The Fastest Year to Ever Year

6-21-16

Hola!  This week was fantastic!  We started the week with only 1 functional bike between 4 missionaries but by Thursday we finally got everything fixed!  So we finished off the week strong, even though we started it off real slow.

So the subject line!  I know it's a little early, but I realized last week after writing that it was the 13th of June, which will be my return date next year.  And that really shocked me, a lot.  For some reason my mind has still been in february and I didn't realize that half the year has already gone by.  Also, I realized that tomorrow will be my exact half-way mark, and that made me feel even weirder!  So I decided to stop thinking about it.  One thinks that his mission will last forever, until he starts it, and then it flies like nobody's business.  It's hard to believe that I've already been here a year, and have been speaking Spanish more than English for a year!  It's crazy to think about how accostumbed(?) I've become to living here in Chile, and I already know that it'll be a huge adjustment when I have to go back.  So I'm going to take the ''glass half full'' approach and look forward to whole other year of being a missionary!  I've made a lot of progress in this first half, and I hope to make even more in the second and become the best missionary I can be!

With that said, this week was stressful but good!  Yeah, still good.  Felipe is progressing super quickly!  He accepted a baptismal date this week, came with us to a district temple activity, came with us to a baptism, and came to church with us.  He's also been reading a lot, but I don't think he's used to praying for his atheistic background.  He reminds me of Kind Lamoni however in just that he believes everything we tell him!  Yet he understands the importance of investigating for himself, and he's not going to get baptized until he comes to his own conclusion through the answers God gives him.  So he's doing great!

Claudio also came to church again this week, and Denel came again this week.  So they're doing great too!  We weren't able to teach Denel again but at least we saw him at church, if Claudio passes his interview with President he'll be on track to get baptized the second of July!  Pretty exciting.  We still don't know much about Claudio #1, he came to church too but we weren't able to talk to him much.  We'll see how he's feeling about getting baptized on the second of July as well this week.  I hope that the scriptures and testimony that I gave helped him.

I did divisions with Elder Bento this week, a new Brazilian that just got to the missino three weeks ago.  It was a good division, I enjoyed getting to know him even though his Spanish is 80% Portogeuse and I don't understand everything.  That night we went to Euguenio and María and had a barbeque with them and Marìa's family.  Definitely one of the best barbeques I've had in Chile, so it was a good score.  Eugenio said that he read the intro to the Book of Mormon and has been praying about it and feeling peaceful while praying, so that's a good sign!  He also said that he'd be coming to church for sure this week because they've been wanting to go, but sadly they didn't come.  I tried calling him the morning of but he didn't answer, so we're not sure what happened.

The district is also doing great!  This week all the companionships in the district have an investigator with a baptismal date, so that made me super excited.  A few of their investigators also came to the district activity and the baptism afterwards, which also made me really excited.  A lot of the people who attend baptisms get baptized, it's funny how that works.  I felt a lot more confident in the district class this week, I felt inspired to abandon what I had prepared and just go for a completely different topic and it worked out great!  The miracle of trusting in the Spirit is that it'll never lead you astray!  Even when you're new at giving district classes and you're scared to death hahaha.

Fun story!  So Wednesday after the district class we are about to call a colectivo to go home when we saw Jaime, a recent convert of the zone leaders who is extremely friendly with the missionaries and always gives us stuff.  We got our attention and told us that if we waited a bit he would take us home.  So we waited and got in his car.  However, instead of taking us home he took us straight to one of the nicest restaurants in the mission (and generally recognized in Chile for having the best meat) that's called ''Los Buenos Aires de Paine.''  And he baught us all lunch there!  It was the best, I was so happy I could've cried hahaha it was the best meat I've had since I've been in the states.  So we ate and talked to him for a good while, luckily we didn't have lunch with a member that day so it was perfect!  So Jaime just became my new best Chilean friend!

So that was my week!  It was a great week, and it's awesome to finally see a good group of prorgressing investigators after a lot of patience and perserverance.  It's not likely that I'll be here to see their baptisms, but what's important is that they get baptized, and I'm super grateful to have been part of that process.  This week I studied a lot about patience, and came to a conclusion that I liked:

Patience = Faith + Time

Then Elder Christensen told me that once an apostle said that patience is obedience prolonged so I decided to change it to:

Patience = Faith + Hope + Obedience + Time

A little more complicated, but I decided that I liked that!  The difference between patience and the other attributes is that it involves time, obstacles, and trials.  It's the ability to maintain all the other Christlike attributes for an extended period of time regardless of the obstacles in the way, and accept the timing of the Lord in all things.  So that's my spiritual thought!

I love you all!  Have a fanastic week!  Know that I pray for you!

Love

Elder Fox