week 75: Service Opportunity

January 29, 2018 (transcription from audio file)

Halo from Licantén. This is the fourth week  of change 12.1

Hi guys, that was Elder Hiatt helping me out. So we are on our way to the Library right now to write. Our Pday has been pretty relaxed so far we just made some pizza and went to the gym and that's about it...and a smoothie, we also made smoothies, which were super tasty. 

This has been a good week. It's been kind of crazy, a lot of stuff to do. On tuesday we did a service activity, well a service, for a part member family who were receiving the missionaries a while ago and they came to church a lot. They came to church for 2-3 months straight. That was in August of last year and then their missionary that they loved so much just left them so when the other missionaries came it just wasn't as good and they stopped coming to church. So we are trying to get some trust with them so we did like a six hour service project with them on Tuesday. We helped them lay cement. They moved out to a house in the country and it's a REALLY old like adobe brick house. They had destroyed half the house to rebuild it and we were laying cement with them...making the mix and putting it out. I don't know exactly how you make cement in the states but I'm pretty sure it's a little different here because we just got two mountains of dirt and rocks and cement mix and you just put it all in one of those things that spin around, haha, I don't know what they're called. And then you have to dump it out and it's like one wheelbarrow at a time. It takes probably over a hundred wheelbarrows to do the amount of cement that we had to do. So we worked for about 6 hours without stopping. But we got it all done. We got it all laid out. There were a bunch of us working as well, it wasn't just the two of us. the owner of the house and a couple of his friends were also working. So he is not a member, but his wife is and his kids are members, but they don't go to church. But one of the big obstacles for their progress has been that they weren't married, but they are getting married on the 14th of February now and we are going to try to get them to accept a baptismal date this week for probably the beginning of March. So we're excited about that.

Apart from that, we went and did exchanges with the Zone Leaders which was fun. I got to be with Elder Crompton from my MTC group. I haven't seen him very much at all in the mission honestly. He was one of the last people from my group that I saw a second time, like after the MTC and the meetings with the new missionaries. So it was cool to be able to catch up a little bit. Love the guy. It was super fun. While we were on intercambios, we found a little trail that took us to a little cemetery we had no idea existed so you'll get some cool pictures of that. 

A couple of days after that, on Saturday, we went down and were there in Curico all day, all afternoon, doing the Book of Mormon activity that I told you about that we did last week here in Licantén. We helped the other district out to do it down there. Found a lot of people. I got to practice my Creole a little bit. There are some Haitians down there. One of the people I contacted was a member from Haiti. He started singing How Firm a Foundation in Creole so that was pretty fun...I got to see something a little different.

Pamela is doing really well. She's progressing. She went to church again this week. She seems super excited for her baptism. And her family is really cool.

We just got here to the library to write so that's about as much as I'm going to be able to get to for my reporting this week. But I'm excited for this next week. We have zone conference. That'll be good. I'm excited about that. But yeah, we're working hard. We're seeing a little bit more progress in our sector this change than I think the missionaries have seen in a little while so I'm excited about that as well. Me and Elder Hiatt are still getting along great, having a good time. I hope you guys are all doing well.

A little thought: I was just the other day talking about General Conference talks and I realized how little I took advantage of the easy access I had to General Conference talks before the mission and now I listen to them quite a bit more often. But before the mission I never really took advantage of that opportunity we have so often to hear the prophet's voice and to listen to the Lord's message that he has for us in our day. So if you haven't listened to a General Conference talk recently, I invite you to do that. I think it'd be a good opportunity because we are so blessed to have such easy access.

I love you guys. Hope you're all doing well. Have a nice week. Bye Bye!

Elder Olson

Hanging around town

Little hidden Cemetery

Elder Hiatt and Elder Olson

cake in a cup

week 74: Book of Mormon Activity

January 22, 2018

Hey everyone, 

It's week 3 of transfer 12 and I'm here in Licantén with my boy Elder Hiatt. So we are going to be spending our Pday in Licantén here this week because Curico is super far. So we are just going to have a kind of chill day. We went to the gym this morning. WE FOUND A GYM! That's another thing that happened this week. We found a gym here in Licantén and it's super small. It has like 3... well it has a leg press machine, 3 racks to do squats on, no room in the middle of the racks or anything like that, and an incline bench, a bench and then treadmills and dumbbells and that's about it. So super small but it's better than nothing and we'll be able to stay in shape. I stopped buying protein though which I was doing last change because it was super expensive. 

