The Latest Email Ever Sent

Hey family!!

This letter is ridiculously late.  I apologize for that.  We decided to try to climb a hill with the zone leaders in the middle of the day and we greatly underestimated the time it would take to do so, so we're super late today.  I'll have to write real quick but I'll give a quick update.

First off, today!  Today was awesome, even though we're behind.  Next Monday I'll be doing another exchange in Pichidegua to help out there and say goodbye to those I can on the way, so this was my last p-day in San Fernando, which is why the zone leaders wanted to go climb the hill, and we happily obliged.  The hill didn't look that high from the ground, but it turned out to be the highest hill I've ever climbed on my mission by far.  We probably climbed about 2,000 feet, but it's hard to say, it's the hill on the West side of San Fernando if you're curious enough to look it up on google earth.  It was incredible though, definitely on the list of the most incredible places I've ever been.  I'll try to send pictures next week.

As far as the work goes, it's been a good week!  We've been working pretty hard with less actives, and we've made some progress!  A lot of people promised they'd go to church that didn't (that happens sometimes) but the biggest surprise was that one less active that never attends church went this week!  She has a smoking problem and really bad depression, but we've been encouraging her and I think she's going to to the 12 step class as well.

We also started the 12 step class this week!  It went pretty well, but I don't have time to write details.

The kids are progressing well, their baptism will be this Saturday!  Wooooo!

I don't remember if I already said this, but the hermanas from Centinela are working in San Fernando 2 two times a week now and it's helping a ton.

Okay, I really don't have time to write anything, but I'll write a good one next week!  I love you all!

Love

Elder Fox

This week was much better

In essence, this week was much better.  And I have stories!  But I don't have a lot of time.

Things are doing good in Calle Larga it seems, Maricarmen went to the temple this week!  I'm not sure if she went to do baptisms but I know that she went.  Apparently she bought a full set of scriptures there and some other books, she's so awesome.  The ward keeps progressing, and Alejandro is working a lot with the missionaries.  This week he substituted for a new missionary who had to go home since his companion had nobody to work with.  So good stuff!

Things are doing great over here.  Tuesday we had interviews with President Harris which was awesome.  Me and my comp were also able to put some good goals of what we wanted to accomplish before I leave and we've seen some good miracles.

First off, Lorena and Cesar are doing amazingly.  She really wants to get baptized, they just need to get married.  They're some of the coolest investigators I've ever had, they're so ridiculously friendly.  We taught them the Restoration this week and it went really well.  They should be going to church this Sunday for sure.

Also, Lorenzo and Gladys (Angela's kids) are doing really well.  For kids that are completely new to the church, they're learning incredibly well.  I think they understand the Plan of Salvation better than I did at their age.  We taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to them and during the lesson Angela's sister, who we hadn't met before, walked in and we got to know her too.  She seems pretty interested, so we're probably going to go teach her too soon.

We also had a family home evening with a struggling family where the dad goes to church every now and then and the mom isn't a member.  They have a son named Diego who's 17 but doesn't go.  They invited some Haitians over for the lesson, so we got to teach them all.  It was a good lesson, we hope to help Diego more than anything, we tried to get him excited about preparing for a mission.

We also have hermanas working in our branch now!  Finally!  President Harris told the sisters from Centinela to work in our sector two days a week to visit the members that we can't because they're women.  On Friday we went with the sisters through the whole sector to show them where everyone lives and visit some people.  One of the sisters we visited was Lily Poblete, who's a girl who was strong recently but went inactive because she started smoking and didn't have any help from the missionaries because they can't go in her house.  So when we brought the sisters, she was really excited and seems like she's going to be going back to church.  Miracles!

Also, President Harris accompanied us this Sunday to the family of a kid in the branch who is going to go on a mission soon to Arkansas.  His mom is less active and his dad isn't a member, so President Harris wanted to go over and talk to them.  It was an amazing lesson, and the Spirit was really strong, and we invited them to read the Book of Mormon every night for 30 minutes.  If they do it, we know they'll come back, so we have hopes!

Also, we're going to be starting up a 12 steps class!  There are a lot of members we're working with that smoke, and probably some others that do more serious things, so we talked with President Harris yesterday about making our own 12 steps group.  He loved the idea, and said that we should just go ahead and teach the class ourselves with a member accompanying us, so that's what we're going to do!  I'm excited to start the class up, I've definitely never taught an addiction recovery class before but I trust in the Spirit to help us through the process.  It's gonna be great!

Anywho, I love you all!  I hope you all have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

Finally went to the Andes

Hey people!!

Sorry for not sending a letter last week, I had honestly completely forgotten until about a half an hour after I had finished writing.  That's a first!  But anyhow, luckily there aren't a whole lot of updates but I'll cover both weeks in this letter.

