D&C 4

Hey everybody!

This week was pretty good, not a lot of news but everything keeps on keeping on!  Patricia's not doing too well though so we definitely need lots of prayers for her.  It was a really busy week though, and an ultra-busy weekend, so I'm left feeling really beat and it kind of hurts to keep my eyes open haha but I'll try my best to give you all an update!

So, starting with Patricia, we went to her house on Tuesday and the good news is that she still has her son!  So that's the good news.  However, when we went, she started fighting a lot with her mom right there, and this time it got pretty bad.  It's not the first time this has happened, but they have a pretty up and down relationship and her mom is actually mentally ill which definitely doesn't help things.  At the end of the lesson though, everything was a lot better.  We were pretty clear with both of them and we talked about how the gospel is supposed to change people and families, and if it's not making a change, then you need to commit yourself.  Lately the problem there is that she tells us that she wants to be baptized a lot but then doesn't show much of the desire later in the week, and we think she says different things to everyone.  So we're hoping for a miracle and that we can help her to be really dedicated.  Her baptismal date fell through because she didn't go to church this week, because she still hasn't gone to church all 3 hours and now investigators need to go all 3 hours at least twice and have gone to sacrament meeting at least 3 times, which is a good rule.  But anyway, lots of prayers for her and her family!

Rosa and René are doing really well, we talked about repentance and baptism with René the other day and put a date for April 1st so we're super excited!  He went to church yesterday with his son, but Rosa didn't go.  We think she was nervous about seeing the stake President again because of all the garbage that went down a few years ago, and the stake President comes to our ward every fast Sunday because it's his home ward.

Maricarmen is doing pretty well too, we went there the other day and we were going to teach the Restoration, but we ended up having to fix something that was said during church that worried her a bit.  But now, all is well!

We also found a lot of new investigators this week!  One of the stories is actually pretty miraculous, we had done this contact a few days earlier in a park where we talked to a young couple with their baby daughter.  They seemed to have a lot of faith, but no religion in particular, which is really surprising to see here.  They were interested and we set an appointment with them.  But when the day came, we had a hard time finding their house.  We ended up knocking on this one door, and an older lady came out who didn't know the people we were looking for at all, but we asked her if she would like to hear our message and she let us in.  We went in and taught her and 3 of her grandchildren a quick lesson (we still wanted to find the original people we were looking for) and set another appointment to come back.  When we came back, it turns out that the daughter of the woman we talked to and the mother of the 3 kids is already a member, but none of her kids are.  She told us the story of how she got baptized, but didn't want to tell us at first why she left.  She talked about how she was constantly suffering from panic attacks and changes in her blood pressure, and we offered her a blessing.  Sadly, right when we did, she was too weak to do anything and had to lie down, so we came back a few hours later to give her a blessing.  When we got there she was literally trembling, and then I had the chance to give her a blessing of health.  I felt the unique impression to tell her that it was God's will that she recover fully and completely, and promised her that she would as she exercised her faith.  After the blessing she stopped trembling and was a lot calmer, and then started to tell us everything that had been going on.  It turns out that the only reason she stopped going to church is because of a mentally and emotionally abusive partner that she's been with for years now.  And he is also the reason for her constant anxiety and nervous breakdowns.  We helped her know, fairly directly, that what he was doing to her wasn't good, and promised her that as she started reading the Book of Mormon again and praying that God would help her make any decision she has to make.

Also, we ended up finding the two people we were originally looking for, and they were great!  But then we went back for a return appointment and the girl told us that her partner had been partying a few nights ago has been drunk since then and she got made at him and hadn't seen him for a few days.  We then went to go find him at his Dad's house to talk to him directly, but he was sleeping.  So more details on that story later.

We also had zone conference on Friday!  It was an amazing conference, probably one of the best I've ever been to.  The focus was on Repentance, the Plan of Salvation, and becoming a consecrated missionary.  It was soo good!  I had never thought exactly about what heart, might, mind, and strength meant individually, but understanding exactly what God is asking us to give in that verse opened my eyes a lot as to how to really become consecrated.  So good stuff!

Alright so that was my week!  I love you all!  Hope you have a good one!

Love

Elder Fox

Filled with Exalted Fleas

Hey all!  This week was really great!  Before I get to that...

Clarification:  Elder Covey isn't my comp, he's just my roommate but he's one of my best friends in the mission.  He's actually pretty well known, you've probably heard of his grandpa, Stephen R. Covey.  There's actually a good deal of hype about him in the college football world, because he was a starting receiver for the U of U last year and he was just a freshman.  Because he's on a mission, there's a big debate over whether or not he's going to transfer to BYU afterward, because he could get a full-ride scholarship to either one.  He's going to keep going to the U though (even though he's a big BYU fan) because he'll have more influence there (most of the players aren't members.)  Anyway, that's Elder Covey.  He was here last change too, and we've made great friends.  My comp is Elder Sawyer, who's a computer engineering major and a lot like me haha we also have a ton of fun together.

Anyway, back to the week.  This was an amazing week but it also took a turn for the worse right towards the end.  But there were also so many miracles!!

First miracle, I got a call one night at about 11:28 (with the new schedule we go to bed at 11:30) from Rosa Machuca and I decided to answer it.  She was super excited, and told me that she had just been in an interview with the bishop.  She then told me that her husband finally made the final decision to marry her and get baptized!  They set a marriage date, and they talked it over with the bishop and the outcome was that her husband could get baptized at the end of March to receive the priesthood to be able to baptize his son when his birthday comes in May!  She was really stoked about it, and obviously we were really stoked about it.  So, now we're not just going to teach her son, but her husband at the same time!  They are such an awesome family, so exciting!!

Second, Maricarmen is progressing super well.  She told us in a lesson we had early in the week that she was afraid that after feeling all this peace, that God would let her down again.  She's had a really hard life and has lost some children, and it was really hard for her.  She's searched just about every religion for peace, and hasn't found any until she got here.  Now, she's afraid that after getting baptized another tragedy could occur and that it'd destroy her.  We then had an amazing conversation about faith, and we shared some of Hebrews and Ether 12 with her to explain that hard things and tests and even tragedies may occur, but that we can run towards the finish with the faith that the atonement will recompense all those things, and make all that is wrong right again.  Continue through the hard times with faith that we will be with our families forever, and let that be the source of our hope and eventual peace.  It was probably one of the most spiritual lessons I've had, and she understood it great.  Our next lesson when we taught the restoration, she accepted a baptismal date!  So we're excited about her too.

Patricia was doing really well, but we're worried about her again.  Early this week we went to her house right after she had received a letter from the government telling her that she needed to go to court the next day with her kid to debate whether or not the government should take custody of her son.  We didn't know why at first, but she was really distraught, and we talked about if she keeps her son that she needs the second chance to take responsibility for him and do what's best for him.  Luckily, the government didn't take her kid, and the next lesson we had we talked about that a little more and it seemed like she was going to do great.  She understands repentance super well and every time we go there she seems really excited to get baptized, but then later it seems like she lacks commitment when we're not there.  She's been going to church but she didn't go yesterday, though she said she would.  Apparently she went to her boyfriend's house for the weekend, so that kind of indicates her level of commitment.  We'll keep talking about true repentance and see how we can help.

Another miracle!  There's a less active family that we had lunch with every now and then and had a family home evening with once.  This week, we went for lunch, and I shared a spiritual thought at the end and invited them to come to church on Sunday.  She then explained that during the week she had a big learning experience, and had basically come to realize that she needed to forgive the imperfections in the Bishop and in the members and go to church because she owed that to herself and to her son.  It was awesome evidence that God can prepare people even when we don't really do anything at all!  They went to church yesterday, and I was pretty thrilled.

Another miracle!  That other less active family that we had a family home evening with a few months ago came to church yesterday!  We had an awesome lesson about repentance a few months ago and they said they wanted to go back and this week they came!  More miracles!

