Hola hola!  It was another FLIPPING fantastic week here in Constitución!  We found two new investigators which I'll tell you about a little later, so now we're working with 19 people and families (including less actives and recent converts.)  So mish!  We are very busy, and we're having to let those people who are less dedicated fall through the cracks a little in order to give proper attention to those who are going strong, but we're holding up pretty well!  We've managed to get a member to fellowship almost all of those 19 people and families so we're doing alright so far!

First, however, a few more things about Chile!  There's a false conception in the United States that Chile is really high-baptizing, but in fact baptisms here in Chile are actually pretty scarce.  Most missionaries have only a few their whole missions.  For the most part, the people are really hardened and so finding investigators is usually very difficult.  Then, when you do have investigators, nobody here is married and everybody drinks and smokes and does drugs so the chances of being able to bring them to baptism is actually really rare.  It's normal to have several investigators with baptismal dates your whole mission, but actually baptize very few of them.  So this kind of success we're having in Constitución is very unusual, and I'm very blessed to be having a baptism here in my first change.  We're very fortunate to have as many people to teach as we do, and to have as many investigators with baptismal dates as we do.  We'll likely be able to babptize one or more people next change too, which would fantastic!

One more thing, the church here in Chile is not like the church in North America.  It's very new, extremely new, so new that Chile often runs into the same problems that the early Restored church had a few centuries ago.  So when I tell you about crazy things that bishops, stake presidents, branch presidents, and other people do and other crazy stories about things that happen, just know that for the most part that's normal.  In fact, the mission president here actually takes a HUGE role in just keeping the church well organized and intact.  Elder Hadlock my trainer was actually in a branch presidency in his last area, because everybody in the branch was a recent convert and everybody, including the branch president, didn't know what they were doing.  So he actually kept the branch afloat and counceled the branch into health.  How sweet is that?!  Anyway I digress.

This week was amazing!!  SO amazing!  Let me start with what happened just a few hours after I wrote my letter last week.

But first you need a little bit of background

So about two weeks ago my companion and I were studying the section in the Preach My Gospel about finding people to teach, when we came across the section that essentially says ''Don't rush between lessons and appointments while people who might be prepared to receive the gospel are passing you on either side, be careful to listen to the Spirit and talk with everyone.''  We realized we could definitely be better at that, especially because we're so crazy busy every day.  So that day we were walking to an appointment when we passed a lady who was sweeping her front porch.  I was about to walk right past her, but Elder Hadlock tapped my shoulder saying ''Espere'' and went and started talking to her.  Turns out she lives alone in the house, she believes in God and Jesus Christ and is very faithful but doesn't have a religion, and she never drinks or smokes.  For Chile, that never happens.  Ever.  She had nobody to marry, no bad habits to quit, and no religion.  That never happens!  Anyway, I digress.  We talked to her a while and then told her we'd pass by later and teach her.  We set everything up in the coming days to have her come to a member families house who lives right by her so that we can teach her.

Now it's Monday!  This was actually the first lesson I we were going to teach that I would be leading the teaching (as a result of the first 12 weeks program if you're familiar with it) and so I was more than a little nervous, but I was praying hard that the Spirit would be with me.  We teach the lesson to her, and she immediately accepted everything we taught her.  Immediately.  No doubts, no concerns, no questions, just acceptance of the message like she understood it all perfectly (which is also really rare here, the education here hasn't always been the best.)  Towards the end of the lesson when we commited her to pray to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet, she told us that she already felt that the Church of Jesus Christ is the true church, but that she would still pray in order to know for sure for herself.  She later said that she felt the Spirit of God in her heart, which is something that she had been missing in her life and wanting.  It was an amazing experience, the Lord truly prepares people to recieve the message of the Restoration of the Gospel.  We invited her to baptism, to which she accepted.  We set a date for October 3rd.  When we left, she left us with the words ''How beautiful, the word of God.''  Already, I could feel the power of a testimony growing in her.  The Spirit was extremely strong as it confirmed the truth of our message to all of us.  These kinds of experiences in the mission don't happen very often, and I was pretty giddy as we left the house the night.  Elder Hadlock was even happier though, as soon as we were out of earshot he basically screamed and tackled me into the street.  We were really excited, like reeeeally excited.  There are always people who are looking for the truth and don't know where to find it, and the Lord always finds a way to lead His servants to them.  It's no less than a miracle, and sometimes I think that we underestimate that.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Talca and did divisions with Elder Ramirez while the District Leader went to Conti and did divisions with Elder Hadlock.  Nothing much happened on our end but Elder Hadlock and Elder Heinz ended up teaching a man that we contacted the very first day I was here in Conti and they ended up setting a baptismal date with him too, so I was kind of sad that I wasn't there.  His name is Mauricio, and is also increeedibly religious but doesn't actually have a religion.  He has so many spiritualy stories of his life, he told us about 10 of them during the course of the lesson.  Needless to say it was a long lesson.  Anyway, I digress.  Elder Hadlock and Elder Heinz left him the pamplet about the Restoration which his wife also read later, and when we asked Mauricio about it in our second lesson he said that she really liked it, so we hope that we can teach them together and hopefully baptize them both!  They also don't drink or smoke, and they don't even drink coffee or tea, which is about as rare here as finding a 20 foot tall platypus-bear with pink horns and silver wings.  So we have high hopes for them too!

We taught both families that we teach English to this week, but one of the families we ended up only teaching them about our beliefs in the church, which is way better than English anyway!  They have a ton of questions.  Like a ton of them.  So they are at least curious, but I don't think they have any intentions of joining... yet... hehehe.  Our other family we teach English to is awesome though, we've actually become really good friends of theirs.  They invite us to their birthday parties and when they go on vacations they buy us souvenirs, so I have a cool keychain from Easter Island!  They also feed us a lot, that night we taught them they fed us the completos and the herbal tea that we see so much down here.

We visited more people this week but those stories aren't quiiiite as cool and can probably be saved for next week, so I want to digress and tell you about an experience I had a few weeks ago.

A member in church came up to Elder Hadlock and I and started talking in English which kind of caught us off gaurd at first, but then he asked us if we do service every week to which we replied yes, then he said that he teaches an English class in a high school (it's reaally called colegio but it's the equivalent of high school) and wanted native speakers to come in and answer some questions that the students would be asking in English.  I was excited, cuz ya know I can speak English pretty okay.  So that Thursday we went to the colegio and sat down with this member and his class of about 6 students, probably all my age or just a year younger.  I assumed they'd be asking quiestions about our culture, language, and the United States.  But I was really caught off gaurd when the first question, asked to me was ''Do you believe in miracles?''  I was shocked for a little bit, then I turned to the teacher and asked ''...¿Tengo que contestar esta pregunta en Ingles?'', meaning ''... I have to answer this in English?'' to which he replied yes.  I knew that these students didn't know a lot of English, so I was dying to just answer it in Spanish so that they'd understand.  Which is kind of ironic, given that two months ago in the CCM I was wishing the very opposite.  So I tried to answer the question and talk about my experience in the CCM and on my mission in as simple terms as possible, and speaking extremely slowly.  The next question was even harder, ''Why are you serving a mission?'' These students knew we were their age, and they were honestly curious why on earth we'd make this sacrifice.

I'm out of time and the story is not done, I'm extremely sorry but I have to put a 'To be Continued' on this, which stinks because I didn't get to the spiritual message yet!  Shootah.

Love,

Elder Fox