Howdy all! If you can guess from the subject of the email, I had a pretty good week. Not much really happened, in fact most of the things that happened were kind of depressing, BUT I still felt amazing this week. And it was very nice, and I'll get to why in a bit. But first I'm going to start by answering a question I got from my Mom in her email.
SO a typical day in the mission. I wake up every morning at 7:00 and make Elder Hadlock drag me out of bed so I don't skip doing my exercises. I do exercises for a half an hour and then get ready for the day until 8:30 where personal study starts, which continues until 9:30 where comp study starts, then we go until 10:30 when we study the language until 11:00 and then we leave. The mornings aren't an amazing time to contact or to teach lessons, so we usually utilize the mornings to put of flyers for our classes or use our records to find less-active or part-member families to teach, which so far hasn't done much. We have lunch at 1:30 then with a member always, which continues until 3:00 where we have a half an hour of free (study) time in our house before we go out to work for the rest of the day at 3:30. We then return to the house at 9:30 and plan and relax and go to bed at 11:00.
For the most part, the way we find investigators is using our area book to visit old investigators that stopped investigating, using the records to find part member families, but mostly just contacting (tracting.) Elder Hadlock and I lately though, because of our large lack of people, have been utilizing a ton of other clever ideas to find people. For one there's the English class, we're also starting to use a bunch of other ideas we've gotten from members who have served missions, and I'll tell you more about those next week.
I wish we spent more time trying to find people than we do, because we need people, but even though we don't have a lot of people we are still finding ourselves SOOO flippin busy and I don't even know how that happens. Stuff like English classes, doing divisions, having correlation meeting, going to the ward choir (they need me for piano), passing by recent converts and other members that need some love and support, and a bunch of other things that don't come to mind. There's also a ton of walking.
So that's my normal day! It's always a blast except for when it's not.
(but it usually is.)
So time for stories!!
Elder Hadlock and I dropped an egg off the roof this week. It was way too much fun. For the district class Elder Hadlock wanted to do something fun so he decided that we'd do an egg-drop where the people in the district had to prepare something to protect the egg, but Elder Hadlock would also drop one that was completely unprotected. The egg represented somebody with a baptismal date, and the concrete represented baptism. If you don't prepare your investigators with dates, when they get baptized they're going to crack, or possibly splatter all over. But to practice for mine and Elder Hadlock's, we threw an egg with a plastic bag attached to it (to act like a parachute) off the top floor of our apartment building. It didn't work, but it was a lot of fun. One of the people in the building saw it drop and poked her head out the window as we were viewing the damage, she thought it was pretty funny.
SO this story needs background. This change one of the Hermanas in Conti left, Hermana Prien. So then came another Hermana named Hermana Porter (not the same one that was in my group in the CCM, an older one.) She hasn't been here for very long, so I haven't talked to her much at all at this point. NOW the story. Elder Hadlock and I were playing sports with the young men and potential investigators that we invite to play with us this Wednesday when this adorable little girl from primary walks up to me (I'm just sitting on the side at the time.) This is how the conversation goes:
Little Girl: ''Do you like the new hermana?''
Me: ''.... come again?''
Little Girl: ''Do you like the new hermana?''
Me: ''... who told you that I liked the new hermana?''
Little Girl: (with a sly smile) ''... soooooomebody.''
Me: ''Tell me!!''
Little Girl: ''Sooooooooomone.''
Me: ''No, I don't like the new hermana, I don't even know the new hermana, and I kind of have somebody back in the states that I kind of really like yeah?''
At this point the little girl was walking away backwards pointing at her eyes and then at mine repeatedly kind of like ''Iiiiiii'm watching you Elder Fox, aaaaaalways watching.'' It was a really strange conversation, but it was adorable and hilarious so I decided to share it. I'm pretty sure this is just a primary rumor going on, because I haven't conversed much with the new hermana outisde of English class and correlation meeting, and few members are there for either of those. At first I was worried because this ward is notorious for rumors, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing to worry about.
Oh by the way, I got the Christmas Package. I had fun setting up the little tree and the stocking and the nativity on my desk. I'm keeping all the presents in the original box stored away in a closet for now though because we're stil a good ways off from Christmas, but if I don't get changed this next change I'll put the presents under the mini tree. So thanks Mom! :D
Another thing, have y'all ever seen that Sam and Luke series that the church did? It's that story of the two brothers who had a bad relationship, then 5 years later they did another interview with the brothers and it had all turned around. Well apparently they kept following them throughout the rest of their lives and made a whole series about it, and I LOVE it. It's so cool!! Cuz you see their whole flippin lives!! But the reason I tell you is that Sam served in Concepción Chile on his mission, and it shows what my mission is like very very well. At that time the Concepción mission included Talca and Constitución, so it's rumored that Sam was actually in Conti at one point. SO you should all go find it and watch it. Also Luke's mission story really inspired me, like a lot. That's actually one of the things that made me feel so great this week. I won't go into details, but I just loved it. It really shows the growth you go through in a mission.