So it was a week of a lot of miracles haha so we're great!  Yesterday was really stressful for some reasons but it seems like everything is going to be okay.  So that was my week!  I love you all!  Hope you have a great week!  The church is true!

Love

Elder Fox

p.s. the exalted fleas inside joke came up because a guy who's obsessed with deep doctrine in the ward told us that the bugs aren't going to be resurrected, rather melt in together with the earth when the earth gets celestialized.  When we left, I said that I thought that all animals would be resurrected and Alejandro asked me to imagine what an exalted flea would look like.  You got to admit, it's a funny picture

-- 

Elder Fox

It's a Dictionary - Part 2

Hey all!  This week was fantastic!  But I want to start with the it's a dictionary story because I was going to last week and I never did.

SO Elder Covey had a dream one night and told us about it the next morning.  He dreamed that he was in a dark room with his sister and two other girls that he didn't know, and in the dream he had the sensation that something bad was going to happen that night.  One of the girls he didn't know was huddled in a corner reading a book with a blanket over her head, and Elder Covey's sister told him that that girl was a demon.  Elder Covey was pretty freaked out, but he said that she wasn't a demon because she had been reading for the last two hours (dream logic,) but then his sister whispered 3 words in his ear that filled him with horror:

''It's a dictionary.''

He was so terrified because obviously nobody normal reads a dictionary!  At that moment the demon stood up and stood around and he slapped the dictionary out of her hand.

I know it was a nightmare, and I don't know if it was just the way he told it to us, but I found it so funny.  Just that those words filled him with such horror was super funny to us.  So, since then, it's a dictionary has become our inside joke, along with Alejandro.  The next day, while Elder Covey was in the bathroom, we flipped the circuit breaker and I sat on the floor cross-legged with a blanket over my head, reading a dictionary in the candlelight.  He walked out of the bathroom and just screamed ''OH MY GOSH'' and stood there frozen for about 30 seconds.  I decided to stand up at the exact moment that he decided to try to run past me, and I accidently scared the living daylights out of him haha I felt really bad because his face was super pale once we turned the lights on.  This week, I put a blanket completely over my head and put my hat and sunglasses on my blanket-covered face and lit a candle and held a dictionary in my other hand and scared him pretty good.  I have a picture of that one, but I'll have to send it next week because I don't have it with me.  Since then, dictionaries have become the symbol of horror in our house.  When anything weird happens while we're working, Alejandro whispers ''it's a dictionary'' and it's hilarious.  I hope that was as funny as I thought it was haha it's better to explain it in person.

Anyway, this week was amazing.  We're seeing miracle after miracle and I don't even feel like we're doing that much.  Last week I talked about Rosa Machuca, the woman who wasn't married who wanted us to baptize her son.  Many pairs of missionaries have passed by them, and for whatever reason they never got married and never went back to church.  The Dad has received the lessons many times, but has never taken any steps towards baptisms.  We weren't even focusing on teaching the parents, just the kid, but this week Rosa told us that they were going to get married and that he was going to be baptized before we baptize their son.  We had invited them to a baptism, and after the baptism we took advantage of the occasion to celebrate the birthday of a new hermana in our zone from Ecuador, and during the mini birthday celebration is when she told us this.  So it came completely out of the blue, but we were extremely grateful.  Sometimes the Lord's way of preparing people is through the missionaries, and sometimes the Lord has other ways of preparing people and then just puts them in front of the missionaries' nose!  It was a huge miracle :)

More than that, we've been working a lot closer with the ward, we're improving our relationship with the leadership in the stake and the ward, and things are moving forward!  We don't have any more news about specific investigators or people but everybody is doing well in general!

Wednesday was our zone training and interviews day with President.  Then, after the interviews, we went to a meeting with President Salazar (Stake President) and President Harris to talk about missionary week.  During the interviews, we did more trainings, so it was definitely a full day for us!  It was a good day though, and we felt like the zone benefited a lot from it.

And that was basically my week!  A short summary of it, at least.  I'll try to share more details in the coming weeks for sure.  Just know that life is good!  I love you all!  I hope you have a good week!  Always remember how awesome the gospel is!  Whenever we pass through tough moments, God always picks us up, and that truly is the miracle.  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

It's a Dictionary

Hello all!  This week was awesome and super busy.  However, I'm probably spoiled by how crazy these past few weeks have been, because even though this week was super busy it was relatively pretty boring haha so this might be a quicker letter.  BUT, there were a lot of great things that happened!

So these weeks we changed!  Like I said, it was hard to lose Elder Mendez and it was hard for Alejandro too, but Elder Sawyer's great!  We're pretty similar intellectually so we have a lot of great conversations haha he was studying computer engineering in BYU before coming here so there's a lot of similarities there.  I'm excited to see how the change goes with him!

So I think I talked about the Bolivian sisters that recently moved here and just started coming to church for the first time in about 12 years or so.  They don't remember a lot so they wanted us to teach all the lessons and they have a 9 year old daughter that they want us to baptize.  And we started that process this week!  So that was fun, they're a great family and a lot of fun to talk to.  I probably won't be here for the baptism but it should be soon after I leave so I'll get pictures!

We also had a big miracle happen, there's a less active that Alejandro introduced us to forever ago called Rosa Machuca who was active when he was still in the church 16 years ago.  She was a return missionary, and since then, has gotten into a relationship without being married and had a kid.  She lost her rights, and the members and leaders treated her horribly and left her on her own so she's stopped coming.  The first time we went there it was basically just an opportunity for her to vent, and Alejandro went back alone this week and she vented to him for another 3 hours.  However, after those 3 hours of venting, she told Alejandro that she wanted to back to church and she wanted us to baptize her son.  That'a boy Alejandro!!!  Anyway, we were excited about that, and heard about that on Tuesday, the same day as the changes.  So we went by there to teach them too.

Patricia!  We went by and taught the Plan of Salvation and it went really well, though there were a ton of distractions on the part of her son.  We gave her the baptismal date invitation though and she accepted for the 18th of March!  And it wasn't a wishy-washy acceptance either, she said the words ''I really want to be baptized'' so it's a pretty big deal.  The great thing is, is that this time with her we were able to focus on the entire Doctrine of Christ and really hit repentance in hard way before ever talking about baptism.  So she understands completely well the importance of repentance and knows she has to repent before she gets baptized, and has already committed herself to coming to church every week for the rest of her life.

We also started teaching a Spanish woman who's living with a member of the ward!  Her name is Mari-Carmen, and her accent is way different, but it's awesome, and she talks in vosotros! (basically like biblical language, but she talks in it all the time.)  She's had a really hard life and has been trying to find God in a ton of different churches, and told us that she thinks she's finally finding Him here, and that she's finally finding peace for the fist time.  We talked about the Plan of Salvation and the atonement, and it was probably one of the coolest and most spiritual lessons of my mission.  It was a great experience, and I hope that she can continue progressing because she is awesome.

Okay I ran out of time, so the title of the email is based on a hilarious story that I have to tell next week so don't let me forget.  I love you all!  There are so many miracles always!  Life is great!  Always be positive!  Have a great week!

Love

Elder Fox

A Breath of Fresh Air (Literally)

Hello All!  This week was way, way better than all of the weeks previous for a long time hahaha so I'm feeling good!  I think getting through the tougher problems of the previous weeks helped me to keep a better perspective about the littler problems that are happening always haha so I guess I turned out more patient in the end after all!  So this week was good.

The fires are better!  The temperature dropped (one day last week it reached 114 degrees Fahrenheit... luckily this week we were in between 70 and 100) and one day the sky was completely cloudy, and one day it even rained!  So I'm sure that helped a ton.  The miracle is that it never rains in summer here, in fact, it's really weird to even see a cloud in summer here.  There are so many miracles everywhere always it's so great!

And we got changes!  Elder Mendez is going to Rancagua, and it is sad to see him go.  It'll be very different without him here, but we've had some crazy good and some crazy bad weeks together and we'll stay friends forever because of it.  He's a great guy, and he has a unique ability to look outside of the box of all-too-common LDS/missionary perceptions of reality, and because of that he has taught me a ton.  His biggest motto is that love is what matters most, and it's really true, and he shows it in the way he lives and serves in his calling.  So it's been a good time!  The good thing is that Elder Covey is staying in the house, so we will keep having a good time together.  My new comp is going to be Elder Sawyer, who is my first companion since Elder Barbosa (over a year ago) to actually have more time in the mission than I do!  He was a secretary recently so everybody knows him, and he's an awesome guy.  I'm really excited, because I know we're going to get along great.  Elder Young and Elder Heap (two of my best friends that I lived with in Santa Cruz and Hospital) are also coming to the zone as district leaders so it'll be an excellent change.

Updates on the sector!  I had my personal record of investigators at church this week, with 7.  We were pretty excited about that.  Patricia and María gave us a good scare because they were progressing soooo well and then Patricia got back together with her boyfriend and she wasn't progressing as well and we were afraid of losing her, but we went by with Alejandro and an amazingly awesome hermana in our ward called Hermana Evelyn and we had an excellent lesson.  María expressed her concern that Patricia was getting back with her boyfriend and Patricia started to get really offended but then Alejandro and Evelyn controlled the situation really naturally and fantastically and helped her understand that she needs to figure out what's best for her and her son and really do what's necessary, which includes progressing in the gospel.  And this week she went to church!  With her son and even María, who had never come before.  So that was exciting!

A Bolivian family that recently moved from the North of Chile are being reactivated so we're excited about that too!  They went inactive really young, so they want us to teach them all the lessons again and baptize their nine-year-old daughter.  Their names are Lorena and Dixie, and they're sisters, both in their mid-twenties.  They both have several children but no husband, but I'm not sure which children belong to which sister.  The younger sister stays at home to take care of the kids and the older sister works.  Even though they're in tough circumstances, they're super happy people and have a lot of faith and they're very friendly.  So I'll let you know how that goes!

All in all, I'm really excited for how the next few weeks are going to go.  I think the changes are going to help the zone a ton, which was also a significant source of stress this change.  I'm also excited about developments going on in the ward as a result of Alejandro's and Evelyne's service.  Things are really changing down here, and change was very needed!  So lots of prayers!

Thank you all!  I love you all!  Have a great week!!

Love

Elder Fox

Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men

Hey all! :D

I am seriously shocked that nobody seems to have heard about what's been going on down here yet.  I know it's been global news, since Alejandro has told me what the news in the states has been saying, but I guess the news wasn't as widespread as we thought.  So I'm going to tell everything in detail, but don't worry about anything because from what I know the situation is way more controlled now and dozens of other countries are helping us out now so everything is going to be fine.

SO, a forest fire that started right near Constitución got out of hand this week.  From what we've seen from the news, they're saying that this is the largest first in recorded history and others are saying it's the largest forest disaster in our history.  We passed it on the train last Saturday but it was still small and controllable.  Now, everything that we saw on the train Saturday is ash.  Thousands of houses have been destroyed, but miraculously, only 11 people have been killed.  The last time we checked, the number of active fires in the country kept floating around 100, but the number might be bigger now but they're more controlled so there's less danger.  Most people are saying that this has been worse than the earthquake in 2010.

The fires were definitely started on purpose, because there are too many to have been started on accident.  It's an act of terrorism, but all of the people arrested so far have been Chileans.  I don't know if anyone knows why still, but maybe the news over there will say something about it.

So this week was a crazy week for us!  We knew that the fire was getting serious but things really started getting crazy on Wednesday.  Miraculously, all of the missionaries were in Talca in a meeting that went until 6:00 in the afternoon.  The missionaries from Constitución tried to go back, but they had closed the freeway because the fire had crossed the freeway and had surrounded the city.  We could see the smoke in great billowing clouds in the distance, but it hadn't reached Talca yet.  So the missinaries from Conti stayed in Talca, and we wanted the missionaries in San Javier to do the same (San Javier is between Talca and Conti) but they wanted to go back, so they went.  That night, we went to Alejandro and he helped inform us more about what was going on.  A Chilean from the states (the wife of the owner of Walmart it seems) sent a giant plane that drops 70,000 liters of water at a time to help out, but the situation was still out of control.  The situation looked concerning enough to bring the missionaries in San Javier to Talca, so we told them to find a bus and we went to pick them up in the bus station in Talca and brought them to live with other missionaries for a time.

On Thursday, they completely lost control.  Chile is not used to having so much fire at one time and people kept making more fire.  Wednesday night an entire city burned to the ground with over 1,000 houses, and the violence in Conti due to the political unrest was astonishing.  There were fires near Rancagua, Pichidegua, Santa Cruz, Talca, and all throughout the more southerly region where Concepción is.  We were planning on going out to work like normal, but right after lunch, thick smoke flooded all of Talca and it started snowing ash.  We told all the missionaries to stay in their houses and not leave while we configured our phones to listen to the radio to know what to do.  At about 4:00 Alejandro sent us a text letting us know that the situation got completely out of hand and that Chile declared a state of emergency, and that teams of forest-fire experts were on their way from several countries, and that a bunch of other countries were in the process of sending us more giant planes and helicopters and other things to fight the fire.  President Harris called us and told us to make sure that everybody had a three-days supply of food and water just in case anything happened.  Alejandro took us to a supermarket called Jumbo to get stuff for us and other missionaries, and we also bought face masks for everyone.  Even the Jumbo was so filled with smoke that it was visible, and when we left the store for the first time the sun was dark red because of the smoke, and an hour later the sun was completely obscured from view, leaving the sky a brownish-orange color.  We distributed what we needed to the other missionaries and went back home.

On Friday morning the smoke was thick, but the fire was still a great distance from both San Javier and Talca, but the missionaries from San Javier wanted to go back, and we didn't let them.  The foreigners who came to help helped the situation calm down a ton, but the fire was still growing.  Friday morning we stayed inside, but by lunch the smoke had cleared and the radios stopped reporting information about the fire so we decided that we could go back to work.  Sadly though, at about 7:00, the whole city flooded with smoke again and we had to tell everybody to go back home.  Sadly though, San Javier was already in a bus on their way home, and we had to tell them to get off right where they were and we went to go find them with Alejandro and bring them back.  They weren't too happy.  But because we were the only ones authorized to listen to the radio, we were the only ones who knew the seriousness of the situation and we didn't want to scare anyone by telling them.

Saturday was a little better, the smoke cleared at about lunchtime again and didn't get back again until about 9:00.  Because the situation was more controlled, President authorized San Javier to go back home.  We made no-bake cookies with Alejandro to celebrate.

Yesterday was a little smoky, but it was essentially a normal day.  We stopped listening to the radio, and everything went back to normal!  So, in the end, all is well.  As far as I know though, the fire continues, and probably keeps growing, but Chile is still receiving more planes and things every day to keep fighting it.  They say it will take about 30 days to beat the fire completely, but now everything is more controlled and much more relaxed.  The damage is immense though, and we'll be having a ton of opportunities to do service in the coming months.  Several cities have disappeared, and much of the forest in 4 regions of Chile is gone.  We'll be fasting for the victims of the fire this Sunday and do everything we can to help people regain their lives.  There have been massive donation banks in all the churches in Talca, and they went to deliver truck-loads of necessities to the fire victims and the fire-fighters.

So, that is the end of the most intense week of my life!  This has been a crazy month.

The miracles!  There have been boatloads of small miracles this week, and that has been the best thing.  I'll admit, there were times during the week (mostly Thursday and Friday) that things seemed really bleak and we were honestly terrified.  God, however, has His subtle ways of calming us down and helping us keep our heads straight.  This group of 4 missionaries I'm living with right now has been the tightest group of friends I've had in the mission, and together with Alejandro I felt very blessed to have to go through all of that with such good friends.  On Thursday, on our way delivering emergency supplies to the missionaries, all 5 of us started singing ''Piano Man'' and ''The Day the Music Died'' at the top of our lungs (don't judge, the world was ending.)  On Friday morning, we all sat in our house and listened to church music doing nothing for about 3 hours.  The other miracle was Alejandro, who was our informant and our cab driver the entire week for all this crazy process.  Without him, we would've been in serious trouble.

I quoted a song last week, that came to my mind again this week in a particularly desperate moment.  I thought about how people had started all this intentionally, how theories were springing up about how people were reacting in fear to Trump cutting off the lumber trade between Chile and the States, crazy theories about Isis being involved, and the first previous to the one I quoted in the last email popped in my head.

Then in despair, I bowed my head.

There is no peace on earth, I said.

For hate is strong, and mocks the song

of peace on earth good will towards men.

Then pealed the bells, more loud and deep:

God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

with peace on earth good will towards men.

The ringing, singing on its way

The world revolved from night today

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,

of peace on earth good will towards men.

So the message at the end of all this, is once again hope!  I put patience as my goal for this entire month, and naturally I had a really weird month, but something that I'm eternally grateful for is the hope that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings to my life.  So even in the constant craziness that the world is now, we can always remember to be happy and have hope.  I know it's possible!  

''Happiness can be found, even in the most darkest of times.'' - Dumbledore.

I hope you all have a great week!  Stay away from fire!  Only you can prevent forest fires!  Listen to smoky, he knows what he's talkin bout!  The church is true!  I love you all!

Love

Elder Fox

Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence

Hello all!  I am so sorry because I have so little time to write because I had to do something for BYU and I also wrote President a lot more than usual this week because this week was insane.

So, I can't talk about a lot of details, at all, but this week was easily the most dramatic week of my life.  I had some horrendous days and some amazingly wonderful days and so here at the end of the week everything is calm and I'm feeling alright.  And that's all that counts!  There was a lot of stuff happening in the zone and in the ward and with people we're working with all at the same time and all of it came together in a huge mess on Friday when we had zone conference and President and the assistants came and some of the people in our sector we're working with and President wanted to interview some people in the ward and long story short we had a rough day hahaha but all is much better now, though we're still working out some problems in the zone.

One story though, we went to Conti!!! :D  I was so happy I almost died hahaha that was Saturday and it was a good relief from all the craziness of the previous day.  We went to go help out with the open chapel there and Alejandro came with us!  We went by train to see all the pretty places that you can't get to normally on road on the way to Conti and then we were there all day helping out.  We had some time beforehand to see the beach real quick though!  I was in heaven, and I got to see my city again and everybody in the ward and they all recognized me!  It was so much fun :)

Also, as a side note, Elder Covey and Alejandro with the other missionaries brought 105 people in the open chapel.  105.  That is more than double the previous record in the mission.  Alejandro is a machine.

So my message today is about hope, hence the title.  Hope was a really important tool during the harder days this week, and the most powerful moment of the week was when the reality of the atonement impressed my heart, and I remembered that Christ already won the battle.  And that we really can have hope for a better world.  It's a simple message with a lot of meaning, that Christ Lives.  He lives, and I know that He lives.  I know that He's always there, in every moment, and I know that happiness can always be found.  I'm so unperfect, as are we all, but Christ won the victory for me, and for all of you.  Sometimes Satan seems to have perfect control over the world, but the small acts of Christlike love that happen every day constantly display that he can never win.  When I reflected on the atonement, the words of a hymn that my Dad had written to me in a letter but that I had never memorized came to my mind ''Then pealed the bells, more loud and deep, "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.  The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth good will toward men."  I know that's true, so let's never forget it.  I love you all!  And I hope you that you all have a great week and that we can all remember that hope is the anchor of our souls.

Love,

Elder Fox

Scriptures I read this week that were awesome: Moroni 7:41, Ether 12:4, Hebrews 6:11-20, Hebrews 10:32, 35-36


1 and 2)  Back in Conti, but a year and a half older and 78% doper.
3 and 4)  Train trip
5)  Remember this place?
6)  Alejandro next to the train