Feliz Navidad!

¡Feliz Navidad!

do do do do, do, doooo

¡Feliz Navidad!

do do do do, do, doooo

¡Feliz Navidad!  Prósperos años y felicidad

I WANNA WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

Okay that's enough.

Hi all!  We had another great week here!  I made a recording but I don't know if it'll work so I'll pass real quick through the things I talked about in the recording.

This Wednesday we had our special Christmas zone conference, so the mission sent a bus to Talca and took us all to the mission home in Rancagua (about 2 and a half hours away) to have the conference together and celebrate Christmas!  The plan was to sing a special Christmas program for people in need so we needed to prepare that well in advance.  Last Saturday we got together in the morning as a zone to practice the songs and then we did the same thing Tuesday morning.  Then we went to the conference Wednesday and practiced the songs and had a special Christmas dinner with turkey and potatoes and other deliciousness.  Sadly, as a result, half the zone got sick bedridden for the next 3 days but it was still tasty!  After the dinner lunch thing we went to do the program at a drug rehabilitation.  It was an awesome experience, and we were all very grateful to be able to brighten up their Christmas and give them hope in their tough situation.  Definitely the highlight of Christmas this year :)

The next day we had district class and then on Saturday we had the open chapel in San Clemente, so in total we got together as a zone 5 days out of seven this week!  Good thing we love each other a lot.  Actually, this zone has probably been the most united I've ever been in.  I love them all so much!  They're such great missionaries and we're so proud of them!  We're all really good friends, it's going to be hard when the change ends.

So the open chapel was also awesome.  Like I said in the recording, Alejandro came and he was a huge help.  He was never a missionary and that's probably his biggest regret in life.  He's a machine though, it would have been very different if he weren't there.  Funny story from that though!  While the open chapel was approaching the end and we were on the last run through of the chapel, we were all outside waiting for people to pass by to invite them into the chapel and trap them with our friendliness!  Sadly, the only people who were passing by were on bikes, so I started running along side the bikes and inviting them to come see the chapel for 5 minutes and promising them that the tour would be super cool.  It was definitely a first in the mission!  Even though it didn't work too great it was a lot of fun, and we all got a pretty good kick out of it.  When we walked back in the chapel one of the Elders in the zone told me that I had just become Elder Calhoon from the Best Two Years.  I then realized the reality that I had just been chasing bikes begging people to come to church.  Good times though.

So the zone took a pretty hard hit this week because a lot of them got sick for a long time, but we hope that we can get them excited about working well for the last week of this change.  The sector is also not doing great, we've been extremely busy.  We've been trying to help Emelina and the ward a lot this week, we want to motivate people to go to the sign language classes because nobody's going and Emelina is a little discouraged that nobody can communicate with her in church, obviously.  So we made a power point for the ward to use in a training on Saturday that included parts of a talk from President Hinckley about convert retention and gently slapped the members on the face with it a bit.  From what we hear, it inspired a lot of change.  So that's good! 

 8 For though I made you sorry with a [powerpoint], I do not repent, though I did repent: 

for I perceive that the same [powerpoint] hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season.

 9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.

 10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

Anyway, that was that.  We also taught our English class again on Thursday which was fun.  I don't know if you guys remember me talking about Elder Young, because it was a year ago, but Elder Young had about 9 months in the mission when I had 6 and he was a new zone leader living with us in our house in Santa Cruz.  That was the change that I was with Elder Barbosa and his companion was Elder Crane.  Anyway, Elder Young (yes, he is a literal descent of Brigham Young) is definitely one of my best friends in the mission, the missionary I most respect out of just about anyone, and now he's an assistant.  And he came to chill with us Thursday!  He came in the bus with Talca II from their zone conference and did divs with us that night and it was a great time.  He helped with our english class then we talked a long time during our planning about our sector and about the zone and everything.  I got to talk one on one with him for a while too and I forgot how much I missed him!  He's a great guy.

