week 53: Finding New Investigators - even if they are sneaky

(Elder Olson's Mom's transcription of his audio letter)

Alright, Elder Olson here. This is the 28th of August 2017, just so I can keep track of the dates here.

This week has been crazy. It's been really long. We've had a lot of stuff to do this week. A lot of really crazy stuff has happened.

Well we'll start at the beginning. Monday was awesome. Pday. We went and got a class at a Juijitsu gym, which was pretty sweet. We got special permission from President to be able to do it because normally they don't let us take the zone places to do activities. WE took the zone over there. We have a hookup over there with a guy named Cristobal. We contacted him and he came out in his "I like Weed" shirt and he's like, "Ah yeah, I like to do martial arts," and I was like, " Me too. Sweet!" And then there we go. We found out that their gym is right next door to the chapel. And they let us come and they opened the gym in the middle of the day especially for us to let us do a free class. The owner of the gym actually studied at the University of Utah. He spoke English and was really chill. So that was really fun. A great way to start off the week. Nobody got tooooooo hurt. My comp did end up asking for a blessing for his arm because we practiced arm bars. But I think he's doing alright now.

So this week we did exchanges twice. Once with another sector here in Curico, in the ghetto. It's called (?). Then the other day we did them in (Molina?) which is a little pueblo outside Curico. So nothing all that special happened during the exchanges. It was good I finally got to go to a different sector. Normally, I stay here in the sector during exchanges because I know our sector better, so my companion who doesn't know the sector goes. But this last week I got to go down to (?) and do exchanges there. I forgot my towel and a change of clothes and pajamas and a toothbrush all that because we had to go out to Molina(?) early in the morning and did the exchanges back to back and I forgot all that stuff. So I got to "sleep in my tie" type of thing on the exchanges. So that was neat.

This week we found a TON of new people. We found a lot. We found 13 new investigators this week. Which is not a common thing. It's not unheard of but it's not common either. We've already found a new investigator for every day in this change. And that was our goal. We made our goal a week early. So that's cool. But we're going to have keep working hard this week to not let it get to us that it's the end of change...that we've already met the goal...We want to keep that success going. We want to start of the next one strong.

The changes are going to be this week. We find out on...well we'll probably find out early, because my companion will ask one of his friends in the office...but we should be finding out Saturday. So we'll see when we actually know. But honestly I think that I'm gonna be staying here with Elder Guadiglia. Because it's gone really well for us and I think one of the only reasons they'd take me out of Alameda right now is to put me in as a secretary. And rumor has it that somebody else is going to be a secretary. So I should be safe from being a secretary. Don't know if I really WANT to stay another change. For me I like to go to different sectors. But it's okay. If I'm gonna be left in a place, it's a good ward, a really good ward so I won't be too bummed out about it if I stay.

Other interesting things that happened...

This week we talked the Bishop and he was like,"Yeah we've this member who's got a daughter who's 10 years old who's not a member, who's been coming to church for the last few weeks and she wants to get baptized." And we were like, "Oh that's cool." So we went and talked to them and we set a baptismal date right away and she's for sure going to get baptized and we thought we were going to get away with getting her baptized this sunday but some of her family won't be able to make it out that day so she's going to be baptized on the 17th of September. That was nice. A nice little baptism we don't have to work for. Not quite as satisfying but nice that we are able to help there.

On Saturday, late at night, just about time to get home, well 9:20 and we need to be in the house between 9:30-10:00, we were out contacting and not really having much success but at 9:20 we said a prayer, it's the end of the night, we've gotta find somebody. But then we weren't finding anyone and started heading home and I was like, "No. We've gotta find someone." So we started contacting again. Literally the last house we said we were going to contact, we contacted it and this guy came out, and he was super nice, super excited. He said, "Yeah come in. No worries." So we started talking to him. His name's Roberto, he's an atheist, and he's super smart.  He's a mechanic, well he works in part as a mechanic, he's an engineering student right now. That was 9:20 on Saturday night. He committed to come to church and the next day he came to church. Normally we visit with people 5 times and they have to commit, "YEAH! I'm for SURE coming to church this sunday. I'm for sure coming." Normally they have to say that about on 4-5 separate occasions for them to really mean it. But this guy said he'd come to church and he came to church. So that was really awesome! He's good. We've got high hopes for him. But he's hesitant to pray because he doesn't believe there's a god. He said, "yeah I'll come to church and I'll read the book," and he liked church but that step of humility that he's gonna have to take to admit that maybe there is a God, and pray and ask for an answer is gonna be kind of an obstacle for him. But it is ABSOLUTELY necessary for him to do to get an answer. You're never going to get an answer if you don't ask. So we're going to have to help him recognize the spiritual experiences he HAS had or is GOING to have as we work with him so that he can kind of open his mind to the fact that there is a god. We're excited to work with him.

We also found another investigator and her name is Pia. She had a baptismal date for the second week of this change and...we lost her. My companion still hadn't met her. We hadn't found her all this change. She hadn't been answering us and she actually moved houses and we got in contact with her again and she was excited and we taught her a lesson about the Sabbath, about keeping it holy and she came to church. Which until now had been one of her biggest difficulties the last time we were teaching her. So that was awesome that she was able to take that step right away as soon as we found her again.

Also this week we found a lady named Rose who seems kind of crazy and I think may be a pathological liar, but she accepted a baptismal date. She was actually baptized 10 years ago but never confirmed. I feel like she may have just never come to the sacrament meeting after being baptized. Not exactly sure what happened there. But we're going to try to work with her again. She was a reference so we'll see if we can help her. But she's told us she was going to be at her house or going to come to church like 10 times but she's not doing it sooooo....   Well one time, she told us she wasn't in her house and we went to her house and called her and she said she wasn't in her house so we were thinking about where else we were going to contact as our plan b and she just walks out onto her front porch and she didn't see us. Then she came out and walked almost right past us and we were like, "Oh hey, remember when you told us you weren't here like 20 seconds ago?" Ha. That's cool. But hopefully we'll be able to help her out.

This week i began ponderizing a scripture (I think that was a thing from general conference in 2015, memorizing and pondering a scripture) and I'm doing it in spanish but I'll send you a picture of my study journal and what I'm doing for that. I'm studying 2 Nephi 2:25-27 to kind of mix things up with my scripture study.

So yeah. I'm excited for changes this week. We'll see what happens. I'm really hoping somebody from my group, somebody I'm tight with, will come down to my zone. I'm kind of lonely a little bit. Not too bad. It'd be nice to have one of my friends from the beginning of the mission like Elder Haar, Elder Robinson or Elder Mussleman come down here to Curico, that'd be sweet. But if not, that's cool. I'll keep working like a boss Like I should be.

Love everyone. Take care.

From our apt... The world is beautiful right?

Intercambios con Elder Steenblik

you can take the people out of the flayte but you cant take the flayte out of the people

trying fidgit spinner tricks 

a pic for my little brother of my fidgit spinner

my comp asked for food when we were contacting

and then we made jam

A little bit of ponderizing yesterday.

week 52: Hump Day & the Eye of Faith

8/21/17
Basic Transcription of his audio letter:

Well Alright so this is my 3rd audio recording for transfer 8 week 5.

So this last week was a pretty good one, it was a great one actually, but really long. It was a Long week.

To start off the week: Tuesday was my hump-day, my half-way point in the mission. Because my mission is a little shorter than 2 years, because I'm speaking a foreign language and the way the transfers work out and all that, even though I finish 1 year, the day after tomorrow, this last week was my half-way mark.

