Mission Field of Dreams 2015-2017: July 31, 2016

Hi there Elder Cox,

Seriously again where has the month gone. This week has been FULL. Emily went to girls camp on tuesday morning...Dad left out of town tuesday night, Ben went to teachers camp Wednesday morning I worked all day at the clinic, came home and recovered the house from getting everyone packed. Worked at 7 am Thursday, then dad came home, then work and such and meetings and then I worked at the Bake shop on Friday, then Emily came home, then Ryan came home Saturday morning, a party for his return and birthday with friends, then Ben came home from camp, then a wedding reception, then Ryan took a good hit to the head and neck from a 40 foot cliff back-dive gone wrong. He is home moving slow and everyone else is at church right now!!!

How was your week?

Jake H came home this week and gave his homecoming today. Looks good, did great! He spoke about the different answers that we get from our prayers. Yes, wait or no. He relayed several experiences of these answers from his mission.

Zac J comes home in 2 weeks, Morell is home and Logan and Cody in a few weeks. I have to admit that I have cried as I hug your friends upon their return. It just makes me so tender that you are still out and not home, but so grateful that you are still out and not home and makes me once again feel of the intensity of emotions in having you return! I know, I know, I am a big crier, They all just laugh at me as usual and then hug me again! I just love all these boys and all that you have been through.

I wanted to share an experience with you. I was trying really hard to get to the temple this past week while everyone was gone, as you can see, the time was limited. I wanted to go on Thrusday afternoon. The time just for some reason didn't work out. When I realized I didn't have enough time to drive, attend and then drive home before I needed to be to a meeting in the evening, I prayed that I could use the 2 hours that I did have left serving someone. I texted one of our neighbors that came to mind. no response. Ok. I called Meg, No answer. okay. My time was passing. I decided to just take a chance and walk over to this neighbor that I had texted. I went inside, after the kids let me in. She looked at me and said, "I just got your text but my phone is not working to text back, but what's up? I said," I have some time and I wanted to spend it here, what do you need?" She said, "oh, I am fine!" I got started talking to the kids, then turned around to see her in tears and announcing that she was fine, but going to take a break, get a drink and go for a drive with Sister Cox. We had a needed drive to Fiiz and an even more needed 1 1/2 hour counseling and empowering conversation. She thanked me for being the answer to an early prayer that day.

She left feeling like she would handle the next issue that would surely come just a little better now and I left feeling like Heavenly Father knows just what she needed and just what I needed. Answers to prayers are available. Sometimes we just need to ask and even more we need to listen and then take action.

I love you, MOM

Wow that's awesome. I have half my mass email written and that's literally exactly what I've had on my mind a lot this week. The title I wrote for my email is "Someone's praying for you". Then I just read this and was like wow, my mom is so in tune with the Spirit, I love you!

So I know you all want to know what the Tower of Invincibility is. So you can either wait til the end or skip down to the pictures and see that it's a real thing.

This week was great Sam got confirmed! He's such a stud he's going to get the priesthood hopefully in 2 weeks and be passing the sacrament and coming out teaching with us. He's a humble spiritual BEAST.

We also had an amazing lesson with Kay this week. She is the lady we are teaching from Thailand who is waiting for First Presidency approval to be baptized (It's gonna come soon). She told us her full conversion story. From finding a BoM in prison (which she read and learned English from) as well as a History of the Church book which she read. Once she got out of prison she said she needed a bible so her sister's friend found a link for a free bible online and the next day Elder Lords and Elder Banta got a media referral text and showed up on her doorstep with a bible. The rest is history, she's read up to 3 Nephi (twice, in Thai and English), had all the missionary lessons and been to church 17 times. I love conversion stories.

Before I get to the Tower of Invincibility I have to explain the first part of the subject line, which is super cool.

This week Elder Devenport and I were giving a training to about 32 missionaries from every zone in the mission. At the end we were bearing our testimonies and I just had this very strong impression to just start promising a blessing and the words would be put in my mouth. What ended up coming out was the Spirit (not me) promising every missionary in that room that somebody in their area was praying for them to come knock on their door. Whether they were praying for God to send them a church, praying for guidance, whatever it was. Someone was praying for them.

I've had very few times in my life where the Spirit has confirmed the words I said as strongly as that, a few times on my mission, once in college when I was giving a blessing. It's a humbling feeling and those are each moments that I will never forget.

This week we were on exchanges down in Fairfield after a meeting and there was a woman walking about a block ahead of us. She turned to walk across the road and saw us behind her out of the corner of her eye. Usually this is the point where people start speed walking as fast as they can. But this lady pulled out her phone and started walking a little slower (waiting for us to catch up to her) once we got up to her we started talking to her and she said "You're the Elders right? I met with some missionaries a while ago but didn't listen to them as much as I should've. But now I'm going through some tough times and want to start meeting with you again." There's so many prepared people everywhere!

Alright now speaking of Fairfield that leads to the Tower of Invincibility... So Fairfield Iowa is the Transcendental Meditation capital of the world. If you want to know what that involves just go to Youtube and type in "Yogic flying". Ya. So here's some pictures of the big gold domes that they "fly" in and the Tower of Invincibility. Super interesting stuff, I learned a lot about a new culture :)