(Hopefully you can hear me, we're kind of on a large street.)

So this week's been cool. We started off the week with a lesson with a girl named Pamela who's the daughter of our Elder's quorum president's wife. She's about 24-25 years old. She grew up for most of her teenage year in Holland. So she came back to Chile a couple years ago. She lives in Santiago but she wants to get baptized by her dad here in Licantén. She's super excited for it and obviously her family is super supportive of that because they're all members. Her mom is in the primary presidency. We are super excited about that. She's excited. We had a good lesson with her last night as well. In the first lesson we set a baptismal date with her for the 13th of February and I feel pretty confident that she'll get baptized. Keep her in your prayers though. But I think she's got a really good shot. So that was really cool. 

We also found quite a few new investigators this week. We achieved more than our goal so that was good. Also Pamela came to church so we were pretty excited about that. It's been a long time since they've had an investigator in church here in the sector. So that's good that we could kind of start this change off right. We also had interviews with President Harris this week. It was pretty good. It was short. We just had to ask him a little bit about some of the details with our investigators like making sure that we were handling some situations right, but it was a short little interview. While I was there I saw Elder Davis, my previous companion, who finishes his mission this change, so it was good to be able to see him. I guess I'll be able to see him again when Elder Christofferson comes. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that...that he's coming. If not, read my other emails, it'll tell you more about it. 

On Tuesday we watched the transmission from Salt Lake with President Nelson and the announcement about him and the new first presidency. It'll be awesome having a different first presidency as well. You get to hear them talk 2-3 times each general conference so it's pretty cool to be able to have that change, even though I love all of the apostles we've had, especially the first presidency I've known for most of my life. 

On Saturday night we did a Book of Mormon activity. Our district came out here to our sector in the Plaza, the central park I guess, we set up a table and we have these big banners for the activity we are doing in the mission now. So basically, we have these big banners and the questions people have a lot of the time, like "Does God exist? Does my baby need to be baptized? What happens after death?" That kind of thing. So we had all those set up and we go around talking about the book of Mormon with everybody there. It works pretty well. We had about 15-20 people saying that they want to come, that they would accept us in their house, that they would accept missionaries into their house. A lot of them live in other parts of Chile but were here vacationing. In other sectors you normally find a lot more, but considering the size of Licantén, we probably contacted about half the people who live here, so it wasn't bad. It was fun. One thing that was cool about that is that the mission is now like measuring the number of references we get by doing that and if it turns out to be really successful, which so far it has been pretty successful, the area is going to kind of sponsor it and use it in other missions too. So that'll be pretty cool. Maybe my companion and I will end up in a Church magazine in a picture of missionaries doing a Book of Mormon activity. Haaha. probably not but it still is a pretty cool thing that's happening here.

A pretty fun experience we had the other day...we went to lunch at a member's house who live way out in the middle of nowhere and we had no idea how to get to her house. So we got some directions from her and had to tell the bus driver to let us know when we'd passed a certain point and he didn't let us know. So we'd been in the bus a little longer than we expected to and we asked him "hey did we already pass the place we asked you about?" and he was like, "ahhhh shoot!" And I think he felt really bad but he just pulled over and left us there on the side of the road. I have a little video of that I will try to send as well. But yeah that was pretty funny. So we started walking for a bit and finally a car stopped, kind of by itself, and took us the rest of the way. But it wasn't too far. We probably could've made the walk. It was about a kilometer away.

This morning we went hard on scrubbing the mold out of our study room. There was a BUNCH of mold there when we got there. We finally got it all good and clean. So that was good. Nice to have a cleaner house now. 

I think that's about it. We are doing good here. Having a good time. Elder Hiatt and I are still getting along really well. I think. I don't know. He's giving me weird looks right now so I don't know if that's true. But, hahaha, nah that was a joke. But yeah he's great. A great missionary. We're getting along really good.

Oh, then also last night, when we taught Pamela the lesson, we went out to her grandparents house in the compo, in the country, so we went out there and it was just this little old old house that her dad had grown up in and it was like they had dug their own well, their own wood stables with...

