How are you all doing?? By the way, happy Tuesday! It may be weird for me to write today and not yesterday, but it has a very good reason: I got to go to Uyuni yesterday! Uyuni has world famous salt flats and was even one of the filming locations of the last Star Wars! It was an amazing experience and took up all of yesterday, so that is why I am writing today. Don't worry, we have permission and everything, so I am not being a disobedient missionary :) So, my week went great and I am very happy with the work that we were able to do. I would like to focus on another experience this week, so I will not mention investigators by name, but just know that they are doing great and the work continues progressing here :) The experience that I would like to focus on this week was in a little pueblo (which is a term that means a small, secluded town) called Quiriza. Quiriza is about an hour drive outside of Tupiza and around 50 people live in the pueblo itself. In this area, there are also about 8 other pueblos that also need to be visited, and after arriving to Tupiza, each one is between a 30 minute to 3 hour walk away. Every weekend, a couple missionaries from Tupiza go to Quiriza to help the Branch there and do a little bit of missionary work in the pueblos there. This past week I had the opportunity to go and it was amazing! While there, we lived inside the small chuch building there, which is actually the first church building ever constructed here in Bolivia. We walked to a couple pueblos, shared messages with the people there, and even helped them a little bit in their daily work in their fields with their crops and animals. It was such a cool experience and my favorite part was spending Sunday there. We got to see people from every pueblo walk to this small church to partake of the sacrament and enjoy some time there. These people are such dedicated saints of the Church and I loved being able to be with them this weekend. One of my favorite experiences was being able to play the piano during sacrament meeting. The piano there is not electric, it is a real, old piano that has been there probably since the building was constructed. Many members told me how that piano had been sleeping for some time but they were so happy to see me wake it up again after its many years of silence. It was out of tune and had many, many broken keys, but it was amazing to play and it was a great honor to be able to play for these amazing members (who sang just as loud as my home ward as a group of 15 people). As I think of this piano, I can't help but think of a thought to go along with it, and I would love to share this with you guys today :) As I said, this piano was old, out of tune, and slightly broken, so I cannot say that it was the easiest to play. I tried several hymns that simply would not work just because the keys in that musical key were either broken or too out of tune to work together properly. When I was preparing to go to Quiriza, I had heard of the piano there and was really excited, but other missionaries in my zone told me not to get my hopes up, that it was too broken and out of tune to be played well. So I went, without many hopes and came to many of the same conclusions as the other Elders. However, I kept at it and realized that there was one musical key that had no broken notes and was sufficiently in tune that the hymns in that key could be played quite well. This opened up a whole world of possibilties and I was successfully able to play the piano in a good, not perfect, but good way that brought the Spirit to that meeting. Now, let's make the comparison :) Many of us may feel like this broken piano sometimes. We may have tried many things in many different ways, but we just never can find what we can truly do. We may struggle at many of the things that others think that we should be good at, and they don't hesitate to point that out. We may become discouraged and decide that maybe it is better if we just don't try anymore. However, like this broken piano that had it's musical key that worked for it, we too have our area that we can succeed, we just need to find it. So, don't be discouraged if you aren't good at what the world thinks you should be good at. Keep working, search for your God-given gift, and I promise that you will find it. Remember that a piano has no use if it is not played. Likewise, you have no use if you do not try, but if you do try, you can be made beautiful before the world and show those who doubted you how amazing you truly can be. That is my promise that each and every one of you has a gift that can and will help others if we truly make the effort to find it :) Well, I love you guys and I hope that you have a wonderful week! Thank you so much for all of your love and support!
Elder Wynn
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