So that was my week!  And this week I finally have some time to actually share my spiritual thoughts!  Yuusss.  For one, I actually really like the scripture above that I edited to fit the situation.  Obviously, the scripture that is most important out of the three is the last one, and it's one of the lessons that I've learned this change!  When we're motivated to progress in the gospel and to change, we have to very careful about what kind of sorrow we're feeling.  We have to watch what's motivating the change.  I've always thought of wordly sorrow as just ordinary shame to confess and correct, which completely impedes repentance.  But what I've learned is that in many cases wordly sorrow actually can and does inspire change in behavior, but not true repentance.  Whatever change occurs, it's certainly not permanent.  This change can be based on any wordly desire:  to look better, to have more, to feel like a good person, or any number of things.  But Godly sorrow is different, and when we can really feel this Godly sorrow, the changes are always permanent, because suddenly there's nothing selfish about our repentance, and in the act of changing we are really just turning ourselves and our souls outward, towards Christ.  And that is how He heals.

So let's remember that!  In the Christmas season it's good to remember His birth, but it's even better to remember His life, and His atonement, and the unimaginable gift that He gave to us.  Let's turn our hearts to the Savior, and let Him change and heal us, and we will never be the same again.  He will make us into His, and we will become like Him, and we will get to know Him as He knows us.  I know, and I promise, that this is true.  If we do this we can look back and happily recognize that we are unrecognizable compared to what we were.

I love you all so much! :)  Merry Christmas!!

Love

Elder Fox

Hola

Hey all!  It was another incredibly busy week but luckily I told you all about it completely in the recording I made you!  So it's gonna be another quick letter but there's a lot of information in the recording so that'll make up for it!  But I still have some stories!

So the sign language is progressing pretty rapidly, we went the other week and were able to converse for a while and teach a lesson without the help of her hearing daughter, so that ain't too bad!  I've definitely been feeling the divine help as well as when I learned Spanish, at first I struggled to retain a new word when Emelina taught the sign language classes in the church but now I learn every new work effortlessly.  The gift of signs!  It's been a lot of fun learning it, the only sad thing is that it's not even close to american sign language so if I want to learn ASL when I get back I'll have to start from scratch.

Another story!  This is an amazing one, and it happened last week but I forgot to write about it!  But as you all know, I'm with Elder Mendez, who was my first comp in Hospital.  Up until last week, I've kind of looked at my time in Hospital as the low point of my mission.  I made a plethora of mistakes and I had a lot of things I needed to change in myself as a missionary, also as soon as I left all the people we were teaching went down the drain.  I think it was necessary for me to feel that a little, because it caused me to reflect a lot and inspired sincere change and repentance in how I worked as a missionary and how I was as a person, and as a result I was able to help touch many more lives in Pichidegua and hopefully here.  BUT something happened that made me super happy.

So last week we were in our leadership meeting in Rancagua, like I talked about last week in the video.  After the meeting, one of the matrimony elders asked me a question about a baptismal record that was in our zone.  He had a few other records there, and after looking at the one from our zone, I glanced at the other registros and saw the word ''Hosptial'' jump up at me.  I picked two up and looked at them both and they both said ''Hospital'' I quickly read the names and it took me way longer than it should have to process the names:  Claudio Sanchez and Gonzalo Aspe.  I kind of lost my dignity and yelled across the room at Elder Mendez telling him to come see and we gave each other a chilean hug and rejoiced not too quietly.  The matrimony was really confused at what was going on seeing as I hadn't answered his question yet.  I took the time later to explain to him that Elder Mendez and I had already been in HoHospitalogether and taught both of those people.    

So that definitely made my week :)  I wanted to take the time to share a quick spiritual thought from the week.  But I don't have time haha sorry I'm really bad at this.  Remind me to share it next week!  I was going to share it two weeks ago but I keep struggling at having time to write.  Have a great week though!  See you in a few weeks!

Love

Elder Fox

More Stories!

Hey all!  So I talked about most everything in the video but there are a few details I forgot and other stories to share!  So this letter will be a bit quick.

So first thing, I realized after passing dats this morning after making the video that the zone has made a huge leap of progress.  They doubled the number of lessons and new investigators from this last week to this week which is what the zone was doing a little bad in and President told us we needed to improve.  So I'm super proud of them all!  The zone did super great this week and worked super hard.  We combined the two zones today to do a zone activity where we played games and bought 14 pizzas from Papa Johns for the whole zone.  It was a great activity!  We left pretty tired because we spent the whole time coordinating everything but it's all good.

So for the first time in my mission, the majority of our teaching pool is children, so it's definitely been different!  It's been awesome though, and I've really fallen in love with these kids.  Lorena has 3 kids, the oldest being Jesus who we're working with, the next being Yoan (pronounced like Johanne but it's a boy) who's 6 and then Sofia who's probably about four.  Sofia is adorable though, she started out super shy and she didn't say anything but I think she got used to me and now she never stops talking.  I sat with the kids during sacrament meeting while Lorena sat on another bench so I kept Sofia entertained the whole time.  It was a good time.  Yoan is a big ball of energy.  The last time we were there we sat outside and talked and he and his friend put on our helmets and our missionary nametags and we gave them some ''ilumina el mundo'' (light the world) pass along cards just to see what would happen and they went running from house to house saying that they were the elders.  When people answered they held out the cards and asked if they wanted to hear the word of God.  It was probably one of the funniest things I've seen.  Funny enough, people were still saying that they were busy... to 6 year old children.  The funniest though was when they actually got in a house.  Elder Mendez turned to me and told me that they do our job better than we do.  They came out a few minutes later saying ''how lame, they didn't give us anything!!'' because Lorena always gives us food when we go over.  We laughed a good deal at that one.

Hey that was a really quick email but I've been a little slower this week.  More details in the email to come!  I love you all!  I hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

Lots of things

Howdy

Decided I'd change the introduction up because I always start my emails in the exact same way!  This week was good though!  I was thinking about a good subject header to put, and the only thing I could think of was 'lots of things' because there were lots of things!  It was a pretty full week and another pretty busy one but this time I have a little more time to talk about it!

I'll start with our action story of the week.  After stake conference on Sunday at about 10:45 at night (we go to bed at 11:00 and thus we normally can't make or receive calls after 10:30) when we got a call from the bishop of a ward called Piduco in our zone.  We figured it must be important so we answered it, and he told us that he was talking to the sister missionaries on the phone and suddenly the phone cut out and after they weren't answering him at all.  He was worried because Piduco is a really sketchy area of Talca and one of the sisters had problems with a stalker in another sector in Talca in the past.  That didn't worry us too much at first because we thought it was likely that the phone just ran out of battery.  But as we kept trying to call them up until 11:00 they still weren't answering, and by that time they'd have had to plug in their phone and turn it on to use it as their alarm.  At this point we were pretty dang worried and we called President and then the assistants when he didn't answer.  We quickly changed our clothes and went outside running to find a colectivo to take us to the other side of Talca where the hermanas lived.  We called other elders who lived a little closer to pass by them and see if they were alright.  After running for a good 10 minutes we found a colectivo and started heading towards their neighborhood.  Luckily though, after about 15 minutes in the colectivo the other elders called and told us that the hermanas were fine and in their house but that their phone had just stopped making calls and they had no idea why.  After another 15 minutes (we stayed in the colectivo and waited for it to make full-circle through the whole city) the hermanas called us because their phone started working again and explained what happened to us.  We called the assistants and everything was fine!  We did end up going to bed at 12:00 though.  The story is a little anti-climactic but real stories like this are much better that way haha.

Now to start talking more about the investigators!  For Talca I'm a little surprised on how few progressing investigators the sector has at this point, but the goal is that we find a lot more in the coming weeks!  The biggest investigators we have are this extended family that has been listening to the missionaries for a while now.  One of the women, Lorena, has been baptized a few months ago, but her sister, Leticia, has a partner that she needs to marry first.  Lorena and Liticia both have children though that are also progressing.  Lorena's son is named Jesús and he's 10 years old, and he's a great little kid but he has a very short attention span so he's a little harder to teach.  He's been making great progress though and he has a baptism date in two weeks.  Leticia also has a few kids but they're a little more complicated.  One's name is Christofer who's 11, who would get baptized but Leticia wants him to at least get to the point where he stops yelling and swearing during church before he gets baptized.  Seems reasonable to me.  Her other kid that could get baptized is about 16 and I forgot her name.  She's making progress though and has just started going to church and activities.  So that's that!

