Bolivia Bound

Giving It Everything I Have

July 21, 2014

Well, this has been a fantastic learning week! We had interviews this past week with President Willard, which is always a fantastic motivator, course corrector, and fantastic for receiving revelation. We talked a lot about the fact that in mission life, I’m getting old - only have four and a half months to go. As we talked about that, President really pushed me to work harder than ever, keep my mind 100% focused on the mission, and as hermana capacitadora, influence the hermanas in our zone to "lift themselves up to a higher plane." I left that interview feeling even more motivated and excited to push it to the end!!

The interesting thing is that right now, right as Hermana Lopez and I are working harder than ever to improve, things have gotten harder than ever. We are having more challenges than ever in our ward right now. A week ago, I mentioned that a progressing investigator and her son decided to go to a different Christian church and it broke our hearts. This week, the miracle investigator (Marley) from last week who was attending a different ward and showed up out of nowhere with 7 attendances and a baptism date for the 26th, also called us to tell us the same shocking news: she has decided to go to a different Christian church. And then another investigator with a baptism date for the 26th didn’t go to church, and lost her date, and lessons have fallen through right and left, we’ve been losing interested people all over the place... it’s literally been so wild that this happens right as we’re trying to push ourselves more.

We felt a little bit down, but have thought about it a lot and know that this is a test - I thought about how the Lord is actually answering my prayers because He’s giving me a problem so big that I don’t have time to think about anything that’s not the mission - I HAVE to give it everything I have! And Hermana Lopez taught me that every time anything important is about to happen, Satan comes in and tries to stop it - and this is just another example. He is trying to discourage us, but we are just ready to work harder and trust in the Lord more! We know that we need to do something different, especially because we are literally hitting a brick wall as a ward: our ward attendance has been exactly 132 for the past three weeks. I feel strongly that this is not a coincidence: the Lord is trying to tell us that we need to do something DIFFERENT. I think that’s something that happens a lot in life, we want to improve in something, but we keep doing the same things the same way over and over again, expecting different results. That, as President taught us, is the definition of insanity. The prophet has given us instructions to change the way we do missionary work these days, and it’s time to do it! So we’re making some plans to change the way we do things, and we’re working on upping our faith to see more miracles. We prayed yesterday that someone would come to church who wouldn’t normally come since, frankly, we didn’t have anyone who was coming. Well, no investigators came, but three menos activos came to church from our area, two of whom we hadn’t taught and didn’t expect at all. So we know that the Lord is giving us miracles, just not in the way we expect.

I literally feel so excited about missionary work right now, I can’t even explain it. Hermana Lopez and I are totally focused, we were talking about the tough situation our ward is in and the whole mission is in, because the whole mission is still struggling, and Hermana Lopez received some revelation that we then expanded on together, a different way of teaching and a whole different way to look at investigators, which we feel could change the mission. We called President and told him about it because we were so excited, and he totally agreed! He loved the idea and said he’s going to go over it with the assistants and see how we can implement it in the mission. I’m grateful that as Hermana Lopez and I are striving to be better and have more faith, the answers are coming, piece by piece.

I know that the Lord lives and loves us! He guides us, even when it seems like He doesn’t, even when it seems like everything is going wrong, He gives us the experiences we need to grow. I love being a missionary! Sorry this letter is so long, I’m just so excited about missionary work and facing all these challenges we’ve got in the ward, the stake, with our hermanas, in the whole mission... it’s exciting. :)

Love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk