Hey all!  This week was a really weird one, but by the end it turned out to be good!  We have seen a lot of miracles as well in the past weeks so I definitely don't have anything to complain about.

This Thursday we had the newbie training!  It was a great training, one of the best that I've been too, and I learned a lot from it.  They talked a lot about elevating the level of our work and working with faith and what that means.  I took a lot home from that.  We had lunch there (lasagna) and then headed back to Pichidegua and went to the home of a new less active!  A few weeks ago during the sacrament hymn a mass of random people entered the chapel and sat down, and we were all so confused but just decided to go with it.  After the meeting we discovered that this huge group of friends from Santiago was visiting this less active that lives in our branch boundaries and they all wanted to go to church so she brought them all!  She was active in Santiago but then fell away a little bit and ended up moving into our limits so we didn't even know about her.  Coming back sparked something in her though and we went to visit her Thursday and she is awesome!  We were talking a while with her and another member we brought (and Luis our investigator of 4 years who doesn't want to get married) and she really wants to come back and help the branch out!  So that was exciting.  So there are some good things coming!

Also this week President went to visit Dagoberto Molina again and set some goals with him, he should be coming back to church soon :)  Super exciting.

Then, this week was the activity!  It was insane.  It started with us making invitations to give everybody, then we invited as many people as we could, then we discovered that the members actually didn't want a lot of people to come because there wasn't a lot of money to buy enough meat for the barbeque.  Well dang.  Sometimes I feel like I can't do a lot right haha but that's just life sometimes.  Apparently the objective of the activity was to just invite the less actives, which we did, but we in addition invited a lot of investigators and future investigators.  The members were a little frustrated but they got over it.

Then the day of the activity came and we went to the church early to go with a member to buy meat for the barbeque, then set up the tables and the sound system and the games and everything.  We were in charge of the games, and we were happy to see that right before we started a family of 4 from Cuba that we invited came.  We met them a few weeks ago and they are awesome, they're our good friends but they haven't been able to let us in because they recently moved here and aren't living in their own house.  We're going to start teaching them in the chapel now.  Anyway, they came!  Also, all of Ignacia's (the recent convert) family came, including a bunch of little children that we weren't expecting, so in total about 12 non-members came!  And no less actives, for the record.  The number turned out being perfect for the food we bought, so it all worked out.  However, my companion and I were in charge of the games, but we weren't expecting having a lot of children there, so we basically became daycare while the adults talked and cooked the meat.  We were happy to see that the members were all conversing with the investigators and having a good time, but we were slowly sinking on our end.  It was a crazy day, especially because the activity that started at 3:00 ended up lasting until 9:00 at night.  We kept the kids busy though, and while we had to prepare stuff for games or do some favor for a member, the son of President Jimenez kept the kids busy.  I was dead by the end of the day, but it was a success!  We're mostly excited about the Cubans, they're an awesome family.

Today we went to a lake for p-day!  It was a good time.

So that was my week!  I hope you all had a good one!  I love you all!  The church is true!  The book is blue!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

Dangerous quantities of juice given

Hey all!

This week was way too relaxed for comfortable missionary life, but it was a pretty good week anyway!  I don't know if you remember that in one of the first letters I wrote I told y'all that ''giving juice'' is an expression that the Chileans use to say ''messing around.''  We use this phrase a lot as missionaries to say ''not working.''  We most often say it in spanish however, but when talking English we just conjugate the spanish verb like an english verb (I dar jugo, he dars jugo, I darred jugo, I have darred jugo) but it's a fairly common expression.  This week we had a member of the seventy come to the mission and then this weekend was the Chilean independence day and we were actually forbidden from proselyting that day.  Definitely the first day of my mission where we couldn't proselyte at all, they told us that we could go to members houses and dar jugo but we can't teach any lessons or do anything like that.  The day before we couldn't do much either because the day before the partying already starts so we ended up cleaning the chapel and doing other things that needed doing, and the day before that we had a bunch of service and then our english class at night (that nobody came to.)  SO this weekend was pretty relaxed, and it was nice but I'm definitely ready to get back to work.  Yesterday was the day that we couldn't proselyte, so after church we went to a recent convert's house to eat a bunch of empanadas and play games with them.  It was pretty fun, then at about 5:00 we just went back to the house and watched movies, baked a frozen pizza and some brownies and ate way too much.  I ate half the pizza.  I can't believe how much I've learned to eat here.

