Labor in the Vineyard: Week 23: Change to the Missionary Schedule and Faith

February 1, 2017

Friends and Family,

It’s been a pretty interesting week! The fires down here are still out of control. The wildfires are everywhere. They’ve had to pull several missionaries out of their sectors due to the fire danger. All of us Talca missionaries were stuck in our houses for about 3 days because the streets were filled with smoke. The fires in the forests near San Clemente are controlled now, so we should be alright. Once side-effect I didn’t see coming has been the soldiers with machine guns all over the place. The fires before now were apparently started intentionally, so they’re working hard to protect their forests.

This week we also had the opportunity to participate in a worldwide training broadcast. Some of you may have heard, it brought some big changes for us. The first change was to the schedule. We now have a slightly less structured schedule. We plan in the morning now, and can choose what time of day we want to study. They’ve also changed the number of stats we report from 9 to 4, which will really help us missionaries in general to focus on repentance and baptism.

This transfer we’ve been working with an inactive member named Aldo. Aldo left the church after a divorce with his wife several years ago. We’ve been teaching him for a while now, and he’s come to church 4 Sundays in a row. He had an interview with the branch president, and we’re starting to work on getting him to the temple. It’s really been awesome to work with him.

This week we’ve taught a lot of lessons on faith. May people we teach talk about how fait his super important, but really don’t understand what fait is. we often explain faith has having 2 parts: belief (It took me a minute to remember that work in English) and works. As we’ve surely all heard, faith without works is dead (James 2). In Alma 32 we learn that faith is like a seed that must be nourished by works in order to grow. We can read in the end of that chapter that the fruits of the see will be sweeter than anything we have before tasted. I promise you all that fait accompanied by works will bring you blessings and miracles.

Much love,

Elder Olson