Filled with Exalted Fleas

Hey all!  This week was really great!  Before I get to that...

Clarification:  Elder Covey isn't my comp, he's just my roommate but he's one of my best friends in the mission.  He's actually pretty well known, you've probably heard of his grandpa, Stephen R. Covey.  There's actually a good deal of hype about him in the college football world, because he was a starting receiver for the U of U last year and he was just a freshman.  Because he's on a mission, there's a big debate over whether or not he's going to transfer to BYU afterward, because he could get a full-ride scholarship to either one.  He's going to keep going to the U though (even though he's a big BYU fan) because he'll have more influence there (most of the players aren't members.)  Anyway, that's Elder Covey.  He was here last change too, and we've made great friends.  My comp is Elder Sawyer, who's a computer engineering major and a lot like me haha we also have a ton of fun together.

Anyway, back to the week.  This was an amazing week but it also took a turn for the worse right towards the end.  But there were also so many miracles!!

First miracle, I got a call one night at about 11:28 (with the new schedule we go to bed at 11:30) from Rosa Machuca and I decided to answer it.  She was super excited, and told me that she had just been in an interview with the bishop.  She then told me that her husband finally made the final decision to marry her and get baptized!  They set a marriage date, and they talked it over with the bishop and the outcome was that her husband could get baptized at the end of March to receive the priesthood to be able to baptize his son when his birthday comes in May!  She was really stoked about it, and obviously we were really stoked about it.  So, now we're not just going to teach her son, but her husband at the same time!  They are such an awesome family, so exciting!!

Second, Maricarmen is progressing super well.  She told us in a lesson we had early in the week that she was afraid that after feeling all this peace, that God would let her down again.  She's had a really hard life and has lost some children, and it was really hard for her.  She's searched just about every religion for peace, and hasn't found any until she got here.  Now, she's afraid that after getting baptized another tragedy could occur and that it'd destroy her.  We then had an amazing conversation about faith, and we shared some of Hebrews and Ether 12 with her to explain that hard things and tests and even tragedies may occur, but that we can run towards the finish with the faith that the atonement will recompense all those things, and make all that is wrong right again.  Continue through the hard times with faith that we will be with our families forever, and let that be the source of our hope and eventual peace.  It was probably one of the most spiritual lessons I've had, and she understood it great.  Our next lesson when we taught the restoration, she accepted a baptismal date!  So we're excited about her too.

Patricia was doing really well, but we're worried about her again.  Early this week we went to her house right after she had received a letter from the government telling her that she needed to go to court the next day with her kid to debate whether or not the government should take custody of her son.  We didn't know why at first, but she was really distraught, and we talked about if she keeps her son that she needs the second chance to take responsibility for him and do what's best for him.  Luckily, the government didn't take her kid, and the next lesson we had we talked about that a little more and it seemed like she was going to do great.  She understands repentance super well and every time we go there she seems really excited to get baptized, but then later it seems like she lacks commitment when we're not there.  She's been going to church but she didn't go yesterday, though she said she would.  Apparently she went to her boyfriend's house for the weekend, so that kind of indicates her level of commitment.  We'll keep talking about true repentance and see how we can help.

Another miracle!  There's a less active family that we had lunch with every now and then and had a family home evening with once.  This week, we went for lunch, and I shared a spiritual thought at the end and invited them to come to church on Sunday.  She then explained that during the week she had a big learning experience, and had basically come to realize that she needed to forgive the imperfections in the Bishop and in the members and go to church because she owed that to herself and to her son.  It was awesome evidence that God can prepare people even when we don't really do anything at all!  They went to church yesterday, and I was pretty thrilled.

Another miracle!  That other less active family that we had a family home evening with a few months ago came to church yesterday!  We had an awesome lesson about repentance a few months ago and they said they wanted to go back and this week they came!  More miracles!

So it was a week of a lot of miracles haha so we're great!  Yesterday was really stressful for some reasons but it seems like everything is going to be okay.  So that was my week!  I love you all!  Hope you have a great week!  The church is true!

Love

Elder Fox

p.s. the exalted fleas inside joke came up because a guy who's obsessed with deep doctrine in the ward told us that the bugs aren't going to be resurrected, rather melt in together with the earth when the earth gets celestialized.  When we left, I said that I thought that all animals would be resurrected and Alejandro asked me to imagine what an exalted flea would look like.  You got to admit, it's a funny picture

-- 

Elder Fox

It's a Dictionary - Part 2

Hey all!  This week was fantastic!  But I want to start with the it's a dictionary story because I was going to last week and I never did.

