July 29, 2013

Well, here I am, partway through my second week in Bolivia! We do most of our contacting on the street. People are always willing to stop and talk because everyone here is religious, and a decent number of people are willing to have us take down their addresses and say we can come by. However, oftentimes they aren’t home (or they pretend they aren’t home, and it’s easy enough to do when there’s one main door to the group of mini houses, because they can just tell one of their neighbors to say they aren’t there when we know they are). The biggest challenge is that a lot of people don’t have phones, they move a lot because they cant afford rent, and they often aren’t available when we come by, but we cant very easily confirm appointments or reschedule when we cant call them. So if anyone has any ideas, please let me know! We have a bunch of investigators and contacts, but not many that are progressing for this very reason.

I’ve got to learn how to teach, how to contact, how to get around Santa Cruz, how to plan, and everything else, all while only understanding between 40 and 50% of what people say to me. My brain feels like its going to explode always ha-ha. But there is definitely progress. Hna Castaneta is a great teacher as far as how to explain the lessons simply and clearly, and I can definitely understand people more than I could when I first got here.

However, we are having success with some people who sincerely want to know more about the gospel. There is one couple; I think I might have written a little bit about last week, Omar and Noelia. They are both really great, and have two sons. However, they aren’t married and aren’t sure that they want to get married because they have some problems in their relationship. We haven’t been able to teach them very much because we want to teach them together but Monday through Friday Omar works until 10 or so at night, but with the little we have had a chance to teach, they really seem to be building in their faith. Noelia commented that originally she didn’t have very much faith in God, but she feels like she has more now. They went to church on Sunday as well (a big deal because that’s our other big challenge with investigators, is getting them to church, even when they know that its true) and Omar especially was really attentive in all the lessons. Then at night we had a Family Night with Omar and Noelia and a family in the ward who are really strong and aren’t too much older than them. It went really well, and they were still there, talking gospel topics when Hna Castañeta and I had to leave to go to our apartment for curfew. Unfortunately, we can’t teach them again until Saturday, and they have no phones to contact them and see how they’re doing. Ugh. But I really have confidence that they are progressing.

We also met a few other people who seem to be genuinely interested as well this week. One is Elizabeth, who was a contact from like four months ago that was never home when the other missionaries went by, but she was home a few days ago! She has had a lot of trials n her life and hasn’t found much peace, so I felt like I should share Alma 7:11-12 with her, which is a great scripture. When we pulled out the Book of Mormon, she said, "Oh, it’s the blue book of the Mormons!" We asked what she knew about it and it turns out her dad wasn’t a member, but he loved the Book of Mormon and read it all the time and taught the family that it was the word of God. Her dad died when she was six, so she never read it, but she said she has always wondered and she was super excited when we gave it to her. We are going to go back and teach her more on Tuesday and I’m stoked. I just pray that she’s actually home!!

And then there's one other person. We went to a less active member’s home, Jhosselij or something like that, to visit her. Her boyfriend was over, so we started to focus our lesson a little more on him. He took the lessons a while go but felt like he didn’t really get an answer when he prayed, so he stopped. We talked a lot about how to receive answers to prayers, that oftentimes it doesn’t come right away, but it comes gradually as we experiment upon the words of Christ and continue to learn more. He said he wanted to believe that these things are true, and we promised him that if he continues to learn and experiment on the words, God will answer his prayer in the timing that is right for him. We then challenged him to baptism on August 24, and he accepted! However, he didn’t go to church the next day, despite our best efforts, so I don’t know if he is sincere. I really hope so though! We’re praying for him.

We’ll be having a noche blanca, which means a day when the entire zone baptizes, on August 24, so we’re praying that someone that were teaching will be prepared for baptism that day.

This church is true and I’m happy to be a part of it!

