Pichidegua!

Hey all!  This week was a pretty dang good week, I've been feeling a lot of energy and the drive to work like crazy!  Which was good.  We kind of killed ourselves working in Pichidegua however and then I had to recover a bit but now we're back up to good energy-levels.  Anyway,

Pichidgua:

So the original plan was for me to go Tuesday morning, stay Wednesday morning (we had to stay in until government people came to survey us because it was Chile's census) then go home Wednesday evening after the census, but once I got there we found out that there weren't any buses all day Wednesday, so I'd have to go home Thursday morning.  So, I spent two full days in Pichidegua!  It was an awesome feeling.  When I walked in the house, the smell brought a flood of memories back.  Despite how difficult it was there, the memories were all good, which is the cool thing about memories.  So, I was on cloud nine the whole time just being back there.  Everybody we saw was super excited to see me and I was ecstatic about seeing them, so it was a great couple of days.

First off, we saw Luìz and Jesika who were eternal investigators of four years that didn't want to get married and their recent-convert children, Carlos and Fran.  I had heard they weren't going, which worried me, but I found out that the Dad had always been going but the mom had back problems, and because she didn't go the kids didn't either.  We talked about how much we needed them and how much we wanted to see the branch progress since we have a missionary as a President finally and how we needed their help and they seemed pretty excited about going to church at the end.  Success!

Next came fma. Peña, a family who was reactivated when I was there who went inactive again.  They got caught up in work, again, but we gave them the same speech we gave to Luìs and Jesika and they told us their plans to start going to church again.  They'll rearrange things with work to be able to go, so we'll keep praying for them!

Next I showed Elder Villavicencio where Christian lives, because after Elder Kammerman and I left nobody had passed by them again, but they kept going to church.  I had only been in bus, but this time we went in bike and it was a 1 hour ride solid.  They were the Peruvian family who started going back to church that we met through the son, Leper.  The Dad, Christian, is an incredibly spiritual investigator that loves going to church and wanted to get baptized but he has to wait to get legally divorced to get married to Leper's Mom.  They're still doing great, they were going to church as often as they could, but that's still not too often because they have to have a friend drive them and he's not always there.  They love going though, so they're getting a car now to be able to get there every week.  Elder Villavicencio got to know them well, and he'll be passing by now, so that was also a success.

We went by almost every member, and most of them are doing pretty dang well.  A lot of them are exactly where they were, a few are doing much better which was good to see.  The only real heartbreak was Ivan.  We talked to him for a few hours both nights, but the good thing was that we made a lot of progress.  It was hard to see a member who was so strong and helped us so much be so far from the truth, and being far from the truth has negatively affected his personality and everything I knew about him.  We were able to dig deep and understand why he didn't believe anymore, apparently he never really had a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and the fact that none of the members did anything bothered him.  I don't know if he'll come back, but at least I understand him, and he knows that I love him unconditionally and he loves me back, so we're at peace.

It was fun being with Elder Villavicencio.  We came to the mission together and have been in the same zone 7 changes, so we know each other pretty well.  We've both grown a ton, and we had a great time talking about the mission and what we've learned.

Calle Larga:

Things seem much better there lately according to Alejandro's last letter.  Rosa's and Rene's son got baptized this Saturday which is exciting, and several of the people that we were teaching are progressing well.  As far as I know they still don't know about the Bolivian family and I don't think they're teaching Patricia anymore, but we'll just have to keep praying for them all.  Alejandro's been teaching the missionaries English/Spanish which has apparently been going well.  He's also studying English in the University as always and it seems like he'll be going into storytelling too!  So there's a lot of exciting stuff too.  Alejandro's Mom went to Pedro's baptism, I think that's the first time she's gone to a church meeting in 16 years.  She was apparently uncomfortable, but we have a lot of hope that she'll come back completely as well.  With time.

San Fernando 2:

Things are doing pretty good here as well, Lorenzo and Gladys (Àngela's and Lorenzo's kids) are progressing and learning well and will probably be baptized early June.  We have some other new investigators in the woodwork but this week we were working a lot with the members and planning activities and things to help the ward be more unified.  It's been working well, we're gaining confidence with the members and they're all being more active.  We'll probably try to do an activity every week to help the ward be more active and build more unity.  We also had a zone conference on Friday, and I got to see all the missionaries from Santa Cruz.  I got to see Elder Covey again, which was awesome, and Elder Davis as well.  Most of them I hadn't ever met though, and when I met one he read my tag and told me right away that he had heard a ton about me... kind of worrying but I'll just hope they were good things.

So that was my week!  Lots of work, but life is good!  Changes are next week, I'll let you know what's going on, but I'll probably just stay here with Elder Figueroa to finish off.  I love you all!

Love

Elder Fox