What the fweak just happened?

I hope you all understand the Kid History reference.

This is the subject of the email because this week was just... really... weird.  It was amazing, and awesome, and weird, and hard, all at the same time!!  So it does beg the question:  ¿Qué pasó?

But overall, it was actually one of the best weeks of my mission thus far, so I'm not gunna complain!

Monday we found someone and put a fecha!  It was a great triumph after over a month of our area being completely dry.  I had passed by him a very long time ago accidentely when I was looking for a past investigator and went to the wrong house.  He said that he wanted to know about our church and to come back, so we passed by Monday and we taught him the first lesson and put a fecha!  His name is Eduardo, and he's 86 years old.  For the U.S. that's normal, but for Chile that's absolutely incredible.  He has an awesome little house on the edge of a seaside cliff.  He's been Catholic all of his life, so that's his doubt, but he seemed to like the lesson and he said that he'd read the Book of Mormon and go to church!

Tuesday I went to Talca to go on divisions with the Elders in our district there again.  This time I was with Elder Lloyd, who went to Lone Peak but graduated the year ahead of me.  We had a good day, but not much happened.  Meanwhile in Conti Elder Hadlock and Elder Villavicencio found a family!  A flippin family!!  And he put two fechas right there, but there are some more kids in the family and the mom is a less active member.  It's really hard to find good families to teach here, so when I got the call I was really happy.  After over 3 months of not much at all we suddenly got a lot in a matter of days, I was stunned!  Also, Megan the gringa had read Alma 32 and absolutely loved it.  She loves the Book of Mormon apparently, but she doesn't believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet yet.  I'm not really sure how that works, but she's progressing really well!  She went to church again as well.

Fun statistic time:  In this mission about 20% or one fifth of the people who accept a baptismal fecha end up actually getting baptized.  Just thought you might like to know.

I stayed overnight in Talca because Wednesday was the Christmas activity for our half of the mission!  We combined 4 zones so I got to see Elder Waters and the other Hermana Porter again!  The activity was a lot of fun, we had a devotional, played sports, ate a huge lunch and then watched a slideshow of all the missionaries' best photos from the year.  That night Elder Hadlock and I stayed in Talca and worked with Elder Villavicencio and Elder Lloyd for the night.  We went to Jessica's house again and watched Meet the Mormons.  It was awesome, we talked to them and Jessica said that she prayed about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith and said that she got a very peaceful feeling and that she knew that it was true.  I was stunned, she was golden!  I was feeling super grateful that I was able to participate in her conversion process, because she'd likely be the best investigator that I'd meet on my mission.  I was very impressed with her and her dedication and her sensitivity to the Spirit.  That night Elder Hadlock and I stayed the night in Talca and us and all the Elders in the apartment put apartments in the main room and had a giant sleepover.  It was awesome.  We were super happy for the other Elders because they had a baptism coming up, and the had Jessica and her son that were fantastic investigators, and one more really promising investigator with a fecha.

That next day we went to zone training and went back to Conti, and that's where weird things started happening.

We got a call from Elder Villavicencio and he told us that they discovered that Jessica was a member that had been ex-communicated, and she'd been wanting to be baptized again but wanted to keep this information from the elders so had been pretending to be a real investigator.  The news shocked me, I'm not going to lie.  It shocked me a lot.  But, I realized that if she goes through the long process ahead of her and ends up being re-baptized, that'd still be incredible, and I would have still helped in that process.  Also, her son hadn't ever heard of the church before, and the elders are now working on getting him baptized.  The coolest thing about that though, is that he's saying that he wants to serve a mission.  And that is flipping fantastic.  So, even though the news was shocking, I'm still very grateful that I have been able to be a part of their big life changes.

Elder Villavicencio called us the next day and told us that their other fechas fell too for other odd reasons, those poor elders had a really hard week.

