Claudios

Hey all!  This was a fantastic week, we had some terrible days and some fantastic days and I'm excited to tell you all about it!  But first I need to tell you the fun stories of the week!

So the four of us got to the house of a less active member that we're teaching, and her little nephew was sitting on her porch dipping bread in yogurt and then eating it.  Elder Cook asks:

''Are you.... dipping bread in yogurt?''

Little boy:  ''It's the same!''

''... the same as what?''

Little boy:  ''It's the same thing!''

''The same as what?!''

This conversation continued until the less active came out and explained to us that it's the same as eating bread and then eating yogurt.  I'm not really sure how the logic of all that came about but I thought that it was pretty hilarious.

Burdened with mayonnaise!  So in Spanish ''burdened'' and ''loaded'' are the same word, so sometimes it's hard to tell which one someone wants to say.  So last week we were eating Choripanes (hot dog type things) and I put a good deal of mayo on mine and Elder Cook tells me in Spanish that it's ''loaded with mayonnaise.''  But I was confused and took it to mean ''burdened'' so I replied in English, ''It's... burdened with mayonnaise?''  We laughed about it for a while and I said that that would make a good band name:  Burdened with Mayonnaise.  Then Elder Cook wrote a screamo song on the spot that went like:  ''SHE *drum drum*  left ME *drum drum*..... BURDENED WITH MAYONNAISE''  I thought it was pretty funny.  I then took a picture of Elder Cook and Elder Espindola acting out how being burdened with mayonnaise would look like, which I'll send hopefully in this email.

So a while ago we went pday shopping while fasting (bad idea) and bought a lot of weird food.  One of these was a weird fruit that I'd never seen before in my life, I think it might be a dragon fruit?  I'll send a picture of it.  So this morning we decided to finally make juice out of the weird fruits that we baught, so we cut the top off, gutted the insides to make the juice, then poured the juice back into the shell and drank it with a mate-straw to filter all the seeds and gunk out, and it actually turned out pretty delicious!  Then, just to complete the effect, Elder Cook put his Guaso pancho on and I got the house guaso hat and all four of us sat there drinking juice out of our dragon fruits dressed as guasos.  Realizing how weird the situation was, Elder Cook explained how a few years ago he would never have been able to imagine his life coming to this.  It was hilarious, I'll also send pictures.

So the week!  There were too awesome things that happened this week and the rest of the week was kind of normalish.  Sadly, what progress Francisco made seems to have disappeared and he's back to saying that he will never get baptized regardless of any spiritual confirmation he gets.  So that was definitely disappointing.  We did have an amazing lesson with Juana and Romildo though, where Juana told us of a dream she had when she was doubting in God and asked in prayer if He really existed.  She told us that it's because of the dream that she knows the God is real and that He loves her, and when she started to talk about how her faith has helped her in her life, she started to weep.  She went on to tell us that she doesn't believe in any church because of the experience, that she just knows that there's a God, that there's Jesus, there's the Holy Ghost, and that we shouldn't pray to saints or to anything else.  It was a very powerful experience, and we promised her that just as God answered that prayer with revelation, He can also answer her prayer to know that the things we're teaching her are more than just pretty words, but that they're things that God has specifically in store for her.  She promised us that she would have a conversation with her Father, and that she'd take some time to spiritually prepare herself.  I was pretty stunned through the whole experience, she is really someone who just gets it, and I think it has a lot to do with her dream.

Claudio!  We had an awesome lesson with Claudio this week where he agreed to pray with his girlfriend about a baptismal date!  Woooooooot!  Dominic (the girlfriend) was super happy after the lesson, she's been waiting for this for a long time.  So we'll see how it goes with him!

We found a new investigator this week!  His name is also Claudio, and he's super prepared.  He told us that he wants to change his life and leave everything behind, and he accepted a baptismal date for the 28 of May without hesitation!  It was awesome, we're also super excited about him.  We haven't been able to teach him again so we're not sure if he has anything holding him back from baptism, but knowing Chile it's very likely that he'll have to leave behind a lot of things.  So we'll see how it goes!

