Hey everybody! This week was great! And the best thing about it is that we're going to have a baptism this Saturday!! First one in a very long time. It's been 4 months since my last one at the end of my first change in Conti. We're super stoked. And so is President. We had a special training this week and the first thing that President told me and Elder Leguizamón is that he's happy that Paniahue is finally seeing success. And we are too! We visited Alan every day this week and taught him, and conducted the pre-interview on Saturday and he passed really well. His third church attendance was this Sunday so now he just needs to do the real interview Wednesday and he's ready!
I also gave a talk in church! But I'll probably talk about that later in the email. I find it funny though, that a 10 minute talk in English used to intimidate me, and now I'm perfectly comfortable giving a 25 minute talk in Spanish without writing it out first! My Spanish wasn't perfect but it was good enough! I feel like my Spanish has improved a ton with having Elder Leguizamón as a companion. Both my comprehension and speaking ability have improved, but mostly my comprehension.
We also got a killer reference this week! Apparently he's attended the church in Santa Cruz a few times (more than 3, which is awesome) and he went the other Sunday and the zone leaders talked to him, put a baptismal date with him, and since he lives in our sector they gave us the reference! So we have an investigator with a baptismal date that we haven't even met! So that's also super exciting.
I feel like the lessons I've learned about faith have been really paying off. I learned a lot about not blaming the circumstances for anything. It's easy to blame the circumstances, but in a work like this, the circumstances really don't matter. I think I may have been sent to a less-successful mission specifically to learn about faith. God has the power to prepare people and put them in your path, regardless of where you are, how the members are, or anything. That was a big lesson I had to learn. And I'm really glad I learned it.
Also! The mom of a convert named Yanina came to church Sunday! Which I was excited about. We've been trying to get her to go for a while, and this week we were able to teach her a 15 minute version of lesson 1, and she came to church! She said that she was bored, but that's okay! We can still work with that!
We spent Wednesday and Thursday in Pichilemu this week, which was fun. We helped the other elders move houses and I got to enjoy the lovely coastal climate which I miss from Conti. And I got to see the beach again, nice because it's been a while. Also in Pichi there's a disco (kind of like a club) called 'Señor Fox.' that's big and super popular there, which I thought was pretty funny. The logo looks almost exactly like the little fox drawings that Bri does for our birthday cards.
We did a deep clean of the house today! It was sorely needed. The past elders were very irresponsible with the place and we've been cleaning it trying to get the weeds and plants out of the small yard out back essentially since we got here. And now it's finally finished! Now if it were in the States we probably wouldn't even be kicked out of the house! Probably.
SO my talk! I wanted to talk about the atonement and missionary work, so I ended up telling the story of the filling of the font in Conti as an intro for my talk. I liked reflecting back on that event and thinking of the symbolism behind it. I realized when I looked back on that story that since that baptism Elder Hadlock and I have filled the font two other times (for the baptisms of the hermanas) and the font filled much more normally, without problems. The font filled in 2 hours, just like it should've that day of our baptism. Also, we've used the firehose of the church since then to clean the church (don't ask how) and the water that came out of the hose was perfectly clean. I realized that both of the things that caused the emergency that day were both very exceptional circumstances, and realized that God had likely caused both in order to teach us a lesson.
Aaaaaaand I have to end the letter there. Which is really sad because I started that whole thought with the font-filling and the atonement but I can't finish. Woops. Sorry! Remind me to finish next week! I love you all! Have a great week! Be good! Stay safe! The church is true!
Love
Elder Fox
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