We found a new group of investigators this week though that we're also really excited about.  One day out of the blue this Hermana from the ward presented us to her 12-year-old neighbor who informed us that he wanted to get baptized the following day.  We told him that he'd have to prepare a little bit and we'd have to teach him and his family for a few weeks but he was fine with that.  The same hermana found out a little later that this kid's grandpa was a baptized member, but that he and his family needed a lot of help.  She called us later and told us that the grandpa was a member but because of sickness can't use one of his legs and is bed-ridden for the most part.  Because of lack of time on the part of his children who take care of him, the house has become unbearable and alone it would take days to clean.  We went to visit and met the grandpa and the kid's mom.  We'll be passing by the grandpa every day to visit him because he doesn't have a lot of company and also teaching the mom and her son who wants to get baptized.  The mom is really hesitant about going to church because she was evangelical before and had a bad experience and swore herself that she would never go to another church, but we helped her to realize that she can get an answer from God to know if it's good to go to our church and that she can know by reading the book of Mormon and praying about it.  So we're excited for the prospects there!

Thanksgiving!  The day before thanksgiving I did divisions with Elder Wolff (he came with me and was in my district in the MTC so it was cool to be with him in the divisions.  We took a picture of our name tags together: Elder Fox and Elder Wolff) and after the division Elder Mendez and I had some time before lunch.  I was thinking about what we could do for thanksgiving that night and remembered how much I miss good mexican food and suggested that we buy stuff to make tacos (but according to the fox-family definition of tacos they were more like fajitas.)  So we bought meat and chipotle peppers in a can (to mix with mayonnaise and make the chipotle sauce) and green mexican sauce and made tacos together that night as a house!  It was one of the best food nights of my whole mission.  I was very happy.  It wasn't very traditional thanksgiving food but I loved it.

One more thing!  So we had interviews with President Harris all day Saturday and while he was doing interviews we were doing trainings with the missionaries about the Christmas initiative among other things.  We had to do 3 trainings back to back, and it was exhausting.  We were there from 7:30 in the morning until 3:00, and then at 4:00 started the priesthood session of stake conference, then at 6:30 started the adult session of stake conference until about 9:00.  So we spent more than 14:00 hours straight in the church.  Stake conference was awesome though because I saw all the members from Constituciòn!  I forgot that I was going to see them until a few days previous and when I remembered I got so flipping excited.  It was an awesome reunion.  I can't believe it's been a year since I've been there.  I got to see just about everybody though and the majority even remembered me!  It was awesome.

So that's my week of lots of things!  I was going to give a spiritual thought about something cool that happened this week but I don't have time so you'll have to remind me next week!  I love you all!

Love

Elder Fox

The Gift of Signs

Hey all!  This week has been pretty dang nuts but great!  We've been pretty constantly busy which I've actually enjoyed a lot despite the fact that I don't really have time to think.  I don't think it'll be like this constantly but this has been the first week of the change so there are naturally a lot of things to do.

So Tuesday I had to say goodbye to Pichidegua and Elder Kammerman which was actually pretty hard.  I still feel a little like I've left a big part of me in Pichidegua and that the golden age of my mission is over, despite me trying to shake it off.  Leaving a sector has never quite left me feeling like this, but I'm sure that in a few weeks it'll all feel normal again.  Anywho, Tuesday I got to Talca which I was actually pretty excited about because I love Talca and it's been a year since I've seen it.  Being in the center of the city brings back a ton of memories of the start of my mission.  The people here are a lot more like the kind of people I started teaching, it's surprising how different the culture can be just 3 hours away.  Being in Talca is spectacular, in my last 3 sectors I've gotten really accustomed to things being more complicated so it's been a huge relief working a bit in here.  In one hour of contacting here we can find at least 2 extremely solid potential investigators, whereas in Pichidegua we found about one of those a week.  We've kept true to the mission goal of giving out 2 books of Mormon a day with an appointment to return, which has been awesome.  So, so far I'm enjoying Talca!