I'm out of time!  Hopefully I'll be able to tell more about the two Claudios next week!  I love you all a ton!  Take care!  Excited to skype!

Love

Elder Fox

Guaseando and Trainer-Brain: Burdened with Mayonnaise

Hello all!  This week was amazing!  Easily one of the best of my mission.  But I am so dang tired.  So if this email comes out a little odd, it's likely because of that.  But to answer your question, yes, the subject does make sense.  But it does require some explanation.

Tuesday I got my comp!  I was almost as nervous as I was when I got here and I was about to get my trainer!  Which is kinda weird... not sure why.  Anyway, my comp is Elder Espindola from Buenos Aires, Argentina!  And he is awesome.  We became immediate friends, and conversation flows super naturally between us all the time.  We have very similar senses of humor and we laugh a lot together, which is definitely therapeutic because of the stress that we're both under!  He was the Elders Quorum President back home and worked a lot with the missionaries, so when it comes to working with the members he definitely knows his stuff.  He is extremely friendly, has a ton of energy, and is super excited!  Right after I got him the assistants sent us out in different parts of Rancagua to do contacts for 2 hours for references and then come back to finish up the meeting, which I thought was a great idea!  We had a ton of fun doing it, and it was a good confidence boost for me.

So my comp is doing fantastic!  The only thing that he needs to work on is learning and practicing the mission lessons and inviting people to baptism and other commitments, but of course that comes with practice and time.

A cool thing about training is that it puts a lot of pressure on you to be the best example that you can, which is actually something I've enjoyed!  I've been taking courage more often in stopping the bikes to talk to someone walking on the street, or turning around and heading back to be able to talk to them.  And it's done a lot!  The only problem to this is what Breanna in her email to me accurately called trainer-brain:  The pressure to be perfect and the resulting effect of constantly being scattered and a little stressed.  I have felt the trainer-brain for sure!  For the first few weeks I'll have to do most everything (besides teaching and contacting) on my own until Elder Espindola gets a hold of the ropes and can start taking on more responsibility, but until then there is certainly a ton of stuff to do!  I've also been a little scattered, as I usually am, but for the most part we've been super productive this week together!

The week!  We had an awesome week.  We taught a lot more lessons than is normal here, my trainee got to invite 4 people to baptism, and we have a new investigator!  

We made progress with Francisco this week!  When we met him he told us that there was no possibility that he would change his religion, and now he's saying that it's probable, and that if he receives an answer from God he'd be baptized!  He's listening all the parts of the Book of Mormon that we leave for him, he's praying, and he's willing to come to church if we can come by him to pick him up.  He's confined to a wheel-chair because of some physical disabilities, so we'll have to have a member come help us to pick him up.

We taught our new investigators again, Juana and Romildo.  Romildo also can't walk, but he can't even endure sitting in a wheel-chair because of his health, so he's constantly confined to his bed and Juana takes care of him.  We were teaching the first lesson, when I asked Romildo what he would ask a prophet if a real prophet were here with us.  He replied that he would ask him what the next life is like, because he wants to walk again.  The room was silent for a while, and of course we sensed the need to switch gears on the lesson, so we talked about the atonement of Jesus Christ and the resurrection.  Romildo told us that all he wants is a new start, and we promised him that it was possible.  The Spirit was very strong in the room as we testified of the Saviors atonement, and at the end of the lesson I tied the theme of the Resurrection into baptism and my comp invited them to be baptized, but Juana replied that because of Romildo's condition she can never leave the house because she has to care for him.  Definitely a problem.  But we're talking with the members to see what we can do.

New investigator!  His name is Javier, he's been Catholic all his life but he has some doubts about the church and about God is general, but he told us in the initial contact that he wants to listen to us and know more about us.  He's definitely one of the most prepared people I've met, so we're super excited.  We taught him the restoration and it went super well, when we got to Joseph Smith he stopped us and asked us:  ''Joseph Smith... was a prophet?''  and we replied ''yes.'' and he said ''And through him the original power and authority of God was restored to the earth?''  and again replied affirmatively.  Then he said ''wait for me here'' and he quickly went into another room.  We were pretty perplexed, but when he came back out he said ''this is going to surprise you'' and he showed us a book of the Teachings of Joseph Smith and the Teachings of Brigham Young.  He told us that he had a cousin who had passed away who was of our faith.  He said he never read the books, but now he wants to.  So that was pretty surprising!  He's an awesome guy though.  I think he would've invited a baptismal date but my comp ended the lesson a little prematurely, woops hahaha it's all good.  We'll be seeing him again today.