Love you all,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

July 22, 2013

Hi everyone! Today is my first Pday as a real, live missionary out of the CCM, and I couldn’t be more happy to be here. I’m in an area called Braniff in the actual city of Santa Cruz. The ward is super friendly and very eager to help the missionaries, which is great. And I have a great companion, Hna Castañeta. She is almost done with her mission, has less than six weeks left and then I’ll be killing her off. That’s sort of interesting because normally you’re with your trainer for twelve weeks, so I suppose I’ll have two trainers. She keeps teasing me, saying I’ll be a trainer once she leaves. Oh gosh, I hope not ha-ha. What a disaster that would be. I never have any clue where we are with my lousy sense of direction, and there are so many people that I have a hard time remembering anyone’s names. Not to mention that I can’t really speak Spanish ha-ha. Just a little bit about the city and things... it’s super different from the US, obviously. The set up of most of the houses is, there is a huge industrial looking door that you have to bang on and yell into for ages to get someone to open it, then once you get inside, it is a big dirt and cement courtyard type area, where there are a bunch of lines for drying laundry, chairs, old grills, trash, just a bunch of stuff. Then there are a ton of small cement apartment type things where a bunch of families live, one in each apartment. They generally have one communal shower and toilet for everyone in the apartment area, and it’s just super different. This is one of the difficulties of the area, is that it’s hard to find people because we have to bang on the main door for a long time, have someone finally come open it, then ask if the person we want is home, have that person that opened the door go look, and come back and tell us. That’s kind of the set up of our apartment as well, but it’s MUCH nicer. We have tile, not cement, and we have a bedroom, a main room, a kitchen, and a bathroom that even has warm water in the shower! So don’t worry about the conditions here at all. They take good care of the hermanas.

Unfortunately, it looks like I got to the area right when the previous missionaries were having a slow time. They had a few baptisms scheduled, but they fell through, and so we’re sort of starting from scratch, lots of investigators, references, and contacts, but no progressing investigators and no one with a baptism date. Pretty much everyone is willing to listen to our message, so we have a ton of investigators. The challenge, however, is finding those who are actually willing and interested enough to act - to go to church, read the Book of Mormon, accept a baptism date, etcetera. But we have met some really lovely people that I have high hopes for. One is a boy named Abel. His sister Clarita is a recent convert, and she is so great. He has a lot of questions and isn’t very confident in God’s ability to answer them. Also, he has had a hard time with his parents. However, he believes what we have been telling him, he once again, doesn’t want to act on what he’s learning. We’re going to teach him tonight about having more trust in God so that he will hopefully feel enough confidence to try to pray. We also met a very kind woman yesterday named Daisy. We taught her about prayer and challenged her to baptism. She said she wasn’t sure about baptism, but she wants to keep meeting with us. She was so kind and seems like a very special, sincere person. She has a lot of love for her children and I believe that this love will inspire her to want to act because she will want them to have the blessings provided by the gospel. And then we also met yesterday with a couple, Omar y Noelia, that are living together and have two children, but aren’t married. Omar asked me why I was here from so far away in the US and I had the opportunity to testify of how the gospel has blessed my life so much and that’s the reason I’m here, doing something that isn’t easy, because I want them to have the same blessings in their lives that I have in mine. He seemed to be touched by that, and we’ll be meeting with them again tomorrow. These people are so easy to love and so kind. I just want them to accept what we’re telling them! Oh, and there is one more woman, Veronica, that does want to be baptized. However, she isn’t married and there is a problem with her papers, she has to go to Cochabamba to do something with them and that’s a long trip, especially since she’s pregnant and its sort of a precarious situation with her pregnancy. We just have to hope and pray that a miracle of some sort will occur, that the Lord will provide a way for her to be able to work out the marriage so that she can be baptized!

