week 91: Talent Show

Monday, May 21, 2018 (from audio transcription)

Hey everyone, this is week 2 of change number 15. 

It's been a pretty good week. We had the transfers this week. My new comp, Elder Garcia from Mexico came down to Licantén. And it's been good. He's a really good guy, really willing to work, which I really appreciate. He's obedient. We're getting along well. Seems like it's going to be a pretty good change. I'm pretty optimistic about it.

On Wednesday of this week we had a goals and plans meeting in Curico which was pretty normal I guess...we set goals for the change and plans to meet those goals.

 And then on Friday night we had one of the new convert lessons with Darling. It was with her mom and the Branch Mission leader too. It went really well. It was kind of funny. They were coming straight from work. They own a little shop of school supplies and they were really hungry and they got there and they had brought these big bags of stuff to make sandwiches so then they put together the food in the chapel while we were waiting for the member to get there. And we had a little bit of food there. :-) 

And then on Saturday, we had a Branch Talent Show. It started off with a little bit of drama between some of the members there. They fought a little bit because one member didn't let another member hold their baby and it just escalated a lot and they ended up shouting at each other and a bunch of people left. Kind of a mess. But then the actual activity was pretty good. It was really well put together. They had kind of transformed the sacrament meeting room into like a little stage and stuff and that turned out really cool. They asked us to present a little thing in the talent show, so I'll send a video of what we did. It turned out pretty well I think. Everybody liked it. And there were some good talents there. The Branch President and his wife and the first counselor and his wife did a little lip sync thing which was fun. And then the rest of them were kids performing. 

(sorry I'm in the cyber right now, the place where we write so this is going to be a short one. There's like music playing and people here.)

So it went really well. They had a couple of the youth hosting it. They did a great job. It was all really well put together. Right afterward, we went straight to one of the people who was offended. The discussion beforehand (before the drama) was with the daughter of the Relief Society president who is about 30 years old...but is not a member and she has a daughter who's of baptismal age and her husband's not a member either...so we went over to try to smooth things over. So that went pretty well. Our relationship as missionaries with them is already great. But they say they have problems with the other members that are there. So that was kind of a difficulty which is actually pretty common here in Chile. We have a lot of people who get offended over little things and end up distancing themselves from the church...which is sad. But everybody has different, I don't know, trials or struggles they've gotta overcome.

That was pretty much our week.

We went to Hualane a couple times with members which went pretty well. We did a really good job at bringing members to lessons this week, which was awesome and can be kind of tricky to do sometimes, especially in a branch where you have about 20 active members. So that was really good. We were able to bring members to lessons almost every day. 

Some of our investigators that are kind of progressing really well right now, there names are Carmen and Gaspar and they're really cool. They have some really significant difficulties which are stopping them from getting baptized, but apart from that, they've come to church twice. The mom really wants to get baptized, but she's the one more than anything that has the problems which are stopping her from getting baptized. 

But yeah, it's been a good week. Hope everything is going well over there. I want to also wish a special Feliz Cupleanos to my little brother. He turns 17 today I think, on the 21st. Yeah, Happy Birthday, Bud! 

Sorry for having kind of a short, distracted recording today, but I'll try to get you a better one next week. Hope you're all doing well. Take care. Bye!

Elder Olson

Elder Garcia and Elder Olson