Labor in the Vineyard: week 27: My first Baptism!

Feburary 28, 2017

Hey all,

Wow, it's been a big week. A lot of big learning experiences that have helped me improve as a missionary and a person.

This week we had my first baptism! 10 year old Antonio was baptized by my companion, Elder Terrazas, on Saturday. It was a great service, and a lot of the branch was able to attend. The next day, Antonio was confirmed by the branch president in sacrament meeting.

We also had a cool experience teaching a reference from Santiago. His name is Fuslet, and he's from Haiti. He got here about the same time I did, 6 months ago, and he's here working. It was a pretty different experience because he speaks very little Spanish. He lives in a little shack behind another house with about 6 other Haitians (there are a lot of Haitians around here). As we taught Fuslet on the patio, the others were all rotating taking sponge and bucket showers on the side of the house. He was receptive and super humble. That lesson was the most similar so far to my pre-mission expectations. I thought that the people of Chile would be a bit more humble than the people back in the states, but that's not really how it is. I'm thinking about asking the mission to send me some french learning materials to read in the evenings so that I can better help.

This weekend I've been studying repentance pretty thoroughly. Preach My Gospel talks about repentance as a change of heart, consisting of a change of not only actions, but also of thoughts and beliefs. Leaving the sin isn't enough. We have to change our perspective, we have to hate the sin so much that we won't ever want to do it again. Through the atonement, we really can have this change of heart. We can be forgiven and be made new through Christ. Every day I'm more and more grateful for that.

Love ya,

Elder Olson

Here are the pictures from the baptism. Also, enjoy the pictures of our backyard campout on Monday night.