Wednesday was the day the seventy came which was AWESOME.  The seventy was Elder Allan F. Packer (son of President Boyd K. Packer) and he ended up talking about faith.  It was an awesome talk, and something that I and the mission definitely need, and have always needed.  He talked about how faith is a mental exercise, how when we have faith we have a bright vision for the future, but also a specific plan in order to achieve that bright future.  The biggest thing though was the importance of having faith that with God nothing is impossible.  That's something that I've had to learn here (and am still learning, I definitely realized that I don't have nearly as much faith as I should), and something that the mission has had a lack of (but has been improving) since I got here.  When I got to the mission, people told me that we hardly ever baptize here.  That is definitely a faith-debilitating belief, and something that corrupted my view for the first few months of the mission.  The truth is, God can.  He always can, always.  Our faith is tried when we're in places that might seem that they have no hope for growth, but if we can have the faith to see the chapel full, that chapel will fill.  It might not be while we're here, but it will happen.  God has his timing, but I know that Pichidegua has a great potential here.  It's starting now, and it's starting slow, but things are finally starting to move forward here.  God works according to the faith of His servants, so we better let Him work through us.

I also promised more details about Dagoberto Molina, we found out after having seen him that just a few weeks ago his dad had died.  He expected all of his evangelical friends to go to the funeral, but not a single one of them went.  For the first time in 10 years, he was brought to question things again.  He left the evangelical church, wanted to go back to our church, but couldn't bring himself to walk in the doors.  The next week, the mission President showed up at his doorstep and hugged him and told him that everything was going to be okay and that Jesus Christ was there for him.

It's amazing to see how God works in ways like this.  From our tiny perspective, we have no idea what kind of preparations have been years in the making that we happened to stumble into because God wanted it to be that way.  Many times we act on inspiration without realizing that it's inspiration.

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

Love

Elder Fox

A lot of nothing and a huge freaking miracle

ey all!  As the title indicates, this week was a lot of nothing but with a huge freaking miracle.  So I'll go ahead and skip over the whole lot of nothing and share the miracle!

     So Tuesday morning I got a call from President Harris telling me that he'd be coming to accompany us to visit less actives Thursday evening after a training that we had.  So we spent that day and Wednesday putting all the appointments that we could and then Thursday morning we went to a training for a new open chapel program that our mission is doing.  After the training, President drove us to Pichidegua and we ate lunch together.  After that we went to some of the less actives and President is just a rock star.  It does help that people have a lot more respect for a man of age that has the word ''President'' on his chest, but he is also just amazing at showing love.  Sadly enough, none of the less actives we visited ended up coming to church, but they said they would!  So that's at least a start.  

     But the miracle happened with a man named Dagoberto Molina.  All I knew about this man was that he was supposedly branch president a long time ago and went inactive and was eventually baptized into the evangelical church.  He was famous for being one of the most hardened inactives in the city, and though we tried to find him to set up an interview with president (because he needs a disciplinary council for being baptized into another church) he would never come out of the house.  We decided to go by with President, and his wife was outside the house, just leaving to go to work.  I went to talk to the wife, asking if Dagoberto was at home to which she replied no.  I asked her when he would be home when President got out of the car and went up and hugged her and asked her if it would be alright if he went to their house sometime to talk to them.  She, very surprisingly, said that it would be alright, and that we came at a good time.  President proceeded to tell her that God loved her, that she's a really good person, and that he loved her.  She started to weep, and told us to go find Dagoberto at his job, gave us the address, and gave us his cell phone number.  She repeated that we had come at the perfect time.

     So we went to his job just a few streets down and we greeted him as he walked toward the car (his wife called and told him we'd be coming) and President asked him if it'd be alright if they got together to talk another day.  He also said it'd be alright, and then President hugged him and told him the same thing he told his spouse, when Dagoberto also began to weep and replied, ''you don't know all the things I've done, President.''  President replied that it was okay, that everything was okay, that that's what the atonement was for.  He said that if there's anyone that understands shame, it was him, and that we all need the Savior's grace in our lives.  At that point we kind of all lost it and were all crying, when Dagoberto said that he felt the Spirit of God and President hugged him again, told him that God loved him and that he loved him, and that everything was going to be okay.

''Perfect love casteth out all fear.''  I feel extremely privileged to have President Harris as an example for me here.

So that was our story!  We've recently found out Dagoberto's full story of why he went inactive and all that but that'll probably have to wait for next week for the lack of time.  It was an incredible miracle though, and we were all extremely grateful to have witnessed it.  Lives are changing, one at a time.  The moments where we see God's hand so clearly truly are precious.

I love you all!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

Hey all!!!

Hey!  So I already sent you the videos talking about the week but the week was pretty good!  Slow on the investigator front, as you know, but fantastic on the branch front!

So one thing I didn't mention in the video is that I've been feeling the power of my calling especially strong this week.  I'm really feeling the Spirit through me as I testify, and I have an extra confidence that what the Lord is doing through me is really blessing the lives of these people.  It's a nice confidence to have, so even though the week has been I'm still super content.  I found out recently that Alan is more active again, which made me happy as heck, and also that some of the people that I taught in Paniahue are going to be baptized.  I don't know if you remember Isabel, but apparently she's going to move out and separate herself from Blas in order to get baptized.  Also, one of the part-member families that I started teaching in my last weeks there is going to get their kids all baptized here soon, so all of that was music to my ears.  I thought that my time in Paniahue was especially fruitless, but it's a good lesson to show that you never really know what can happen a few months or even a few years down the road!

Speaking of Paniahue, I saw one of the old members from over there this week!  She yelled out my name while we were walking in the street, and I was just wondering who knew my name, and then I looked and it took my brain a good 10 seconds to process that it was Marión!  I was pretty excited, because it's the first time that I've seen a member from a past sector, and she remembered me and my name!  So we talked for a bit and apparently she's working here in Pichidegua now.  Small world!  I've seen her a few times since then just driving by.

So the branch is doing awesome!  The Spirit has been working on them a lot this week, and one of the coolest manifestations of that was last Monday.  Last Monday after P-day we went to a little activity that these members who own a restaurant across from the church were putting on, and we prepared the spiritual thought.  Because President and we thought that we should put a big emphasis on the Book of Mormon with everyone, we decided to talk about the Book of Mormon.  We showed the testimony of Elder Holland on the Book of Mormon and then we talked about it and the personal importance it has for us, and the good that it'll do for the branch if everybody reads it every night.  I shared my personal experience, the key role that the Book of Mormon had for my in my personal conversion, and Elder Kammerman also bore a powerful testimony.  The Spirit stuck really strong in that moment, and after we closed, instead of immediately closing and blessing the food, we all got talking about the work of salvation.  The members started talking about how they felt like they needed to do something more, that they needed to reach out to the youth, how they needed to reach out to the less actives, and how they needed to get the branch strong again.  I was just sitting there on cloud 9, listening to everybody talk and gratefully realizing how our prayers were being answered.  It was a good night.

Chairty is an incredible thing, and something that I've been praying for very hard.  It hasn't been hard to get to love this little branch at all.  Sure, I've been frustrated at times (especially with the President), but I'm pretty convinced that other than my family and close friends, I've never felt such love for a group of people in my life.  I really feel like I'm starting to see them as God sees them, for their strengths before their faults, and it's a very liberating see people.  Seeing people through God's eyes really is the essence of charity.  I think I understand now, at least much more than I did, exactly why we are nothing without charity.  The good we try to do, if done without love, simply doesn't do anything.  It can't do anything.  It has no effect.  It is as ''a tinkling cymbal.''  But with charity, with the power of God on our side, we can move mountains.  I think I understand exactly why faith, hope, and charity are the ''fountain of all righteousness.'' In Spanish it reads: ''the source of all righteousness.''  And that is truly what it is.

I love you all!  And I hope that you have a great week!  I'll send pictures next week!

Love

Elder Fox