Lots of things

Howdy

Decided I'd change the introduction up because I always start my emails in the exact same way!  This week was good though!  I was thinking about a good subject header to put, and the only thing I could think of was 'lots of things' because there were lots of things!  It was a pretty full week and another pretty busy one but this time I have a little more time to talk about it!

I'll start with our action story of the week.  After stake conference on Sunday at about 10:45 at night (we go to bed at 11:00 and thus we normally can't make or receive calls after 10:30) when we got a call from the bishop of a ward called Piduco in our zone.  We figured it must be important so we answered it, and he told us that he was talking to the sister missionaries on the phone and suddenly the phone cut out and after they weren't answering him at all.  He was worried because Piduco is a really sketchy area of Talca and one of the sisters had problems with a stalker in another sector in Talca in the past.  That didn't worry us too much at first because we thought it was likely that the phone just ran out of battery.  But as we kept trying to call them up until 11:00 they still weren't answering, and by that time they'd have had to plug in their phone and turn it on to use it as their alarm.  At this point we were pretty dang worried and we called President and then the assistants when he didn't answer.  We quickly changed our clothes and went outside running to find a colectivo to take us to the other side of Talca where the hermanas lived.  We called other elders who lived a little closer to pass by them and see if they were alright.  After running for a good 10 minutes we found a colectivo and started heading towards their neighborhood.  Luckily though, after about 15 minutes in the colectivo the other elders called and told us that the hermanas were fine and in their house but that their phone had just stopped making calls and they had no idea why.  After another 15 minutes (we stayed in the colectivo and waited for it to make full-circle through the whole city) the hermanas called us because their phone started working again and explained what happened to us.  We called the assistants and everything was fine!  We did end up going to bed at 12:00 though.  The story is a little anti-climactic but real stories like this are much better that way haha.

Now to start talking more about the investigators!  For Talca I'm a little surprised on how few progressing investigators the sector has at this point, but the goal is that we find a lot more in the coming weeks!  The biggest investigators we have are this extended family that has been listening to the missionaries for a while now.  One of the women, Lorena, has been baptized a few months ago, but her sister, Leticia, has a partner that she needs to marry first.  Lorena and Liticia both have children though that are also progressing.  Lorena's son is named Jesús and he's 10 years old, and he's a great little kid but he has a very short attention span so he's a little harder to teach.  He's been making great progress though and he has a baptism date in two weeks.  Leticia also has a few kids but they're a little more complicated.  One's name is Christofer who's 11, who would get baptized but Leticia wants him to at least get to the point where he stops yelling and swearing during church before he gets baptized.  Seems reasonable to me.  Her other kid that could get baptized is about 16 and I forgot her name.  She's making progress though and has just started going to church and activities.  So that's that!

We found a new group of investigators this week though that we're also really excited about.  One day out of the blue this Hermana from the ward presented us to her 12-year-old neighbor who informed us that he wanted to get baptized the following day.  We told him that he'd have to prepare a little bit and we'd have to teach him and his family for a few weeks but he was fine with that.  The same hermana found out a little later that this kid's grandpa was a baptized member, but that he and his family needed a lot of help.  She called us later and told us that the grandpa was a member but because of sickness can't use one of his legs and is bed-ridden for the most part.  Because of lack of time on the part of his children who take care of him, the house has become unbearable and alone it would take days to clean.  We went to visit and met the grandpa and the kid's mom.  We'll be passing by the grandpa every day to visit him because he doesn't have a lot of company and also teaching the mom and her son who wants to get baptized.  The mom is really hesitant about going to church because she was evangelical before and had a bad experience and swore herself that she would never go to another church, but we helped her to realize that she can get an answer from God to know if it's good to go to our church and that she can know by reading the book of Mormon and praying about it.  So we're excited for the prospects there!

Thanksgiving!  The day before thanksgiving I did divisions with Elder Wolff (he came with me and was in my district in the MTC so it was cool to be with him in the divisions.  We took a picture of our name tags together: Elder Fox and Elder Wolff) and after the division Elder Mendez and I had some time before lunch.  I was thinking about what we could do for thanksgiving that night and remembered how much I miss good mexican food and suggested that we buy stuff to make tacos (but according to the fox-family definition of tacos they were more like fajitas.)  So we bought meat and chipotle peppers in a can (to mix with mayonnaise and make the chipotle sauce) and green mexican sauce and made tacos together that night as a house!  It was one of the best food nights of my whole mission.  I was very happy.  It wasn't very traditional thanksgiving food but I loved it.

One more thing!  So we had interviews with President Harris all day Saturday and while he was doing interviews we were doing trainings with the missionaries about the Christmas initiative among other things.  We had to do 3 trainings back to back, and it was exhausting.  We were there from 7:30 in the morning until 3:00, and then at 4:00 started the priesthood session of stake conference, then at 6:30 started the adult session of stake conference until about 9:00.  So we spent more than 14:00 hours straight in the church.  Stake conference was awesome though because I saw all the members from Constituciòn!  I forgot that I was going to see them until a few days previous and when I remembered I got so flipping excited.  It was an awesome reunion.  I can't believe it's been a year since I've been there.  I got to see just about everybody though and the majority even remembered me!  It was awesome.

So that's my week of lots of things!  I was going to give a spiritual thought about something cool that happened this week but I don't have time so you'll have to remind me next week!  I love you all!

Love

Elder Fox