Hey all! I got to talk to a bunch of you yesterday! That was a ton of fun, and I want to finish one of the thoughts that I started but didn't have time to finish!
But first, to catch up all the people who I didn't talk to on my week, it was a good week but really busy to do a branch conference that we had on Sunday. The Branch President needed a ton of help with a ton of things so we found ourselves doing that a lot more than our normal work, but a few cool things did happen! A part of preparing for the branch conference was practicing for a choir number that I had to play the piano for and sing for. The song was ''Santos Advanzad'' and sadly I don't remember what the song is called in English....
So this week sadly we had to drop Francisco, it was really sad, but he literally told us that even if God appeared before him and told him that he has to be baptized in the church of Jesus Christ he wouldn't do it... so that's a pretty good indication that his heart isn't ready for the gospel yet.
Other than that we made progress with Claudio, the investigator we found last week! He has a past but he's very committed to changing his life, which is awesome. The best thing about him is that he doesn't do much so we can teach him 3 times a week and he always follows through with all the commitments so he's progressing very rapidly. He agreed to obey the law of chastity and the word of wisdom and understands the restoration pretty well, so we're hoping he'll be baptized early next month!
We also have a new investigator who's from Haiti! We found him last week when we were trying to find a drug rehabilitation center because we were going to play soccer with the people their. We needed someone to help us find it and he happened to be entering his house at that exact time and we talked to him for a bit. He also explained to us that he had been in Chile for only 7 months and that he learned all the Spanish he knows in that time (his native language is French.) When we passed by later he explained that he was an adventist but that he stopped going to church because he had a girlfriend (in addition to his wife...) and he didn't feel worthy. He explained to us that in order to walk with Christ one has to keep a certain standard of conduct and he wasn't keeping it, so he stopped. But he asked us where we meet every week and told us that he'd come to church! He didn't come, but we'll see about next week!
So near the end of the call I talked a little bit about how I've seen some pretty difficult sectors in my mission, but that I was actually grateful for the experience because of how much I learn from the experiences here and how satisfying it is starting to see the sector that was dry starting to progress.
And that's what I want to talk a little bit more about! A major theme of my mission has obviously been the lesson that I learned from my first baptism in the mission: ''God fills the font.'' Time after time, I have seen this same remarkable miracle in the course of my mission, just always in a different way.
But regardless of how many times it happens, it never ceases to surprise me!
I'm a lot like my parents, especially my Dad when he was in his mission, in that I constantly feel painfully unqualified for the service that I'm rendering. Missionary work is extremely important, and extremely difficult to do it well. But I have seen, time after time, that regardless of how unqualified I feel or how many mistakes I feel like I'm making, the people start to progress in the gospel anyway. We find more people to teach anyway, as long as I'm doing my best to do the things that I know I should be doing. A prime example of this is Claudio. Honestly, every lesson we've taught his has been awful. He's very hard to teach and the lessons we've had with have been the worst of my mission. Yet he tells us every time that we see him that it was the day that he met us that he decided to change is life.
Especially since I started training Elder Espindola, I've felt very unqualified for the times ahead of me. We have been entrusted with a lot of people with a lot of potential, and though my companion receives revelation and helps a lot, I'm primarily responsible for their progress. But in the course of my mission I've learned something:
When we are with God, even though we're just people, God is still God, and everything is possible.
That's the message of the atonement, the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and my message and testimony to all of you! Missionaries aren't the only people who feel unqualified for the type of service to which they've been assigned, we all feel it. And even if we don't feel particularly unqualified for a calling, we all feel unqualified for the celestial kingdom. And there are a few truths that we can never forget. One is that we are children of God and that He loves us, and the second is that God fills the font.
I love you all so much! Have a great week!
Love
Elder Fox
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