The branch is doing great!  The Branch President told us this week that he wants us to give them more work, which of course we were excited about.  We started doing a lot of things to get the members more involved and have a lot of plans, so we'll also see how that goes!

Funny stories!  So Chilean cowboys here are called ''Guaso(s)'' (basically pronounced WAH-soh.)  And this week Elder Cook really wanted to buy a classic Guaso pancho (the guasos wear panchos here, not sure why but they're kinda cool.)  So he was looking for a pancho all week and in the market one morning he finally found one and bought it.  We had lunch with a member shortly after, and we were talking to the Hermana about her husband because he was going to come to lunch a little late and we'd never met him before.  Because we were on the topic of Guasos as well, she also told us that he tends to be a little guaso at times.  So when he came and joined us for lunch, Elder Cook decided to invent a verb and ask ''so where do you guaso, hermano?''  He was naturally pretty confused, because in Spanish it doesn't work so well (donde guasea, hermano?) and then Elder Cook explained that he invented the word 'guasear' (to guaso) but that he wasn't exactly sure what it meant.  We all thought that was pretty hilarious, so the word has stuck.  Now, every night Elder Cook wears his pancho and talks about how much he loves guaseando (guasoing).

Burdened with mayonnaise will have to wait till next week!  It's a funny story too, so remind me to tell you!  We had an awesome week, hope to have another!  Take care all!  I love you all!  Have a great week!

Loev

Elder Fox

The World is Slowly Ending

Hello all!  It was a great week - despite the title of the email.  It's just incredible how much destruction happened this week!  Here in Chile and the rest of the world!

Luckily, Chile is really good at handling earthquakes!  For Chile it was a relatively small one, only about a 5.5, and it was very close to where we live.  The embarrassing thing is... well... I slept through it.  I'm very sleep deprived here, I literally slept through an earthquake.  The whole zone were under tables and doorframes and I was just chillin in my top bunk... happy as a clam.

Another funny story about the earthquake!  In district class Wednesday we played a game that had to do with our emergency backpacks, we had to bring our emergency packs and whatever was in it (and not expired) were our resources for the game.  It was a board game type thing that starts with an earthquake and the goal is to get to the chapel.  If you run out of your resources before you get to the chapel, you die!  So it's a good way to see if our emergency packs are up-to-date.  At the end of the game Elder Matsen said, ''So update your backpacks because there's gunna be an earthquake... TOMORROW!!''  Then his eyes got wide and dramatic and it was silent for a while, then he got normal again and said that he was just kidding.  The next morning, the earthquake happened with the epicenter being practically right underneath his house (he lives in Maipo) so I thought that was funny.

After the earthquake came the rain!  Which proved much more destructive than the earthquake.  It's been raining since Thursday hard without stopping, and the flooding is so bad in Santiago that many people are going missing and they've found a few dead bodies.  It's not that bad here in Buin, but apparently Santiago is having a ton of problems due to the sheer amount of rain.  The river here in Champa did overflow, however, and that's caused a lot of problems for a lot of people in our sector.  So we'll just pray that the rain stops!  Everything I own is wet.

Anyway, other than all that, life is great!  We got the changes last night and Elder Mendez is going to Rancagua, and I'm training!!  Definitely sad to see Elder Mendez go because he was a great friend, but I'm way excited to train!  So I'll be going to Rancagua early tomorrow morning to get my trainee.  It's more likely that he's latino because there are 9 latino Elders coming in this group and only 2 gringos, but it'd great to have a latino because he could help a ton more in the lessons and I wouldn't be so on my own.  So stoked!!  It's great!!