I lived my dream today!  My entire mission, the only thing I really wanted to do on P-day was go and explore in the Andes.  Here in San Fernando, the Andes is in our sector, so it makes things a lot easier.  We live really close to the mountains here, so we've been entertaining the idea for weeks now.  Yesterday, a member from Guadalupe offered to come with us because he knows the area really well so early in the morning we took a bus to Las Peñas and from there walked up the road to a place called Bellavista.  It was easily the most incredible place I've ever seen.  I'll probably send pictures, but pictures don't really do it justice.  The mountains are about twice as big as the mountains in Utah, so it makes for some amazing sights.  We were pretty high up, and there was a lot of sun and it was pretty hot, but miles in the distance we could see 18,000 foot giants covered in snow towering over us.  It was amazing.  So, I was a very happy missionary today.

Also, I don't know if I told you the story of the gringo from Utah that randomly showed up at sacrament meeting last easter, but in case I didn't, this easter a guy showed up at church from Utah who didn't speak any Spanish.  I talked to him a bit before the meeting and he explained that he's a helicopter pilot who was stationed in San Fernando with his flight team for a month or so.  We gave him our number, and this week he called us to invite us to lunch.  We met him at the airport and he showed us his helicopter and everything, then he took us to a vineyard pretty far from the city where I had the best lunch I've had in Chile.  The place was amazing, there was a polo court on one side and the vineyard on the other and it was really close to the mountains.  I ordered rib-eye steak, and it was the only steak I've had my mission, so I was, again, a very happy missionary.

The missionary work is going good!  I'll give a quick update on everything:

I don't know much about Pichidegua but I'll be going one more time soon to visit people and say goodbye.  I'll let you all know how that goes.

Back there in Calle Larga things seem to be doing super well, which also makes me really happy.  The Elder that got there is a lot like Elder Mendez so they're excited to have him there.  The best news is that Alejandro was advanced in the Priesthood and got a calling in the Sunday School Presidency!!  He was really excited, and so was I, so we were pretty excited together.

Here things are going well too, we keep doing activities every week to try to get the ward more active, and it's working a bit.  The best part is that it helps the youth and the ysa go to church and that's what we desperately need.  We keep teaching Lorenzo's kids, who are progressing and learning super well, so they should be getting baptized on June 3rd as planned.  We had a lot of other appointments this week but a lot of them were canceled, we're going to Lorena today though so I'll let you all know how that goes.

I'm super out of time!  So I need to close this off.  I love you all!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

Elder Fox: The Last Airbender

Post from May 2, 2017


Hey all!  This week was a little slower, but still good.  Since it was the last week of the change naturally a lot of weird things started happening, but everything is normalling out right now.

For one, to explain the title of the email, yesterday was labor day, so nothing in the whole city was open.  It was really eerie (I have no clue how to spell that) because there was thick fog and nobody was outside all day.  We ended up going to play futbol with some less actives that are coming back in the branch then we went to a German Sandwich shop (literally the only place open in the city) which was amazing.  We had actually planned to go there before, and then when everything was closed we figured it would be closed too, then we called and it was open!  So that was exciting news for us.  Then, I needed to get my hair cut really bad, so I had Elder Arroyo from Chimbarongo do it.  It was a really bad idea.  Long story short, the hair on all my head is about a half a centimeter long and I may or may not look like Aang from Avatar.  Woops.  Hopefully it'll grow back well enough before I go home.  I'll send pictures once I can get them on the computer.  I actually kind of like it though because my hair never bothers me anymore and I don't have to do it in the mornings or anything.  And of all the times to have my hair like this in my life, the mission is the place to do it.

I don't have a lot of time, so I'll have to summarize the week very quickly.  Sorry!  Anywho, President Harris came to our branch this week to talk to them during branch council and give a talk during sacrament meeting.  It was amazing having him there, hopefully he inspired a lot of changes in the administration of things.  I was able to ask him there how his visit to Pichidegua went, it seems that Ivan is still not budging for now, which is disappointing, but I know that President did everything he could do so now I feel even more peace.  

Sounds like things are doing well in Calle Larga, Elder Sawyer left Friday morning and took his flight last night.  Since Friday, Alejandro has been working with Elder Ullua as his companion.  Elder Manzano is going to replace Elder Sawyer there, and I don't know him at all but I have faith that things are going to be great!  Alejandro has a calling now, as a counselor in the Sunday school presidency.  Exciting stuff!  Evelyn came to eat lunch with us on Wednesday and say goodbye to me since she doesn't think she'll make it to San Fernando again.  It was awesome seeing her again.

Here we've been teaching Angela's kids and we put baptism dates with them this week!  They'll both make their date, so we'll be having 2 baptisms on the 3rd of June if I'm not mistaken.  We also had an open chapel this Saturday, but it was kind of a dud.  Elder Sharp and I were dressed in white in the baptismal font room for the tour.  After people learned a little about the restoration from the sisters, they would come to the font where we would talk about baptism and confirmation.  It was fun, but only 5 non-members came.  Not a lot compared to the 103 we had in Conti.  But it was still good!  That night we got the changes, and we're all staying!!  All 6 of us!  I don't think that's every happened in the mission history, that all 6 missionaries in a house of 6 stay two changes in a row.  But it's really exciting, it's been a good house and we've been really good friends.  So, I got one more change here in San Fernando 2 with Elder Figueroa.  We're going to give it all!

So that was my week!  I love you all, hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox