Bolivia Bound

The Miracles Keep Coming!

February 17, 2014

Well, hello everyone!  This has been a great week where, once again, we have been able to see the Lord’s hand working miracles in the lives of our investigators. This past week we have seen several miracles with one family in particular. We have been working for about a month now with a huge family, that in reality is several smaller families.  Like, it is a mom and a dad, and their five adult children who live there and are almost all married with kids. They were a referencia from the bishop.  

We started with one of the daughters, Wilma, a single mother, and her daughter. Little by little we have added family members as more and more people sit in on the lessons, to the point that we have too many people in the lessons to manage them and have had to split them up and assign different times to visit different people. Now, we are especially working with Wilma and her daughter still, and then with her sister Marisol and the family of Marisol - her husband Roger and their four children, two of whom are baptism-age.

From the beginning, we have invited them to baptism, but they said no.  However, we felt that they sincerely wanted to know the truth and that they would progress, so we stuck with them. This past Monday, however, was a huge break-through moment. The bishop invited everyone in this family to his house for a Family Night. We couldn’t go, we had another lesson, but the next day we heard from this family that the Family Night was fantastic - some family members had cried because they felt the Spirit, and Wilma finally told us that she knows that this message is true.  Now, she still hasn’t wanted to accept a baptism date, but we’re going to work on that in our lesson with her tonight. :)

Then we had the chance for the first time to have a real lesson with Roger, the husband of Marisol, for the first time this week. He understood the Restoration quickly and asked to have a Book of Mormon, a pamphlet of Joseph Smith history, and the Restoration pamphlet to study more thoroughly, and then promised to go to church the next day. We were thrilled, but saddened the next morning when he called and said their son was sick the night before and they wouldn’t be able to go. Wilma came for the second time with her daughter, and we were at least excited about that, but then we had another miracle - just at the end of sacrament meeting, Marisol, Roger, and their four children came!  They waited a little bit since their son was sick, but they came for the second and third hours, and were very attentive in church.

We have been so thrilled to see the miracles with this family, and we know we’re going to see more as we keep praying for them and keep visiting them, not just these two parts of the family, but also the other people who live here - there are tons in this family, including some less-active members, and one who almost got baptized years ago!  It is truly a miracle to see the changes, little by little, in this family as they feel the influence of the Spirit in their home – including that they automatically get on their knees to pray at the beginning and at the end of every lesson, and they want to share the gospel with other people. It is incredible to see, and I know that it is thanks to working under the influence of a bishop with keys. I know these are familias de oro for March, and I’m so excited to see them enter the
waters of baptism!
Well, what other news is there? We had cambios (transfers I think is the word? I always forget) this past week, and I obviously stayed in La Colorada with Hermana Hincapie one transfer more. :) I’m really excited and grateful for that. And my mission family is growing rapidly! Hermana Lopez, my first hija, left for Tarija, another city, to train another hermana, so I now have two hijas and two nietas in the mission. With such a big family, I’m starting to feel old - especially since there are only three  hermanas out of 51 in the entire mission that have more time than me. And I’m not even halfway done!  Ha, mission life is crazy, but I love it :)
Love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Hermana Chelsie Faulk