Hey all!!!

Hey!  So I already sent you the videos talking about the week but the week was pretty good!  Slow on the investigator front, as you know, but fantastic on the branch front!

So one thing I didn't mention in the video is that I've been feeling the power of my calling especially strong this week.  I'm really feeling the Spirit through me as I testify, and I have an extra confidence that what the Lord is doing through me is really blessing the lives of these people.  It's a nice confidence to have, so even though the week has been I'm still super content.  I found out recently that Alan is more active again, which made me happy as heck, and also that some of the people that I taught in Paniahue are going to be baptized.  I don't know if you remember Isabel, but apparently she's going to move out and separate herself from Blas in order to get baptized.  Also, one of the part-member families that I started teaching in my last weeks there is going to get their kids all baptized here soon, so all of that was music to my ears.  I thought that my time in Paniahue was especially fruitless, but it's a good lesson to show that you never really know what can happen a few months or even a few years down the road!

Speaking of Paniahue, I saw one of the old members from over there this week!  She yelled out my name while we were walking in the street, and I was just wondering who knew my name, and then I looked and it took my brain a good 10 seconds to process that it was Marión!  I was pretty excited, because it's the first time that I've seen a member from a past sector, and she remembered me and my name!  So we talked for a bit and apparently she's working here in Pichidegua now.  Small world!  I've seen her a few times since then just driving by.

So the branch is doing awesome!  The Spirit has been working on them a lot this week, and one of the coolest manifestations of that was last Monday.  Last Monday after P-day we went to a little activity that these members who own a restaurant across from the church were putting on, and we prepared the spiritual thought.  Because President and we thought that we should put a big emphasis on the Book of Mormon with everyone, we decided to talk about the Book of Mormon.  We showed the testimony of Elder Holland on the Book of Mormon and then we talked about it and the personal importance it has for us, and the good that it'll do for the branch if everybody reads it every night.  I shared my personal experience, the key role that the Book of Mormon had for my in my personal conversion, and Elder Kammerman also bore a powerful testimony.  The Spirit stuck really strong in that moment, and after we closed, instead of immediately closing and blessing the food, we all got talking about the work of salvation.  The members started talking about how they felt like they needed to do something more, that they needed to reach out to the youth, how they needed to reach out to the less actives, and how they needed to get the branch strong again.  I was just sitting there on cloud 9, listening to everybody talk and gratefully realizing how our prayers were being answered.  It was a good night.

Chairty is an incredible thing, and something that I've been praying for very hard.  It hasn't been hard to get to love this little branch at all.  Sure, I've been frustrated at times (especially with the President), but I'm pretty convinced that other than my family and close friends, I've never felt such love for a group of people in my life.  I really feel like I'm starting to see them as God sees them, for their strengths before their faults, and it's a very liberating see people.  Seeing people through God's eyes really is the essence of charity.  I think I understand now, at least much more than I did, exactly why we are nothing without charity.  The good we try to do, if done without love, simply doesn't do anything.  It can't do anything.  It has no effect.  It is as ''a tinkling cymbal.''  But with charity, with the power of God on our side, we can move mountains.  I think I understand exactly why faith, hope, and charity are the ''fountain of all righteousness.'' In Spanish it reads: ''the source of all righteousness.''  And that is truly what it is.

I love you all!  And I hope that you have a great week!  I'll send pictures next week!

Love

Elder Fox