there is really no physical damage showing but the church still wants us to go through all the red tape just to make sure everyone is good and covered so it was a lil bit of a hassle. Good times, good times.

This week we had the opportunity to go and do some service for a man that we have found and kind of began teaching. He is such a cool guy too! He is in his mid 60's and works at a GM plant and works as a technician there. He is a devout Christian which is awesome. But yeah today we helped him move some wood in his yard because he has a cool project where his is just cutting up wood stumps and stacking it around is property and making it look like a fence. It's a pretty cool idea and it looks super cool. But it's a lot of work... But it was fun getting out of a white shirt and tie and getting down and getting to work. The coolest part though is, as we were moving the wood we were no joke able to teach him the entire restoration in the most casual way. It was so natural and real. It was more of a conversation because he was asking us great questions. It was super awesome and he seemed really interested and tuned in. He also already had a Book of Mormon and had been reading and he was asking us about that too! Over all it was super cool and I can’t wait to go back there and haul some more wood!

Overall a pretty solid week! Hope everyone is doing good! Love you all

This week goes out to Kobe, SEND IT FOR THE LORD

#MAMBA

-ELDER HILBURN

First accident in the mission

Hot Boxed As A Missionary?

What is up YALL, I'm coming to you all from the great town of ELWOOD Indiana!!! Its pretty lit out here I gotta say. Might not be that many people and might be the smallest town I have ever been to in my life BUT it is still sick and I love it. The church is true everywhere you go! The little branch I am serving in is small, but it has some great members in it. This past week had been fairly busy which is good. We have been able to have a decent amount of teaching appointments which is solid. 

We have been meeting with this lady named Peggy. She is probably in her 60's and she is the nicest lady. She was open to hear what we had to say so we just jumped on that opportunity. This last Thursday we had the opportunity to sit down with her and teach her the Resto. Now before I go any further I have to explain that this lady does not speak that much, she is super quiet. When ever we ask her a question she mainly just replies with a simple "yes" and that is it. It is hard to get her to talk more than a couple words but I think that she is getting it and she believes what we are saying to be true. I was able to talk to her a little bit about baptism and the importance of it and vaguely asked if that was something that she would be interested in and of course she replied with the simple answer of "yes" But that's good! Next time we meet with her we plan to get her on date. She's a super nice lady though and we like meeting with her!

Alright Alright Alright...., your probably wondering what the heck the title of email is all about. I can explain...dont worry I'm not that JACK of a missionary. Lolz. So there is this guy that the previous missionaries have been teaching for over a year now. His name is Bryan Z. but he goes by BZ. He is a super cool guy and he reminds me of Dale C.(a guy I taught in my last area). For starters I hadn't even met this guy yet. My companion had but he wasn't with me... I was with another Elder that was fresh from the MTC and I was taking him under my wing in the area. So obviously neither of us knew what we were going into haha. But anyway back to the story, we are welcomed in by BZ and we just talk for a little bit and get to know him. He's a super chill guy and has lived a pretty dope life. Now I feel like everyone out here in Indiana freaking is obsessed with there cigs. Everyone loves there cigs. It's really annoying. But yeah that's an addiction that we will help him get over. But we just talk with him for a little bit and then he asks us if we want to go into his garage and chill out there. So we were like sure, why not. By the way he's got a pretty sick garage. It's a dope man cave. But we sit down in the garage in some lawn chairs and just get to know him and talk to him. Of course the whole time he is smoking so it begins to get a little smokey in there. No fan, no nothin. It was gettin' rough. But that's not all... he then pulls out this little baggy from his pocket and of course what is it?? Yep you guessed it, some good ol mary jane. I was just thinking in my head, he's not gonna light that up in front of us? Right? Nahh fam I was mistaken. He sure did. He just began to smoke it and blow some fat clouds and the smoke was gettin heavy. It was a lot of weed haha. I just got up and said to BZ, you mind if I use your restroom? And he just said yeah go right ahead, I needed some air or I was about to die haha. I forgot about the greenie though, poor guy I just left him in there to fend for himself haha. But I just left the room to get some air then I came back and told BZ that we needed to get going. So yeah, then we just left and told him we'll be back next week and that we would read from the book of mormon with him and he was okay with that and is excited for us to come back. So yeah we'll being going back there this wednesday haha. Hopefully not to get hot boxed again. 

But yeah that was about the highlight of the week I gotta say. Pretty funny. Oh besides me bowling 145 today, hahahaha I was pretty proud of myself for that. Anyway I'll see yall next week with maybe another wild adventure.

Love you all, and dont forget to SEND IT FOR THE LORD

ELDER HILBURN

Bowling on P-Day with the district-Elder Ustch, Elder Hughes and Elder Hilburn

District Bowling day. Two old guys who wanted to chat with the Elders and Sisters.

NEW AREA, NEW COMP, NEW YEAR!

What is up all you wonderful people!? Lots of things have changed out here in Indy! It was all a shake up! Like I said in last week’s email I got moved to a new area and got a new comp. The area is much different than my last area. Like I have talked about it in my previous emails, we taught a lot back then. WELL... that has changed going into this area. The area I cover is pretty big geographically and we cover two towns. Alexandria and Elwood. We live in the town of Alexandria so we try to spend most of our time there so we don’t have to go all the way to Elwood. I am serving in a Branch also so it is really not big at all. Yesterday we had about 40 people total at church so like I said, not big, SMALL. It has definitely been quite an adjustment going from a city to a small podunk town, but there obviously is a reason why I need to be here. Whether it be a new person we find or a less active member that needs me here to influence them and help them in any way I can

I also (like it States in the title) got a new companion. His name is Elder Utsch and he’s from Tucson, Arizona. He’s a pretty chill guy and I like him a lot. 

This past week has been mostly filled with a lot of finding time. So we are either knocking doors or just walking around hunting for people to talk to in this tiny town. It's kinda cool though cause then we have a lot of time to get to know each other so it’s all good. 

We had an interesting experience this last week while knocking doors. As we were knocking this one door, a man pulls up in the driveway and gets out of his car to come talk to us because it was his house that we were knocking on. Of course the first thing he said (which we hear all the time) was "watchu sellin young boyaaahss" , just like that too, no kidding, lol. Of course we respond by saying, "we ain't sellin anything sir" We then just went on to have an interesting conversation about how our church was incorrect and we were a cult basically. It turned into a low key bible bash and I was getting heated. He was saying some ridiculous things and it was getting me mad. So basically it just ended with us agreeing to disagree. Funny thing was midway through the conversation he says that maybe he has us mixed up with Jehovah Witnesses.  As we were walking away I might have mumbled something to the affect "you'll be sorry in the next life for not listening to us!" He just walked into his house and didn’t say anything. Probably shouldn't have said that but I will have to work on controlling myself next time. It’s okay though I've already repented so I think I am good. Haha. 

Anyway y'all, I know this is a shorter email but that's about all exciting that has happened but love you all!

Remember everybody, stay stoked and SEND IT FOR THE LORD

ELDER HILBURN

I'm Outta Avon!!

As the title shows, I will he leaving the great area of Avon. I have grown to love this place. The people are insanely chill and so generous. I will miss the people we have been able to encounter and come in contact with. BUT, the work calls me to another place, SO that's where I will go! And that place is a placed called Elwood, Indiana. It's in the BOONIES, which means the absolute middle of nowhere. But I'm kinda excited and ready for a new adventure. I'm ready to throw the gospel on some people out there in the middle of a bunch of cornfields. It will be much different than I am used to here in Avon but the Lord must need me in Elwood for some reason! Anyway so I thought I would start off with telling you all the update of where I will be going. 

Anyway, this last week was yet another awesome week. On Tuesday we had the great opportunity to go to Zone Conference for Christmas Eve. It was a nice day. We started off going through the new missionary handbook for a couple hours. Then we got to reenact the nativity scene then after that we watched the movie "The fighting preacher", which I had already seen but it was pretty tight to be able to watch a movie let me tell you lol.

On Wednesday it was obviously Christmas. We were not allowed to go out and tract or proselytize so we were just asked to visit ward members or people we had been teaching. So, we ended up with four meal appointments...Too much food for this little guy. I thought I was gonna be sick by the end of the day. It was a pretty relax and chill day so it was nice. The members here are great and really take care of their missionaries, it is quite a blessing. Hopefully my new area will be the same!! Everybody cross your fingers that they will be dope people!! 

I'm not sure if I have talked about the less active man named Jovid but he is a super cool guy who was baptized ages ago but has fell in and out of activity and can’t seem to stay fully active. We have been meeting with him on a regular basis for as long as I have been here, so for quite a while. We are striving to get him into the temple and are seeing promising signs that he is on the right track. But man does the adversary like to attack him, it seems like whenever he gets on the straight and narrow Satan attacks him full force. For instance, he just recently found out that his fourteen year old daughter is pregnant. He has no money and is doing everything he can to pay his child support. The poor man has a lot of issues.  We went over there this last Saturday and offered to give him a priesthood blessing. After we were able to give him one, he said that he felt more peace and more comfort knowing that Heavenly Father would help him as long as he has faith. I really think this blessing was the turning point because he actually made it to church the next day! That is a major miracle because as long as I have been here he had only gone to church twice! So it was amazing to see! We had a cool opportunity to be able to provide a service for our good friend Jovid. So since both me and Elder Driscoll knew that we would both be leaving we knew that we had food at the apartment that neither of us were going to take along with us to our next area. Side note: Jovid had texted us earlier that day if we had a food to spare that we could give him. He actually only asked if we could give him some potato chips and some lemonade. But of course since we were leaving and had nothing to do with the food, we decided that we would give it all to Jovid. We both felt that it was the right thing to do and that he was in a time of need and he out of anyone really needed our assistance. I think it was all meant to be that we had this much left over food to give him. The Lord works in mysterious ways! But it felt really good being able to provide a service for someone I have really grown to love for who he is as a person. 

So since we found out we were leaving on Saturday we were able to let the Ward members on Sunday know that neither of us would be staying and they would be getting two new elders. I gotta say, the ward wasn't too happy ‘bout that...not sure why..hmm I don’t know... must've just been that good I guess. Haha totally kidding. But yeah people didn’t want us to go. Especially our friend Eshet, he is the investigator that I talked a little about last week in my email. Anyway, after Sacrament meeting was over we went over to talk to him and see how his Sunday was going so far. We had some small talk as we always do with him. But then I told him that we would both be getting transferred out of the area and we wouldn't be able to continue meeting with him. And in his exact words, his response was, "What D Heeel" it was hilarious haha. It made it even funnier because he has  thick Ethiopian accent and so when he said it in his accent it was just so funny. I will miss him and his family greatly! The good part though is he asked me if I could baptize him, so when he and his family get baptized I will obviously be able to attended because I will be able to baptize him. So that is super exciting, I can’t wait for that day to come. It will hopefully be by the end of January or early February! 

Well everybody this week has been pretty stellar, even though I will miss this area greatly, I know the Lord has something in store for me in Elwood, Indiana. 

Remember everybody, Stay stoked and SEND IT FOR THE LORD.

ELDER HILBURN

Eshet and his amazing family

Jovid and his wife

These two senior sisters have helped this ward and these elders so much

Ward Mission Leader with Elder Hilburn and Elder Driscoll

Saying goodbyes to the Great people in Avon