So on Tuesday night the secretaries from the mission came over and slept in our house because they had to do some stuff for their visas here in Curico. It was kind of cool to talk to them. It's been a while. It's been kind of lonely here in a house with only two people instead of four...a little boring sometimes. But that's alright. I'll just stay focused. But it was nice to have somebody else in the house. And then Wednesday night we also had a visit from the Assistants who came and slept in our house as well because we had our zone conference on Thursday.

Zone conference was great. We talked about the atonement of Jesus Christ, what that means for us missionaries and what our investigators need to really understand about the atonement to become converted. And the things we need to do to access more power in our lives. President Russell M Nelson from the quorum of the twelve gave a great talk on that in this last general conference. He talked about what we can do to become not only more Christlike but what we can do to have more of His power in our lives. So that was cool. Then in the afternoon we talked about Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. And we brought less actives and investigators, well there were probably about 3 who made it because it was at 3 o'clock on a Thursday so there weren't a lot of people who could come so there were 3 from BOTH zones who were able to come out. But it was good. The zone conferences always give a little bit of a boost, a bit of energy.

Then on Friday, we had intercambios, uh exchanges, with a sector here in the zone which was fun. I was with Elder Christiansen, a gringo from Idaho Falls who's got about 5 weeks in the mission. The poor kid is still working hard at his Spanish, but he's a good guy. I had fun with him. It was great.

That day we had a pretty cool experience. I've talked in my other letters about the Eye of Faith and how the Eye of Faith works and we got to apply that. In our planning we had set the goal to find 3 new investigators and we needed to find those 3 new investigators in order to meet our weekly goal. We went out and we were working all day and about 9 at night, basically we needed to get into a house pretty quick there, and we had one street left to contact that we really had time for so we said a prayer and basically said, "Father in Heaven, we know that this goal is inspired and we need three new investigators to meet our goal. Please guide us and help us to find at least three news." Right after that, the second or third house we contacted, this family of three let us come in. We had actually contacted their son (we didn't know it was his house, he was actually upstairs at the time we contacted the mom) but the son we had contacted in the street one day but he hadn't given us his address because they are Seventh Day Adventists and they are pretty firm in that but we'll see if we can help them out there. But that was really cool because we had barely said that prayer asking specifically for 3 new investigators and right away we found exactly 3. And we were able to meet the goal for the day in the last minute. And that's not the first time that's happened recently. It's been really cool. We've had a lot of experiences like that with finding new people. We've set a goal, my companion and I, to find at least 1 new person every day in this change, and we are on our 4th week in a row of doing that. I've never been able to do that and honestly I've never seen anyone else be able to do that. And it's been cool to work with all these new people. The work now is getting them to progress and to come to church and to actually be baptized. But you've gotta start somewhere.

This week we had 3 baptisms as a zone. We had a crazy experience with that. The sisters from our ward had a baptism (well they had 2) and the Hermana that was going to be baptized, she had asked me to baptized her. But she had also talked with President and had asked permission to allow the missionaries who had found her to be able to come back and baptize her. That's normally a pretty big No, No, because we'd have missionaries traveling all over the zone to do baptisms. But two nights before the baptism, or Saturday morning, President called us first thing in the morning and said, "Listen. I've been up since like 2 or 3 in the morning. I've had an inspirational experience." And he said these other Elders who had found this Hermana needed to come down and baptize her today. So they came down for the baptism today. Which was kind of cool, kind of different. President was there as well. It was kind of a different experience. I don't know WHY that needed to happen, but I'm sure it was what needed to happen. It was kind of interesting to see that.

As a zone,  this change has been awesome. We've been having a lot of baptisms as a zone which is AWESOME. It's been great. As of now we've had 7 baptism in this change and we're almost guaranteed to have another 3 or 4. The average number of baptisms in a zone during a change is between 0-3 baptisms. So the fact that we have 7 already and we might have 10 before the change is incredible. Almost every sector is going to have a baptism this change which is pretty awesome.

