week 83: A Really Good Week

March 26, 2018

Hello everyone, Elder Olson here. this is week 6 of transfer 13.

This week was a good one. A really good one. I don't know if this sector has seen this good of a week in longer than 6 months. We found a lot of people. We had quite a few people in church and we have some new people who are working toward baptism so we are really excited about that. It's been a really great week.

Towards the beginning of the week, we met with the Nuñes family, who I think I mentioned last time, that they came to church. The dad is a less active member but has been inactive for over 15 years and his wife is not a member and neither are their kids. So we've been working with them. The Branch President and his wife have been really supportive. They gave us the reference so they've been really involved in the teaching process with them. So that's been really good.

So this week they accepted a baptismal date for the 28th of march. 

We weren't able to meet with Darling (I think I mentioned her) because she has had to work. She wasn't able to come to church because she worked. She's a nurse and a nursing student right now. So she was down in Curico and got called into work on Sunday, so we were kind of sad about that. But her mom, Karen, the one who I mentioned about with the prayer last week, who gave the really awesome prayer, she came and brought her little boy. She's a less active member and is really great. Also, a convert, who the first time I came out to Licantén, (if you remember about a year and a half ago, I came out to Licantén for one day with Elder Pollard (?) on a special intercambio, exchange) and that day we had a baptismal interview out at the beach with a kid named Mario. Mario has a lot of problems in his life, but he came to church this past week for the first time in quite some time. So we were really excited that he was able to come out. We've only been able to see him a couple times. We don't get out to the beach very much here. I'm sure a lot of you think we're crazy for that but it's a really small town out there. 

So that has been cool. That's a little bit about the work this week.

On Friday, we had an Elder's Quorum activity, something they've been trying to get done for a little while here. We had a BBQ. It was AWESOME! The food was really good. It was just pork and what's called Choripan (basically just sausage and bread), but it was done kind of a different way. Normally, the sausages are pre-made in these little like individual, like a really short, fat hot dog, but a lot more sausage flavor. But this time, the way they cooked it, they had a really long one and they rolled it up in this big spiral and stuck wooden sticks through it and put it onto the BBQ. Today we kind of copied them. We did our own little Choripan BBQ in the house and it turned out AWESOME! We did it Gringo Style too. We bought BBQ sauce and threw cheese on it and this hot pepper sauce that I made. So yeah that was pretty good.

Right now we are in the church because at the library, they are closed all day and that is the only place that has a computer in Licantén. So me and Elder Hiatt are going to take turns on the computer here in the chapel. So we're just hanging out here.

Other that that, this week's been pretty chill. I have a few more pictures this week. I realized I haven't been sending too many so we've been out in this place called Placilla a bunch. That's where most of the pictures will come from. And Placilla is basically this tiny little one street, well, it's kind of just everywhere between here and Hualañé, the other town I mentioned. In between is called Placilla. The houses are really far apart from each other. It's really rural out there. But it's really pretty. I enjoyed being out there. That's where Darling lives and another investigator with a baptismal date named Juan. Everybody out there is super receptive and nice. There are quite a few parts of this sector that are like that. Licantén not so much, because the missionaries have been pretty limited to working in just Licantén before now so it's been pretty knocked out. Everybody comes and has worked this tiny little town over and over and over again. So when we get out of the town a little bit, we are in places where the nearest missionaries are 2 hours away and so if the missionaries from Licantén haven't talked to them, nobody has talked to them. And so we found some pretty receptive people out there.

One of them, her name's Evelyn, we contacted in the plaza here in Licantén a little while ago and she said we could pass by her house in Placilla. A lot of the time when we contact people who live in a place where we don't stop and proselyte often, we don't always do the best job at getting out to them. Mostly for the sake of time and money, we can't just be using our time stopping by people's houses who live twenty minutes apart. So if we do visit them, we have to get ahold of them by phone. But Evelyn, we said we were going to pass by one day and we did not pass by. And while we were looking for another investigator out in Placilla, we had forgotten she lived there (it had been about a month since we contacted her) we were looking for another investigator and we came across her but we didn't recognize her. She was like, "Hey how are you? Oh you finally found my house." I was like "I don't know who you are." We didn't really remember her. We reintroduced ourselves, I guess. I felt pretty bad about not remembering her. But she was really nice. She let us in. We had to teach her on her porch because her husband wasn't there, but we shared something short with her and set and appointment for this week to go back and teach the whole family. And she has cousins from Santiago who will be coming down here during this next weekend. So they'll be here for General Conference, which will be cool.