There were a lot of things that happened this week that I'll have to go more detail into next week, but on Wednesday we had to Rancagua for a special zone leader meeting that President called for.  It's about 3 hours to Rancagua from here so we read a lot of scriptures on the way and back, then in the meeting they talked about the new Christmas Initiative ''Ilumine el Mundo'' (not sure what it is in English, light the world?) so that's exciting.  I thought the idea of having goals for 30 days leading up to Christmas was an awesome idea.  I challenge you all to follow them!  It'll make Christmas that much more special.

The rest of the week until today was getting to know the sector and the ward.  It's a pretty great place!  We have some awesome investigators that I still don't remember the names of so I'll have to get back to you on them.  The only thing that really stood out this week was when we went to one of our recent converts.  Elder Mendez explained to me beforehand that we have a deaf convert, and that all the missionaries that have been here since they started teaching her have learned chilean sign language.  I explained that I took a year of american sign language, but I soon discovered in our first lesson with her that it is not at all the same.  Elder Mendez doesn't know much either because he's only been here 6 weeks and he relied mostly on his comp, but we've learned a ton in the short encounters we've had with her and her hearing daughter.  They actually teach a class for the whole ward every week that we go to to learn.  The greatest thing though is that she is the probably the kindest and happiest woman you'll ever meet in your life.  She's always smiling and is so happy about life.  I felt the charity very strongly when I first met her, and I'm already getting decent at communicating in sign language so I hope that I'll be able to learn well enough while I'm here to talk well with her!

The only other thing from this week is that we planned an activity for today (here the zone leaders always have an activity for the zone) that turned out awesome.  We played soccer and ate completos.  Pretty normal, but we had a great time and I got to meet the zone.  They're awesome missionaries and I'm super excited!

I love you all!  I hope you have a great week!

Elder Fox

The Close of an Era

Hey!  So this week was pretty uneventful so I'll talk about the few things that happened then talk about the changes a bit.

So, as I said in the video, we went to Chimbarongo this week and both stayed the night there so I could do some more baptismal interviews.  I had to do four this time so it took a good while.

Found out who won the presidential campaign!  I was probably just about as surprised as you are.  I thought it was a joke when the zone leaders called us and told us that a member informed them who won.  However, as you all know, everything is going to be just fine.  I'll be the first to say that I have strong feelings against Trump being our president and I really wasn't expecting it to happen and I definitely wasn't expecting Utah to vote for him since the third party candidate was from Utah (from what I heard) but I'm still pretty sure he's not Hitler.  And there's that!  So we'll just remember faith and hope and that everything is going to be okay.

With that, the changes!  I totally predicted the changes, just thinking of the weirdest possible thing that could've happened with the changes.  I thought that I'd be going to Talca and be with Elder Mendez again (my first comp in Hospital) and that Elder Espindola (my first trainee) was going to come to Pichidegua to be with Elder Kammerman.  And guess what happened?  I'm going to Talca as a zone leader with Elder Mendez and Elder Espindola is coming to Pichidegua with Elder Kammerman.

Weird right?

The mission is definitely full of weird changes!  This one in particular took a little more time to digest because, for one, I know Elder Kammerman and Elder Espindola extremely well.  After all, they are both my ''sons''.  So I know that there aren't two people more different in the planet.  I trust that they're going to love each other though and that everything is going to be fine because I trust and love them both.  Pichidegua is definitely the place I care about most in the mission, and now I get to confide it to the two missionaries I trained!  I'll be praying for them and for Pichidegua a lot in the next couple of months.  I hope I trained them well!

The other thing is being a zone leader, but I trust that I'll get used to that as well as any assignment in the mission.  I'm pretty excited about being with Elder Mendez again because we were good friends and got along great but it is kind of weird at the same time.  Definitely came unexpectedly.  I'm super excited about being in Talca again though, in a strong ward in the most successful zone in the mission.  Though I've absolutely loved my time in these smaller and more complicated sectors.