Today we're gonna have a pretty fun activity, I'll see if I can grab some pictures. We found a JuiJitsu instructor. And I talked to him and told him that I had done some Martial Arts before the mission and we got him to accept to do a class for the Zone. (WOOOOO!) It's gonna be pretty sweet. Hopefully nobody breaks an arm. It should be pretty light, pretty...chill I guess would be the word...tranquillo. So that'll be fun. So we're doing that today.

I've been a little...not sick..., well I don't know how I could be even a little bit sick with all the vitamins that my family sent and that I've been taking every day. But I've got a bit of a sore throat and a plugged up nose. But it's alright. It's just because I've been talking a lot...I've been spreading the gospel. So it's worth the pain. Worth the trouble.

So to finish off I just wanted to share a scripture we'll be sharing with the zone. Because there are a few sisters and a few Elders in the zone who are a little bit discouraged. We're going to share with the zone today this scripture. I really liked it and the way my companion had phrased this. It's in 2 Timothy 4:7 and it says, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." I like to look at that and think of it as a question... Have I fought a good fight?  Have I finished my course? Have I kept the faith? It's just something all of us can be asking ourselves this week.

I love you all. Take care. Have a good week. Ciao!

Love,
Elder Olson

The Curico Zone with President and Sister Harris

One Mission Journal Complete

Our JuiJitsu Class (the instructor with 2 thumbs up actually attended University of Utah)

Week 51: Miracles

8/13/17

Kouman ou ye? (Haitian Creole for how are you?)

Hi guys,

I'm doing great down here in Curico.  it's been a solid week. 

We started off with Oreo empanadas and soccer for P day. We were smart enough to delegate the food part this time, so we actually got to play again. Good stuff. 

I've had quite a few chances to practice my creole this week. We have some new Haitian investigators, and I actually gave a baptismal interview to a Haitian. We had to get special permission from President Harris so that we could use our friend Fafu as a translator during the interview.

We had a lot of rain this week. It also happens to have been the week that we both forgot our umbrellas in an investigator's house. We've been practically swimming from lesson to lesson instead of walking (but I haven't gotten sick thanks to all of the vitamins the fam sent! Thanks mom!)

This change we’ve been seeing  big-time miracles as a zone. We’re baptizing (well when I say we I mean they but I like to think that I’m helping somehow) more than we have here in a LONG time. By the end of change possibly 4 times more. We still aren’t quite Brazil, but we’re seeing great improvements. 

On Friday, a convert asked us to give a blessing to his uncle who is currently in an induced coma. He (the convert, Lupo) expressed his faith and asked us to perform a miracle for him. We had to explain to him that we can’t change God’s will to him, but it was cool to see such firm faith in a new convert.

This week some members had family visiting from a city called Portomon (not sure how to spell that) in the south. I don’t know if all southern food is that good, but what they gave us (a kind of salad, fried bread, and salmon with cheese and southern sausage) was awesome. That was the first time I’ve eaten salmon in a year.

Spiritual Thought: Remember to pray always! 3 Nephi 18:15, 18,19,27; 3 Nephi 19:26, 30; 3 Nephi 20:7.

Much love,

Elder Olson

PS- We climbed a hill (and maybe some other stuff)

Note from Elder Olson's Mom: He sent these videos but didn't talk about them. He evidently experienced another earthquake this week but this time was in his 5th floor apartment. I don't think he's ever been in an upper level of a building during an earthquake.

Week 50: A week of miracles!

Elder Olson sent another Audio Letter this week so I put it to the pics he sent as well. Enjoy!


August 6, 2017

Hey guys,

Well this is my second try at this because in the middle of the last one we got a call and I'm recording this on my cell phone and it cut everything I had. But that's cool. It's alright.

So I wanted to start off by saying thank you to all of you who sent me birthday wishes this last week...to the family especially for the package they sent, that was awesome. Thank you for that. I have a little video I'm planning on sending to show what was in the package.