      Oh sorry we're getting completos right now and one of them kind of flipped. OH MY GOSH! Wait a sec..Alright, sorry. We were eating lunch and a bunch of our food fell over.

But yeah I'm pretty sure that's about it. I hope everybody's doing good. Love you guys a ton, have a good week. Bye!

Elder Olson

walking the long road when we were lost

Pretty fields

Our walking adventure

week 73: Licantén

Elder Olson and Elder Hiatt in Licantén

January 15, 2018 (audio letter transcription)

Hey everyone, Elder Olson here,

So this is week 2 of transfer number 12. We are here in Curico right now for Pday. We just got something to eat. We're gonna make some sandwiches. We just had a zone activity down here with the zone. We played soccer and then we went to go get burgers at a place that was supposedly really good but it was closed. So we just went to a bakery and got some bread and meat and cheese...which is probably better us anyway just because of how much money we've spent on travel these past couple days. It's a two hour drive from Licantén to Curico then two hours back so it's quite the trip. So this week has been good. 

It's been cool to be here with Elder Hiatt, that's my trainee's name. He's from Orem Utah. So not too far from home. He's super cool. We're having a good time out there in Licantén. It's a SMALL town. It's so small. We went out running the other morning and we ran around the whole town and back to our house and it took us about 15-20 minutes and that was with some pretty big hills. So it's not a big town. Our chapel that we have isn't actually a chapel, it's a little house. I sent pictures before but it was about in the second or third month in my mission. Tiny little chapel, well house. They have it kind of modified to have a sacrament meeting room in the bottom floor and classes on the top floor and then there's a little pool in the back for a baptismal font. So that's cool. 

This week on Friday I had a District leader meeting for all the new district leaders because they've changed some things for the District Leaders since I was one. I went with the other DL from our zone who was also a zone leader. He came here from being a zone leader, along with me. We went up there. It was good. We watched the funeral of President Monson which was great. The thing I took out of that, there was a part in the closing hymn, after they'd talked so much about all of his lifelong service, and then the closing hymn was...I don't know if the title was "Weary Not" but I know it said "weary not" a lot and President Monson was good example of that. A good example of being perseverant and continuing on in Christlike service for a long long time. I imagine what it would be like to serve a mission for 60 more years and that would be a lot of work so I have a lot of respect and love for him for that. 

Our days working the sector have been a lot of contacting. We've tried to work with the members to figure out who we ought to visit. We've had some visits with members in their houses. We've had mission coordination with the ward mission leader or branch mission leader on Saturday night and he told us Saturday night that we were going to have to give a talk on Sunday. So we were kind of nervous about that seeing as how it was already 10:00 when he told us that we had to give these talks so we rushed and prepared talks and then on Sunday we kind of got saved...some people from the Stake came and were giving talks as back up...well not as back up I guess WE were the back up that day. And then we're going to have to give our talks next week instead. The branch is small. There were, counting us, 19 members who attended church on Sunday. We had some visitors, some people come out to the beach and so there were probably about 30-35 people in the branch but there were about 14 visitors. So it's small. But they are good. They have a REALLY good branch presidency. They are all really focused and really dedicated in the work. The mission leader is good. In all of our contacting we've found some people who are pretty promising. We also have found that there are a lot of part member families in the town so we are going to be working a lot with those. That's kind of the basic update. We don't have much time because we came down to Curico today and I forgot to record on the bus and now we have to leave time to write and then get the two hour ride back and we're sitting down eating lunch right now. So today's not going to be a very long recording.

But I'm doing good. I'm excited.

oh yeah...

Also something really cool that's happening is that Elder Christofferson is coming to the mission. I may have mentioned that I'd heard a rumor that he was coming, but now President made it official. Elder Christofferson will be coming down to visit our mission and Santiago South on Valentines Day. So on the 13th the WHOLE mission is going to get together in Rancagua. I have no idea HOW we're going to do that because there's like 200 of us and then we're going to sleep in Rancagua that night. So I don't know, I have no idea how we're going to do that...if we're going to all be in houses of missionaries in Rancagua or what the plan is. And then the next morning we will drive up to Santiago in a stake called San Bernado where we will have the conference for about 2 hours with Elder Christofferson. So I'm really excited about that. That's something that I ...well it's kind of rare to have a Seventy come and then a month and a half later have an Apostle come to visit the mission. So hopefully it's for a good reason, not because there are a lot of problems in our mission. But we have a good mission. We are seeing a lot of improvement. 