So that's been our week. There hasn't been anything else particularly interesting that I can think of. Hold on just a sec.

Oh yeah, at the Branch BBQ we had some investigators come, a group of Haitians.  I'll see if I can get one of the pictures to send that they supposedly sent me, we'll see. All of the Haitians who are investigating the Church that live in Licantén, I think we found the majority of them, we've been trying to teach them. They're all friends at this point. They've all met each other by either coming to church, or because it's a pretty small town. Pretty easy to notice other Haitians. So they all came. There were about 5 of them. Even though they didn't speak much Spanish, they had a pretty good time at the activity this week and we had a few of them in church as well. 

So yeah, that's it. You guys all have a nice week. Love you guys. Take care. Bye!

Elder Olson

Video of the Haze (and Frogs)

Out in Placilla

Elder Hiatt and Elder Olson

Elder Olson said, "Is this picture hipster or what? Not even trying..."

week 82: working the rural areas

March 19, 2018

Hey everyone this is week 5 of transfer 13.

It's been a good week.

We had exchanges with the Zone leaders this week. It went really well. I was with Elder Rogers who I've known since he started his mission back when I was in Buin. So that was really cool. We also have been in a zone together in Rancagua for a few changes. So we know each other pretty well. He's an awesome missionary. And it was really fun because he speaks really good Creole. The Haitian language. He speaks pretty fluently I would say. Although my Creole isn't perfect. They seem to understand him super well. So it was cool because I was able to practice and I was able to learn a couple things. We had two or three, no at least three lessons that were entirely in Creole which was cool and I was actually able to participate a little more in these. I've had them before all in Creole on exchanges with Elder Rogers. And I've been able to understand what was going on but not been able to express myself super well. But this time I was able to explain some stuff, I was able to give my testimony. That's what I've been studying a bit here in Chile. So yeah that was fun. And then we ended up, because of a thing they had, we extended the exchange for the next day. That night Elder Hiatt and Elder Tyce came down from Licantén and they brought my suit and stuff to stay in the Zone Leader's house there. And we also took advantage that night, we saw there was a deal at this place called Pela Pizza, which is like basically the only pizza chain here in Chile, and they had some large pizzas for only 4000 pesos which is like 6-7 dollars, which is...it's not the BEST pizza...but it's the best price for a decent pizza that you can get around here. So we were pretty excited about that so we all bought a ton of pizza. Which was awesome! And there were also some other Elders, Elder Crompton and Elder Musselman, both from my MTC group, Elder Musselman was my companion. They  were staying there that night to do some things for Elder Cromptons Passport and Visa. So that was a lot of fun to be able to catch up with them too. 

On Saturday, we had a lesson in this little town called ?. It's  just one road and it's super super country, very rural. And so the cool part with that was that we, well she was a member reference, the cousin of the Elder's quorum president, she's less active, but she has a daughter (the Mom's name is Karen, the daughter's name is Darling) and Darling isn't a member. She was listening to the members before. She had a baptismal date that she was pretty excited about. But she didn't get baptized because I think she was studying and had to leave to go to school. Now she's back and she's just barely finishing her degree this week. So we had the visit and her and her mom were super excited that we were there. They received us really well. The mom's husband did NOT receive us that well. He went and hid. But it was good to be able to have the lesson with the other two. Darling is like 21 or I think she might be 23 but she's just finishing her nursing degree. So we are excited to be working with them. One of the coolest parts of that lesson was at the very end, the mom, Karen, gave a prayer to finish the lesson and in her prayer, she basically said that she was grateful that we had been there to their house and she was grateful that we had arrived in what she said was the perfect moment. She was thankful that her daughter was ready to be baptized, and she basically said, at the very end, thank you for rescuing me and please don't let me go. It was just very sincere and really incredible to hear that prayer. So that went really well.

This week we've also set baptismal dates with some other investigators. One named Max and one named Juan. And Max is a Haitian, he speaks English. He went to church on Sunday. He's awesome. OH, we also had in church on Sunday, this family from Hualañe where we've been working a lot. But it's been hard to get people to come to church from out there. So that was awesome. They're really cool. His name is William, he's a less active, and then his family are not members. So we've been working with them. The Branch President is very psyched to be working with them.