This week's been a pretty good week. It's been kind of crazy but we've had a lot of miracles and a lot of little things that have worked out just too perfectly. It's been amazing. At the same time, we've had some trials. It's been a tough week, but it's been worth it. We've been seeing a lot of progress in our sector and in the zone.

To start off at the beginning of the week, after Pday we were going out to work and we had an appointment with an older lady that we had contacted out in a town called Sarmiento outside of Curico. So out there in Sarmiento, about two hours before the appointment she calls us and says, "Hey, I've got some family situations out here and I'm not going to be able to have the appointment here today." We were luckily able to get ahold of a family, literally the only family in that town that is active, and they got home at exactly the hour we were going to have the appointment and they were able to, the son was able to take us over and pick her up from her house and take her back to their house where we were able to have the visit. And she was super receptive. Her daughter and her daughter's family are all super active...they're endowed. They're from Santiago. But she also lives with one of her sons who is atheist and makes fun of religions a lot. So we were able to have that visit with her and as I said, she was super receptive and now she has a baptismal date for the 3rd of September. So we're going to be working with her a lot to try to help her with that.

Then later in the week was my birthday, so that was fun. That was something special this week. On that day we had interviews with the mission president, President Harris. He came to Curico at our chapel, the stake center. While he was doing the interviews, my companion and I gave a training to the zone about quite a few things. Sister Harris talked about the schedule and the importance of the schedule and a couple of small changes that we're making. The Hermana, or sister leaders, I think they're called sister leaders, I'm not 100% sure in English but that's the translation...They talked a little about positivity and kicking out that culture of people saying, "In this mission we don't baptize that much, You'll probably baptize SOMEONE in your mission, but we really don't baptize." That's a culture we really want kicked out of the mission. We talked a lot about the goals and plans we've set, which we've been working on as a zone, which have been going great. They're killing it out there. It's been awesome. Then we talked about some principles from Preach my gospel. So that all went really well. My interview with President was GREAT...it's always a good little renewal to have that talk with him. He's really a great guy, I look up to him a lot.

After the interviews, we got back to the house and we saw that...OUR BIKES HAD BEEN STOLEN. When we left the house, we hadn't noticed but we think in the night someone had clipped the lock on our bikes and had taken them from the apartment complex. So not from inside our apartment, but they were on a bike rack inside the complex which is all fenced in with a guard post to get in and out. But somebody had cut it and somehow taken the bikes out. What I think happened was that they just jumped the fence over on our side of the complex, cut the locks and passed the bikes out. So, that was a nice little birthday present. We get to walk for the next couple of weeks until they get us some new ones. Hopefully they don't make us pay for the bikes, but we'll see what happens there.

But then after that we went down to Centro, downtown, ...we stopped by a member who works as a barber down there, some converts actually...she was a "hair cutter?" I don't know what you call that (in English). And they said, "Hey, we need you guys to come by our house, like right now." And we were like, "Okay." So her son took us to their house. We got there and their family was all waiting there and another family, the family of our ward mission leader, and they were waiting with a cake and everything. They had a little surprise party planned so that was cool. That was REALLY nice of them. So that was what ended up happening on my birthday.

Oh but that morning, it was really funny, because...well at midnight...I was already asleep, but my companion had put my phone on the shelf right next to my head. And then at midnight he calls and I'm kind of half awake and I look over and see my phone and I'm like, "who's calling me right now? I don't even remember putting my phone right here. I don't know what's going on." I roll over and look at the phone and he had changed his contact information in the phone so that it said, "MOMMY." And I read that and I was so confused. I just thought I was having the weirdest dream of my life. I answer it and I was like, "Hallo?! Como.." I was super confused about what was going on, and then I just hear from the bottom bunk, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU...." shouting the song in english. Haha. I was super confused ...it took me a minute to figure out what was even going on. I thought it was all a dream. But that was pretty funny, something a little different.

