Bolivia Bound

Coming Unto Christ

September 29, 2014

Hello everyone!!

Well, welcome to another Monday Pday! This past week was a challenging week in a lot of ways. But let’s start with the good news. We had a lot fewer lessons than we were hoping for, although the lessons we did have were great. They were very powerful, and we found another new family to teach. Just like the family we found a few weeks ago, they commented that they could feel a difference between our message and the messages of other churches - they felt something different, accepted baptism dates, and the husband cried when he said the prayer and thanked us profusely for coming to visit them.

The majority of the lessons we have had in this area have been powerful like that. I know that it is because Hermana Paz and I are trying to truly live the gospel in our lives, not just teach it - we have the Spirit with us more and people can feel it. Unfortunately, the bad news is that despite these powerful lessons, none of the 11 investigators and only one of the six menos activos we committed to come to church, actually came. We also had other challenges with members who committed to help us with certain things and didn’t, lessons falling through, and lots of other things. That was hard for me to see so many people feel the Spirit, commit to do something to come unto Christ, and then choose not to act on it, but I know that the Lord is teaching me a lot about patience. That’s the blessing from trials - we get the chance to become much more like Christ.

I pray that these people can progress because I want them to find the happiness I have found in the gospel, and I will keep giving all I can so they can feel it. But even if the people we teach choose not to progress, I am learning that I just need to be grateful to the Lord for the chance to learn to be more like Him.

I feel like in this area, even though I’ve only been here a few short weeks, I am learning more than I learned in any other area. I feel like in the other areas I started to form the base of a converted, Christ-like servant, and now Heavenly Father is letting me learn to put it in practice to see if I can really apply what I’ve learned. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself very well, ha, but I can tell you all I have felt the Spirit more in this area than anywhere else and I feel like my mind and heart are much more focused on Christ. He is just always in my thoughts and always influencing my decisions in a way He didn’t before. I don’t really know what changed, but I’m grateful for the change, and I will accept whatever circumstances I need to experience to become the person that the Lord needs me to be.

I invite you all to put the same principles in practice. I finished studying the book of Helaman this week, and the words in Helaman 5, "remember, remember" have been on my mind a lot. Helaman invites his sons to REMEMBER all that they have learned because it is SO easy to forget. We so often have powerful spiritual experiences with the Lord, or receive incredible blessings from Him, but as soon as a challenge or a distractions comes, we forget and start to pull away from Him. If we could just REMEMBER Him always, we would always strive to make good choices and always be focused on becoming more like Him. That is my goal in these last weeks of my mission: Remember the Lord in everything I do so that I can really become like Him. Strive to do the same and you will find the source of true happiness, no matter how bad your day is, no matter how hard the trials are, Christ permits us to find peace. We just have to REMEMBER. :)

Love you all! Have a great week!

Love, Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Here is a picture of Hermana Paz and me at an activity we had with the other misioneras in our stake from last Pday. We made ice cream sundaes and played some games. :)