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