Labor in the Vineyard: 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