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!

Paraiso Round 2!!

June 23, 2014

Hello everyone!!!

Well, it’s been yet another great week! It was a nerve wracking week as well... the week of CAMBIOS! On Wednesday night we got te dreaded phone call... and were excited to learn that Hermana Lopez and I get to stay together here in Paraiso for another six weeks at least to bless this ward. :)

Last week, as I mentioned, was "the week of the family." We spent the week trying to be more diligent in contacting families in the street and looking for referrals of families. The week of the family didn’t turn out exactly how we imagined (I was imagining, for example, contacting a great family of four that lives in our area and would accept to be baptized in the first lesson), but I know that the Lord gave us exactly the families He needed us to contact. In the end, we contacted various couples and families that seemed interested, but none that live in our area, ha. That’s okay, though; Hermana Lopez and I talk a lot about how we have the blessing of having an area en el centro (downtown?) so we get to bless other missionary’s lives by talking to and contacting prepared people that live in other areas. For example, we found a fantastic part-member family that lives in another area, a family that is less active and talked to US because they want to go back to church, and also lives in another area, and other nonmember families that are interested and live in other areas.

But I know that despite the fact that we haven’t yet found our "golden family" in our area, the Lord is still blessing us a LOT, and with families - just not in the way we expected. For example, we felt prompted to visit a part-member family that we were working with a while ago but that stopped receiving us - and they are once again interested in making the gospel a part of their family! They have some work to do to be ready for reactivation/baptism, but they came to church on Sunday and we’re excited about that. :) We also met a new menos activa, Veronica, who wants to come back to church and wants us to teach her boyfriend that she lives with - another potential family! And we have seen lots of progress with other people we have been working with - Cristina and her boyfriend Grover, who I mentioned a few weeks ago, went to church as well, Cristina for the second time and Grover for the first time, and are progressing towards a baptism date. And another hermana Adriana came to church for the second time with her nine-year-old son, and are super excited to keep progressing. Another investigator also came to church, as did several menos activos - including one named Mauricio, who came for the first time in years! It wasn’t exactly the week we expected, like I said, but I know that the Lord is blessing us with tons of miracles.

Some other good news... it appears that after almost a month, the university in our area is now FINALLY open again! That means a lot of our investigators who left will now be coming back and hopefully we can start teaching them again. :) Also, if everything goes well with the interview, Esteban should be getting baptized this week! It was a huge fight he had to go through to make it to this point, but I am grateful to be here to see his example of firmness and patience despite all the trials he’s had to go through to get baptized.

Love you all! Have a fantastic week!!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Barricading Tarija

June 16, 2014

Well hello everyone! This has really been a wild week, full of crazy moments and challenges, but also full of miracles. I’m loving it here in Paraiso!

To start off with some crazy news from here in Bolivia (Dad you’ll like this, I know you always want to know more about the culture here)... our area happens to include the biggest university in Tarija, el Tejar. That means that our ward has tons of university students and the YSA group is huge here. Also, the majority of our investigators are YSA. But, the student leadership group and the faculty in administration had some kind of huge tiff and two weeks ago the student leaders got so mad that they blocked off the university! Seriously... like 30 students took over the university and barricaded it off with furniture and stuff, and then fought off anybody that tried to take them over again! They literally fight with the faculty and the police and everything, and the really wild thing is that they win! They have now had control of the university for over two weeks now, and there is a group that camps outside it every day with signs and things making sure they can’t open it. It’s not like it’s been dangerous for us or anything, but it has been pretty inconvenient and killer for the people we’re teaching. The majority of the students here come from other cities, and especially from little pueblos, to study, so when classes are closed for over two weeks, they have just gone home! So we’ve been losing investigators with baptism dates, investigators who were really interested, right and left. They just all leave! Also, this happened just in the moment when we’re working harder than ever to pull up attendance to over 200, and attendance has definitely taken a hit. So it’s been a bit of a challenge for us here, but nothing kills my or Hermana Lopez’s spirit. :) We just keep working harder than ever despite the challenges!

It’s saddening to see that all these people can’t progress thanks to the university, but Hermana Lopez and I have felt that this is the Lord’s way of telling us He wants us to focus more on families and people who live here permanently in Tarija. Not that these university students aren’t important - they’re super important and, like I said, I’m really sad that we can’t teach them right now - but the Lord needs FAMILIES that can support this ward if it is going to stay open. With that in mind, we have titled this week "The Week of the Family" and we are praying that the Lord will grant us with a family to teach this week. I know that if we truly give this week everything we’ve got, He will bless us with a family to teach. But despite the challenges, we do have several people who really are progressing, and like I said, we saw miracles this week! One was that a girl, Lourdes, approached US in the street and asked us to come visit her! She said she has been looking for a church and feels like the Catholic church doesn’t have what she’s looking for. Unfortunately, she also went home since the university is closed, but we want to pass the referral to Yacuiba where she lives and hopefully she can start attending church there! Also, we started teaching a Christian woman, Adriana, and her son. They went to our church before and thought it was boring so they didn’t want to go back, but a member introduced her to us a few weeks ago and she went to church with us yesterday. I don’t know what changed this time, but she really liked the church and recognized that this is what she needs to come unto Christ more fully. We have also seen progress in the miracle investigators from last week, Cristina and Grover. Both of them really liked the message of the Restoration and feel that it is true. They continue to be interested in baptism. Unfortunately, Satan always puts challenges in the way of baptism, and Cristina is sick in the hospital right now so neither of them could come to church. But that’s one of the big things I’m learning in the mission - that the Lord often gives us the miracles we ask for, but He rarely gives them to us in the time we want them. I know that He wants me to learn patience, and I’m trying to do so. The important thing isn’t whether or not I’m there for the baptism, it’s whether or not they make it. And I know that I need to be more humble to be able to accept the Lord’s will.

It really has been a crazy week, and there’s tons more I could mention... a man with a monkey who tries to attack us, a possessed investigator, an attempted robbery with a hero who came at just the right moment, stomach problems, stomach problems, and more stomach problems... ha, we got everything this week, but the Lord always keeps us safe and protected. I know that the mission is where the Lord needs me to be and I LOVE IT!

Just a few more things... first off, shout out to Dad! Happy Father’s Day yesterday! Also, keep Esteban in your prayers... he’s supposed to get baptized next week, but he’s still having problems with his wife. Looks like the decision might come down to get baptized or keep his family intact, despite everything we’ve tried. We’re praying that the Lord opens up a solution!

Love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Happy one year!

June 9, 2014

As the subject indicates, I officially reached a year in the mission this past week, and it has indeed been the happiest year of my life. Six months more to keep loving it! We started off the week, as I mentioned in my last email, in Santa Cruz. Hermana Lopez and I flew up there for the consejo de lideres and it was great; we learned a lot about new instructions to lift us as a mission and help us to be more obedient. As part of these new instructions, we as hermana capacitadoras have much more responsibility and are in a lot more constant contact with the hermanas we work with since the elder leaders can’t be in so much communication with the hermanas anymore. It’s great; it means we’re sacrificing a lot more of our time since we really are now acting basically like lideres de zona for the hermanas, but I like being able to serve in that capacity. I learn a lot from the hermanas we work with and I learn a lot as I try to think creatively and work with Hermana Lopez to lift the hermanas.

I also had the chance to talk more to Presidente Willard one on one and he really pushed me to give the mission everything I have for the last six months I have. I am extremely grateful to have such an incredible presidente de la mision who knows exactly how to say what the Lord needs me to hear to push me to realize my full potential. Well, that totally changed my week and, I believe, it will change the rest of my mission. As I have striven to be more diligent and 100% obedient, I feel the Spirit much more in my life and feel so much closer to the Lord. And we have seen miracles as a result of it. For example, we had an investigator, Cristina, who liked our message and was interested in going to church, but was afraid of her boyfriend. He is in the police academy and only comes out on weekends, but she is here in Tarija waiting for him to leave the police academy so they can get married. (They are both from Santa Cruz, but he came to Tarija to be in the police academy and she followed him here to wait for him the two years he has to be in it! That, my friends, is true love.) She told us that she’s interested in religion, but he really isn’t so she was worried about being able to progress or get baptized. Well, we got her to agree to a lesson with the two of them on Saturday when he was out of the policia for the weekend. Before the lesson we were a little nervous, but we said a prayer before the lesson and the impression came to Hermana Lopez strong: "Have faith." When she shared that with me, I remembered and felt strongly that the Lord works with us, that we have His power and authority to teach and invite others to come unto Christ, and that He would help us with this lesson. In the lesson, we talked about the importance of following Christ in our lives and I contemplated inviting Grover, the boyfriend, to baptism but although I usually do in the first lesson, I was a little bit uncertain this time. But those words, "Have faith" echoed in my head and I just had to do it. I invited him to baptism and a miracle happened: he said instantly, "I would really like to, when can I?" And both of them accepted a baptism date for next month! It’s going to be a little bit complicated with him since he only comes out weekends, and not even all weekends at that, but he said that when he does come out on Sundays he wants to come to church, and this week Cristina came to church with us and loved it. It was marvelous to see the Lord’s hand working in our lives and in the lives of our investigators.

Well, we had lots of other great experiences this past week and we keep working hard. We’re getting Esteban, one of our investigators, ready for baptism in about a week and a half and we’re so excited for that. The challenge is still his wife; we’ve been able to meet and start teaching her, but up to this point she hasn’t given him permission to get baptized. We’re praying that her heart will change and that she will give him permission and then, even better, join him!

Love you all! Have a great week!!!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk 

The love that changes us all

June 2, 2014

HELLO EVERYONE!

It has been another FANTASTIC week here in my personal paradise, barrio Paraiso, Tarija. :) First off, the ward is doing well. We brought up attendance by about 20 people this week (to 124 peope), which is definitely a step in the right direction. The news about the possible union with barrio Central has been a huge motivator for the work of salvation, and I love it. Our consejo de barrio is all focused on how we’re going to bring people back to the fold of God, planning activities (something that rarely happened in this ward before), making assignments to visit specific investigators and menos activos, and looking for ways to serve and lift the people around us. The missioneros del barrio are getting organized and are excited to work as well, as is our ward mission leader: he is 100% determined to change the situation in the ward and will do what it takes to get us there. We have a specific goal set: to have attendance of at least 200 for the conferencia de barrio the last weekend of July, and I know we can do it, with the misioneros del barrio, the consejo de barrio, the six missionaries in the ward, and most important, the Lord. We are more excited than ever to be working here.

The people we are working with are doing well! Belen, an investigator who is studying in the university here and living with her member aunt, is getting ready to be baptized, probably on the 14th of this month. She is so firm and excited about the gospel that she shares it with her friends and her dad and sister who aren’t members. Her dad isn’t thrilled about her decision to get baptized, but she is super excited about it and knows that this is the right decision for her life. We continue to work with Esteban as well - his baptism date on the 24th of June is getting closer and he is SO excited about it. He is truly converted to the gospel and an incredible example to me, as he has made huge changes in his life, abandoning alcohol and coca and going to church despite the major objections of his wife. We taught him about fasting and fasted with him for his wife this Sunday, and on Tuesday we are finally going to go visit her for the first time. We’re praying that the Lord can soften her heart at least to let him get baptized, hopefully to learn more about the gospel herself too. We are also working with a great less active family, la familia Avila, who are a couple with their new baby. We are just working to get this less active family married and on track to the temple! I love finding not just prepared investigators, but also prepared less actives who want to return to the gospel once again.

Finally, this has been a week where I’ve had the chance to learn a lot about God’s love for each of us, which is manifested through the Atonement. I had an interview with Presidente Willard this past week and I had the chance to talk to him about a few things that had been troubling me. He taught me a lot about just how deeply God loves us - something I am only just starting to understand here in the mission. And He manifests that love to us through the Atonement of His Son Jesus Christ. I love how Alma the Younger expresses it in Alma 36 when he finally understood and felt the atonement in his life:

 21 Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.

 24 Yea, and from that time even until now, I have labored without ceasing, that I might bring souls unto repentance; that I might bring them to taste of the exceeding joy of which I did taste; that they might also be born of God, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.

I know that once we not only understand the Atonement, but also strive to apply and feel it in our lives, we will come to feel the joy that comes only from feeling God’s love. I invite you all to apply the Atonement in your lives, not just for big sins, but also for small errors and for mistakes that we all make on a daily basis. As we come to understand and feel the Atonement in our lives, we will come to feel the power of God’s love fundamentally changing us, AND feel a deeper desire to share this gospel with everyone around us. I love the gospel and I’m so grateful to be here as a missionary sharing it with the people of Bolivia!

Well, have a great week everyone! In just a few hours I’ll be flying off to Santa Cruz for the monthly consejo de lideres, so I’ll let you all know how that goes next week! Love you all!

Love, Hermana Chelsie Faulk

Accepted of the Lord

May 26, 2014

Hello everyone!

Well, we’re still working hard here in Paraiso! We had a kind of tough week with church attendance; a lot of the people we have been working with committed to go to church, but in the end, only one came. Hermana Lopez and I are praying to understand better what more we need to do to help these people come to church. We are also praying for our ward.  This ward, and Central, the ward I was in before here in Tarija, have pretty low attendance and the area has said that if we can’t pull attendance up to at least 200, and do so pretty soon, they will combine the two wards. Well, talk about motivation. All the members of the ward council, and us (the six missionaries in the ward) are really motivated to work a lot harder and get people to church! We are excited to bring more people unto Christ through His church.

This week I have been reflecting a lot on my spiritual progression over the course of the mission, and I read a fantastic talk from April 2013 General Conference called "Being Accepted of the Lord." I invite you all to read it - I think that many times, we focus too much on being accepted by other people. For example, I want to be accepted by my companion, by my mission president, by the bishop in my ward, by the hermanas and elders in my zone, by the investigators, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s good to want other people to like and accept us, but the problem comes when we seek for acceptance from other people that we forget about what is truly important – being accepted of the Lord. I love the scripture that Elder Kopischke uses in this talk, D&C 97:8: “Verily I say unto you, all among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice—yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command—they are accepted of me.” I know that this is true. We must reflect upon the condition of our hearts. Are we truly willing to sacrifice for the Lord? Are we humble and teachable before Him? Do we admit our mistakes readily and strive to repent? As I prayed about and considered this talk, I learned a lot about some ways in which the Lord still wants me to improve, and also received the sweet confirmation of the Lord’s love and acceptance of the progress I have made up til now. I invite you all to do the same, because while it’s great to be accepted by the people around us, there is nothing more special or more important than feeling accepted of the Lord.

Anyway, I love you all! Have a great week! And Mom and Dad, if the whole DC/NY trip one kid at a time is now a tradition, I’ll definitely be waiting for mine... :) Haha love you!

Love,
Hermana Chelsie Faulk

I love Bolivia J

Happy Monday everyone,

Well, it’s been, as always, another good week here in Paraiso!  Probably the biggest news for us here this week was that we had a bishop change in the ward! That was really big, because Obispo Sullca has been bishop for more than seven years. But, our new bishop, Obispo Oliveira, is going to be great. He’s hardworking and in our first consejo de barrio with him yesterday, it was obvious that he is dedicated to doing the Lord’s work the way He wants it to be done in these days: really talking together, with everyone contributing, to see how we can help the families and people that we as missionaries and members are teaching. This ward is great and I’m excited to see how we can contribute to it in a meaningful way. We’re also excited because we learned that the stake presidency’s big goal for stake conference in November of this year is to DIVIDE THE STAKE. Right now there is one stake of ten wards here in Tarija (which is pretty impressive considering that it’s a city of about 20,000 people), but to get to another stake here, we’re going to have to work HARD with the members to make it. I’m praying that we can see this miracle here in Tarija, and I know that with the Lord’s help we can do it.

One of my favorite things about the mission is seeing the Lord work miracles in our lives and the lives of so many people. We see miracles all the time, and this week was no exception! One investigator, Belen, is nervous about getting baptized because her whole family is catholic, but we encouraged her to pray about it and get an answer for herself. She did it and felt a lot of peace. She’s now excited about following this path and even invited two friends to learn about the church as well!  Another miracle we had is with Fernanda and Pablo, a part-member family. Pablo is less active and Fernanda isn’t a member.  They’ve received the missionaries for years, but weren’t really interested until just recently. This week both of them came to church on their own, and Fernanda said she "wants to put more of herself into the church to find out if it’s really true." They’re coming to a family night at a member’s house with us tonight, and I feel confident that we will be planning a wedding (they aren’t married) and a baptism in the near future!

We are working with some other really prepared people, like Esteban, who showed up to church on his own and is completely turning his life around - he’s in the process of quitting drinking, smoking, and using a drug called coca (which you chew like chewing tobacco but is a green plant), and he is 100% determined to get baptized. The problem is that his wife is completely opposed to the church, but his testimony is so firm that he says he will do anything, even divorce her if necessary, to get baptized. We’re still praying to see a miracle there with his wife, because we don’t want Esteban to have to choose between the gospel and his family.

Anyway, as always, I love being a missionary here. I love this gospel and the way the Lord, through His Atonement, can completely change our lives if we let Him. Have a great week, I love you all!

Love,
Hermana Chelsie Faulk