Labor in the Vineyard: week 86: Building a House & Changes of Heart

April 16, 2018 (transcription from Audio letter)

Hey everyone, Elder Olson here. This is week 3 of Transfer number 14. Here in Licantén this week, it's been a pretty good week. A lot of work.

Last Monday, sorry for not being able to have a recording ready for you, or for NOT having a recording ready, I probably could have if I had remembered. But we had to take a last minute trip to Talca. They let us know about it the night before. We had to get up at about 5 in the morning to catch a bus to Talca. But it was cool to go. I hadn't been there for a while. That was where I, or the zone where I started my mission. So it was pretty cool to be back down there. And my old companion, my trainee, Elder Hiatt is down there and Elder Haar as well...one of my good friends. So it was cool to be able to see them, and seeing how it was for my companion's visa, he went with the secretaries and I went with Elder Haar and Elder Hiatt and all of them to their zone activities which was fun. It was cool to see people down there. I also got to talk with Elder Lee a bit. So it was a fun little trip. Then we got to come back up to Licantén. The bus ride was different from the normal one. Both the bus rides from Curico to here and from Talca to the area of Licantén are super pretty. So that's something that I like about this sector.

And then during the week, we helped doing a service, building a house with a younger guy, who's about 25. He's been investigating since the time he was about 14 years old and he really just hasn't progressed. I think a lot of it is the missionaries fault. So he knows the missionaries pretty well and he asked us to help him with some service building this house so we went over there and helped him. We cut styrofoam for the insulation, and then we helped nail in the, or put up the walls.

And then on Wednesdays we have our district meeting in Curico. Normally what we have to do is we don't have lunch here with members, instead, the mission passes us money because there's no way we'll make it back on time after the district class because of the 2 hour bus ride to get home. So normally we pay and eat at a restaurant down in Curico. But this last Wednesday we came up and just had a later lunch with that investigator. We did a little BBQ there which was pretty fun. And we were going to finish the service but it was raining. And so he still wanted to do the BBQ but we weren't able to help him finish the house there that he was working on.

Also this week, we had a cool lesson with Darling. We talked about the law of chastity with her, which was one of her only obstacles for her baptism. She has a pretty serious boyfriend. But she talked to him and she committed to live the law of chastity and she's excited to get baptized.

So, Sunday was kind of a bummer. None of our investigators came to church. Darling was going to come and actually her and her mom, they left their house on time, but they live about 15 minutes by bus away from our church. They left and they were out waiting for the bus for over an hour. By the time they gave up waiting, it was already the end of sacrament meeting. And so they did not make it to the church this last week. Which was a bummer because it'll also mean Darling's baptismal date will need to be postponed because she won't have the church attendances in time. She was kind of worried about that when they called. They called us right after the meeting and apologized and said they'd tried to come but they couldn't. So I was very glad to hear to hear that at least they'd been trying to come. But we could've helped them. If we would've known sooner we could've sent somebody to pick them up. But it wasn't their fault at all either. But we are probably going end up baptizing Darling in May instead of April. But that's okay. She's awesome and it won't hurt to have a little bit more time to prepare.

Today we were going to go the beach and go try one of the seafood restaurants that there are out there. We cleaned the house in the morning, we got all ready, we packed our Matés. My companion is from Uraguay and there Maté is pretty big. I bought a thermos this week to be able to take my Maté on the go. I was pretty excited about it. So we had our thermoses and our Matés all packed and all ready and we waited for almost an hour for the bus to go to the beach and none came by. It's super unreliable, the "bus system" out here. But it's okay. So we ended up instead, we made Milanesa, kind of a, I guess I would call it an Argentine Hamburger. I mean it's a little different. But it's good. Super tasty. Learned how to make it so I'll probably be making it again in the future. And then we took a nap and now we're getting ready to go "write."

Oh yesterday, we had a really cool experience. We have these investigators who, they just seem to have a lot of things and problems that would impede them from progressing. We taught them once in my first transfer with Elder Hiatt, so quite a while ago. And then we taught them again two weeks ago and then again yesterday. And they've been participating more and more in the lessons. And yesterday, it was really cool, the dad opened up a lot more to us and we found out the reason he hadn't really been participating very much in the lessons and wasn't very willing to go to church, he wouldn't pray at the end of the lessons. His oldest daughter who's 11, she participates and is super excited and she always reads what we leave, but the dad and the mom, are not so super into it. But anyway, the dad, yesterday kind of opened up to us and said that...we were asking him about his experiences with praying and asked him if he'd ever had prayers answered before...and he shared one experience where he felt like he had his prayers answered and he kind of teared up a little bit during that one. And then he was like, "but I've also had another experience where god didn't answer my prayers. My mom was really sick and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I asked God to save my mom but my mom died. And I promised that I would never go to another church again." And we were like, "Wow. Ok." We kind of figured out what his difficulty was, I guess. And we left him a scripture from the Book of Mormon that talks about the resurrection and we have a lesson planned for tonight about that. And he prayed at the end of the lesson, which was really cool too. And he got pretty emotional, which was a pretty drastic change from how he was in the beginning. So that was pretty cool and I'd love to see them be able to progress. I think it'll be a lot of work and it'll be tricky, but it would be awesome. I would love that.

I think that's all the big news for this week.

The primary president is about to go have a pretty major surgery and she's gonna be in the hospital for two weeks. She's the Elders Quorum President's wife. So they're going to be pretty busy. So she asked us to go by and help her kids study English because she won't be there to help them study. She asked us to go by a couple of times this week. So that should be interesting. But they've helped us a lot. Darling was a reference from her and also it was her daughter, Pamela, that was baptized the other transfer here. So we're more than happy to do what we can to pay her back. And serve a little bit there.

So this next week, we're going to be out of town for a couple of days. We're going to be doing divisions in Curico and then we have zone conference, which we'll be together with Talca. Which I have a bunch of my mission friends down in Talca so I'm pretty stoked about that. But I hope you're all doing well.

That's pretty much my whole week this week. Looking forward to hearing from you guys when you write. Take care. Ciao!

Elder Olson