Bolivia Bound

Another great week :)

June 30, 2014

Well this past week was a joyous week because we had the chance to see one of our fabulous investigators enter the waters of baptism. :) Hermano Esteban has fought for over two months now, with his wife not wanting him to get baptized at first, then losing his baptism date because of an interview for question 4, but on Thursday, he made it. :) He was SO excited and it was wonderful to see the way he has obviously been truly converted to the gospel. It was also a joy to see the way the ward friendshipped him so much and supported him in this process, especially since up till now he’s doing it without much support from his family. His wife, in the end, agreed that he could get baptized, but no one in his family attended the baptism. It was sad and hard for him, but he is firm in the gospel. He also gave us the referencia to teach two of his adult children, so we are excited to do that and, of course, to keep working with his wife and see if her heart softens with time.

In other news, we can see how the Lord continues to bless us in this area. We have been working with a less active member, Daniela, for about a month now and have recently started to see progress in her conversion, and this week we got the chance to teach the rest of her family, who aren’t members. The Lord has truly blessed us here with a prepared family - the mom is looking for something more in her life, and her children are willing to follow the mom’s lead and learn more. It’s exciting! We also continue to work with another couple of investigator families that we have found, investigators we lost when they closed the university but that we now have again because the university is open again, and lots of menos activos.

It has been inspiring to see the way the Lord is opening the hearts of many menos activos in this area and preparing them to come back to church... in the next few weeks, I know we’ll have more rescatados. An especially exciting moment was when we could do service for a huge family, la familia Solano, with lots of menos activos and some nonmembers that lives in our area. The majority have been menos activos almost their whole lives, but one invited us to help clean their house, and we are seeing changes in the family. We have been able to teach some of them, others who used to be unfriendly to us now wave and talk to us when we see them. We really feel like the Lord is preparing this family to come back to the gospel. And yet another menos activo, Mauricio, is also making great progress. He is a returned missionary and so it’s really exciting to see him come back, because he has a testimony and knows that he isn’t keeping the covenants he made. We committed him to an interview with the bishop to renew his temple recommend! I am just so grateful to be in this ward and see the Lord’s miracles here!

Well, this week’s going to be a great week too for us, partly because we are teaching lots of fantastic people and also partly because it’s yet again time for consejo de lideres! In about two hours I’ll be in a plane once again to Santa Cruz for a fantastic consejo with President Willard Monday night and Tuesday morning, and this time will be extra special because normally we go back to Tarija Tuesday afternoon, but this time we will stay in Santa Cruz until Wednesday because Elder Ojeda of the Seventy will come to talk to the mission leaders. Should be a great experience!

I love you all! Have a fantastic week! I’m going to try to send a picture of the baptism with Esteban too, and you can all finally see pictures of Hermana Lopez too haha.

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Here is a picture of me and Hermana Lopez with Esteban and the hermano who baptized Esteban, Hermano Roberth. Hermano Roberth is on the left of the picture and Hermano Esteban is next to me. Love you all!