We also did divisions with the assistants this week!  That definitely came as a surprise, but Monday night Elder Crane (good friend from Santa Cruz, now assistant) called us asking if we could come to their sector the next day to do divisions with them.  It was a shock, but it was great!  I worked with the other assistant, Elder Evans, I learned a ton.  It was a great learning opportunity, and I've been applying what I learned in the division and as a result we have 3 new investigators!  Pretty dang excited about that.  Two of them my comp already knew but had never taught, we passed by to see how they were doing and ended up teaching a lesson on faith.  They're awesome people!  I don't have a lot of time so I'll have to explain more in my next letter, sorry this letter is a shorter one too, I wanted to send pictures this week.

The other new investigator we just found contacting!  At first he didn't want anything but he actually let us in and we taught him lesson one really quick and he accepted the invitation to pray, we didn't invite him to baptism because we want to invite the whole family at once, and we have an appointment with them this Saturday!  So I'll definitely update you on that!

Hey can someone send me a good waffle recipe?  Hard to use a waffle iron without a waffle recipe.

I love you all a ton!  Thanks for all the love and support, I appreciate it a ton.  This is going to be a great change!  Pray for me and for my trainee!  Have a great week!  I promise that longer emails are to come!

Love

Elder Fox

Whoa I have no time!

Heeeey I literally have no time this week.

Hahaha... woops.

But I love you all a ton!  I'll tell you just a few things before I log out.

My scripture cases came!  They are super sweet, I'll need to send pictures!

Hey so we need to vote, and by we I mean I, I need to vote.  Can you send me something so I can register to do such?  And can Bri and Mom send me information about both candidates?  I definitely don't want to vote in ignorance.  I know the primaries aren't quite done yet but once we know the final two send me stuff about them.  Chances are it's Clinton and Trump from what I hear.

We had some awesome contacts this week!  We're going to other parts and finding some awesome people who are a ton more receptive!  We have a lot of appointments this week so pray for our success!  We're finally starting to see some real progress here!

I did divs this week with a fresh-out-of-the-mtc gringo!  It was a ton of fun, made me realize that I'd love to train.  We found a new family of investigators that day!

I love you all!  Take care!

Elder Fox

This week was just about the best ever

Hola people!  This week was easily one of the best of my mission.  And it ended fantastically with the best general conference ever!  Seriously, it was awesome.  But first I want to talk about investigators!  Because we're finally starting to see some progress which I'm really excited about.

So we have this eternal investigator named Claudio that knows that he's going to get baptized, but he just doesn't feel like he's ready to do it now.  He feels like he's never received an answer.  I understand what he's feeling, I remember feeling frustrated that I had never felt like I had received an answer to know if the Book of Mormon is true, that is until I went on Heritage Tours and the answer was unmistakable.  But we made a good deal of progress with him this week!  We had done a family home evening with him and his LDS girlfriend and her family about the Book of Mormon, and I was able to share my initial conversion experience with him.  After the lesson, he asked the other elders how they came to know that the church was true.  The other three elders gave powerful experiences and testimonies of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the Restoration.  After, he asked me to name three changes that I've seen in myself by being here in the mission, and if I have ever felt like I have lost myself.  It was definitely the most interesting question I've ever gotten by anybody, and to answer truthfully would definitely be revealing a piece of my soul to everybody in the room.  But I decided to do it anyway!  Words kind of exploded out of my mouth, and I forgot what I exactly said, but I'm certain that some of my words needed to be heard that night.  It was an awesome experience, and the Spirit was very strong.  After I stopped, it was silent for a bit, then Claudio just leaned over and gave me stones hahaha he's a cool guy.

We also found two new investigators this week.  They're super interesting people, and the lesson was a little odd.  BUT new investigators are a thing to celebrate anyway, and they did agree to let us come back and teach them more, even though they assure us that they're set in their ways and they're never going to change.  My comp told them that they could be surprised how the will of the Lord for people can be manifest by two young boys, and they both admitted the possibility!  So it was progress.