So that's the change!  Saying goodbye was really heartbreaking.  I've been in a pretty low mood the whole weekend since the changes.  Out of all the times I've left a sector, this has been the one I've been the least prepared to leave.  I hope I don't have to do a lot more of these goodbye's because they are definitely getting marginally harder every time.  The sad thing about having greater charity is what you have to go through when you leave.  It's far worth it though.  I had a deep relationship with all these members and investigators and they were very sad to see me go this time around, and the heartfelt goodbye's they said reminded me of when I left home for the mission.  They all said so many nice things and almost made me cry a few times.  Christian actually said that he wanted to invite me back to baptize him in January but I had to tell him I probably wouldn't be able to get permission which was kind of sad.  I just hope I get to come back!  This time with Elder Kammerman has been a golden era for sure, Elder Kammerman is definitely tied with Elder Hadlock as far as friends in the mission go, and that's not easy to do!  I've never been more open or closer with a comp in the mission and leaving him is going to be very hard too.  We worked like crazy and as a result we have 3 investigators that are going to be baptized and 8 people reactivated with more on the way.  President Jimenez thanked us for what we were able to do together in the branch and all of the reactivated members expressed their gratitude.  We've also made some amazing friends in the zone this change as we mentioned in the video and were able to touch their lives in various ways, so it was hard to say goodbye to them too.  There have been a lot of tough trials in these months, and these months have been some of the most difficult, but easily the most joyful at the exact same time.  Funny how that works.  Pichidegua will always be the pride of my mission.  It has changed my life forever, for sure.  I would write more details about goodbye's but sadly I don't have a lot of time.  I really love these people though, with all my heart.  I will never forget the members and the investigators we've had here.

And that's all!  I hope you have a great week!  I love you all!

Elder FoxEra

Gadianton and the rumors and wars of rumors

Hey all!  With all said and done, this week was just incredibly weird.  But it was also good!  In the video we already gave you all the highlights with more detail than I could in writing, so I suppose I'll just skip to the spiritual thoughts after mentioning a few small details about the week.

So as far as the sector goes it was a little slow other than the things we talked about in the video.  We still haven't seen Andrea and we were really worried for a bit but figured out she was just in Santiago so she doesn't actually hate us and we'll start teaching her again when she gets back.  We have a lot of potential investigators and a few references who are super interested but we haven't been able to go to them this week.  One story we didn't say was that we went to Pataguas in the week to hunt for some new investigators (we figured Pichidegua itself is a little dried up and we should broaden our reach.) and we could only be there for a bit because we were delayed dealing with the leak in the house among other things but we starting talking to this couple on a park bench and it was a little awkward at first because they didn't want to talk but then they opened up and told us that they were just distracted because of hard things and they ended up talking about their situation.  They were from Bolivia and having a hard time adjusting to that place.  The contact changed immediately and we were able to talk about how the gospel can help them specifically and they want us to come back to talk about more!  So we're pretty excited about that!

So I think the best lesson learned this week was about the power of the atonement.  I have felt this power in my life, but sometimes in my moments of most difficulty I have a hard time calling down the powers of heaven amidst the distractions.  This week I really discovered how much a sincere prayer can really help if we pray with faith.  I have a strong testimony of the love of God for us, and how in these moments, the only thing we need to do to receive the help of God is to let Him help us.  Let Him take it.  It's funny how we can hold on to our own temptations and sins and trials in the confusion that our own pain causes.  But I know that He lives and loves us and that He will help us if we let Him.  It's as simple as that.  I bore a testimony this Sunday about how the gospel works, and how by simply getting to know the Savior and reading about His life we can get to love Him and find happiness following Him and His gospel.  It's so simple yet we try to complicate things so much.  The grace of God is with us every step of the way as we try to follow in His footsteps, and all He asks of us is that we use that grace to progress in our ability to help other people.  With every action we take to help another person He fills the font, but maybe even more importantly, He fills us.  I love Him, with all my heart, and I love His gospel, and I know that it's true and leads to true and everlasting happiness.

I love you all!  Have a great week!  The church is true!

