Labor in the Vineyard: 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)