SO Elder Covey had a dream one night and told us about it the next morning.  He dreamed that he was in a dark room with his sister and two other girls that he didn't know, and in the dream he had the sensation that something bad was going to happen that night.  One of the girls he didn't know was huddled in a corner reading a book with a blanket over her head, and Elder Covey's sister told him that that girl was a demon.  Elder Covey was pretty freaked out, but he said that she wasn't a demon because she had been reading for the last two hours (dream logic,) but then his sister whispered 3 words in his ear that filled him with horror:

''It's a dictionary.''

He was so terrified because obviously nobody normal reads a dictionary!  At that moment the demon stood up and stood around and he slapped the dictionary out of her hand.

I know it was a nightmare, and I don't know if it was just the way he told it to us, but I found it so funny.  Just that those words filled him with such horror was super funny to us.  So, since then, it's a dictionary has become our inside joke, along with Alejandro.  The next day, while Elder Covey was in the bathroom, we flipped the circuit breaker and I sat on the floor cross-legged with a blanket over my head, reading a dictionary in the candlelight.  He walked out of the bathroom and just screamed ''OH MY GOSH'' and stood there frozen for about 30 seconds.  I decided to stand up at the exact moment that he decided to try to run past me, and I accidently scared the living daylights out of him haha I felt really bad because his face was super pale once we turned the lights on.  This week, I put a blanket completely over my head and put my hat and sunglasses on my blanket-covered face and lit a candle and held a dictionary in my other hand and scared him pretty good.  I have a picture of that one, but I'll have to send it next week because I don't have it with me.  Since then, dictionaries have become the symbol of horror in our house.  When anything weird happens while we're working, Alejandro whispers ''it's a dictionary'' and it's hilarious.  I hope that was as funny as I thought it was haha it's better to explain it in person.

Anyway, this week was amazing.  We're seeing miracle after miracle and I don't even feel like we're doing that much.  Last week I talked about Rosa Machuca, the woman who wasn't married who wanted us to baptize her son.  Many pairs of missionaries have passed by them, and for whatever reason they never got married and never went back to church.  The Dad has received the lessons many times, but has never taken any steps towards baptisms.  We weren't even focusing on teaching the parents, just the kid, but this week Rosa told us that they were going to get married and that he was going to be baptized before we baptize their son.  We had invited them to a baptism, and after the baptism we took advantage of the occasion to celebrate the birthday of a new hermana in our zone from Ecuador, and during the mini birthday celebration is when she told us this.  So it came completely out of the blue, but we were extremely grateful.  Sometimes the Lord's way of preparing people is through the missionaries, and sometimes the Lord has other ways of preparing people and then just puts them in front of the missionaries' nose!  It was a huge miracle :)

More than that, we've been working a lot closer with the ward, we're improving our relationship with the leadership in the stake and the ward, and things are moving forward!  We don't have any more news about specific investigators or people but everybody is doing well in general!

Wednesday was our zone training and interviews day with President.  Then, after the interviews, we went to a meeting with President Salazar (Stake President) and President Harris to talk about missionary week.  During the interviews, we did more trainings, so it was definitely a full day for us!  It was a good day though, and we felt like the zone benefited a lot from it.

And that was basically my week!  A short summary of it, at least.  I'll try to share more details in the coming weeks for sure.  Just know that life is good!  I love you all!  I hope you have a good week!  Always remember how awesome the gospel is!  Whenever we pass through tough moments, God always picks us up, and that truly is the miracle.  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

It's a Dictionary

Hello all!  This week was awesome and super busy.  However, I'm probably spoiled by how crazy these past few weeks have been, because even though this week was super busy it was relatively pretty boring haha so this might be a quicker letter.  BUT, there were a lot of great things that happened!

So these weeks we changed!  Like I said, it was hard to lose Elder Mendez and it was hard for Alejandro too, but Elder Sawyer's great!  We're pretty similar intellectually so we have a lot of great conversations haha he was studying computer engineering in BYU before coming here so there's a lot of similarities there.  I'm excited to see how the change goes with him!

So I think I talked about the Bolivian sisters that recently moved here and just started coming to church for the first time in about 12 years or so.  They don't remember a lot so they wanted us to teach all the lessons and they have a 9 year old daughter that they want us to baptize.  And we started that process this week!  So that was fun, they're a great family and a lot of fun to talk to.  I probably won't be here for the baptism but it should be soon after I leave so I'll get pictures!

We also had a big miracle happen, there's a less active that Alejandro introduced us to forever ago called Rosa Machuca who was active when he was still in the church 16 years ago.  She was a return missionary, and since then, has gotten into a relationship without being married and had a kid.  She lost her rights, and the members and leaders treated her horribly and left her on her own so she's stopped coming.  The first time we went there it was basically just an opportunity for her to vent, and Alejandro went back alone this week and she vented to him for another 3 hours.  However, after those 3 hours of venting, she told Alejandro that she wanted to back to church and she wanted us to baptize her son.  That'a boy Alejandro!!!  Anyway, we were excited about that, and heard about that on Tuesday, the same day as the changes.  So we went by there to teach them too.