Also, Elder Hadlock and I returned to the family that they found on Tuesday and they are very very kind people.  I love them to death.  I forgot their names, BUT I'll tell you them as soon as I remember.  The problem is, we found out that they didn't understand very clearly when Elder Villavicencio put the baptismal date with them on Tuesday.  We brought it up again to confirm it, and they told us that they weren't going to get baptized because they had been baptized in the Catholic church and didn't think it was necessary to do it again.  We explained the restoration and the importance of the preisthood authority again, but they still held firm in their conviction that they didn't need to get baptized again.  So they lost their fechas, but we're not giving up!  If they truly understand the restoration they'll be ready and willing, and they're an amazing family. 

That's about all!  But I have some funny (and weird) stories to share that contribute to the weirdness of the week.  And then my awesome spiritual moment for the week!

So Elder Hadlock and I had a really unfortunate encounter with an army of pre-teen girls.  We were contacting and passed this party that was going on outside with at least 50 pre-teen girls, but four of them were on the curb close to where we were walking.  When we passed them Elder Hadlock just said ''Hey do you want something?'' and handed them all little ''Ha nacido un Salvador'' cards that we got at the Christmas activity to hand out when the storm started.  Suddenly EVERY pre-teen wanted the card.  All of them.  In seconds we were surrounded on all sides by 12-year-olds and we gave them all cards.  But that's not where it ended, they found out that we were from the states and that we spoke English, and then they were all asking us every kind of question you can think of.  All of them.  At the same time.  What's your name?  What does this thing in English mean?  How do you say this thing in English?  Where are you from?  What do you do here?  How long have you been here?  What does this english swear word mean in Spanish?  Why do you have dirt on your butt?  Meanwhile they were all taking pictures and videos and voice recordings and selfies to put on social media after, which I thought probably wasn't the best thing for the public view of the people on missionaries, but we couldn't escape!  That's when Megan the gringa came because she lives really close and her brother told her about the commotion going on outside with her gringo friends.  She came to us and we spoke english to each other which definitely didn't help the situation.  She suggested that we just run, but I didn't want an army of little girls chasing after us in the streets for everybody to see so I thought better of it.  We ended up slipping out while enough of them were just focused on Megan the gringa and snuck away.

Sorry Megan, it had to be done.

We also had a 40-year old woman hit on us reeeeeally hard core, but I don't have a lot of time so I'm not going to go into it.  It kind of freaked me out, to be honest.

Oh, by the way, if it was Mom's wish that I play the piano on my mission, she definitely got her wish.  I played every day in the CCM for opening hymn.  Day 1 in the field in my interview with President he informed me that I'd be playing for the newbie meeting in 10 minutes.  Wasn't a lot of time to prepare.  Then, I accidentaly became the official ward choir accompanist because the ward pianist is the conductor of the choir.  So I essentially have to learn whatever songs they want to sing as quickly as humanly possible because we don't have a lot of time to waste sitting in the church for me to practice.  Also, since I played for the ward choir it got out that I play piano and now people call me and ask me to play for whatever activity or that they're going to have, and usually give me about a days notice so we have to run to the church for a half an hour so I can practice.  A lot of piano.  I'm getting a lot better at learning hymns quickly.

Spiritual moment!  There were lots, but this week Elder Hadlock and I did a study of the atonement in our companionshiop study and both ended up tears.  A lot of tears.  I felt like Hermanas, but it was a really amazing study.  He read a poem about missionary work and the atonement and we both just lost it.  I learned a lot though, and I felt the spirit very strongly, and gained an appreciation for the atonement that I've never had before.  It was an amazing experience.  Also, the other night I was feeling really down on myself and Elder Hadlock had the perfect things that I needed to hear and shared the story of him and how he's felt his whole mission up until that point and that was also an amazing.  Maybe I'll be able to share both stories in more detail when we skype because they were amazing and I can't really do it justice in this email.

So this week was kind of a rollercoaster of all kinds of emotions, but there were so many incredible things that happened this week, it made it an amazing week.  My gratitude for the atonment and my Savior goes beyond words, and I know that He loves us more than we can imagine.  I wish I had more time to share my feelings, but I don't.  Poop.  Hopefully next week will be a little less crazy so I can share what I'm feeling.

So that was my week of what the fweak just happened!  I love you all!  Have a great week!  You're in my prayers!

Love,

Elder Fox