Pure Service

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

Patience

Hey all!

Well this week I ended up sleeping on the floor!  Twice!  And once in my proselyting clothes!  So it was rather adventurous if I say so myself!

And to start it all off I prayed for patience, so I deserved what I got.

So the first day that's worth mentioning was Wednesday, where we had zone training in the morning and then interviews with President right after.  And, like the other interviews, Elder Mendez and I gave a training to each district individually while they were waiting for their interviews.  So I went into the day probably way more stressed than I should have been but it turned out great!  The meeting the district leaders at 9:30 went really well then the training went from 10:30 to 1:00 and we did practices with the missionaries and everything which went well and then Elder Mendez and I gave 3 different trainings during the interviews from 1:00 to about 6:00 without much pause in between, then waited for other people to interviews until about 7:00.  Since we didn't have much of a chance to eat during that time we went and got food after and then went to work for a few hours before going home.  Super exhausting day though.

Then thursday!  Thursday was where the problems started.  During the english class that night (a ton of non-members went) I started to feel nauseous and had to leave and go to the bathroom.  After vomiting everything I felt better and decided that it was no big deal and I brushed my teeth and kept helping with the class.  I got bad again though, and figured that I probably had a virus and didn't go back in.  It got bad quickly, and I became very weak and Elder Mendez and I went outside to wait in Alejandro's car.  Alejandro wanted me to go say bye to the people that came though, even though I was white and my eyes were glowing and I looked like Voldemort.  After that he took me home and I put my pillow in the bathroom and took off my tie and laid down on the floor.  After a few hours my comp took a spare mattress and put it on the floor and helped me onto it and he slept on the couch nearby and there we stayed all night.  I kept waking up to go the bathroom about every hour from that moment, but by the morning I didn't feel quite as nauseous.  I was still extremely weak though and almost couldn't move so we stayed in all that day.

The next day I felt better so we decided to work!  I was careful to hydrate myself really well and we went out and found some new investigators!  It was actually one of our best days.  But that night (I was sleeping in my real bed this time) I woke up feeling extremely dizzy and in a cold sweat and I needed to go to the bathroom again.  I sat up in my bed and promptly put my head back down because of the dizziness.  For some crazy reason I felt like I could get out of my bed and go to the bathroom without help (I sleep on the top bunk) so I hopped out of bed and the next thing I know I was leaning over the bottom bed in a praying position and the lights were on and Elder Covey was asking me if I know who I was.  Fetch.  My fall woke them up and apparently when they turned the lights on I was on the ground unconscious then quickly opened my eyes but I still wasn't conscious and I put myself in the praying position and didn't respond until Elder Covey started talking to me in English.  They helped me outside to the couch and called President and that night I ended up sleeping on the mattress on the floor again while Elder Covey woke me up every hour to make me drink a glass of water.  Apparently I hadn't hydrated myself enough and that's what caused the complications that night.  So Sunday to recover I was inside all day drinking a ton of water until we were 100% sure that my body was fully regulated.

And sadly, I don't have more time!  But I'm fine now and we played games this p-day with the two zones and ate chori-panes and I feel completely fine.  I wanted to share what I learned about patience this week but it'll have to wait until next week.  So it was a weird week but I actually learned a lot and it all turned out okay in the end!  I just feel lucky to have a great comp and great roommates that care about me and President's help and concern as well.  

Have a great week!  I love you all!  The church is true!

Love

Elder Fox

2017 wooooooooo

Hey all!  I have to be fast again haha so sorry that I keep doing this.  The week was great though!  It was a little complicated due to new years and the fact that we spent all of Thursday at leadership counsel, but next week we'll pick our progress back up!

So I didn't end up telling you about what we did for Christmas!  At least I don't think I did... anyway, after church we went right to Alejandro's house to do Skype and then we went out with him to visit some members and came back to his house for Christmas dinner!  Which was super tasty.  Here they open presents on Christmas eve so we opened everything the night before after we ate tacos with a part-member family that we're good friends with.

New Years!  We ate tacos again!!  We've been eating a lot of tacos lately haha but that's what the other elders in the house chose so we made tacos again!  They were the best yet though, we had a lot more time to prepare because we had to go in early so we took our time to fry vegetables and make good chipotle sauce and it was heaven.  We went to bed at 11:00 as normal but I set an alarm for 11:55 to be awake for the new year but we were all so sleepy that when we heard the noise outside at 12:00 we just grunted ''feliz año nuevo'' and then fell asleep again.

Funny story!  So we were in our English class last week when Alejandro (he teaches the class because he's studying to be an english profesor) the difference between american and british english because he speaks british english.  And then, pausing, I said ''well... I say to-may-to... and you say tom-ah-to.'' and it was so tragic because I thought it was so funny but obviously nobody got it because nobody speaks english!  Then I proceeded to explain the differences in the accent better.

This week we went to Rancagua on Thursday for the leadership conference and asked Elder Haar and Elder Figeuroa to go with Alejandro to our English class in our place.  Of course, the one week we're not there, 9 nonmembers came and at least 1 is interested in knowing more about the church.  Pretty exciting though!  We'll have to meet them this Thursday.

SWEET I finally have time to share my thought really quickly.  The thought was inspired by Alejandro on Christmas when he dropped us off out our apartment and we ended up talking in his car.  The thought has to do with the relationship between sadness and happiness, and how crucial sadness is for our existence.  Alejandro was talking a little bit about how he wasn't used to feeling sadness often, but coming back to church has prompted that feeling a lot more, and my comp said something pretty profound about being grateful and enjoying sad moments, because at least you're feeling something.  He went on to explain that all the happiness that we have in life results from sadness.  And it really hit me!  I loved the movie Inside Out before I left on the mission, but I just started understanding it.  When sadness leaves, happiness naturally leaves with it, and the results are only feelings of anger, envy, and fear.  When we choose to never put ourselves in positions where we'll suffer, we choose to actually never be happy.  My mission has simultaneously been the most difficult and most wonderful experience of my life, and I know that most people who have served feel the same way.  If we don't feel sorrow with respect to the church and spiritual things, we never feel inspired to change.  Those who don't hurt in church never progress.  Sorrow is actually a very necessary part of our mortal existence, and its purpose is to actually help us to find happiness.  So we need to be grateful for our sorrowful experiences like my companion said, and realize that it is only the gateway to greater happiness and peace.  And of course, it is only the atonement of Jesus Christ that can truly turn our sadness into happiness.

I love you all!  I hope you have a great week!  The church is true!!

Love

Elder Fox

Hello again!

Hey all!

Hey so I wanna tell you a few things really quick that I couldn't mention yesterday!  I would write more about my week for those who weren't in the call but I have to sadly admit that I've been chatting with Elder Kammerman for a long time today hahaha so I don't have much time.

Speaking of Elder Kammerman, Pichidegua is still on fire.  The attendance was over 30 this week, the highest it's been in probably over 2 years.  For those who weren't in the call, Elder Kammerman this change is leaving and my other trainee Elder Espindola is staying there to train.  So I'm going to be a grandpa! :)  Haha and my entire family and legacy is in Pichidegua still haha.

Anyway, you guys met the miracle of this change yesterday and I couldn't talk about him because he speaks perfect english haha but he was Alejandro, the guy that started going to church about 4 weeks ago after 16 years of complete inactivity.  He's incredibly intelligent, he knows English perfectly but he has a British accent because that's the accent he studied.  Once he returns to full activity, he's going to be an incredible tool in the Lord's hands.  He has a really sharp eye and he reads people in moments, he knows exactly how to help anybody or any group of people and he helps us a ton as missionaries and leaders.  It was him that took us to the open chapel in San Clemente and was largely responsible for its success because he showed us how to bring people in effectively.  He never served a mission but it's always been his dream, but now he's 31 so it's too late.  He has a deep drive to help as many people as he can.  He's been an amazing friend this change and we're so excited that he's returning to activity in the church.  He told me after the call while Elder Mendez was talking that we've helped him a lot, but once we go he's dedicated to staying in the church and help has many people as he can.  So that's exciting :)

So that's that!  But I also promised that I'd send a spiritual thought that I learned this week, but I'm actually out of time.  Sorry!!!  Next week you have to remind me because it's a good one.

Merry Christmas!!  I love you all!!

Love

Elder Fox

Feliz Navidad!

¡Feliz Navidad!

do do do do, do, doooo

¡Feliz Navidad!

do do do do, do, doooo

¡Feliz Navidad!  Prósperos años y felicidad

I WANNA WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

Okay that's enough.

Hi all!  We had another great week here!  I made a recording but I don't know if it'll work so I'll pass real quick through the things I talked about in the recording.

This Wednesday we had our special Christmas zone conference, so the mission sent a bus to Talca and took us all to the mission home in Rancagua (about 2 and a half hours away) to have the conference together and celebrate Christmas!  The plan was to sing a special Christmas program for people in need so we needed to prepare that well in advance.  Last Saturday we got together in the morning as a zone to practice the songs and then we did the same thing Tuesday morning.  Then we went to the conference Wednesday and practiced the songs and had a special Christmas dinner with turkey and potatoes and other deliciousness.  Sadly, as a result, half the zone got sick bedridden for the next 3 days but it was still tasty!  After the dinner lunch thing we went to do the program at a drug rehabilitation.  It was an awesome experience, and we were all very grateful to be able to brighten up their Christmas and give them hope in their tough situation.  Definitely the highlight of Christmas this year :)

The next day we had district class and then on Saturday we had the open chapel in San Clemente, so in total we got together as a zone 5 days out of seven this week!  Good thing we love each other a lot.  Actually, this zone has probably been the most united I've ever been in.  I love them all so much!  They're such great missionaries and we're so proud of them!  We're all really good friends, it's going to be hard when the change ends.

So the open chapel was also awesome.  Like I said in the recording, Alejandro came and he was a huge help.  He was never a missionary and that's probably his biggest regret in life.  He's a machine though, it would have been very different if he weren't there.  Funny story from that though!  While the open chapel was approaching the end and we were on the last run through of the chapel, we were all outside waiting for people to pass by to invite them into the chapel and trap them with our friendliness!  Sadly, the only people who were passing by were on bikes, so I started running along side the bikes and inviting them to come see the chapel for 5 minutes and promising them that the tour would be super cool.  It was definitely a first in the mission!  Even though it didn't work too great it was a lot of fun, and we all got a pretty good kick out of it.  When we walked back in the chapel one of the Elders in the zone told me that I had just become Elder Calhoon from the Best Two Years.  I then realized the reality that I had just been chasing bikes begging people to come to church.  Good times though.

So the zone took a pretty hard hit this week because a lot of them got sick for a long time, but we hope that we can get them excited about working well for the last week of this change.  The sector is also not doing great, we've been extremely busy.  We've been trying to help Emelina and the ward a lot this week, we want to motivate people to go to the sign language classes because nobody's going and Emelina is a little discouraged that nobody can communicate with her in church, obviously.  So we made a power point for the ward to use in a training on Saturday that included parts of a talk from President Hinckley about convert retention and gently slapped the members on the face with it a bit.  From what we hear, it inspired a lot of change.  So that's good! 

 8 For though I made you sorry with a [powerpoint], I do not repent, though I did repent: 

for I perceive that the same [powerpoint] hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season.

 9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.

 10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

Anyway, that was that.  We also taught our English class again on Thursday which was fun.  I don't know if you guys remember me talking about Elder Young, because it was a year ago, but Elder Young had about 9 months in the mission when I had 6 and he was a new zone leader living with us in our house in Santa Cruz.  That was the change that I was with Elder Barbosa and his companion was Elder Crane.  Anyway, Elder Young (yes, he is a literal descent of Brigham Young) is definitely one of my best friends in the mission, the missionary I most respect out of just about anyone, and now he's an assistant.  And he came to chill with us Thursday!  He came in the bus with Talca II from their zone conference and did divs with us that night and it was a great time.  He helped with our english class then we talked a long time during our planning about our sector and about the zone and everything.  I got to talk one on one with him for a while too and I forgot how much I missed him!  He's a great guy.

So that was my week!  And this week I finally have some time to actually share my spiritual thoughts!  Yuusss.  For one, I actually really like the scripture above that I edited to fit the situation.  Obviously, the scripture that is most important out of the three is the last one, and it's one of the lessons that I've learned this change!  When we're motivated to progress in the gospel and to change, we have to very careful about what kind of sorrow we're feeling.  We have to watch what's motivating the change.  I've always thought of wordly sorrow as just ordinary shame to confess and correct, which completely impedes repentance.  But what I've learned is that in many cases wordly sorrow actually can and does inspire change in behavior, but not true repentance.  Whatever change occurs, it's certainly not permanent.  This change can be based on any wordly desire:  to look better, to have more, to feel like a good person, or any number of things.  But Godly sorrow is different, and when we can really feel this Godly sorrow, the changes are always permanent, because suddenly there's nothing selfish about our repentance, and in the act of changing we are really just turning ourselves and our souls outward, towards Christ.  And that is how He heals.

So let's remember that!  In the Christmas season it's good to remember His birth, but it's even better to remember His life, and His atonement, and the unimaginable gift that He gave to us.  Let's turn our hearts to the Savior, and let Him change and heal us, and we will never be the same again.  He will make us into His, and we will become like Him, and we will get to know Him as He knows us.  I know, and I promise, that this is true.  If we do this we can look back and happily recognize that we are unrecognizable compared to what we were.