Oh, Yesterday night, we had a bunch of plans for stuff to do and we had plans to go out and work with the Branch President. We had plans to go up to this other pueblo called Vichuchen, and we were super psyched, all ready to go, we had a couple cita's and then we had another one back in Licantén in the late evening. And we called all our cita's to confirm all our appointments and every single one of them fell through and we were like, shoot, what do we do? And it came to our mind to call this investigator who I mentioned a couple of weeks ago who lives WAY out in the middle of nowhere about an hour away. So we called her and she said yeah I'm here. Come on out to visit. So we told the Branch President, and he was NOT excited about it because it was so far and he was worried that it would not be a good use of time. I think that's a very valid concern. But we felt that there was a reason we were going there. So on the way there, I told him a little bit about the family, about how they had invited their neighbors to the last lesson, how she had read and how receptive she was and he started getting a little more excited. And then we got there and her son was there for just that, well he comes down on the weekends every once in a while. We hadn't met him before. But our Branch President had given the son a Book of Mormon before, but we had no idea. And so it was quite  a big coincidence. The Branch President was REALLY excited to be there teaching them. So it kind of turned that situation from something that could've been uncomfortable to something awesome. 

So that's about it. I hope you guys are all having a good week. Sorry that this recording has been a little scattered. We were walking to the library and we got in here. Love you, Bye!

Elder Olson

P.S. - In other not mentioned news, it rained a bunch this week.

The entire Rancagua Mission at the time of Elder Christofferson's visit. Elder Olson is on the right half. About the 5th row back, three male heads in.

This spider was crawling on Elder Hiatt's foot

Week 81: Interesting Investigator & Bus Contacting

March 12, 2018 (transcription from audio file)

Hey everyone, this is week 4 of transfer 13. We're here in the Library writing you all right now but I forgot to make an audio for you so instead of writing it right now I'm going to make a quick audio.

So this week was cool. Started off pretty well. We went down to the other town in Hualañe and worked there. We found some new investigators who are pretty cool down there named Angelo and Carmen. They are really receptive and they were really excited when we went back by their house. We've had some really good visits with them, some really spiritual visits. Their big problem is that they're NOT married. So we are going to have to see how that goes. But they were a cool family we found this week. 

On Wednesday we had exchanges. I went down to Curico to the ? ward with Elder Moira from Brazil.  I got to practice my portuguese a little bit. We had a lesson with this investigator of theirs named Alex. So this guy...his name is Alex...they found him on the street after, like right before church on sunday. One of the Elders contacted him. He said he was an atheist, he didn't believe in God, he had been sleeping out on the street, he had all kinds of problems...

(Ok sorry side note, my companion just showed me in a letter that he got that our video of Language Ball is on the Mission Facebook page. Didn't know there was a mission facebook page, so I guess that's pretty cool)

So anyways, this guy, named Alex, he slept the night on a bench, he was having a really tough time. He walked by the church, the Elders contacted him and he was like, no, I'm an atheist and the Elder basically asked him if he was happy. He said he wasn't and that his life was really hard. And the Elder said if he wanted to change his life, he could enter the church right then. And the guy did it. And he started crying during testimony meeting and he said he had this super strong spiritual experience. And then afterwards there were a couple times where randomly on the street a pastor came up to him on the street and offered him like food, and invited him to come to his church, and that was like the fifth time a pastor had come up to him and he was like "No, sorry. I can't go to your church. I go to a different church. I go to the Mormon church." And this was from a guy who earlier that morning had claimed he didn't believe in God. So the lessons were received really good but they found out that he had a big problem. He had been to jail and he has about 7 or 8 years ago now, he owned a night club and was dealing drugs and they got him and sent him to jail now for some of the stuff he did back then. And he had just gotten out and the only way he was going to be able to stay out was if he paid a bail payment. And he didn't have the money for the bail payment. So we visited him, had some talks about real intent, trying to figure out if he was legit or not and in the end he seemed super sincere. I had a visit with him as well and he seemed honestly just super sincere. And the Elders, Elder Moira, the Brazilian was ready to give him personal money. He didn't about $100 maybe a little bit more than that in American money, to supposedly pay these two small bail payments called ?. So they talked to the ward leaders and a couple ward members volunteered and gave him the money. And then the day after... HE DISAPPEARED. He disappeared with the money and some of the member's stuff, didn't go back to church, didn't hear anything about him going to the cops, he was just GONE. They're pretty sure he went to Argentina, because he had mentioned that before. So that was pretty crazy. It was kind of a bummer for those Elders. But kind of just things that happen. It's hard to be able to tell who's sincere. Who really needs help and who doesn't need the help. But hopefully one day, he will have a great change of heart. 

Other big stuff that happened this week, on our way down to Hualañe, to the other town, on Friday, me and Elder Hiatt contacted on the bus. Which is something we've talked about doing. To try to make our new goal of 200 contacts in each week. And so we stood up at the front, and I gave a short introduction to what we believe, what we teach, and explained that we'd be going around handing out passalong cards and inviting them to hear a message in their home. Selling stuff on the busses is like really common here. A lot of times people will hand out cards to everybody and then go back around and pick up the cards that they handed out or pick up money/donations from the people. And so it's like not that weird of a thing to do here, but it was weird that we were giving out the cards instead of asking for money. So a lot of people were kind of confused there, but it gave us a chance to explain what we were really doing and I think they liked that, the fact that we were just giving them out without asking for money. I think a lot of the people liked that. So yeah, it went really well. We practiced before doing it with Elder Hiatt because I start at the front of the bus and he went to the back of the bus to talk to the people at the back of the bus and worked our way to the middle. And he did a super great job. It went super well. We got a couple people from that.

Then on Saturday we had an open chapel program which went super well. Well the first part went super well. We did one part in a park in Hualañe. Hualañe is that other town and there are not a lot of missionaries that have gone through there. It's bigger than Licantén but it doesn't have a branch of its own. It doesn't have its own stuff there. They have to come here to go to church. So a lot of the people there don't know much about the church, so there were a lot of really receptive people that we found there. So that was really cool and it went super well. I was worried that it wouldn't turn out, but we found a good set up, a way that we could do a small presentation to a group of people at a time. It worked super well. So we had some help from the Zone to be able to do that which was really nice. And then in the evening we had the open chapel here in Licantén. And that one we actually did in our "Chapel." We set up a tour. Elder Hiatt and I were in the Baptismal font talking about baptism all dressed in the white clothes. We had people out contacting in the streets. We'd talked about it for a couple weeks in the meetings in church to get them kind of prepared for it...to invite people and stuff. But it didn't sound like a lot of people invited people to come. There was a turnout of about Four people. But we got some contacts in the street there trying to get people to come in. Some people said we could pass by. They were just going to parties or were busy right at that time. And it was cool to see...the ward did come together really well and all made a station for their auxiliary organization to talk about what it was that they did. So that was really cool.

Then yesterday in church, we gave talks, Elder Hiatt and I and our Branch Mission Leader. So I gave a talk in the first hour and then taught the Gospel Principles class in the second hour and then the Elder's Quorum asked me to be the, I don't know if in English they call it the facilitator, but basically the teacher for the Elder's Quorum class. So I was busy ALL day. Then after that we had the branch council meeting. So I was definitely a little more, even more involved in church than normal. And We are starting to get to the second round on Hymns that I know how to play on the piano. I'm starting to do repeats because I don't know all that many. 

So yeah, it's been a really good week. I hope you guys are all doing well. This week we have Zone Conference. We are going to be talking about the summaries of the Plan of Salvation that D. Todd Christofferson asked us to write. So mine is in spanish, otherwise I'd send one for you guys to look at or I'd read it to you but I don't have it with me right now and it'd take up a little bit of time. But that was cool to be able to study a little more in depth the Plan of Salvation. Oh also, I LOVED, my seven year old brother sent me a picture of his version of the Plan of Salvation so I thought that was very appropriate for this week. 

Love you guys. Thanks for everything. Have a good week.

Elder Olson

Elder Olson was able to get himself a new suit since he wore out his others

week 80: By Divine Design

March 5, 2018 (transcription from audio file)

Hola, muy buenas tardes a mi familia y amigos. 

Es la tercera semana del cambio número trece en la misión Chile Rancagua.

(note from Elder Olson's mom: I do not speak Spanish, but I am proud of myself for transcribing what he spoke in Spanish by guessing at what it meant and typing that into google translate...hahaha. So for the rest of you who don't speak Spanish, it says, "Hello. Very good afternoon to my family and friends. It's the third week of transfer number thirteen in the Chile Rancagua Mission)

Hope you guys are all doing well. This week was good. We spent a lot of time on trips to and from Curico to do things for my visa, my companion's visa, for classes and interviews. 

On Wednesday we went down and had district class. After district class we came back up to Licantén and worked for a couple hours. We had an appointment in Hualané with a member who took us out there to visit this inactive member. And so we were going to go visit her and we got there, and she wasn't there. So we were kind of like, shoot, what do we do. And when we were about to leave her house, a recent convert from Santiago, who moved there to Hualané, about a month ago, who we contacted a couple days before, we ran into her on that same street. It turns out she lives right across the street from the inactive member we were there to visit. So we were surprised to see her but pretty excited about that and we were able to go into her house and visit her right away. So that was pretty fun. Well it was really cool that she was right there in the perfect moment.

I think that was probably the theme for this week. It reminds me of the talk by Elder Rasband, By Divine Design, about how there's no such thing as coincidence. We have definitely seen that a lot this week. There have been a lot of perfect little timing things that have worked out in a way that's almost too good to be true. 

So after that, we contacted a couple people, we had a visit we had scheduled, but he wasn't there, and then we had to hurry and catch a bus to Curico to stay the night because the next morning we had to be up bright and early to do stuff for my companion's carnet, which is the Chilean ID. That took ALLLLLL day. It took a really long time. We took turns waiting in the line and while the rest of us went out and got stuff to eat, went to the bathroom. But while I was sitting there, the guy sitting next to me was from Washington, and he was married to a Chilean. So that was kind of cool. Something a little bit different. He was a nice guy. And oh yeah, also during that time, because it was really SOOOOOO long waiting, we went and I bought a new suit, because I had to stay close but I needed to buy a suit. So we took advantage of the time to buy the suit. 

(side note from Elder Olson's mom: he messaged me a couple of weeks ago telling me all his suit pants were completely worn through between the legs...even the ones that had been patched once already. These boys do so so so much walking, and some bike riding, that their suits don't stand a chance. I'm glad he could get a new one.) 

And then on Friday we were down there, we had to sleep down there in Curico again. We got up SUPER early in the morning at like 5 to go do stuff for my carnet. The secretaries had lost a document of mine for the Chilean FBI so we showed up there and got there just in time because there were about 50 Haitians who'd been waiting there all night, getting in line. Because what they do, they only give like 50 slots to people in line. So out of the 50, we got there and we were like 44, and the rest of them had slept the night there outside of the place. So we got there just in time. We got our number when they opened up at 8:30 in the morning. It was really cool because we got there with the ONLY taxi that was working that hour. So that was something pretty cool. Then while we waited we went and got breakfast in the plaza. We saw a member from Alameda, one of my other wards here, and he offered to give us lunch, because we didn't have anywhere to have lunch that day and we had interviews in the afternoon, so that was really nice of him. And so while we waited we found a place to get my suit pants hemmed and then we went all the way back to the Zone Leader's house, showered, changed, and got everything we needed for interviews. Then we went back and we got there EXACTLY...so our number was, we were 44 like I said, and when we got there, they were attending number 43, they were attending the person RIGHT in front of us. So we were really sooooo lucky that we got there right when we did. And part of it that helped was, the colectivo, the taxi driver, he took us all the way to the place. Here it's not the same as a taxi, it's called a Colectivo. They do routes and so where we needed to go was a little bit out of his route, but we were talking to him as we were going and he was nice enough to drop us off exactly where we needed to go. We got in right on time and got it all done. And then the afternoon, with interviews, I had to present on the importance of giving references, obtaining references, passing references, taking care of them once they've been passed...all of that. 

And so that was pretty much our week. It's been a good one. It's been pretty busy but at the same time we haven't been able to work in our sector quite as much as we wanted to. But it's been good.

Hope you all are doing well. We are here, I started recording while we were waiting for lunch, and they've brought us our food. So, thanks for everything. Love you guys. Take care. Bye!

No pictures this week but a video...a glimpse into missionary life, as Elder Olson said.Language Study made fun.