General Conference!  So lucky that my birthday fell on general conference weekend.  I don't have a lot of time to share conference thoughts sadly, but I took a bucket load of notes and loved every minute of it.  It was all extremely inspired, especially the messages from our beloved prophet.  I especially appreciated how the talk about feeling more entitled when we're farther from God preceded those who shouted their oppositions in the sustaining rather than raising their hands as indicated.  They likely didn't even listen to it.

My birthday was great!  My comp made a cake for me while I was in the shower (I have no idea how he pulled that off) and we all had cake for breakfast!  Then that night I made the cake that Mom sent me the ingredients for (which wasn't too easy with the Chilean supplies I had, the ovens don't have any way of setting or measuring the temperature) and finished it this morning and we ate it for breakfast!  Cake for breakfast two days in a row!  Delicious.  Also, thanks a ton for the gifts you sent.  I loved the hump day pillow case, it was a little hard to explain what our hump day radio show was (or what hump day is and why it's called that) to my comps in Spanish but I think they thought it was clever too!  I also love the ties, whoever picked those out definitely has a good taste of ties.  I love you all!

SO!  I honestly have no idea how to tell you all why the week was so great without being ridiculously vague, so I'll just have to be ridiculously vague!  I don't think I've ever felt more spiritual light and guidance in my entire life than I felt this week.  I feel very different, very changed, and my conviction to serve my loving Father and to love Him and His children with all my heart, might, mind, and strength has doubled, even tripled.  I feel like I've never felt before the desire to serve Him in the exact way that He would have me serve Him, and to give all my life to Him.  I feel a burning conviction in my heart to consecrate my all to my Savior.  I'm a rough stone rolling, but I will always be eternally grateful for my experiences here.

Out of time!  I love you all!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

Happiness is found in random panini makers

Hey everybody!  This week was fantastic.  I saw a ton of tender mercies from the Lord this week, and just had a good time!  It was definitely a good moral boost.

SO to continue the stories that I started last time.  The hole!  The famous giant hole.  So we don't really know what the hole is for... we didn't really ask questions.  We're only slightly concerned about what it could be for.  BUT we were digging the hole one morning when the hermana came out in tears saying that her uncle had died (apparently they were very close) so she had to go to Argentina.  It was a super sad moment, but it was kind of awkward because we were just sitting in a big hole while she was standing over us crying and we weren't really sure what to do.  BUT the moral of the story is that the hermana went to Argentina so work on the hole stopped for the week.

María!  We did service with her a few more times, but sadly enough we still haven't been able to teach her.  She's an awesome lady though, more updates on her in the future.

So this is probably the best group of Elders I've ever lived with.  I have loved every Elder I've ever lived with to death (and that's no lie) but this is probably the best house so far of my mission.  Elder Mendez is super easy to talk to and we have a lot of deep conversations which I like, also our companionship is super united because we just have such similar personalities and strengths.  We both like being super organized and super diligent, but we're not over-the-top.  Also, the fact that we both have around the same time in the mission is super nice because neither one of us is prideful or thinks that they know best.  SO we're getting along dandy.  It's been fun having a younger comp (in mission age that is.)  Also the other companionship that we're living with is a ton of fun.  We spend a ton of time together with the 4 due to all the service we have, and we've all gotten to be great friends.  We're all easy-going and don't stress too much but we're all hard-working and obedient.  So it's an amazing group.  And in speaking of the group, I have stories!

So you're probably wondering what inspired the title of the email.  The background is that there is only one elder in the whole mission who has a waffle iron, and he's famous for having it.  And he's Elder Edwards!  You all know him.  Not a lot of missionaries have money for things like that, even though they all love waffles and miss them a ton because they don't exist here.  BUT this week my wonderful grandparents sent me money for my birthday, so I bought a panini maker!!

But it's not just a panini maker... dun dun dun

Kidding.  It is a panini maker, but it also includes other replaceable plates to turn it into a sandwich-griller type thing and another set of plates to turn it into a waffle iron.  So it's all three!  I bought it after my division with my district leader Wednesday (another story) and surprised the other Elders at our house and they were absolutely thrilled.

So true happiness is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  But one can find happiness in random panini makers too.

