Elder Ben 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