Labor in the Vineyard: week 54: Goodbye Curico! If you want a thing bad enough

9/4/2017

Hello, Friends, Family, Beautiful People of the United States of America,

This is Elder Olson coming at you from the beautiful Curico Chile Alameda Ward. It's a beautiful morning looking out the window here. Well I honestly can't see much because the sky's full of chimney smoke but that's okay. It's still a beautiful day for a BBQ. We're going to go have a farewell BBQ with one of our investigators because...I am leaving. I am leaving Curico. We got the transfers on Saturday night. We got them super late because the assistants changed the password to our account, well to all the zone leaders' accounts, because a lot of zone leaders and other people try to get the transfers early and so we ended up getting them super late but it all worked out ok.

So I will be leaving Curico after just 2 changes here, I thought I would be here a little longer. But that's ok. I'll be headed to Rancagua to a ward that's called Bacadal(?). I'll be with Elder Davis there. I'm gonna be a zone leader gain there. So that'll be fun. I HOPE we can do the same thing there as we did here because we had a TON of success here this last change. It was awesome! A lot of success in the sector, a lot of success in the zone. In the sector we have at least 2 definite baptisms in the next change and at least 2 or 3 that are probable. I'm kind of sad that I won't be able to see them but I am really stoked that I'll be leaving here on a high note.

So this last week we've been teaching Roberto. I think I mentioned him last week. He's an atheist we found at 9:30 at night last Saturday and he came to church Sunday. We've been teaching him through the week and he came to church again yesterday. And he's awesome. We've been teaching him and he has a lot of questions but he's really sincere with his questions. You get a lot of people who just want to fight about philosophy or who want to Bible Bash or who knows, but he's really sincere and he actually wants to know. And when we explain something and it makes sense to him, he's like, "Ok yeah, that's cool. I understand that." And so that's been really cool. And we've seen some progress with him this week. He reads everything we give him right away and then he's like, without even looking at the book, "I've got questions about verse 27, verse 32 and 33 and he really understands what we're talking about. That's not something that I'm really used to. It's awesome. I love that. And this week he prayed for the first time. I don't know if it was the first time in his LIFE...I doubt it. But it was his first time with us and we've invited him to pray before and he was like, "No. I'll read, I'll come to church to learn more but I'm not gonna pray to somebody who doesn't exist." And we talked a lot about faith...about hope in things which are not seen which are true and a lot about how action is part of that faith. Really faith is everything as far as missionary work is concerned. So this last lesson we had with him, we invited him to baptism and he rejected us but he did accept the invitation to pray at the end. And he didn't say that he'd NEVER be baptized but he didn't accept a date. He accepted the lighter invitation, that if you pray and read and you feel that these things are true, would you be baptized. And he said, "Yeah, if I think it's true, then yeah I'll be baptized." So it's something but a little bit at a time. Despacito. (I don't know if that song's super popular up there...I think it would be because there's a Justin Bieber version that's going around here now as well. But that song's been really popular here for a while).

This weekend we were doing some farewells, well last night more than anything, with one of the families that's been really great to me here. This ward is definitely one that I want to visit again at some point because it's been a lot of fun here, even though I've only had a short time. We had a good FHE yesterday with these converts about not being afraid to stand alone. We watched that video with President Monson and the Navy which is awesome.