Also this week we've had a lot of little miracles. We've been starting to set goals, like in the morning we have to achieve this goal before going to lunch, as a motivation to get out of the house, right on time and get working, and really take advantage of the mornings...because mornings are TOUGH down here. Everybody is always prepping lunch, because that's their big meal, and most of them just sleep until like 2 in the afternoon, like they don't do a whole lot. So we had a bunch of stuff that we were supposed to do that morning as far as planning, pass the keys to some other people, and we weren't on bikes so we had to walk downtown. We made it down there and in the end, we had about 15 minutes to get to our lunch with a member family which was only minutes away walking. But we thought, "we have to make our pre-lunch goal or we can't go to lunch." So we said a prayer. Our goal was to give a Book of Mormon and get an appointment. So we start contacting houses on our way to lunch. We were actually in the sister's sector because all the members live in the sister's sector. We only have 3 or 4 families that live in our sector. But on our way to lunch, knocking doors, and the first person we actually talked to...because nobody came out of the first few houses and people who we had tried to stop on the sidewalk weren't feelin' it. But we were contacting this house and the lady came up to her porch at the same time as we were contacting her house. We got talking to her and she had a ton of questions and was super receptive. She accepted the Book of Mormon and we set an appointment like right away. I honestly was super surprised that God helped us and that we were able to meet that goal so quickly, because there are times where you can contact in the morning for an hour and a half and nobody will give you an appointment. The mornings are tough. But she was super super super receptive and it was immediately after that prayer. And we were able to get to lunch on time AND still make our goal. So that was awesome.

I guess I'm getting kind of long here on the recording. But also we've had a lot of miracles in the last few days. A lot of situations have just worked out perfectly. We're meeting our goals, we've set 5 new baptismal dates this week, we've been working a TON...we've been working really hard. And it's been good.

I wanted to share a spiritual thought because I think I kind of missed that last week. Right now in the mission we've been talking about using the "Eye of Faith," which is seeing what you WANT to happen before it actually happens and really believing it. And then you go out and actually ACT as if it's going to happen. For example, with that goal of placing one Book of Mormon and an appointment before lunch, ...so we had to see it in our minds' eye, which we did by planning and praying and asking for revelation and saying, "please help us know HOW we can do it and we promise we are going to do everything we can to meet that goal." By doing that, the heavens are able to be opened and we are able to receive miracles. I'm sure everybody has heard before...FAITH MOVES MOUNTAINS. Faith is how we get miracles. I want to share this scripture of where the eye of faith comes from. Since we as a mission have started using this eye of faith theme, we've gone up in baptisms, in new investigators, in investigators in sacrament meeting by like 50% and it's really been crazy. In Ether 12, it talks about faith. It gives examples of miracles in stories and the miracles that come by faith. And in verse 18-19 it says, "And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God. And there were many whose faith was so exceedingly strong, even  Christ came, who could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes the things which they had beheld with an eye of faith, and they were glad." And that eye of faith is our minds and our hearts. The way we do it in the mission is we make a plan. That's the way we show we are seeing with the eye of faith, if that makes sense. We put down on paper what our goal is and what we are going to do to receive it...showing that we SEE this goal, that we see that it can happen. Then we go out and do it. And through that faith, anything is possible. In moroni 7:33 it says, "And Christ hath said:  ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me." I know that that's true. I know that through faith we can see miracles and we can work miracles ourselves. And that's what I wanted to share with you guys.

Thanks again for the birthday wishes, and to all of you who keep contact with me out here. And I want you to know that I love you tons and I hope everything's all good out there back home. Talk to you later.

Love,
Elder Olson

The scripture cover Elder Olson bought himself for his birthday

Elder Olson with the members who threw him a surprise bday party (see the video below)

Elder Guariglia and Elder Olson bummed that their bikes were stolen

Making Oreo Empanadas

Videos Elder Olson sent this week...

Elder Olson opening his birthday package from home...


Elder Olson's story of stolen bike...



Elder Olson's surprise birthday party from ward members...



A ward member shows off his drumming skills...