The Beginning of Great Things

Hey all!  I made a video that I'm going to upload and send in the church after this, so stay tuned.

In the video I describe that me and Elder Kammerman are staying here this change and I'm district leader again.  It's gunna be a good change!

Things I didn't mention in the video!  General Conference was awesome.  We saw a lot of repeated themes:  The Plan of Salvation and the Atonement, The doctrine of Christ (faith and repentance), prayer, and missionary work.  Cool right?!  We also got a few talks about the Restoration and how to help our faith when it's struggling.  I learned a lot and look forward to studying these talks a lot more in the coming months.  The Spirit was very strong for me this conference, and I felt manifestation after manifestation of God's love for me, when feelings that we need to improve something are accompanied by feeling God's love for us, we know that those feelings truly come from God.  Those are the feelings that truly lead to repentance instead of discouragement, which is what Satan wants.

So I mention in the video that there are a lot of great things coming up here in the branch.  Me and my comp are super excited about all of it, and we're excited for a great change coming up.  God truly has great things in mind for Pichidegua, and we're seeing the start of a process that I'm sure is going to be very long, but very important.  We're seeing many miracles every week, like the miracle I describe in the video with the family we found as a reference that's going to start going to church every week.  Exciting stuff!  Goes to show that faith always holds the power to execute the will of God, whatever that may be, and however slow the growth of the church involved may be.  In a few of my past sectors I saw the same kind of thing.  Growth is slow, but I suppose that God uses some people to start the rock rolling and others to keep it rolling.  Neither is more important than the other.  I haven't baptized anyone in over 8 months, and in 15 months I've only baptized two, but I never really feel like I'm not successful.  God has been using me to start the rocks rolling, and I'm fine with that!  It'll be great to see how Pichidegua is a few years from now, since growth is finally beginning.

Some funny stories!  So my comp has this uncanny ability to permanently remember the name of anyone we meet (while that's a particular weakness of mine.)  So we were walking into a supermarket one day when my companion waves to this guy passing by us and says ''Hey Carlos how's it going?!''  I had no idea who this person was, and I was pretty perplexed at how my companion knew him since I've literally been by his side ever since he got to this part of the country.  I expressed how perplexed I was and asked how he knew his name and he replies, ''He's Carlos!  Ya know, that guy we bought bread from that one time?!''

Oh yeah.  Carlos.  How could I have forgotten?  The bread guy we bought bread from one time about a month ago.

I thought that was pretty funny.  It's pretty handy how he always remembers these people.

Another one, so Chileans almost always try to speak English when they see us.  It bothers some people, but I've just always found it funny.  So between sessions we were outside with two other elders getting money from an atm when these street workers nearby started trying to speak english.  They said the common ''hello'' and ''how are you'' (most chileans don't know more than this) but then started asking between themselves in spanish ''how do you say ____?'' but I didn't pick out exactly what.  I decided to be a little twitful, and in spanish I asked my companion ''¿Cómo se dice... hablamos español?'' which is ''how do you say... we speak spanish?''  I didn't intend for them to hear me, but they did, and they got a huge kick out of it.  They started laughing a ton and said ''we heard that!''  At least the took it well.

So that was my week!  I'll be sending the video!  I love you all!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox