Labor in the Vineyard: 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