NOW for investigators and things that happened there. We taught Pedro and Rosa again this week, but it didn't turn out so great this time. They started getting a little frustrated because they couldn't understand the Book of Mormon passage we left them (Moroni 10: 3-5) and were saying that they didn't understand the 'vosotros' and the 'os' and the '-éis' and all that, and were getting frustrated that it was ever written like that in the first place. Apparently they'd never been exposed to the vosotros form of Spanish before, which I didn't know was something that ever happened. The problem was that I didn't know how to explain why they translated the Book of Mormon using vosotros form. I couldn't really come up with a good reason at all. Then they both seemed to decide that they didn't really like the Book of Mormon and they're pretty sure that the Bible is the only book of scripture. Woops. I explained to them what I did last time about the importance of the Book of Mormon, but nothing absorbed. Elder Hadlock and I are not sure if they're ready anymore, but we're definitely not ready to give up on them yet.
We had a lesson last night with two women that we found contacting that went pretty well. We taught the first lesson, but the kids couldn't be controlled the entire time so they didn't absorb much of what was taught. Their names are Karina and Fernanda, who are cousins. They both have a little son, one is 3 and the other is 1. So it was a lot of fun, buuuut not the best teaching environment. The two women both have husbands but they're always working so we had to bring a member by to teach with us. In the course of the lesson we also ended up giving 3 Priesthood blessings, which is always a great opportunity, but a little odd thing to do in the middle of a lesson. The member offered them of us, whereas we would've waited for the end of the lesson, but it ended up working out alright in the end.
The real victory of the week was in Megan the Gringa. Elder Hadlock and I managed to get the only copy of the Book of Mormon in English for her in the entire mission this week when the secretaries came to our district class. Also, when we talked to her last week we invited her to our english class to help out with it, but she said that her family always travels to Concepción in the weekends. This Saturday though, she came and helped us out. Afterward we talked for a bit with her and before we all left we invited her to church. She said she would as long as her mom didn't have anything else she wanted to do. That next morning in Sacrament Meeting she came, and it was amazing. That was the first investigator we've had in church since our baptism back in my first change. It was a glorious moment. It was a great meeting too, one of my favorite members got up and talked about the vision of the Tree of Life. Megan stayed with us the 2nd hour too for the Gospel Principles class, which was luckily taught this week by our wonderful Misison Leader Daniel Mendez. Because she was there he revized the original lesson topic (signs of the second coming :P) a ton to be able to share a little about Joseph Smith and the First Vision and his testimony about the church. The Spirit was very strong and I was very very happy with that man. We gave her the Book of Mormon and she said that she would read it, which we were very happy about. We have an appointment to teach her Tuesday, so I'm really excited about that.
So I'm sure you're wondering why the week was so good, and to be honest, I'm not sure if I know the answer. I was very very blessed this week. The Lord blessed me with a love of Chile and a love of the members and a love of the people that I've never had before here on my mission, and I realized that I really want to enjoy every moment that I have here in this beautiful country. One thing I think I learned was the importance of enjoying your mission to the fullest, and how to do it. Another thing was a tremendous peace that I've been blessed with. I think I've finally internalized the truth that the number of baptisms doesn't measure the success of a missionary, and am finally at peace with the fact that as long as I try my best and love God, that I will do good here that I do not even realize. And even if not much good is done, God will accept my sacrifice, and be proud of what I'm doing. It seems like obvious stuff, but it took me a very long time to truly be comfortable with the fact that I'm not going to have a lot of baptisms in this area, and that I won't have many my whole mission either. It took me a while to be at peace with the fact that other elders are having a lot of success right now, and despite our efforts we're really not. It's a hard thing to do, and I think that peace I feel is a gift of God. I understand that I can only do my best, be humble, and constantly try to improve the way I work. But, more than anything, I need to love God. I learned that the love a missionary has for God is the true measure of success of a missionary. Also, taking a step back and looking at how much I've grown and how far I've come has made me realize how much the mission is changing me, even though the time seems to fly by without much happening. At the start of this week I became really uncomfortable with the fact that my mission, at the end of this change, is going to be a quarter of the way through, and not much has happened. I think I realized this week how many lives I've touched, and especially how much I've changed. I love my mission. I love it so much. I am so grateful for every moment that I can be here and I'm especially grateful for my mission call to the Chile Rancagua mission. Yes, Chile might have some of the lowest numbers on this side of the world. Yes, the Chile Rancagua mission has the lowest numbers in Chile. But, that doesn't mean that this mission isn't successful, and that doesn't mean I'm not a successful missionary. I feel a lot of peace in the face of not much success, and a lot of love for the country, and that has made a lot of difference. This week was actually a big turning point for me, and has changed the way I do a lot of things. I've also found much more confidence to talk to people and to step out of my comfort zone, as well as in teaching people and testifying. I'm feeling the Spirit work through me more and I'm feeling the power of the Spirit more when I testify. All of these things I'm convinced are gifts of God, and especially gifts of the Spirit. I'm very grateful for this week and how I've changed.
I sadly don't have any more time, because I was planning on bearing my testimony for the first time in a little bit in this letter, but hopefully I'll be able to next week. I love you all! Until next week!
Love
Elder Fox
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