Love

Elder Fox

Helaman 1:10 and Luke 5:26

Hey all!  The biggest events of the week we recorded in a huge freaking video that's still uploading so you should all get that hopefully by the end of the day!  The email should send as soon as it's done uploading.  I apologize in advance for how dead I am in the video, I was pretty dang tired.  We also made some videos for Elder Kammerman's little brother the other week during p-day.  For his birthday (Elder Kammerman's brother) he asked Elder Kammerman to buy a candy bar and take a video of him eating it.  We decided to go all out and add music and make some dramatic videos of him eating chocolate.  I'll send those too in this email because they're super small.

So the video mostly talks about the adventures of Kishkumen.  Luke 5:26 applies because after the climax of the Kishkumen weirdness I read that verse in my studies that night before going to bed and started laughing out loud.  The weirdness continues, after noticing one of the poison pellets disappeared we noticed two more disappear this morning and another bunch this afternoon.  We have no idea how much poison this thing can take.  We also noticed this afternoon that it managed to eat peanut butter off the trap that we tied to the wall without setting it off and managed to take the poison off the bread with peanut butter and just ate the bread and peanut butter.  This thing is incredible.

Sadly, other than the kishkumen business, nothing much happened.  We weren't able to see just about any of our investigators this week for one reason or another.  We haven't had the help from the members this week that we usually do so it made it impossible to do much outside of the actual city of Pichidegua.  Also Andrea and Oliver didn't go to church this week, though they said they would the night before, so we'll have to put their date for early next change.  The happy thing is that she still looks clear for baptism, so it'll still be soon!  I look forward a ton to at least seeing pictures if I'm not here.

Quick update, I don't know if you all remember Javier who we started teaching as soon as I got to Pichidegua.  We kept teaching him but weren't able to for the last few weeks and it turns out that he went back to drugs and robbing and was kicked out of his house.  His girlfriend's mom, who was in Peru, came back and divorced her husband and kicked her daughter of the house because in the midst of the nightmare Javier and his girlfriend ended up selling almost everything they had (except for the house) for food and drugs.  So... that just happened.  Goes to show that you can't help everyone!  But it's alright, they have their agency.

So this week prayer and scriptures have been really good friends.  I guess my testimony this week is how important the basics really are.  Even as missionaries we have weeks when we feel pretty dang normal and once we re-learn to have meaningful prayer and scripture study everything really turns around.  I know that He really listens to our prayers, and if we pray with faith, promising to act, we can really turn any kind of situation around.  I also know that we can receive answers and inspiration from the scriptures.  I learned to love the scriptures before my mission, but here they've taken an entirely new dimension for me.  They're so great!  And that's all I have to say about that.

I love you all!  Have a great week!  Preach the gospel!

Love

Elder Fox

k

A Series of Unfortunate Events - Pichidegua Edition

Hey all!  Considering how unfortunate the events of this week were it was a pretty good week!  I have some funny stories to start out though:

Fence scratchers!  So the other week this less-active member was walking on the street when we passed him and said hi and shook his hand, and before he said anything he said:

''Hey, don't feel bad you guys, but I've been getting some complaints from some of my friends in La Torina about you guys.  You see La Torina is a very atheist place... you know what atheist means?''

Me:  ''Uhmm... yeah.''

Member:  ''Yeah it means their super super Catholic.  That's what atheist means.''

Me: ''Uhhh... are you sure?''

Member:  ''Anyway, they're very atheist over there.  So one of them came up to me the other day and told me that after you ''alo''-ed at his house you were scratching the fence while you were waiting for him to come out.''

Me: ''....we were... scratching the fence?''

Member: ''Yeah, apparently while waiting for him to come out you scratched the paint on his fence, so just be careful not to touch people's fences if they don't come out.  If they don't come out, they just don't come ya know?'' 

As we were walking away Elder Kammerman said, ''Oh yeah I totally have a habit of scratching fences while waiting for people to open the door.  Oh wait... no I don't!''

I thought that was pretty funny.  We continued making jokes during the week about ''them dang fence scratchers'' pretending to be livid with those fence-scratching mormons.

Another random quote from my companion:

''When my gravy light gets echoed, man, game over.''

As confused and obscure as this comment may seem, I promise that it actually does mean something.