Anyway, that’s sort of how things are going down here. It’s FREEZING right now, I had no idea that it got so cold here in Santa Cruz during the winter, but turns out, it does! Obviously I was totally unprepared for cold, so I ended up having to walk around in freezing cold water in the streets above my ankles all day yesterday. But no worries, the elders are super kind and one of them lent me this huge coat that I’m currently wearing, and my companion lent me stockings, so I’m doing great and we’re going to buy rain boots and cold weather supplies a little later today. Anyway, yep, that’s the life in Santa Cruz! It’s not easy, but it’s great and I’m so glad to be here doing the Lord’s work!

July 9, 2013

Hello! I can’t believe it, but my time at the CCM is almost done! I've officially been on a mission for more than a month now, and it's amazing how fast the time is flying. I love the CCM, but it is totally time to get going to Bolivia and get started on the mission for real! We leave on Tuesday this next week, so I have no idea when I will be able to email again because Tuesday would normally be my pday... Anyway, so the next email you get from me will be from Bolivia!!! I'm so excited to go!!!! This was a way good week though, with some pretty cool experiences.

I’ve still been doing a lot of the same stuff, practicing Spanish, practicing teaching, and getting to know the gospel better. Things with our two progressing investigators, Alberto and Augusto, are going really well. We FINALLY got Augusto to commit to a baptism date yesterday! He has been hesitating for a while despite knowing that it was important and believing in the book of Mormon because he was concerned about his family, but we had a really powerful lesson where we bore a lot of testimony about the fact that God will always provide a way for us to follow his commandments, even when they are difficult, and we will be blessed whenever we do. Mosiah 2:41 was our closing, comforting scripture. It’s a good one. And Alberto is getting baptized! We are going over the baptism interview questions with him tonight and then we’re done with him. It’s really exciting, even though he is just our teacher and he’s just acting. I have really grown to care about and love Alberto since he’s been our investigator for so long. We got to hear about his real conversion story from our teacher, Daren Mostacero who really converted him, and we even got to see a picture of Alberto on Hno Mostaceros iPad, and I just loved seeing it because I love him! The Spirit is always so powerful when we teach, and I love it. Can’t wait to teach real people now!

I also had a really interesting experience with one of the other maestros here. While Hna Wursten was doing some Spanish practice, I practice taught this one teacher and once again, the Spirit was just so powerful. I can’t even explain it adequately, but it was the first time I have ever taught with no plan at all and really felt like the spirit was guiding me in what to say. Afterward, the maestro said it was a powerful lesson and that even as a member of the church, he felt inspired and motivated to be more dedicated to the Lord. It’s incredible how the Lord can take us and shape us into effective teachers through the Spirit, so we are guided in what we need to say.

A few fun experiences for the week now! First off, the fourth of July here was awesome! It sounds like things were a lot of fun at home, and I wish I could have met Emily! I'm glad things are going well there. We had a great party here, and I sent some pictures in the email. Pretty much all the norteamericanos were dressed in red, white, and blue, and the kitchen staff decorated the entire comedor with flags and fun streamers and things, and made this huge buffet of American food with an extra long lunch time! Well, almost American food. They tried ha-ha. It was seriously such a fun thing, and they had endless ice cream and an American flag cake and all kinds of great things, and then the teachers kept talking about how great America was and encouraging us to sing the national anthem and it was so fun! I was sort of thinking they wouldn’t want anything done with the fourth of July since it’s not a Peruvian holiday, but the people here are so great, they just really tried to make it a proper party. I think I celebrated the fourth here more than I ever have before ha-ha.

And just one more fun/sort of sad experience. Today on our way to and from the temple, I decided that my Spanish was good enough to really try to talk with the people on the bus and try to tell them about the church and potentially give them a LDM. Well, I definitely gave it a try, on the way there and back. On the way there, I was actually sitting by an inactive member, but I had no clue what else he said other than that he used to be a member, so I spent the entire rest of the bus ride trying to piece together what he was saying, and had no clue. And on the way back, I struck up a conversation with a different man, who was very friendly and definitely wanted to talk, but once again, I had no clue what he was saying at all, and spent the entire seven or so minute bus ride trying to piece together one sentence from him. Ha-ha and here I thought I knew Spanish! Oh well, at least the people are really friendly and were just amused by my lack of ability to speak. At least I think they were just amused, who knows. Hopefully that inactive member just saw the missionaries, remembered how much he really loves church, and decided to go back. Anyway, being in the real Spanish world where people don't speak at half speed like they do here will definitely be an interesting experience, especially for those in our district who can't even follow the half speed! The good news is that the Lord will definitely bless us with help as we try our best.

Anyway, love you all! Have a great week!!

Love,

Chelsie/Hermana Faulk

July 2, 2013

My week was great, as always! My big focus for the past week has been learning
how to be a lot more direct, especially with baptism invitations. My
teacher/practice investigator Daren/Alberto is always telling us about
how important it is to invite people to baptism early on, from the
very first lesson or often even in the very first contact, so that
people know that what we are teaching isn’t just nice information, but
it is actually vital to their salvation and it is heading to an end
point that will change their lives. I have been practicing a lot, and
although it felt awkward at first, I think its working, at least in
the practice contacts and lessons we do. I’m excited to use it when we
go proselyting again, which we were supposed to do this past Saturday
but we couldn’t for two reasons. First, because it was a huge
Catholic holiday with potential for danger. Second reason, because it
was also the weekend of a huge Mormon celebration, of the creation of
the 100th stake in Peru! It was super cool that that happened,
especially because Elder Christofferson came to Lima for the
celebration. We found out that he was coming, but he was going to be
really busy with the festivities and calling a new stake president and
everything, so he wasn’t going to be able to come to the CCM and we
were all pretty bumming. I was disappointed, and I especially felt bad
for the people, like the Latino missionaries, who have never had the
chance to meet an apostle of the Lord before. And then we found out
that he was actually coming to the CCM, but he wasn’t going to be able
to meet the missionaries, he was just coming to have a giant lunch
with a bunch of area seventies and all the new mission presidents for
the area included in the Peru CCM. So then we were even more bumming
that he would be so close and we wouldn’t see him, and they made us all
stay in our classrooms so we wouldn’t be out and about trying to get
autographs or anything ha-ha. But we hung out right by the window and
tried to see him, and tried to find him and didn’t. But THEN, right at
the last second he announced that he actually did want to meet with
all the missionaries after all! He took an hour to speak to us and
answer some questions from the missionaries, and then he shook all of
our hands and it was such a sweet experience. I could truly feel that
this was one of the fifteen men specially called as prophets, seers,
and revelators on this earth today. The Spirit was powerful and I was
so grateful for the opportunity, especially when our teachers said
that they knew that he really wasn’t planning on coming, but it was the
faith of the all of us missionaries and our prayers that he would come
that made it happen, that inspired him to squeeze the time into his
tiny window. What a testimony of the power of prayer.

And one other really cool thing happened along with that experience. When all the
mission presidents came for the lunch, they walked through all the
classrooms, and we got to meet our mission president and his wife for
just a few minutes! That too was an extremely powerful experience. As
soon as we figured out that we belonged to them we ran right up to
them and all started talking excitedly, the mission president’s wife
hugged us all really happily and it was just so cool. They’re brand
new, so we will be their first new batch of missionaries, the first
ones they ever get to see through a whole mission. I can already tell
that they are so kind and full of love. The wife got all choked up and
actually started to cry a little, she said, "We have been waiting SO
long to meet you, and it was just so incredible." They already love
their missionaries so much and all of us could feel that and feel
that that love came from God and so all us girls got all choked up
too. I don’t know about the elders ha-ha. But really, I know that we
will all be in wonderful hands with them as our mission
president/wife.

We’ll be getting two more roommates tonight. Hopefully they’re Latinas so we can practice our Spanish more! Anyway, love you all!

Chelsie at the Temple

Some sweet senior temple missionaries serving in Lima passed along this picture of Chelsie at the temple. The full post can be found HERE