Hola todos!
So, this is a recap of the last...3 weeks...sorry. The first week, I just ran out of time, the second one we got that incredible announcment, so I spent all of my email time calling my family, and last week...well, bad habits are hard to break, okay. I will be sending out another letter later on today that will cover this last week, so stay tuned if you wanna keep up on the life of the Fantastic Mr. Elder Fox! (sorry, terrible joke) As for top of the letter highlights, I got super sick for a bit last week, the Guatemalan family is still AWESOME, and we met, taught, committed to be baptized, and then had to pass off (have other missionaries teach the person) an awesome person in 2 weeks! It was a pretty wild ride, so let's head down the (slightly blurry) memory lane!
We sadly had to stop teaching the Cruz family, they are awesome, and I love them dearly (we even got to give Alejandro a birthday present of one of those plug and play TV video games that you find in Walmart with a bunch of classic arcade games, which he loved and it was super funny), but the mom is not yet willing to put in the effort to pray or read to receive an answer. The Lopez Family (Guatemalan Tribe) was awesome though! We found out a lot more about them and they had their immigration court and are being allowed to stay!!! We had a member with experience in that help them out, and now he, another member, and us are working super hard to help this family get their kids to school, get some basic medical care, and some furniture and clothes! We found out that calling them a Tribe is also much more true to form then we thought. We talked a bit more about their past, and they come from a situation where they were living almost completely seperate from the general civilization (grew and bred all their food, wove all their clothes/bags, forged their tools, etc.) with a bunch of people that were all fairly easy to trace back to some common ancestors. They learned about the USA and wanted a better life, so they found a bus that went north, and made it here with basically nothing, they have been working odd jobs since, really cool story!
So, about that other really cool person though, her name is Valeria, and she is incredible. She is quite young and just came to the states with her mother from Venezuela for a few months to earn money so they can keep surviving back home (for those unaware, the situation and economy are horrible in Venezuela, and the only way to really live is be completely self-sufficient, do what Valeria is doing every now and then, or have family from somewhere else send you money). They met some sister missionaries that invited them to church, and they came and loved it. Found out they lived in our area, so we invited them to a party we were having that night, they showed up, and loved it too! We set up to meet her later in the week, we did, and that first lesson we felt inspired to extend to Valeria the day of March 16th to be baptized, and she was ecstatic, especially when she informed us that she is moving back on the 20th. Note, leading up, we had an awesome lesson where tears were shed on both sides of the table! We were super stoked, but then that week, she informed us that the family they were living with was kicking them out. We scrambled as much as we could to find them somewhere to stay, but it didn't work out. They ended up finding a place a bit farther down south, so they moved there, and we had to pass her off to the Elders down there (but they are awesome, so we aren't worried). Such an awesome example of faith! Also, a cool guy just showed up to church last Sunday named Ricardo, but I'll talk about him in my next letter though.
I know y'all might be pretty sick of me talking about the joy and power of service, but (for those unaware), I passed my 75% mark a few weeks ago, and so I was only have about 5 moths left to be out here, which is super sad, but also nice in a way, haha. But it has caused me to reflect a lot on what I want to be when I get home, and these last few weeks have really stapled serine in for me. So this paragraph is mostly for my future self, but I hope y'all like it too! So, to start, if any of you ever see me put anything other than my family above helping a child of God in need, punch me in the face. Being a missionary, I get to ask for help from the members of the Church a lot for those whom we teach (for example, the Lopez family), and it is often a big struggle to get anyone but the same few people to help with most things, and I need to be one of those few, and I invite all of you to be such. There were a few incidents that caused my focus on this thought, but long story short, we are not here to prosper ourselves. We are here to learn and experience trials then first, form and provide for your family, and second serve everyone else. I firmly believe this. Christ's entire mortal life was dedicated to service. While we are supposed to still do what we need to to provide for ourselves and out families, outside of that, we need to serve. Not only is it, hands down, the best return on investment of your time, but it is just so much more worthwhile. So please, Future Elder Fox, be Merlin Gallardo. And to all the rest of those reading, please never underestimate the importance and amazing blessing of service. Our time is not our own, we did next to nothing to deserve this chance to live here and partake in the blessings we recieve, it is all due to our Heavenly Father! And what better way to repay him and use this gift he has given us, than to help his other children along the way! Thanks for all that you have done for me everyone! Your prayers and love do not go unnoticed! I love you all!!! Write ya in a little bit!
<3 Elder Fox