Apart from that, this change we've had this goal of finding 7 new investigators a week. I mean you can't compare with other missions, whether that's a lot or a little compared to other places but here that's a lot. That's not something that I've ever seen any other sector do, to find one new investigator for every day of the week of the change, or the whole transfer. But WE DID IT, and we did it a week early. We found 13 in one week and 8 the next so that made it like an extra 7 so in week 5 we'd already met our goal. And that put us at 42 for the change so we were like, "alright, we've gotta find 8 in the next week instead of 7 because if find just 7 in the next week it'll only be 49 and it's not as cool. You've gotta get 50. So we worked a lot to get those new investigators this week and we got to Sunday and we only had 4 new. And we were pretty desperate going everywhere we could think of to look for "news." We contacted for a little while and nothing. We were going by "futures" and no one was home. Everyone leaves their house on Sunday. At the end of the day, it was literally the last minute. We had an appointment for that FHE (talked about before) at 8 and it was probably like 7:45-7:50 we passed by this house with some Hatians that we'd passed by before and there were a couple of them that speak Spanish...I mean even though I'm basically a pro at Creole, I'm not really actually that pro...I can introduce myself and tell them I speak a little bit of Creole and that's about it. But we got there and knocked on the door and nobody was there. So we call them but their phone cuts out, we can't hear them, we have no idea where they're at. We call them a couple times. But nothing. Nobody's there. It's a young married couple there in that house with a bunch of other Hatians who live there as well, but the young married couple speak better spanish. But right when we...we were knocking for like 5 minutes...when we were leaving, I said a silent prayer while my companion was on the phone. I was like, "we need these 4 news to meet our goal and I know that it's possible and you can help us." And right when I finished saying the prayer, they pulled up in a car...the married couple got dropped off and they were like, "hey come in!" and when we went in there were 2 of their friends who were just kind of kicking around not doing anything. So we invited them to listen too so then we had our 4. It was 4 exactly. It was exactly what we needed to meet our goal. That was a nice little miracle.

We also had a TON of people in sacrament meeting. I haven't had that many people in sacrament meeting in my whole mission. We had a bunch of baptismal dates as well. It's been awesome.

Earlier in the week I broke one of the axels on my bike's back wheel so we were on foot again for a little while...which is...well it's a pretty long walk. Not as far as Buin, but it's still pretty far.

I wanted to share something I read a little while ago but I love it, about goals. I really want to testify about the power of goal setting, because that was the way we had so much success during this change. By setting goals and saying, "We're not giving up until we meet this goal." And it's a poem I found in one of the talks that I have that I read. It's called, "If you want a thing bad enough." (altered to match the real version found from multiple sites online)

“If you want a thing bad enough to go out and fight for it,
to work day and night for it,
to give up your time,
your peace and your sleep for it…

if all that you dream and scheme is about it,
and life seems useless and worthless without it…

if you gladly sweat for it and fret for it and plan for it
and lose all your terror of the opposition for it…

if you simply go after that thing you want
with all of your capacity, strength and sagacity,
faith, hope and confidence and stern pertinacity…

if neither cold, poverty, famine, nor gout,
sickness nor pain, of body and brain,
can keep you away from the thing that you want…

if dogged and grim you beseech and beset it,
with the help of God, you will get it!”
---Les Brown

Really that's true. I've always firmly believed in that. If we want something bad enough, we'll get it. It's really just a matter of becoming motivated enough to put in the WORK. Really no matter what it is, it's just a matter of work and how much we are willing to give to achieve it. That's especially true with missionary work or anything in the gospel. Only when we have our will aligned with the will of God. When our desire is the same as God's desires, when we want what He wants, we will get it almost every time. God might try our patience, he may make us wait for it, or maybe we'll screw up and that's ok, but really when have a righteous desire and exercise faith to achieve that righteous desire and it's according to the will of God, we WILL get it. And we can't make the excuse of "oh maybe it's not God's will, not what He wanted..." if it's a righteous desire we have to go at it with everything we've got and that's when we will get it. And I'm really excited to apply that in the new sector this change. I'm really hoping this sector wasn't a "one-hit-wonder" and that I'll get to this new sector and everything will just go to dirt, but by really applying this we'll have success there. And I'm super excited to have a chance to do that.

I want to let you all know that I love you and I think about you guys. I love you. I know the church is true. Read your scriptures. Pray. Go to church. Have family home evening. Do all the stuff you know you should do. I love ya. Take Care!

Freaky Elevator

inside freaky elevator

drum corps