I think that's it. Love you guys. Hope everybody's doing good. Have a good week!

Elder Olson

The tiny apartment (and YUCKY mold)

Coming into Licatén

Licantén church (in a house)

The song sung at President Monson's funeral

week 72: Changes...going to be a trainer

January 8, 2018 (transcription from audio letter)

Hey guys,

So this is week 1 of transfer number 12. We are about to have some changes. We found out the transfers on Saturday in the evening. And it looks like I'm leaving Baquedano. I'm going to be going down to Curico again, but kind of far outside Curico to a little sector called Licantén. It's right by the beach so that's pretty cool. It's about two hours from the city of Curico. It's in the other zone in Curico, the one I was NOT the zone leader in. And I'm going to be there as district leader and training, in a whitewash. For any of you who don't know what a whitewash is, a whitewash is a missionary term for two new missionaries getting to the same sector at the same time. 

So the last two missionaries who were both in that sector, one of them went home from the mission, he just finished. And then the other one was Elder Villegas, and they took him out of the sector. He was one of my old companions. Now it will be me and a new missionary who hasn't gotten here to the mission yet. So that will be super fun. I've never trained before so I am excited for the opportunity. It'll be something very different from being a zone leader I'm sure. There are only 3 Elders coming into the mission this change so there will be two other trainers with me. I know all the elders in the office and I was talking to them and they have the records for the missionaries who are coming. So it looks like there's one from Orem, Utah Valley, there's one from Argentina and one from Brazil who are coming into the mission. So it's going to be one of the three that I'll be with. So I'm excited to see which one. We won't find out until president Harris has interviews with them and all that. That will be on Tuesday and that will be the day that I'll be there in the morning doing a training, receiving a training for the new trainers and then we'll have a meeting with all the trainees and the trainers together, I would assume....that's how it was when I got the mission at least and then we'll head down to our sector. It's about a total of 4 or 5 hours from here in bus but it looks like the assistants are actually going to help us out. I was talking to them and they're going to drive us down in their car all the way to our sector and one of the assistants, Elder Pollard, he was in Licantén before. 

I've mentioned Licantén because in my second change in the mission I went there on intercambios, on splits. When my companion went home and the companion of Elder Pollard, the now assistant, also went home, we went there together for two days and so I got to know the sector a little bit. I feel like the Lord might've been preparing me, I'm not sure. But I remember it quite a bit. Actually that day we had kind of a special situation because there are 3 towns that are part of the sector. One called Licantén, one called Hualañe, and one called Iloca and I got to know all three during that two day intercambio. Which is something different. Also it sounds like they'll be giving me quite a bit of money working down there. It won't be on bike. All the towns are too far apart to bike. About half and hour on bus each on from each other. But they want us to work more in one of the towns, the one that's NOT on the beach, the one called Hualañe. They want us to work there because that town is starting to grow it sounds like and that town has a lot of potential. But the missionaries haven't been able to go there because it's too expensive and they end up without money at the end of the change. So now they've given us a little bit of extra money and are asking us to work there as well. So I'm excited for that. So that's what's going on with the changes. I'm super excited. 

I don't know really what to expect. I've been asking around though, because a lot of my friends, people with the same time in the mission as me, they've all trained already but seeing how I've been a zone leader for a while now, I haven't had the chance to train. So I'm super excited about that.

This week on Tuesday we had exchanges, intercambios, splits with the assistants so that was fun. I went with Elder Montano from Mexico. It was a good time. We kind of contacted a lot. All four of us were working in the sector of the assistants. I don't know, it wasn't anything too special. It was kind of like just trying to help them out in their sector because they don't get a lot of time there. 

And then on Wednesday we had to go to the hospital. Don't worry, it was just to help the nurse translate. There's a new nurse who just got here so we had to go help her with translate for a companionship that didn't have an Elder who spoke english so we had to kind of go in the middle there. So that was a lot of our day wednesday. 