Anyway, on to the week!  It was a pretty stressful week, but it turned out to be a great week by the end!  We got everything done that we needed to by the end, so it was good!  Also learned some important lessons.

Tuesday was the start of the nightmare.  We had some appointments set up, so we biked to La Torina (ya know, the super atheist place that's way into Catholicism) which is pretty far from our house.  After going to one of our investigators who wasn't there, somehow the wire that controls the back tire gears got loosed from the gear-changer thingy and the chain kept slipping off the gears so we couldn't go anywhere.  With some tinkering around, I figured out what the problem was and how to fix it but I needed an allen-wrench.  We proceeded to go door to door for about an hour just to find the wrench, but our efforts were in vain.  We ended up walking back to Pichidegua and buying an allen-wrench.  After that, we went to a less-active we had an appointment with and he wasn't there.  We contacted a bit more in La Torina but then needed to go to Andrea, who we had an appointment with.  We decided to take the long way back to contact one or two houses more.  We did so, and while talking to this nice man who came out and started talking with us, I suddenly felt something pinch down on my leg hard.  I turned around, and alas!  It was a wild dog with its jaws firmly attached to my leg!  At this point I honestly just laughed because of the kind of luck we were having that day.  The dog gave no warning, nobody saw it come up and it didn't make any noise or bark or anything.  The good thing was that it didn't hurt that bad, but I knew I needed to take care of it so we had to cancel our appointment with Andrea.  Honestly, having to cancel the appointment was the only part of the ordeal that was irritating to me.  We went to the chapel to see if it broke skin, and it did, so we called the nurse and she told us that when we went to Rancagua the next day (we had a meeting) that I'd need to get a rabi shot afterwards.  That night I cleaned it out as best I could and we had to go back to the house to bandage it up and then it was too late to work more.

The next day!  I looked at my clothes and realized that there weren't any visible holes from the teeth so I told the nurse that it didn't seem like the teeth actually directly reached my skin.  So she said we didn't have to worry about it!  Then we had the meeting and the meeting was excellent and I learned a ton.  The sad thing was that the meeting went way late and we were going to go visit Christian, upon discovering that was impossible we set an appointment with Andrea, but we also had to cancel that because the bus took so long and we got back home at 9:30 at night.  That night I looked at my clothes more carefully and realized that there were holes... so I called the nurse and told her that I actually probably did need the vaccination.

Next day!  We were going to go to Menene but in the morning we had to do the district class because the meeting replaced it the previous day so we went to San Fernando that morning and went to the hospital there.  Upon waiting a while, we discovered that my insurance somehow didn't work from them so they would have to charge about $75.00 for the shot.  Nope.  So we went back to Pichidegua and because we were delayed we had to cancel with Menene.  At this point I was pretty dang stressed and really frustrated at the dog.  Luckily that night we got to teach Andrea before going to the hospital in Pichidegua that finally gave me the shot for free without much hassle.  Finally!

And with some crazy time-management skills, we managed to visit Menene and Christian still later in the week.  So it all worked out and was fine and I was silly for worrying.  But that was the craziness of the week!

Saturday morning we also climbed the hill here in Pichidegua with the youth of the branch and the Elders from Peumo.  It was a ton of fun and we were able to get to know Leyper (Christian's girlfriend's son who's a member) a lot better and had a good time.

So the lessons I learned this week!  This week I actually had a good deal of very profound spiritual learning experiences that all came after the three days of extreme stress.  We watched this ''Hope Works'' thing which seems like Mormon ted talks with this guy who talks about not worrying things that won't matter in 1,000 years.  I learned a lot from that and definitely recommend it.  The biggest learning moment, however, came when we were watching another one of those hope works things with this girl that talks about the ''perfect lie.''  She explains how she was approaching life at a me + more = christlike perspective when in reality the truth is me + christ = more.  I LOVED that.  Learned a ton from that, and it went along with a lot of the lessons I've been learning here.  We also watched the face-to-face with Studio C (advantages to having a church computer to download all these things during branch activities) which was actually really inspiring and had a lot of lessons about the atonement and God's love.  Good stuff!

Well that was my week!  I love you all!  The church is true!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox