Hello all! I tried to free more time this week to write the group email because it's been a while that I've been able to write a group email with a lot of detail like I used to, so here you go! :) This week was awesome, but with many complications. 3 of the 4 bikes of the house broke this week (mine is the one that stayed alive... HA) and without bikes here it's impossible to keep people progressing. But nothing is impossible with God! So we had an awesome week anyway! AND we got more investigators in church and new investigators than ever before! So we're excited.
Funny stories! So I tried to invent a verb this week and it didn't work out so well. We all drink mate just about every night, and I wanted to invent a verb to say ''let's mate ourselves'' (makes more sense in Spanish.) In order to make 'mate' a verb in spanish I thought of 'matear', and to conjugate it to be a first person plural command I said 'Mateemosnos', which happens to sound exactly like 'Matemosnos', which means 'let's kill ourselves.' So my comp was pretty disturbed when I said 'let's kill ourselves' right after the closing prayer to our planning. Yeup. Didn't think that one through.
So I fell in a hole this week. For some reason on a bike trail there is a large sewer thing without a grate, and for weeks I've been passing it and thinking 'that would be really terrible to fall into.' Well one night we were on the bikes (before they broke) and it was super dark and I fell in the hole. And discovered just how terrible it was to fall into. It was hilarious, but a little painful.
Alrighty investigator time! I completely forgot to tell you about Eugenio and Maria last week because I thought that that happened the week before and I already mentioned it. But I didn't! We met them in 'El Gringuito' a few weeks ago and we talked about the restoration with the shop owner and it caught their interest. While I kept talking to the shop owner, my comp turned to them and got their address and asked if we could pass by. We went by, and they're probably the most friendly people I've ever met. They want to do a barbeque for the whole zone next p-day for free! Reeeeeeaally friendly. Even more shocking was their lifestyle, they live the commandments perfectly and only believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost even though they're technically catholic. They have tremendous faith, and were excited when we taught them the restoration and they accepted baptismal dates! It was a true miracle. The only difficulty now is getting to church, because as catholics they're not used to that.
Denel! I might have talked to him, but he's another extremely friendly person from Haiti that we met a few months ago. We just started teaching recently however, and he loves to have us over and listen to us, even though his Spanish isn't perfect. He's a little iffy on the Joseph Smith asunto because he loves the bible, but he understands the importance of the Book of Mormon in proof that he was a prophet and is willing to read it. We got him the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets for the lessons in Creol so he can understand better. He didn't want to accept baptism because of his doubts of Joseph Smith, but he'll get there. The best news is that he came to church this week! And he loved it! We went to pick him beforehand and he told us that he had already been waiting for us for an hour. To every member that he met, he point to me and Elder Espíndola and said, ''These ones are my brothers, they come to my house and teach me the word of God and it's the best.'' He's great.
Claudio #2 made a huge step this week in finally coming to church!! Victory!!!! We're still not sure about him getting baptized because it's hard to tell how much of what he tells us is true, but if he comes to church two more times we'll have to set up a baptismal interview with President Warne anyway, so he can decide if he's truly repented or not. We'll see how it goes!
Claudio #1 is still waiting for an answer, I wrote him a letter this week with a lot of scriptures about how we get answers and I wrote about my own conversion experience and shared a lot of my thoughts on the subject. I hope it helps him.
We found three new investigators this week! I don't have time to go through them all, but the one that called the most attention is a new investigator we have named Felipe. We were walking towards the fma. Menares last week and I noticed a dirt road off to the side that I'd never noticed before, and I thought it led to a few houses or another neighborhood, so we took the road and there was a young adult already outside walking out to meet us. We discovered that it wasn't a neighborhood, it was just a house with a really long driveway. We talked to him and he said that he was atheist but that we should come by another day. We set an appointment and this Tuesday we went by and he was already waiting for us, he said he was anxious all day to see us which was a good sign to me. We talked about how God is our Loving Heavenly Father a little, and gave him the commitments of reading Alma 32 and praying to know if God exists. I asked him why he would pray, to verify his intent, and he replied ''because I want to change.'' That shocked me a bit! The second time we went, he had read the chapter and wrote 10 questions about it, and already had a table outside and lamp ready for our arrival to talk about it. It was awesome! His questions were really profound, great questions. He accepted everything we said without hesitation. He also told us that he wanted to quit smoking and he wanted our help. A little later, we asked why he let us in, why he wanted to talk with us, and he explained that he didn't like the direction that his life was headed in, and made the decision to change his life 10 minutes before we showed up right at his door. He took it as a sign. Cool right?!?!?! That night we talked about the book of mormon and how it's the key to know that God really exists.
So I did divisions with one of the Elders in my district, Elder Santini this change. He's fantastic, and I always learn a lot from him. We were able to put a baptismal date with a new investigator that night, which I was really grateful for because I was praying for days that we'd be able to put a date because they didn't have any investigators with baptismal dates. And the guy's awesome! His name is Alex, and his girlfriend is LDS and his uncle and aunt are converts of the zone leaders, and he's already been to church twice! SO I'm way excited.
SO that's my week! The other companionships in my district also did amazingly this week, so I'm super proud of them all. Thanks for all of the advice about leadership and feeling peace. I learned a lot about that this week, and came to the conclusion that everything is in the heart. I've had leaders that didn't have confidence in me, and it was the worst. Luckily I learned from their mistaes, and I've been constantly expressing my confidence in the missionaries in my district. Another thing that's been amazing is praying for them all, by name, every night. I might not be a great leader, but when we have faith, hope, and charity, amazing things can happen.
So I've just had an amazing week this week in general, minus the stress caused by the bikes and other small things, I've been extremely happy with everything. There have been many things that have contributed to that happiness, but one of the biggest spiritual experiences I had this week was when I read Luke 5: 10-11 in Jesus the Christ:
''Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men... they forsook all, and followed him.''
Usually we read the other working ''For I will make you fishers of men'', but the different working of Luke really got to me very suddenly, and I wasn't entirely sure why. I remembered how my mission wasn't the beginning nor will it be the end of my missionary service, but that ever since that summer of 2014 I dedicated to my life to Christ, and ''henceforth [I] will catch men, and forsake all, and follow Him'' And, truly, we will all henceforth catch men, and forsake all, and follow Him, because that is our calling.
I love you all! Have a great week!
Love
Elder Fox
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