Thursday and Friday we had some time to actually work. We taught a lesson to a reference from a member family. He's from Columbia. He's the boyfriend of a member...they met on the internet and he came down and is now living at their house and I think they have plans to get married at some point. But he really likes the church. They'd sent the missionaries to his house there in columbia and he was liking it and he had a baptismal date. The only reason he didn't get baptized there was because he ended up working a lot in order to save money to be able to come here to Chile. So he's got a lot of potential.

We've got a lot of new investigators who have a good chance of getting baptized in this next couple of changes so I'm excited for them. Replacing me here, Elder Lee is going to be with Elder Stevenson from Idaho, who I was in the same zone with in Buin. He's a good guy. They'll do a good job here.

Jorge got the priesthood this Sunday, which we were really glad about! We were talking to him and he told us that the Branch president had interviewed him and we were like "awesome! yes! So did he tell you you were going to get your priesthood?" And he's like, "yeah he told me in March I'm gonna get it." And we were like, "what's up with that?" because he should be able to get the Aaronic priesthood in a week after his baptism. So he should've received it LAST Sunday. So we were pretty confused there. We weren't sure what was going on. But then on Sunday we found out that Jorge had just misunderstood. They called his name in Sacrament meeting, they had him stand up and they sustained him also to be, they called him as a ward missionary, which is interesting because the branch missionaries should be helping us to give the discussions to Jorge a second time...normally the branch missionaries do that with us after baptism. But now Jorge is the Branch missionary so it'll be all on my companion now. He did get the priesthood that day. He was kind of surprised himself. He didn't quite understand. I don't know if it's just because the branch president didn't explain it very well. We talked to him about it and I think he understands everything now.

Today we're going to go pass by the mall and eat some lunch. There are some places like Pizza Hut and KFC that you can only find here in Rancagua so we're going to go enjoy one last lunch over there and probably buy some new pants as well. Then I'll be packing all evening...getting ready to go.

One thing that happened this week, that I'm sure most of you heard about before I did, was that President Monson passed away. I think it was his time. He's been sick for a little while and I think it'll be good for him and his family that he can go on to his work in the next life. I think it was Elder McKonkie quoting another prophet saying that it was graduating. Graduating to the next life where he'll be able to contribute even more to the work. I'm excited to see the change. It's gonna be super weird having a new first presidency as well because basically for my whole life it's been, well for as long as I can remember, for half my life, it's been President Monson, President Eyring and president Uchtdorf really. So it'll be interesting to see what the new first presidency looks like and what happens with all of that. I'm more than confident that those who will be called have been prepared before their call and will serve very well in their callings. I'm excited to see the changes. 

Also, other news, this isn't official, they haven't announced it but it sounds like we might be getting a visit from an Apostle in February. I'm not a hundred percent sure but in talking with the office, it sounds like Elder Christofferson might be coming by and giving us a visit with our mission and Santiago South together. So that's really cool. I'm excited about that. That's not something that's very common either. We just barely had a conference with Elder Bragg of the seventy and so it'll be really cool now to be able to hear Elder Christofferson speak to us. 

I know that the prophets we have today, that the quorum of the twelve apostles, are called of God and I know that our church is led by inspired leaders. Whether they be your bishops, your stake presidents, or the president of the church. I know that they are called of God and they are there for a reason. I know that especially the prophets and apostles communicate directly with God. I hope you all can feel that, the importance of modern prophets as we see these changes coming in the next few weeks, the next few months. 

I love you guys. I hope everything is going well.

Take Care! Bye!

Elder Olson

Rancagua, Baquedano zone

Brother and Sister Carrasco, members who help us a ton

Week 71: Happy New Year!

January 1, 2018 (Transcription from Audio Letter)

Hey everyone, Happy New Year!

This is week 6 of transfer 11 and the first day of 2018!

So it's been two weeks since I've been able to write or send anything so this is going to be kind of a recording to catch up on everything that I haven't been able to talk about all that much. 

Starting off with last week, (the week leading up to Christmas) we had a lot of activities and things like that for Christmas with the Branch and with the Stake. We sang in a couple of Stake Choirs. We helped out in a branch devotional as well. I think I may have mentioned they asked me to be the angel in the devotional. So that was...that was fun.