So that night we had to enter the house an hour early due to a soccer match between Chile and Argentina (rival country.)  So that night we made waffles and super tasty fried sandwich things, took them to the roof, and ate them on the roof while talking about life.  After, we just laid out on the roof and looked at the stars and talked.  It was a ton of fun.  

The branch!  Funny enough, due to a special regional type conference and then the stake conference, this Sunday was the first time that I attended Sacrament Meeting here in the branch.  But the branch is awesome!  It's huge!!  It's almost as big as my ward in Conti was!  There are apparently 60 members who attend on a regular basis, and they're all awesome!  It has one of the highest percentages of tithing-payers and endowed members in the whole country, and every family is just amazing and a ton of fun too.  I've made good friends with a family that lived in Utah for about 2 years, they've already forgotten a lot of their english so we still speak Spanish always but they're a ton of fun to talk to, as are all the members!  Everybody who goes to Hospital loves it to death, and I definitely see why.  The place is gorgeous and the branch is awesome!  Remind to send pictures, in speaking of that.

So that's all the time I got sadly enough, I wanted to share a few thoughts I had while studying Alma 42 this week but it'll have to wait for next week.  I love you all!  Take care!  Have a good week!

Love

Elder Fox

Holes - Chilean Version

Hello all!

So sadly I don't have much to say about this week, BUT it was a fun week.  We had a ton of service. Like a ton.  Probably more than any set of missionaries in the mission.  But I do love service! Starting to miss proselyting a little bit though, not gunna lie.  The weather will start cooling down soon and the service will calm down and we'll get bikes again so everything will go back to normal.  BUT I did enjoy the service a lot this week, so I'll tel you a little bit about it.

The subject of the email is inspired by a service project we started this week.  I thought that we were just going to go to the house of this member and do a little 3 hour project to help her out and be done.  We got to her house and she told us that she wanted us to dig a hole, which didn't seem like too big a deal.  she drew the outline of the hole and it was a rectangle about 2 and a half meters long and 2 meters wide.  Still no big deal.  We started digging and got about 8'' deep when we decided to ask how deep she wanted the hole.  She responded, ''Oh, as deep as possible.  4 meters, maybe 3.''

Four meters deep, she wants a hole that's twice as deep as I am tall.

So that's when we realized the full magnitude of the project that we've engaged in.  Digging a giant hole is super exhausting, but it's actually kind of fun work.  It's been one of my favorite projects in the mission so far for sure (but that might be because the only service I've done before is helping people move, and that's the absolute worst.  Especially in Chile.)  so we've been digging a giant hole.

We also got a reference this week from others elders about a woman who needed a service, so we went to her house and started building a shed for her to keep a bunch of extra wood that she has just sitting around in her property (I know it's a little odd but we just went with it.)  Her name is Maria, and she's an awesome lady.  I think we'll definitely be able to teach her, and I think that she could easily accept the Restored Gospel.  She says that she's very catholic, but she makes a lot of off-colored jokes and swears a good deal.  She's really funny and easily to get along with though, and we've all made quick friends.  So we'll see how all that goes!

Other stories of the week!  I did divs with the zone leaders this Wednesday, which was a lot of fun.  We had a great day and taught a super awesome lesson together.  

Also I'm an official convert to mate.  For those who don't know what that is, it's pronounced MAH-tay and it's a drink that originated in Argentina but is popular in Chile also, and super popular among all missionaries in South America.  What you do is you put mate herb in a cup type thing with a special straw that allows water to pass while blocking the herbs, and you put hot water in the herb cup and drink it.  I've been warming up to it since I started the mission, at first I didn't understand it at all (''why would I want to put water in a cup of oregano?'') BUT I have cultivated a love for the stuff, and the same member that we're digging the hole for gave me a mate cup and straw and sold me herb for super cheap and so now I'm a mate addict. 

''Swalled up in the will of the father'' by Neil A. Maxwell is a flipping awesome talk!  My zone leader gave it to me in my division and I read it and loved it.  If you haven't read it, go find it!

So that's all that I have for this week!  I love you all, a ton, and I hope to be able to send you some pictures of hospital!  I'll hopefully be able to send you some more pictures next week, I'll plan to have some more time in advance.  Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Fox