A God of Miracles

March 10, 2014

Wow, has this been an incredible, miracle-filled, last two weeks. First off, we had three days of Carnaval in the house with a schedule of activities to do and lots of study time, which were truly inspired and helped me reflect a lot on my time in the mission, which is now halfway over, on what I have done in these nine months and how I need to improve for the next nine. As I reflected, I studied a lot about miracles and what conversion truly means. My principal goal for the mission is to become truly converted, so that in this year and a half I can not only serve the Lord with what He needs here in Bolivia, but also become the person He needs me to be for everything to come in the future. And so I studied conversion, in particular in the General Conference Liahona from October 2012, which was full of talks about conversion and true discipleship. I was able to make a list of all the things that have been keeping me from being 100% obedient and make several new goals. I also recognized that I have truly started to change as I have improved in one of my goals that I’ve had for a long time, which is to make my prayers more meaningful. As I’ve been learning to do that, I’ve felt my love for the gospel deepening, I feel the guidance of the Spirit more in my life, and I truly feel the purifying influence of the Atonement, especially when I have the chance to study the scriptures daily. I know that this is something every person can feel, but many times we make our prayer and scripture study so robotic that we don’t give way for the Spirit’s influence. I invite you all to make that a personal goal. But I was very grateful for those three days of Carnaval, and at the end we left more excited than ever to get working and see miracles. And we definitely needed miracles - Carnaval started on Sunday on a disappointing note: we had to report, for the second week in a row, zero with baptism dates, which was pretty crushing since we lost a few baptism dates that same day at church.
But we fasted and prayed hard in Carnaval, and miracles happened! We have been working with several families, la familia Soliz and la familia Cuellar, for a while now, and as I’ve mentioned before, they are truly familias de oro, but didn’t want to accept baptism dates. Well, this week we had the incredible miracle of seeing la familia Soliz and almost all of la familia Cuellar accept baptism dates for the 22nd of March, and we are very confident that the rest of la familia Cuellar will also accept the same date in our lesson with them today. The story of these two families is very long, too long to write here, but believe me when I say that I know this was a miracle - all of our best efforts to get them to baptism failed, and it was only when the members stepped in and started friendshipping these families, and more importantly, when the Spirit had the chance to work in them, that they decided to take this step. And then, last night we had yet another miracle, with yet another investigator, Anyelo, who has attended church for months, lives all the standards of the gospel, but never wanted to get baptized. I know I’ve mentioned him before too. Every time we talked about baptism with him, he pulled away more, to the point that he finally told us he did not want to hear us talk about it at all anymore. Anyway, but we went to visit him for the first time in two weeks yesterday, a little nervous about how he would receive us. For the first time, we had a lesson with him without mentioning once the word "baptism." We just talked about faith and read from Alma 32, and as we walked out the door, he said, "Quick question. When is the next baptism in the ward?" We answered, "The 22nd, why?" "Because I would like to be a part of it." We were shocked and SO grateful for the chance to witness this miracle. He said he would really like to get baptized as soon as possible, so he’ll be getting baptized this Saturday!
I want you all to know that I KNOW that miracles haven’t ceased, and that the promise in Jacob 5:72 is true. The Lord really does want to work with us in His vineyard, and He will, but Hna Hincapie and I came up with the recipie to receive His help. It is: obedience + diligence + fasting and prayer = miracles. That is all we’ve tried to do - be exactly obedient, including in the "little things" and be diligent, and put in practice lots of fasting and prayer, and the miracles just keep pouring in, and I love it!!! I recommend that you try it in your own lives. Maybe you aren’t full time missionaries, but you still need the Lord to work side by side with you in your daily life, and He will, as you strive to be exactly obedient to His commandments, be diligent, and fast and pray for His help. I know that this gospel is true, that God lives and that through His Son, Jesus Christ, we can all be saved. I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,
Hermana Chelsie Faulk

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! 

The Miracles Keep Coming!

February 17, 2014

Well, hello everyone!  This has been a great week where, once again, we have been able to see the Lord’s hand working miracles in the lives of our investigators. This past week we have seen several miracles with one family in particular. We have been working for about a month now with a huge family, that in reality is several smaller families.  Like, it is a mom and a dad, and their five adult children who live there and are almost all married with kids. They were a referencia from the bishop.  

We started with one of the daughters, Wilma, a single mother, and her daughter. Little by little we have added family members as more and more people sit in on the lessons, to the point that we have too many people in the lessons to manage them and have had to split them up and assign different times to visit different people. Now, we are especially working with Wilma and her daughter still, and then with her sister Marisol and the family of Marisol - her husband Roger and their four children, two of whom are baptism-age.

From the beginning, we have invited them to baptism, but they said no.  However, we felt that they sincerely wanted to know the truth and that they would progress, so we stuck with them. This past Monday, however, was a huge break-through moment. The bishop invited everyone in this family to his house for a Family Night. We couldn’t go, we had another lesson, but the next day we heard from this family that the Family Night was fantastic - some family members had cried because they felt the Spirit, and Wilma finally told us that she knows that this message is true.  Now, she still hasn’t wanted to accept a baptism date, but we’re going to work on that in our lesson with her tonight. :)

Then we had the chance for the first time to have a real lesson with Roger, the husband of Marisol, for the first time this week. He understood the Restoration quickly and asked to have a Book of Mormon, a pamphlet of Joseph Smith history, and the Restoration pamphlet to study more thoroughly, and then promised to go to church the next day. We were thrilled, but saddened the next morning when he called and said their son was sick the night before and they wouldn’t be able to go. Wilma came for the second time with her daughter, and we were at least excited about that, but then we had another miracle - just at the end of sacrament meeting, Marisol, Roger, and their four children came!  They waited a little bit since their son was sick, but they came for the second and third hours, and were very attentive in church.

We have been so thrilled to see the miracles with this family, and we know we’re going to see more as we keep praying for them and keep visiting them, not just these two parts of the family, but also the other people who live here - there are tons in this family, including some less-active members, and one who almost got baptized years ago!  It is truly a miracle to see the changes, little by little, in this family as they feel the influence of the Spirit in their home – including that they automatically get on their knees to pray at the beginning and at the end of every lesson, and they want to share the gospel with other people. It is incredible to see, and I know that it is thanks to working under the influence of a bishop with keys. I know these are familias de oro for March, and I’m so excited to see them enter the
waters of baptism!
Well, what other news is there? We had cambios (transfers I think is the word? I always forget) this past week, and I obviously stayed in La Colorada with Hermana Hincapie one transfer more. :) I’m really excited and grateful for that. And my mission family is growing rapidly! Hermana Lopez, my first hija, left for Tarija, another city, to train another hermana, so I now have two hijas and two nietas in the mission. With such a big family, I’m starting to feel old - especially since there are only three  hermanas out of 51 in the entire mission that have more time than me. And I’m not even halfway done!  Ha, mission life is crazy, but I love it :)
Love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Santa Cruz de Los Milagros!!!

February 10, 2014

Well, this week Hermana Hincapie and I had a wonderful opportunity to see miracles in the lives of our investigators. I can truly say I know that this mission really is Santa Cruz de los Milagros.

We have an investigator, Micaela, with whom we have seen lots of miracles from the first time we met her, and this week was even more incredible than normal. It all started about two months ago in Braniff when I first met her with Hermana Lopez. She told us that she lived in La Colorada, so we passed the referral to the offices to pass on to La Colorada. However, when I got to La Colorada, they had never received the referral. That was the first miracle, that if the Lord hadn’t sent me to La Colorada, no one would have known about her referral. Then, we started to teach her and she started to progress rapidly. Because she’s had to travel a lot this past month, it has been hard to teach her frequently, but every time we do, she expresses her desire to get baptized, she prays, she reads her Book of Mormon, and she’s just fantastic.

Well, last Monday we found her again for the first time in a long time since she had been traveling, and wanted to visit her, so we invited her on what we thought was just a whim to a family night that we had in a members’ house that night.  We picked her up later that night to go to the house, and when we were there, her two-year-old daughter started to throw up, several times. Micaela was really worried, especially because her daughter had diahrea for two days before that. Well, the Lord always knows what He is doing - the hermana we were visiting, Maria, was a nurse, and explained to Micaela that this situation was urgent, that she needed to buy medicine right away, and told her what medicine was necessary.

We left with Micaela to go to the pharmacy when Maria ran out of her house and gave Micaela money, saying "I just felt like I had to give you this to buy the medicine." Micaela started to cry and later told us that she had no money at all to buy the medicine, which was why she hadn’t done anything about it up till now. Then we went to the pharmacy, but the pharmacist told us she was sorry, but she couldn’t give medicine for a baby without a prescription from a doctor. We felt defeated for a moment, when another woman, Flor, who "just happened" to be in the pharmacy said, "I work with a pediatrician that lives three blocks from here. She’ll help you now for free if you say you’re a friend of Flor." So Flor took us to see the doctor, who attended us even though it was late at night, and the pharmacist agreed to stay open and wait for Micaela to come back.

We were amazed to see so many miracles in one night - that the Lord guided us to plan a family night in the home of a nurse, then invite Micaela to this home, then that He guided the nurse to give Micaela money, then that Flor was in the pharmacy at that exact moment, the pediatrician lived three blocks away, AND that the pharmacist agreed to stay open. Thanks to this incredible series of miracles, the Lord saved the life of Micaela’s baby. (And we were able to contact Flor to teach her!) We went home that night incredibly grateful for the chance to see the hand of the Lord so clearly in Micaela’s life.

But that still wasn’t the end! Micaela has been looking for work for a long time, and she was excited about a job she found in Hipermaxi, the supermarket of Santa Cruz. But the problem was that she would have to work Sundays.  We went to talk to her about Dia de Reposo (Sabbath Day) on Friday, and she has a lot of faith - she said if she had to work Sundays, she would reject the job offer because she knows that the Lord will bless her for her obedience. Well, we started to pray that Micaela would be able to find work. The next day, we went to make copies and the women attending there told us that she was a member of another ward, that she was looking for someone in this area that wants to work in her Internet - and since she’s a member, they wouldn’t have to work Sundays! We were thrilled, told her about Micaela, and passed the information on to her. We’ll see what ended up happening with that, I’m not sure, but what I do know is that the Lord definitely loves Micaela.

All in all, I am so grateful to see how the Lord truly does work alongside us, like the scripture in Jacob 5:72 says. I know that the Lord is doing everything He can to help Micaela progress, just like we are. He has all the power in the end, to solve problems that seem unsolvable and to help us in every aspect of the work. But I know that this doesn’t just apply to missionary work. Heavenly Father wants to give all of us the miracles we need, big or small, to help us get through the trials in our lives.  We just need to have the faith sufficient to believe that He WILL help us, like the faith Micaela had to reject a good job offer to follow Christ. I love being a missionary!

Okay, so let me explain the pictures a little bit. We have two here.  This one is of our baptism Saturday - us with Anair, who got baptized, and her mom and her little sister. We are very excited because we have been teaching Anair for about a month now, and she’s gone to church for a good amount of time, but we’ve never been able to find and teach her parents. They are literally never home, except for ONE time late at night when we didn’t have time to teach, only to get the baptism permission slip signed. Well, we were excited when Anair told us her mom wanted to attend the baptism - it gave us the chance to contact her! We talked to her a lot, and she agreed to let us come by yesterday, Sunday. Well, yesterday we not only talked to her, but also her husband, and they were great! They both said they want to go to church this Sunday and invited us back to teach them more. Yay for the chance to teach families!!!

The second is of our house. I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that we have found all kinds of crazy animals, including ENORMOUS snails, outside in our patio. Well, we had a new crazy this week. We were studying calmly when Hermana Hincapie freaked out and pointing at our ceiling. Well... you can see what we found! An even more enormous snail, climbing up our wall! Hahaha we couldn’t even believe it. So that’s a little taste of Bolivia for ya.

Love you all! Have a wonderful, miracle-filled week!!!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

The Power of Fasting!

February 3, 2014

Hello everyone!

Well, it looks like fasting has been great for everyone this past week - thanks to a state-wide fast, California has rain, and thanks to my fast with Hermana Hincapie, Aline Ligeron got baptized. :) Aline was one of our investigators planning on getting baptized Saturday, February 1, but her family is very anti-Mormon and she was really questioning her decision. Worse still, we weren’t able to get ahold of her because she traveled for a week and wouldn’t answer her phone. So, we decided to do the only other thing we could do: fast. So last week, we fasted, and to our amazement, we were able to talk to her a few days later and she said that after talking to her uncle, who is a member, she was 100% sure of her decision, wanted to get baptized, and she’s planning to go on a mission in a year!!! We were thrilled and it was a pleasure to watch her enter the waters of baptism two days ago, and get confirmed yesterday. I love the power of this gospel!

Then, for Fast Sunday yesterday, we fasted for another investigator, Wilma, who is fantastic, but who has had a hard time going to church. I think I talked about her last week - she had a dream 15 years ago about the Cochabamba temple and feels like she needs to find the right path to Christ, she’s reading her Book of Mormon, she prayed and asked if Joseph Smith was a prophet... she’s great. But, she’s had a hard time coming to church! So, we fasted, and were excited when we called and she said she was on her way, but then we were saddened when, an hour into sacrament meeting, she hadn’t showed up. But, with about five minutes left of sacrament, she came in! And not only her - she brought her 11-year-old daughter, and her brother and his son, who we have never taught! They stayed for the rest of the church, and at the end, she said she would definitely be coming back. I love the power of fasting. :)

Well, just some fun news about what Bolivia’s like now, because I’m sure Dad’s dying to know - it’s supposedly summer here where it’s supposed to be SUPER hot, but it’s actually been pretty moderate, sometimes even cold. I even have to cover myself with a light blanket now to sleep sometimes! And it’s also the rainy season - it has sure been super rainy. It’s super crazy because it can be clear, not a cloud in the sky, and five minutes later it’s POURING and we’re soaked instantly. It pours for like 15 minutes, and then is clear again, ha. Bolivia is nuts and I love it.

Well, I’m trying to send pictures, we’ll see if it works. One is of our baptism with Aline, the other is of Hermana Hincapie and me one of the days when it absolutely poured, this time for about an hour, and we were lost searching for the house of a menos activo and got totally soaked hahaha. And you know what? We never found the house. Ah well, such is life!

Love you all! Have a fantastic week!!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

 

 

 

Coming to Know Christ

January 27, 2014

Hello everyone! This has been, as always, a wonderful week. I love being a missionary! Hermana Hincapie and I have put the goal together to get to know Jesus Christ a lot better so that we can learn to be more like Him. With that in mind, I have been studying Jesus the Christ and studying the scriptures always trying to learn more about Christ, and I have learned a lot. (just a comment... those of you who haven’t read Jesus the Christ, read it. I love this book!!) Anyway, I also had the chance to study a lot more of the sciptures than normal this week because Hermna Hincapie was sick Wednesday and we couldn’t leave the house most of the day. I have had the desire to read more of Doctrine and Covenants, so I read from the beginning and a part in Section 1 really hit me: "For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance; Nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of the Lord shall be forgiven" (v.31-32) Before this moment, I guess I sort of thought that we can reach a certain level of "righteousness" in this life and then we don’t have to worry, we’re good, we don’t have to keep striving to improve and eliminate our so-called little sins. I thought, God knows we aren’t perfect, He doesn’t REALLY expect us to strive for perfection, but this scripture caused me to reflect and helped me to understand that that’s not the case. The Lord cannot permit any sin, big or small, in His kingdom, and He expects us to repent and strive to abandon ALL sins. I started to think about my life and about some of my "little sins" and I realized that I have several that I need to abandon. I got on my knees and made several promises to my Heavenly Father that I would truly strive to abandon these "little sins" and utilize the Atonement more fully in my daily life, and I have really felt closer to the Lord, felt the Spirit in lessons more, felt like my scripture study and prayers are more edifying. I know that it’s easy to be content with where we are and think we’re "good enough", but the Lord is waiting to bless us for our increased obedience. I love all the lessons we learn in the mission. :)

Some good news - we had a disappointment with Anyelo when he told us he didn’t feel ready to get baptized, but this Saturday we had a really fantastic lesson with him. The Spirit was strong in this lesson to open Anyelo’s heart to the subject of baptism again, a subject that he had previously told us he didn’t want to talk about anymore. He opened up about some of his reservations, and then as we talked through them, he ended up putting his own baptism date for February 22! We’re really excited for him. Now he will get baptized in his own timing and he feels really good about it instead of feeling obligated. Yay! Another investigator, Aline, was supposed to get baptized this week but we ended up having to put off her baptism date as well. (I think the Lord is trying to teach me patience, ha.) But once again, I’m happy about that. She also needs to feel really secure about her decision and not feel like we’re just dragging her to a baptism date. It’s important to always remember that baptism is 100% about the investigator and 0% about us. If they need a little bit more time to be ready, that’s what’s important to more adequately help them. The Lord is definitely helping me to learn a LOT more about patience and trying to help me learn to "love my neighbor as myself." I love it!

Now to reply to your questions, Dad - yes it’s muddy a lot, so my shoes are always a disaster, but it’s not a big problem. Yes we also have hot water in the shower, but when it’s really hot out, it’s better to shower with cold water. It depends. And as for bugs, all the houses have bugs. It’s kind of gross, but it’s pretty normal these days. I’m even getting pretty good at killing spiders, and even cockroaches! I’m very proud of myself. :)

Anyway, that’s just a little bit about my week. I love you all!!!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

 

What Do You Do With A Bidet, Exactly?

Hello everyone!!!

First off, congratulations to Bryan!!! Even though I think that December would be a much better month than May for a wedding ;) Haha no, but that’s awesome. Send me lots of pictures!!! Also pictures now of the ring!!!

Well, this week has been wild. We worked a lot, as always, and had some disappointments, but also some great moments. Our biggest disappointment was definitely that Anyelo, our investigator with a baptism date for this coming Saturday, got super anxious and told us yesterday that he didn’t feel good about baptism, that he wasn’t going to do it right now, that we could keep coming to his house but he doesn’t want to hear about baptism. Well, that was really sad for us, but we’re going to keep working with him. He’s fantastic - he reads the Book of Mormon, keeps the commandments, including Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity, always goes to church, and prays. Also Dad, you would like him - he’s an accountant! I know he’ll end up getting baptized at some point, it’s just important to be patient with some people. It’s not an easy thing to make a life-changing commitment like baptism. But we also found lots of new people to teach, including families, and the Lord guided us to several new menos activos in the past few days. It was really great yesterday. We had lots of investigators come to church, but it was really cool to see lots of menos activos also show up, many of whom hadn’t come to church at all in many years, one of whom is really excited and told us she wants to do a family night with the bishop, another of whom accompanied her husband to church for the first time in years. It was a happy day as the Lord worked miracles in the hearts of the people of La Colorada. :)

We’ve also had a crazy adventure in our house the past few days. On Wednesday, our toilet broke and started spilling water out of the top, which flooded our bathroom to the point that the water started to enter into our bedroom. Uh oh - we called our zone leaders and they came with a plumber, who worked for about four hours (we, and the zone leaders, lost almost the whole day, which was a disappointment), and then proceeded to tell us that he had ALMOST fixed it, but would have to come back another day. So for the next few days, we could use the bathroom, but the toilet kept spilling out water from the top and our bathroom was perpetually flooded, ha. Then the plumber came back Saturday, spent another few hours to fix the toilet, but we weren’t in the house - just him and the zone leaders. We came back to the house that night, and to our surprise, not only was the toilet not fixed still, but the sink also stopped working. The plumber still hasn’t come back, so now our bathroom is still flooded AND we don’t have a sink, ha. Our solution? The bathroom also has a bidet, which we are now using as our makeshift sink to wash our hands, wash our faces, brush our teeth, everything. And then today, the light also went out in our bathroom. Hermana Hincapie and I think it’s just hilarious - hahaha I love being a missionary.

Well, there are always about a million experiences, miracles from the Lord, funny moments, and everything here, and never enough time or space to write about all of it. I know that this is the work of the Lord, and I definitely learned this week that we have to stay positive and make the best of whatever situation. Learning to trust in the Lord, learning to see the silver lining, and learning to laugh are the secrets to a happy life, and I love it. :)

Love you all!

Hermana Chelsie Faulk