Then on the Tuesday before Christmas, we went to a central plaza and we sang songs for everybody. There were actually a lot of people there. I was really impressed. A lot of members and then people who weren't members stopped to watch and listen. So that was cool. We got there early to help blow up helium balloons and then they handed out balloons with a card for Light the World to everyone and then everybody let them go at the same time at the end. So that went pretty well.

So after that, that weekend, Jorge got baptized! Wahoo! I'm super super excited about that. He is great. He's still doing great. He was baptized on the 23rd right before Christmas. He was baptized by a member, Hermano Torres. It was a pretty small little service but it went well. There were probably about 3 families of members, maybe a total of 16 people there at his baptism and it was really spiritual, at least for me. I felt the spirit pretty strongly, so I enjoyed having that experience and it went well. The brother that was baptizing him, he... I think Jorge kind of went limp when he went under the water, he was kind of expecting the member to kind of pull him out. And Jorge's not THAT big but not a small guy either, and the member was recovering from a car accident and so his arm strength isn't all that good. We were actually kind of worried that he wasn't going to be able to do the baptizing. But with a loud grunt and a lot of visible effort, the member got him up out of the water. So that was good. It all went well. hahaha. And then the day after there was the confirmation on the 24th. And we just had a short little sacrament meeting with a primary program and my companion and I were able to participate in the confirmation with the Branch President. 

The primary program was great. I also felt the spirit watching that. I enjoyed it. And then that night (December 24th), we first talked with our families and then we had dinner with our Branch President and his wife and also with Jorge which we were really grateful for. We were trying to look for somebody to invite him and if not we were going to go eat with him because he is separated from his wife and he lives by himself so we were looking for a way to help him have a merrier Christmas. I think he had a good time.

Here in Chile, Christmas is a little different. Everybody opens their presents at midnight instead of waiting til the morning. So there's a bunch of parties and everybody's out until midnight on Christmas eve and then they open all their presents and they're like, "yeah cool" and then they're up until like 2 or 3 in the morning and then they go to  bed and then the 25th Christmas day is like nothing for them. They don't go to work but they don't really do anything else either. They maybe sit around in their house, maybe have another dinner, maybe they'll go out but it's just kind of like any other holiday, not all that special, from what I have seen, from what I understand.

So we were there, not until midnight, only til 10. All the members were surprised, especially the returned missionaries, because most of them had received permission from their mission presidents when they'd been serving but we did not have permission to stay out later for new years or for Christmas. 

So during the week, we had a good week, we found a lot of new people. We talked with a lot of people in the street and we just kept finding and finding and finding a lot of new investigators, so that was really cool. We found almost 2 new investigators every day. So that was pretty cool. 

We also did a couple...I don't know if they're called splits or divisions...in Spanish they're called exchanges basically...intercambios. Where one companion goes to another sector with another missionary and the other missionary comes to our sector, our area. So we did that twice. I left both times. I went to be able to accommodate for the schedule and for the missionaries that we had. So I went to Donihue on Wednesday. I was there with Elder Rogers who I've known for a long time. I saw him start his mission in Buin and now have been his zone leader for 3 changes here in Rancagua. So I've gotten to know him pretty well. So that was good. He's a great missionary. Oh also that day, we had some lessons with some Hatians. Elder Rogers speaks very very very well, Creole/Hatian. And so I got to practice my Creole a little bit. I was able to understand probably about half of everything that was going on. I was able to explain what the book of mormon is and some very basic stuff and introduce myself and ask them a couple basic questions about themselves. But I understood quite a bit actually of the Creole so I was very very excited about that. That's a talent that I haven't been able to develop all that much. Not a lot of missionaries do. Elder Rogers is definitely the best in the whole mission as far as I know, at speaking Creole. But that's a talent I would like to develop a little bit more.

On wednesday we went straight from Donihue, came back to the house and I grabbed some other clothes and then went straight back out to Rengo to do intercambios. I was with Elder Pistorius there, one of the people from my district in the MTC. So that was really cool. He's also a great guy. Him and his companion are great missionaries. We really enjoy having them in the zone. We tried passing by my Aunt's family's house to see how they're doing but they weren't home. But it was still cool to be able to go on intercambios there. I like Rengo in general and we were able to have some good lessons as well. We were in lessons basically the whole time and then we were in their ward council meeting so we were pretty busy that whole day.

