Seeing

¡Hola amigos! ¿Como están ustedes?

This week was really weird!  And I know that I left of in the middle of a story last week but I'm actually gunna finish it at the end of this email, but I'm going to finish it!  Promise!  Pinky swear!

So we weren't able to teach Rina again this week, which was pretty disappointing I'm not going to lie.  She also couldn't go to church so her date fell.  She seems to be busy preparing things for the 18 de Septiembre with the city council and such, and if she's not busy she's sick or tired or says she needs rest from working with the city council so much.  It'd be totally fine if all that's true, but what happens here a lot is that people feel good about the church then their family talks them out of it and give them a bunch of anti.  If that happened that would extremely disappointing to say the least, but we're pretty hopeful that that didn't happen because her faith was already so strong just in our first lesson.  I'll keep you posted for next week!

Mauricio!  Mauricio was our other golden investigator who didn't drink or smoke or drink coffee or tea... buuuuut it turns out he's already a member.  Which does explain a lot, granted, but it was still extremely funny and very strange finding out that our investigator with a baptismal date has been baptized for years already.  He must not have his memory completely intact, he's not very old and he seemed very normal to us.  Last time we visited him he told us that his nephew was a member (and he's actually a regularly attending member) so we talked to his nephew at church who told us that he was a already a member.  I laughed, for a very long time.  We found his membership record later just to make certain.  It explains why he doesn't drink coffee or tea, for certain.  Our weekly planning yesterday with regards to him was really entertaining:

Me:  ''So I guess we need to move Mauricio from a f1 to an inactive member                  now...  What should our goal for him be this week?''

Elder Hadlock:  ''Let's put... get him to remember that he's a member''

Then daily planning

Me:  ''So what are we gunna teach Mauricio tomorrow?''

Elder Hadlock: ''We'll teach him 'already being a member', that's a lesson I haven't taught in a while.''

It was hilarious.

Meanwhile, however, María is progressing towards her baptism this Saturday, the only thing more we need to do is get her interview done with the district leader.  I'll be performing the baptism, so I'm really excited!  She's really old though, so I'm a little nervous about being careful enough.  Pray for me that I won't break her!  Kidding.  Just jokes... mostly.

Wednesday we had zone conference which was a awesome, it was all about setting goals and making plans.  It was excellent, I learned a ton.  I'm glad that I can least understand all of the Spanish said in the conferences and meetings and such, even though I definitely don't understand everything that the Chileans say yet.  After zone conference we visited the hospital in Talca for a bit so stop by some members and then we took a bus all the way up to Rancagua (3 hours) because the next day was reunión de los nuevos, or newbie meeting.  We slept in the assistants house that night (had some excellent gospel discussion with the assistants) then went to the meeting the next day.  Seeing most of my CCM district again at the meeting definitely made my week.  It was awesome to see that they were all doing so well and seemed so happy, and their Spanish had all improved immensely too.  It was a lot of fun just talking to them about what's been going on the last 5 weeks since we had seen each other last.  That meeting was really good too, I learned a lot.  We had the opportunity to ask Presidente any questions that we had for about an hour, which was a really good idea, because we all had a lot.

Today's P-day was a lot of fun, but I'm very tired.  We went on a train that runs by the river by Conti all the way to Talca, but we got off the train at the first stop and walked the tracks on the way back.  It's reeeeeally pretty over there, and it was a very fun hike.  My favorite part was a giant bridge across the river where you can see the river winding through the green hills and empty into the ocean, it was fantastic.  We walked about 10 miles though, so we're all extremely pooped.

Beyond that, not much happened this week.  We had a few lessons with Mauricio, buuuuut looking back on them they didn't really accomplish much.  We also had some lessons with less active members.

So now last weeks stories!  We had a really cool service experience that I didn't have time to tell you about last week, so I'm gunna talk about it this week!  We were on the way back from lunch, that day we had lunch with the family we teach English that's asking us about 1000 gospel related questions a day, so they are at least interested about what we believe, but I don't think that they're interested in the way where they want to be converted, just curious.  Anyway, I digress.  On the way back to our apartments we say two ladies who were raking trash out of a big hill by their house that was just all weeds.  There had been trash falling from their chilean trash-can thing for so long that the trash was essentially indistinguishable from the soil.  So we started helping them get the trash, when they told us that they were going to dig out their chilean trash-can-thing that day and put in a new bigger one, and wondering if we could help them start that.  In Chile, the trash cans are more like mailboxes.  They're cemented in the ground as permanent fixtures, and people just come and take the trash out.  Theirs was very small, and they wanted to put a huge one in.  So we ended up taking the service opportunity (which are very rare here, people usually never ask for service even if they really need, which is something I don't really understand) and we spent the next few hours digging their trash can out of the ground, digging a huge hole to put the new one in, borrowing a metal saw and cutting the new big trash can a little shorter, then putting the new one in.  Even though we had to sacrifice some of our plans that day, I really appreciated the opportunity to serve.  As missionaries we're not just here to teach, we're here to love and help the people.  The people we were helping didn't seem interested in hearing our message, but they were extremely appreciative of our service because they were two woman in their 40's who definitely couldn't have done it without us.  They said that they didn't believe in miracles, but that now they do because we came by and helped them without them asking.  It made me feel really good, and we made really good friends with those ladies, to the point where, maybe someday, more missionaries will pass by and they'll invite them in.  You never know!

Time to finish the story I didn't finish last time real quick.  She asked my why I decided to serve a mission, and I told them, again very slowly in English, that I decided to serve a mission because I love God.  She didn't really understand that though.  She then, forgetting English and turning to Spanish, told me that you could love somebody that you couldn't see.  That there was no way that you could love somebody like you can love someone that you can see.  For this reason, she said, she didn't believe in God.  This is when my companion took over and said a few things about faith, before we went on with the English class.  But what she said left me thinking the rest of the day, because at the time I didn't really know how to contest what she said.  But after not much thought, I realized a big flaw in her thinking.  We love our parents, we love our family, we love our friends.  We can see them all.  But what if something happens, and we become blind?  Do we stop loving them?  Absolutely not.  And what if someone is born blind, does that make them love their parents, their family, their friends any less?  Of course not, why would it?  So what is it that brings us to love people then?  When it boils down to it, we come to love people not by seeing them, but by talking to them.  By listening to them.  By feeling them, by feeling their love for us.  And as believers in our loving Heavenly Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost, we believe that we can do these three things as clearly as with any other man.  We can certainly speak with Him.  We can, if we exercise faith and patience, listen to Him.  And, in those moments of discouragement, despair, and hopelessness, we can feel Him and His love for us as tangible as a hug from a loving Parent.  So why did I serve a mission?  Why do I love God?  Because I know Him.  Because I love Him.  I know that He loves me, I know that He hears me, that He listens to me, and I have listened to His advice and counsel more than that of any other being in my life.  I know that He lives, as reliably as I know that the earth spins.  The sun comes up, the sun goes down, and it is always the same.  So is God's love for us, despite whatever we may do in this life.  He loves us more than we can comprehend.  Even when we feel weak, useless, hopeless, and unworthy, He sees something great in us.  Something so great we can't comprehend it, because He can see our potential, He sees a God.  And He loves us.  This is why I love Him, and this is why I'll sacrifice everything for Him.

So that's my spiritual message for this week and the last week, I feel like it's been a while since I've left you with a spiritual thought, I promise I'll keep em coming!  I'll try to tell you as much of what I learn here on the mission as possible.  For now, let the work roll forth!  I'll talk to ya next week.  Love you all!  Remember, if nothing else, that God loves you.

Elder Fox