Bolivia Bound

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

August 11, 2014

It was another great week, as always. I feel like I always start my emails like that, but it’s true, every week is great in the mission even when they’re tough. This week started out great - we had lots of people accept baptism dates AND we found some new menos activos to work with in our area, who seem really prepared. The menos activa I mentioned last week (Ofelia) is doing well. She’s the one who we didn’t know was a meons activo, but we were given her name as a referral twice and to our surprise turned out she was menos activa! Anyway, we taught her for the first time and it turned out she had been praying to God for some way to have a change in her life - and we showed up. :) Such a testimony to me that Heavenly Father knows His children. So we were excited about her, about another couple of menos activos who were progressing well.

We were also excited about several great, interested investigators who made some breakthroughs - Elsa is reading their Book of Mormon regularly and prayed about Jose Smith for the first time, this fantastic investigator Luis got really excited about the idea of baptism, Victoria prayed for the first time in her life - all great progress. And we had seven people with baptism dates on Saturday going into Sunday. But, to our disappointment, almost none of these people, menos activos or investigators, came to church. In the end, we had two investigators and two menos activos come to church despite our best efforts - calling, picking up, etc. That was really disappointing to me, because we REALLY tried our best to get everyone to church. I sat in sacrament meeting feeling upset and almost angry that we had been trying so hard and very few people came to church, but the Spirit prompted me to pay more attention to the talk our bishop was giving. I started to listen and he was talking about charity and Jesus’s example by saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." I started to think about that with respect to our investigators/MAs, and I realized that they don’t really understand what they’re doing when they decide not to go to church - they don’t understand the importance of this to their salvation like we do. It’s not that I should be upset because they fell through on a commitment. I should love them enough to first, pray, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do" and then love them enough to teach them the importance of these commitments to their salvation. I feel like that was an important lesson that I keep learning little by little in the mission. I hope that these people progress soon and we can see the fruits of all our efforts, but whatever happens, I’m grateful for the lessons I’m learning here.

I do have some good news though! First off, one of our menos activos, Jose, got an interview with the bishop and is about to get a calling! He’ll be rescued next week and no longer be considered menos activo. :) And also, Mariana is progressing great and excited for her baptism next week. So it’ll be a great week! I know that the Lord is working here in Paraiso and that we are seeing lots of miracles here! Happy to be a missionary! :)

Love, Hermana Chelsie Faulk