COVID-19 TRYNA TAKE US MISSIONARIES OUT!

This week hasn't been the most exciting week but it is still a great time to be a missionary! This whole Cornavirus stuff is freaking everyone out and it is for sure making it hard on us missionaries to do our work! We are still allowed to do our normal everyday proselytizing but everyone else is panicking so no one really wants to talk to us lol. Which isn't much different as our normal day proselytize...haha. People act like we are the cornavirus when we try to come up to them and talk to them lol. It's all good tho, every time someone doesn’t want to talk to us or straight up insults us I just think to myself, "sucks for your dawg, it's your salvation that your dissing on" Anyyywaayyy, enough about that lol. I would say the highlight of my week was going on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went to their area and currently they are serving on Ball State University.

It's a pretty big campus, Comparable to BYU or UVU. Most of what they do there on campus and what we did was walk around outside and talk to everyone and anyone. It is pretty fun because you have to just start random conversations with people and it can be challenging sometimes but that is what makes it the most fun. The atmosphere was just super cool. I felt like a college student all day walking around campus. It was pretty dang dope. I haven't seen so many people in one place in sooo long. Well about three months to be exact hahah. It was a sensory overload! We were super busy though all day. We had about five appointments. All with college students of course, it was pretty cool having lessons with people on campus. Just not what I am used to but I thought it was pretty dope. It was a bit of a good break because it brought me back to my last area of being super busy and staying busy all day. Which is what I need and love as a missionary. So it rejuvenated me to go back to my area and grind even though there ain't as much going on. Oh, also I forgot to mention that I was in a trio for that day. That was also hecka fun. Being with two 

other dudes makes it double the fun hahaha. 

That next morning Elder Ravsten (the zone leader) asked if we wanted to go on a run and a I was like "ehhh I'm super out of shape" but then I didn’t want to seem like a pansy so I was like "aight let's send it for the boys" So we did. Didn’t’ necessarily like the run itself but we ran all through campus so that was pretty cool. I was kinda dying towards the end because I was doing everything in my power to keep up so I looked sorta in shape, it was rough but I needed it. Turns out it was four miles which isn't really much but that was a lot for me for not running for so long lol. Overall the exchange on Ball State was pretty dang lit. Due to the cornavirus though, literally that next day after I left they shut down campus all together. Also they shut down every other major campus in Indiana. Everybody is freaking out its nuts. Also there ain't nothing in the stores anymore so don’t know how we gonna survive lol. The lord will figure it out for us missionaries so not worried at all.

Yesterday felt pretty slow because we had no church which throws everything off. Usually our Sundays are pretty full and busy but without church that threw everything off haha. It's all good though we had a unique Sunday!

We got to go do service for our good ole fellow Kim G. The guy we've been teaching. We helped him around his yard again and moved some things for him. He is super into metal detecting so after we finished the stuff in the yard he pulled out his detectors and showed us the ropes. It was kinda funny to see him all into it lol. But now I can say I am a first class detector and I'll find anything you throw my way yooooo.

We have been receiving emails from our president like multiple times a day for the past couple of days updating us on the situation with Covid-19. We are supposed to have zone Conference this next week but we have been told by the missionary department we are not allowed to meet together as big groups. They are working on doing zone Conference over video chat somehow so that will be interesting. Even though they cancelled church we are still allowed to do everything that we normally do. Might be hard though because no one will want to talk to us haha.  

Other than the pandemic that is going on currently, missionary life is pretty dope! I know that everything is happening for a reason and it is inspired by God! I know that President Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of God and he is leading and guiding us through this time! I love this gospel with all my heart and love proclaiming it to everyone I come in contact with. Nowhere else I'd rather be!

Love you all, stay inside, and SEND IT FOR THE LORD

ELDER HILBURN

Elder's Being Elders, A Little frisky golf and then retrieving the frisby

Some good wall art

Best slide in the city

Its cold but still a happy Missionary

For Floor Installation: Call 1-800-Elder Hilburn

As the title says, if y'all need someone to put in your flooring, IM YOUR MAN. This past week we were able to help out a less active family (The Baugh Family) in our branch that is remodeling their house and they were putting in wood floors. We stopped by to see if they needed any help and sure enough they invited us back to help them put in their floors! This will be my third floor installation project on my mission.,haha. I don’t know what Heavenly Father is trying to tell me but I sure hope he's not trying to tell me what my future career is. I like doing this as service on my mission but sure don’t want to be doing this for my livelihood... It has been a fun project though on the mish for sure. I have learned a lot of skills that I definitely would have never learned if I wasn't out here on my mission being put in these circumstances so in that way I know for a fact that I am here for a reason. And, because I love it! I know that Heavenly Father guided us to stop by this families home to see how they were doing and see if they needed any help. They have been going through a hard time with this remodeling project and they are also crunched for time and money. I know without a shadow of a doubt that Heavenly Father placed us there at that exact moment so that we could help them as much as we could. The husband even told us he took his only week of vacation this past week so he could do as much as he could at the house and he won’t have anymore vacation time for the rest of the year! My comp and I felt so blessed to have this cool experience!

The week of my birthday I had the flu so I wasn't able to accomplish much. I read a lot from the scriptures that week! Haha. When you’re stuck in an apartment with nothing to do you seem to just want to read the scriptures or listen to Conference talks! I learned a whole lot that week! Also never thought I'd see myself doing that but that's how I know I've changed! And changed for the better! Part of the sick week we were on exchanges and I was with Elder Hughes in his area. I wasn't planning on being sick the entire week but my body thought otherwise. So I ended up staying in that area till Thursday afternoon being sick haha. It was okay Elder Hughes took great care of me. 

Funny story, so every transfer we are allowed to have what is called a "District P-Day" which means we can get together as an entire District on P-Day and do a fun adventure together. What this basically just means for us was we could hang out with the Sister missionaries lol. Since we already are usually together with the Marion Elders every Monday. So we were just allowed to get together, just the six of us haha. Yeah it is a small district lol. Anyway, we grouped up down in the city of Anderson which is the Sisters area and also the biggest "city" there is in our district so there was more stuff to do there. We heard about the national park that people said was pretty cool so we all decided to go to the national park and go on a little hike.(not really a hike because there is no such thing as elevation in Indiana) It was a good time but as we were walking back to the car we just decided to walk on the road back to the car and we see this man get out of his truck and start taking pictures of us as a group. We all were like what the heck and who is the creepy old dude doing taking pictures of us. We just decided to let it go. The old man hops back in his car and drives a little farther down the road but then stops again. And sure enough gets out of his car and starts to take pictures of us again. We were finally close enough to be able to go over to him and ask him what he was doing. Well sure enough, he told us he was from "The Hearald Bulletin" which is the local newspaper. He went on to tell us that he was trying to take a cool picture of us walking in the park so that he could put us in the paper for the next day. All of us were like, oh dang that's dope haha. We told him who we were and what we were doing in Indiana for two years. He was pretty impressed and told us to look for tomorrow’s newspaper! Sure enough WE MADE IT. So thought that was pretty dope. Kinda funny but cool lol.

A couple weeks ago we were walking around our little town of Alexandria trying to just find someone to talk to and we ran into this guy Chad W. We stopped to talk to him for a little bit and had just a brief but nice conversation with the man. We tried to ask him if he would be interested in hearing a message about Christ but he avoided it and basically said he wasn't interested. So we didn’t try to push it on him anymore. I just asked him if I could leave him a card with our names and phone number on it and we told him if there was anything we could help with we told him to give us a call. He said okay and thanked us and we went our separate ways. I didn’t think too much about that encounter really the rest of the day because ever since I have been on my mission I've have never had someone call or text us back when we just gave them our number without getting theirs. Well that all changed that day! He actually texted us!! He texted us basically to thank us for talking to him and he told us that he was "grateful to talk to two young men who have their heads on straight, that's what this world needs more of" He went on and said a couple of other nice things. After that we just texted him back and reassured him if there was really anything we could do, to please let us know. About two days later, he texts us AGAIN!! This time he wanted to let us know that he had moved to the neighboring town of Marion and he wanted to let us know that if we would be interested in meeting(which no duh of course haha)  that he would like to meet up with us again and just have a discussion!!! Now this is a bittersweet moment because obviously its awesome that he wants to meet with us again, BUT, that ain't our area so we had to refer him to the Elders serving in Marion but all in all it is pretty cool and I hope he progresses!

Yesterday on Sunday we were able to have a lesson with someone new! That was pretty exciting because we hadn't had a lesson with someone new in a while so this was a blessing. It was cool that we were able to meet with someone new but this guy wasn't super receptive. We basically just had a discussion about religion as a whole for about the first hour. We asked him if it would be okay if we just shared with him a unique message about Jesus Christ and he gladly let us. So we pulled out the Resto of course haha. After we taught him he basically told us that he would be willing to read from the Book of Mormon but he claims "the bible is the only word of God" and how he doesn’t think the Book of Mormon is really a true testament of Jesus Christ. But, we did our part of inviting him to read from it and pray about it. We got a return appointment with him for next Sunday so hopefully he has read it and prayed about it. We will see!

Sorry everyone that it had been so long since I have written an email! But that is why I wrote this extra long email! So I could make up for the past couple of weeks lol

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes, it was an okay birthday haha. As you know I was sick so that was a bummer 

Well I hope y'all have a good week and make sure y'all are preparing for General Conference that is coming up in less than a month!!! CRAZY STUFF BOUTA HAPPEN!!

love y'all and don’t forget to SEND IT FOR THE LORD

ELDER HILBURN

Elder Hilburn's district makes the news!

Elder Hilburn and Elder Usch putting in some wood floors

Elder Hilburn, Elder Hughes and district