I love you all so much! :)  Merry Christmas!!

Love

Elder Fox

Hola

Hey all!  It was another incredibly busy week but luckily I told you all about it completely in the recording I made you!  So it's gonna be another quick letter but there's a lot of information in the recording so that'll make up for it!  But I still have some stories!

So the sign language is progressing pretty rapidly, we went the other week and were able to converse for a while and teach a lesson without the help of her hearing daughter, so that ain't too bad!  I've definitely been feeling the divine help as well as when I learned Spanish, at first I struggled to retain a new word when Emelina taught the sign language classes in the church but now I learn every new work effortlessly.  The gift of signs!  It's been a lot of fun learning it, the only sad thing is that it's not even close to american sign language so if I want to learn ASL when I get back I'll have to start from scratch.

Another story!  This is an amazing one, and it happened last week but I forgot to write about it!  But as you all know, I'm with Elder Mendez, who was my first comp in Hospital.  Up until last week, I've kind of looked at my time in Hospital as the low point of my mission.  I made a plethora of mistakes and I had a lot of things I needed to change in myself as a missionary, also as soon as I left all the people we were teaching went down the drain.  I think it was necessary for me to feel that a little, because it caused me to reflect a lot and inspired sincere change and repentance in how I worked as a missionary and how I was as a person, and as a result I was able to help touch many more lives in Pichidegua and hopefully here.  BUT something happened that made me super happy.

So last week we were in our leadership meeting in Rancagua, like I talked about last week in the video.  After the meeting, one of the matrimony elders asked me a question about a baptismal record that was in our zone.  He had a few other records there, and after looking at the one from our zone, I glanced at the other registros and saw the word ''Hosptial'' jump up at me.  I picked two up and looked at them both and they both said ''Hospital'' I quickly read the names and it took me way longer than it should have to process the names:  Claudio Sanchez and Gonzalo Aspe.  I kind of lost my dignity and yelled across the room at Elder Mendez telling him to come see and we gave each other a chilean hug and rejoiced not too quietly.  The matrimony was really confused at what was going on seeing as I hadn't answered his question yet.  I took the time later to explain to him that Elder Mendez and I had already been in HoHospitalogether and taught both of those people.    

So that definitely made my week :)  I wanted to take the time to share a quick spiritual thought from the week.  But I don't have time haha sorry I'm really bad at this.  Remind me to share it next week!  I was going to share it two weeks ago but I keep struggling at having time to write.  Have a great week though!  See you in a few weeks!

Love

Elder Fox

More Stories!

Hey all!  So I talked about most everything in the video but there are a few details I forgot and other stories to share!  So this letter will be a bit quick.

So first thing, I realized after passing dats this morning after making the video that the zone has made a huge leap of progress.  They doubled the number of lessons and new investigators from this last week to this week which is what the zone was doing a little bad in and President told us we needed to improve.  So I'm super proud of them all!  The zone did super great this week and worked super hard.  We combined the two zones today to do a zone activity where we played games and bought 14 pizzas from Papa Johns for the whole zone.  It was a great activity!  We left pretty tired because we spent the whole time coordinating everything but it's all good.

So for the first time in my mission, the majority of our teaching pool is children, so it's definitely been different!  It's been awesome though, and I've really fallen in love with these kids.  Lorena has 3 kids, the oldest being Jesus who we're working with, the next being Yoan (pronounced like Johanne but it's a boy) who's 6 and then Sofia who's probably about four.  Sofia is adorable though, she started out super shy and she didn't say anything but I think she got used to me and now she never stops talking.  I sat with the kids during sacrament meeting while Lorena sat on another bench so I kept Sofia entertained the whole time.  It was a good time.  Yoan is a big ball of energy.  The last time we were there we sat outside and talked and he and his friend put on our helmets and our missionary nametags and we gave them some ''ilumina el mundo'' (light the world) pass along cards just to see what would happen and they went running from house to house saying that they were the elders.  When people answered they held out the cards and asked if they wanted to hear the word of God.  It was probably one of the funniest things I've seen.  Funny enough, people were still saying that they were busy... to 6 year old children.  The funniest though was when they actually got in a house.  Elder Mendez turned to me and told me that they do our job better than we do.  They came out a few minutes later saying ''how lame, they didn't give us anything!!'' because Lorena always gives us food when we go over.  We laughed a good deal at that one.

Hey that was a really quick email but I've been a little slower this week.  More details in the email to come!  I love you all!  I hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox