Bolivia Bound

Feliz Carnaval!

February 24, 2014

Hello everyone!! First off, a quick announcement... I won’t be able to write next week, so don’t get worried or confused when there’s no email from me. This coming Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are Carnaval, which is a festival that originally represented an abandoning of the "natural man" in preparation for Easter, but now is basically just a giant party where the people of Bolivia drink and throw TONS of paint and water at each other for three days. So, we won’t be able to leave the house at all for those three days, with the exception of once to go to church, but just sacrament meeting. And even for that, we’re pretty sure we need to go in taxi. So we’ll see how those three days go! It’ll give us lots of time to study and grow closer to Christ. :)

Well, this has been a kind of tough week, but from the tough weeks we always learn. We had several days where almost all our lessons fell through, and also our plan B, C, D... etc. Haha, but Hemana Hincapie and I know that when lessons fall through, it’s because the Lord needs us somewhere else and knows we won’t go unless all our previous plans don’t work out. That’s why persistence is so important. For example, a few days ago we had exactly that happen, and we started looking for investigators or menos activos, but no one was home. As a last option, we finally had the idea to look for an investigator from several years ago, Carla, and she was home! She received us well and remembered a lot about what the elders taught her a few years ago, and although she said she’s still not sure if she wants to get baptized, she’s excited to be able to learn more once again. Once again, yesterday ALL of our plans and back-up plans fell through, until we decided to look for a referral we had received a few weeks ago. We had looked for her before and she wasn’t home, so we decided to go back once more... and she was home! We weren’t able to teach her right then, but we were able to make plans for another lesson and I’m excited about the chance to teach her. We were also able to contact a family on the street. This family doesn’t belong to our area, but they really need to gospel, and we were grateful to be able to get the referral to pass on. I know and have learned more this week that when our plans fall through, we just need to have the right attitude and recognize that if our plans fall through, it’s because the Lord has a different, better plan.
I also have learned a lot this week about patience. We have been struggling to find anyone that will accept a baptism date recently. We have some great investigators that are progressing well, have gone to church, read the Book of Mormon, pray, and everything, including two families and one single man, but they still don’t want to accept baptism dates. Well, I was getting stressed as the end of the week was coming and we still had no one with a baptism date, so I started trying to really push baptism in every one of our lessons with these people, but it didn’t work. Finally, yesterday Anyelo, the single man, told us, "You know, when you try to push me to baptism in every lesson, it just makes me want to pull away." Well, that definitely hit me hard and I realized, as I reflected on that, that we are here to give the people the tools and invite them to make their own decision. With both of these families and Anyelo, we have done that. Now, they’re hestitating in making the decision, but I can’t obligate anyone to baptism. I just need to help them to feel the Spirit and trust that the Lord will speak to their hearts as they continue to learn, read, pray, and go to church. I know their baptism dates will come, but in the Lord’s time, and not in mine.

Hermana Hincapie and I also had a fantastic opportunity this week to spend the afternoon with Hermana Willard, the spouse of the mission president! It was great - she came with us to our district meeting, then to lunch, then spent three hours going to lessons with us. We had the chance to learn a lot from her about how to truly love the people we teach, and it was especially special beause she is a convert with a story very similar to the story of one of our recent converts, Aline, who got baptized at the beginning of February. We visited Aline with her, and the Spirit was strong as Hermana Willard was able to strengthen Aline in the challenges she has had now that she’s joined the church. I’m so grateful for the Spirit for guiding Hermana Willard to visit us here where we have Aline and knew that Aline needed this visit!
Well, have a great week! Especially have a great Monday, because today is a very special day... Hermana Hincapie’s birthday! We’ll be celebrating in fine fashion with the pensionista :) Anyway, I love you all!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Here are a couple of photos from this week. One is of our afternoon with Hermana Willard (the mission president's wife). It straight up POURED but luckily one of our investigators halfway saved us from the rain under a tin canopy thing they had, but we still got pretty wet, ha. But Hermana Willard loved it, said it reminded her of her mission in the Dominican Republic. 

The other picture is of the baptism we had this week, with Jose Velasquez. He is the son of an investigator family. We wouldn’t normally baptize someone this young without their parents, but this family has faithfully attended church for more than six months and are still waiting because the mom is working on getting divorced to her old husband who left her so she can get married to her now-husband, and they can get baptized. Divorce is killer expensive and VERY slow here, but it’s looking like in April this faithful family will FINALLY be able to get baptized. But in the meantime, their son turned eight!