Hey all!! I have a little more time to write this week so I hope to give more details!
First off, I apologize to all because I went through my last several letters and I realize that I have given so little detail about anything that's been going on in my time here in Calle Larga. I've been super rushed during my email hours and it's difficult sometimes to talk about everything and remember what to talk about. But I hope to talk a little more about what's been going on lately and the miracles we've been seeing lately. We've been busy but things have been good! I also need to share my spiritual thought from last week and talk a little about this week. However, I have received a series of questions from someone that I want to go through and answer.
I wanna know about specific people you talk to when tracting, how they receive you, if you ever get doors slammed in your face, how you find your investigators, who you talk to on the streets, how they receive you, who you talk to on the bus. Also, about the discussions you teach. How many do you teach per week, roughly? Do you give Books of Mormon away regularly? If so, how many? Do you hand them out on buses and on the street? How are they received (how do they react)? Stuff like that. Do you get as many teaching opportunities now that you are a zone leader, or are you more busy administering now and don’t have as much time to tract and teach?
That's a lot of questions! Hahaha okay, I think it's a sad effect of time in the mission that we get desensitized (or something like that) to all of the miracles that we see in the mission. We do have good contacts a lot, and I do appreciate them, but I neglect to talk about any of them in my letters. Chile's a little unique because everybody is very kind but almost nobody genuinely wants to listen, so because of that I've learned to curb my enthusiasm I get when we meet someone nice and listen to the Spirit to know how interested the person really is. Most of our finding is done door to door or on the streets because here references are scarce. About 3/4 of the people let us have a conversation with them at their gate and the other 1/4 just say they're busy and don't really listen but almost never shut the door in our face. That's only happened about twice on my mission. So, if we do the contact like a robot and just ask if we can come another day to share our message about 1/2 of the people we talk to will say yes and the other 1/2 will just give an excuse like not having time because they don't want to be rude. However, of those 1/2 who say yes, only about 1/4 of them actually have interest and about 1/8 of those who have interest would actually become investigators. So we have to raise the bar here a lot and really push to invite the Spirit during the contact and ask them a lot of questions and generate true interest, and if we can get into the house at that moment. There's a new technique in the woodwork that I'll talk about later. I'll try to give more stories in the future about people we meet and how we found them and how the conversation went so that you know a bit more.
We also talk to people on the street a lot but we don't have the opportunity to do contacts in public transportation much. The colectivos are our only chance but we don't take colectivos much in Talca so it doesn't happen much. People on the street, however, if they're not busy, are usually open to chat with us and are really nice. Most of them will give us their address but very few of them will actually have enough interest to open the door or let you in when you go.
Now we're teaching about 8 lessons to investigators a week and a ton more to less actives but we don't keep track. We need to strengthen this ward a lot more before it's ready to have true converts.
We have the goal as a mission of giving 2 Books of Mormon away every day with a return appointment to explain in, and we've kept as true to that as we can and average at about 10 Books of Mormon every week. It helps a lot because if a doubting contact really gives the Book of Mormon a chance, it changes everything and they almost always let you in after to explain more. So we give a lot out, on the street or at people's houses. Normally it's a little difficult to help people understand that it is not the Bible nor our version of the Bible but that it's a completely separate thing, but if they do understand that it's even harder to help them understand that it was actually written by prophets here anciently, similar to the bible, but almost all those who understand that give it a test and read it and usually end up loving it. We always give the books out with the commitment that they'll read and pray about it, and we mostly help people just to understand that it's the evidence that we have and that God can give them an answer about if it's true or not and people accept them readily.
Being a zone leader here does complicate things, because here we do more than in the majority of the missions since we have meetings with the district leaders and STL's every week and meetings with the zone every week. Also, if there's an open chapel in another ward that eats our entire day, and sometimes we go to places to do double-divisions if we're concerned about a companionship or a group of 4 Elders. We also have a lot more nitpicky stuff to do in-between so being a zone leader eats up our time considerably.
Whew. I hope that answered all of them haha I hope to share more detailed stories about all this stuff in the future.
So now I gotta quickly talk about the week haha the week was good! We found two new investigators going door to door that had listened to missionaries before but the missionaries disappeared out of the blue. They never had the opportunity to go to church. They were super friendly though and when we went back they invited us right in. Their names are Patricia and María and Patricia is our age and is super smart and seems to have a lot of potential. She said she was going to go to church but she went randomly to another place. But we'll see what happens!
We also found a whole family of less actives that want to come back to church. We went with Alejandro and talked about repentance. The Spirit was super strong in the lesson and everybody wants to come back to church! So that was an exciting miracle.
There's a new contacting method in the woodwork! The idea is having a survey of gospel questions and so when people open their doors you ask them if they can take a survey instead of if they want to hear the message. If they're hesitant, you ask them the first question which is super easy and just a yes or no answer. Then you ask if you can take the survey real quick inside. You ask all the questions, and ask follow-up questions, and explain gospel principles as you go, and as a result the contact always shares a lot of experiences from his/life and opens up a lot as the survey goes and it invites the Spirit like crazy. After the survey you ask if you can talk a little more but start with a prayer, and you teach the Restoration in 5 minutes. And it works wonders. It's a genius idea Elder Covey gave us and we've started to apply it. Elder Mendez and Alejandro and I went to San Clemente to do divisions with the 4 elders there this week to get them excited about working and apply this method to help us do it. I went with two Elders and Alejandro went with another and Elder Mendez with the other. Alejandro went with one that was really discouraged because we were sure he could help him and sure enough, he did! They got into a house using the technique and taught a lesson and everything! I love Alejandro, he's like our personal assistant hahaha.
We did splits with members again on Thursday so that I could go to ward council and Alejandro and Elder Mendez went to a few lessons. There's another couple of less actives who were good people but the guy had a drinking problem and didn't want anything to do with the church. After we taught about the 12 steps and watched the first video and it made a big impact, the next Sunday he went to church (his name is Roberto Alvarez) and told us that he has a goal to get to the temple to get sealed with his family! Yus!!! Anyway, that's where Elder Mendez and Alejandro went that night while I went to ward councill. So, good times!
And now my time is up! So those are some more details about the work here, we've been crazy busy, we're seeing some crazy progress, I have more to talk about still! But everything's been very satisfying. We're working very consecratedly and seeing the blessings and just feeling good about our pure service, forgetting about the numbers and all exterior pressures. So that's all :)
I love you all! I hope you have a great week!
Love
Elder Fox
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