Labor in the Vineyard: week 10: Officially One Month in the field

Friends and Family,

Officially one month down in the mission field! I try not to focus on time too much, but I get excited about every little milestone. I've been keeping super busy, and a lot has happened. I had my first opportunity to participate in giving a blessing in Spanish. I just did the annointing, but it was a big confidence boost to know that I'm able to contribute in a manner that the people I'm serving can understand. I'm still feeling great about my spanish, although today it's being tested a little. I'm going on exchanges with an Elder from Mexico, and I'm leading our sector. It's going to take some hard work and quite a bit of faith.

This Monday was a combination of Halloween and National Evangelical day. National Evangelical Day is a big deal down here, they were all parading in the streets chanting scriptures and such and having huge concerts in their church buildings. There are a lot of Evangelical's down here, and honestly I think it's mostly because they just get to party all the time. Monday is my PDay, and we were going to go to some village up in the mountains but it was too stormy to do so, so we just stayed home and made some kind of hawaiian sushi with spam instead of fish (my companion lived in Hawaii for several years before the mission). We found out midday that we had to travel to Rancagua that night, so we spent several hours of Halloween on the bus ride up to Rancagua. My companion and I switched name tags and ties to try to get in the Halloween spirit, and we went to a little chinese restaraunt that was surprisingly tasty with the other Elders that were headed to the same meeting.

On tuesday we had a meeting with all of the new missionaries for our 5 week training. It was awesome to see that everybody from my MTC district is still doing well. I got back from the meeting that night to find that the other Elders had put my comp's nametag and a bunch of my candy in jello, so that was interesting.

This week was the first time I've had a baptismal date fall through, which was a bummer. It was one member of a family as well, and so the rest of the family will likely want to push their date so they can get baptized together. We also had an investigator open up to us about how hard of a time her family is having just trying to find food to eat. It was a truly humbling experience, and it breaks my heart how little we can do to help. I'm incredibly grateful for the blessings I had back in the states.

I'm sorry that I didn't prep any sort of spiritual thought for this email, but I want to testify to you all that I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only true church on the earth today. I know that Jesus Christ payed the ultimate price to save you and me from our sins, and I'm eternally grateful that through his sacrifice I can have an eternal family.

I love you all,

Elder Olson