Patricia!  We went by and taught the Plan of Salvation and it went really well, though there were a ton of distractions on the part of her son.  We gave her the baptismal date invitation though and she accepted for the 18th of March!  And it wasn't a wishy-washy acceptance either, she said the words ''I really want to be baptized'' so it's a pretty big deal.  The great thing is, is that this time with her we were able to focus on the entire Doctrine of Christ and really hit repentance in hard way before ever talking about baptism.  So she understands completely well the importance of repentance and knows she has to repent before she gets baptized, and has already committed herself to coming to church every week for the rest of her life.

We also started teaching a Spanish woman who's living with a member of the ward!  Her name is Mari-Carmen, and her accent is way different, but it's awesome, and she talks in vosotros! (basically like biblical language, but she talks in it all the time.)  She's had a really hard life and has been trying to find God in a ton of different churches, and told us that she thinks she's finally finding Him here, and that she's finally finding peace for the fist time.  We talked about the Plan of Salvation and the atonement, and it was probably one of the coolest and most spiritual lessons of my mission.  It was a great experience, and I hope that she can continue progressing because she is awesome.

Okay I ran out of time, so the title of the email is based on a hilarious story that I have to tell next week so don't let me forget.  I love you all!  There are so many miracles always!  Life is great!  Always be positive!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

A Breath of Fresh Air (Literally)

Hello All!  This week was way, way better than all of the weeks previous for a long time hahaha so I'm feeling good!  I think getting through the tougher problems of the previous weeks helped me to keep a better perspective about the littler problems that are happening always haha so I guess I turned out more patient in the end after all!  So this week was good.

The fires are better!  The temperature dropped (one day last week it reached 114 degrees Fahrenheit... luckily this week we were in between 70 and 100) and one day the sky was completely cloudy, and one day it even rained!  So I'm sure that helped a ton.  The miracle is that it never rains in summer here, in fact, it's really weird to even see a cloud in summer here.  There are so many miracles everywhere always it's so great!

And we got changes!  Elder Mendez is going to Rancagua, and it is sad to see him go.  It'll be very different without him here, but we've had some crazy good and some crazy bad weeks together and we'll stay friends forever because of it.  He's a great guy, and he has a unique ability to look outside of the box of all-too-common LDS/missionary perceptions of reality, and because of that he has taught me a ton.  His biggest motto is that love is what matters most, and it's really true, and he shows it in the way he lives and serves in his calling.  So it's been a good time!  The good thing is that Elder Covey is staying in the house, so we will keep having a good time together.  My new comp is going to be Elder Sawyer, who is my first companion since Elder Barbosa (over a year ago) to actually have more time in the mission than I do!  He was a secretary recently so everybody knows him, and he's an awesome guy.  I'm really excited, because I know we're going to get along great.  Elder Young and Elder Heap (two of my best friends that I lived with in Santa Cruz and Hospital) are also coming to the zone as district leaders so it'll be an excellent change.

Updates on the sector!  I had my personal record of investigators at church this week, with 7.  We were pretty excited about that.  Patricia and María gave us a good scare because they were progressing soooo well and then Patricia got back together with her boyfriend and she wasn't progressing as well and we were afraid of losing her, but we went by with Alejandro and an amazingly awesome hermana in our ward called Hermana Evelyn and we had an excellent lesson.  María expressed her concern that Patricia was getting back with her boyfriend and Patricia started to get really offended but then Alejandro and Evelyn controlled the situation really naturally and fantastically and helped her understand that she needs to figure out what's best for her and her son and really do what's necessary, which includes progressing in the gospel.  And this week she went to church!  With her son and even María, who had never come before.  So that was exciting!

A Bolivian family that recently moved from the North of Chile are being reactivated so we're excited about that too!  They went inactive really young, so they want us to teach them all the lessons again and baptize their nine-year-old daughter.  Their names are Lorena and Dixie, and they're sisters, both in their mid-twenties.  They both have several children but no husband, but I'm not sure which children belong to which sister.  The younger sister stays at home to take care of the kids and the older sister works.  Even though they're in tough circumstances, they're super happy people and have a lot of faith and they're very friendly.  So I'll let you know how that goes!

All in all, I'm really excited for how the next few weeks are going to go.  I think the changes are going to help the zone a ton, which was also a significant source of stress this change.  I'm also excited about developments going on in the ward as a result of Alejandro's and Evelyne's service.  Things are really changing down here, and change was very needed!  So lots of prayers!

Thank you all!  I love you all!  Have a great week!!

Love

Elder Fox