Then this weekend we did some stuff for new years, new year's eve. But let me see, I don't want to skip anything here. Nah, everything's been pretty normal, just still working our hardest.

We have a kind of new investigator named Eileen. We found her in probably the third week of this change. She is the cousin of a member from a little town outside of Rancagua. Her cousin is a returned missionary. Her mom is a less active member. And she is not a member. She's 18. She has a son who's like a year and a half old and they live there, the 3 of them. She listened to the missionaries before and she really really really wants to get baptized. She's super excited about it. She almost got baptized with the other missionaries but her son got sick and she is worried about taking him to church and there were some other complications. So we still have been teaching her. We visited her twice and so we're still not 100% sure what happened the other time. The other missionaries didn't leave a very good record of why they stopped teaching her. But she seems to have a lot of potential. She came to church this week which was awesome. Also members brought 2 other investigators to church this week so that was awesome. It's not common to have members bring people to church so that was a nice change. So that was cool. Eileen now has a baptismal date for the 3rd of February so we're going to be working with her and praying for her. 

Last night for new year's eve, we worked for a while, had some lessons and then we had some appointments that a member was going to accompany us to, so we went and passed by a couple other investigators and then we went with that member to have dinner and share with his family. He has some...well his son is less active and his kids are all less active...most of them don't live with him but his youngest son lives with him. And his daughter drove down from Santiago with her boyfriend as well. So that was really fun. It was a good dinner. We had some BBQ and were back in the house by 10 as normal. 

Our zone had a great week as far as numbers were concerned. We were really excited for them to see a lot of the progress. There are a lot of investigators that I think have a lot of potential. We should be having, well I would say 1 baptism this week, we COULD have more, but we will have another baptism this week which will meet our...if we have that baptism...we will meet our goals for baptisms for the change. We already met our goals for the month of December, but if we're going to meet our goal for the change, we need 1 more this week. And then hopefully we can keep elevating the zone a little bit at a time. But it's been really good. The zone's been really stable. We haven't had any weeks that we were just like, "oh this week was a tough week" where the numbers just drop a lot. It was just a really good change.

I'm still enjoying being with my comp, Elder Lee. We'll find out changes this week. I have NO idea what's going to happen. I've been here for 3 changes already. So the most logical thing I think would be for me to leave but I could definitely stay with Elder Lee another change because we get along great and we are having success in the sector and in the zone. Elder Lee could also leave, you never know. But we'll find out probably Saturday. We also have exchanges/splits with the assistants tomorrow so that'll be fun. 

I want also, for a spiritual thought, I was thinking about a talk from Elder Holland he gave at BYU for New Year's, I don't know what year, but he talks about a scripture in Luke...I don't want to say the reference in case I'm wrong...I think it's either Luke 9 or 19 verse 32 which says "Remember Lot's wife." (it's actually Luke 17:32) That's like the whole scripture. But the idea is that Lot's wife, well Lot and his family were commanded to leave Soddom and Gommorah, that one is in Genesis 19 I believe, and they kind of dallied a little they kind of lagged behind, took their time, and then they kind of left running from the city and Lot's wife looked back and they had been commanded NOT to look back...to look not behind you. She was turned into a pillar of salt. So Elder Holland talks a lot about why she would be turned into a pillar of salt just from looking back. With the new year, we have an opportunity to look forward a lot more than looking back. The problem isn't the look back because we can learn a lot of things from the past, but he illustrates, or at least the point I get is that we should not look back longing to be in the past, like wishing we were in another time. Just enjoying where we are now and enjoying the hope of an even better future.

So I hope you guys all made it this far in the recording...I know this one was a little long. But I want to wish you a happy new year and I hope everybody is doing well. I love you. Take care!

Elder Olson

Elder Olson "helping" fill balloons at the plaza

Elder Lee, Jorge, Hermano Torres, Elder Olson

Elder Olson on Christmas Day 

Elder Olson and Elder Lee shared a "talent" at the Zone's Christmas Day gathering

Elder Shumway and Elder ? show their "Talent"...Elder Olson couldn't handle staying to record the end...sorry

 Elder Olson's reaction to Elder Shumway's talent

Huge moth under the glass, it was flying around the shower

Countryside

Elder Rogers and Elder Olson in Donihue

The District