Elder Jacob Brian Olson returned home after serving an honorable 2 year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on August 7th, 2018. On August 12th, he spoke about his mission to the congregation at Church and later a gathering at home.
waiting for his arrival
The first hug in two years.
Father and son
best friends, Jacob and Jared Snelson
family photo
with the Hansen Grandparents
With the Olson grandparents
Uncle Ben and Elder Olson
with mom and dad
pics with mission buddies
Baby bro Archer helping roll the bags
heading home
HOME!
Homecoming with family - Grandparents Hansen
My Uncle Mike Hansen family
Buddies Conner and Jared
Cousin Jonathan Eaton
Uncle Eric Hansen family
sharing more about my mission in Chile with family and friends
Monday, July 30, 2018 (transcription from Audio letter)
Hey everyone, Elder Olson here. This is week 6 of transfer 16.
Made sure to definitely get an audio recorded this week because...
this will probably be the last week that I'll be writing!
Kind of crazy! Kind of exciting! Super exciting!
It's been a pretty good week. We've been working super super hard.
Well first off I want to wish a happy birthday to my little brother Archer and my Grandma Hansen, Grannie. Hope you guys are doing well. Hope you guys had a good birthday this last weekend.
On Tuesday we did exchanges with the Elders of Hospital. I was with Elder ? from Ecuador. It was fun. He's a good missionary. It was kind of funny to see him play with the dogs. He is just super, has NO fear at all of the dogs and just loves to play with them. So he'll just go up and start playing with them but he's super rough with them. Haha. He starts almost punching them in the face and they'll get kind of mad at him and they'll kind of nip at him but he'll keep hitting on them but like playing with them and he gets them to chase him around. I thought that was pretty funny. Kind of crazy. He picked one dog up and "threw" it, so that was something a little different. People in general don't play with the dogs like that. But we had a good day that day...pretty standard, I guess. We found a couple new friends to teach so that was good.
On Wednesday, again just basically another day of work. We went to subway for lunch because they passed us money to eat so that was great. Afterwards we had district council in the afternoon. That was pretty normal. Our district does our District councils in English when I'm there because everyone in our district, well we are 4 gringos and an Argentino and my companion, but the Argentino was in the office so he speaks English. And so we do the class in English on the days I'm in our district class. And then my companion and I teach a membership class on those days we have the district class.
On Thursday we had zone councils in Rancagua. We were going to take the train but it left at like 7:30 in the morning and we didn't make it that early in the morning.And we were going to take the train back but it was kind of late so we just had to take the bus. The guy who sold us our bus tickets in the terminal...they have a guy selling tickets calling out "Santiago, Santiago, Santiago!" and we went to him for the tickets and they ask you about 1500 times if you are going to that place and so we bought tickets from one of them because it's a lot faster, because if you go in the line you'll end up having to wait 20 minutes to half an hour to rent a bus. But the guy selling the tickets sold way more tickets than they had seats on the bus so I got to stand. But it was a short ride. Once I had to stand for a two hour ride from Licanten to Curico in a tiny little bus...THAT was the worst! But from Rancagua to Buin it's like 40 minutes so it wasn't a big deal. But it was good. We talked about the Restoration at the training. Nothing too crazy. It was all pretty...it was just good. It was mostly stuff that I've heard before. My companion and I had to do a demonstration of how to contact and get to know people during the contact and not just walk up to them and say "hey, we're representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we would like to share a message with you," which happens a little too often. And so, we taught a little bit about how to go up to the person and get to know them and have a conversation while contacting them and then relating the conversation to the gospel. That went super well. It seemed like everybody liked the presentation.
And then on Friday, we had a couple of baptismal interviews, one we had to go to (?) for and then another one here in Buin. That was good. We had a goal as a zone, I'm pretty sure I mentioned it, of 15 baptisms for the change. That's high. When we set that goal...I've never seen a zone do that many baptisms in one transfer here in the mission. Our goal for the mission was 50 baptisms. So 14 is more than a third of the baptisms for the mission which are in the zone. Which is kind of a high goal, but WE DID IT! We were blessed to be able to achieve that goal. By the beginning of the week we had 11 people baptized and 3 more people with baptismal dates for this last weekend. So we need all of those three people to get baptized on their baptismal date or we weren't going to get our goal. And we found out on Tuesday, that one of them might not be able to, well had a work conflict and was going to have to push the baptismal date back a week, and so we weren't going to get it, but be so close. So we sent out a message to the zone with the names of the people and their baptismal date asking them to pray for them to make that baptismal date. And in the end, on Thursday night, she found out she wasn't going to have the work conflict. So we did the baptismal interview on Saturday morning and on Saturday she was baptized with the others. Then on Saturday night, I did the baptismal interview for a guy from the Dominican Republic. He's super cool. He was just a really really prepared guy. So he got baptized. He's a very impressive guy. We are hoping to get the missionaries to his wife and kids in the Dominican Republic as soon as possible.
That is pretty much our week.
So I'm super excited that we met the goals. I also gave my final testimony in Zone conference and then also in church on Sunday.
This week, we should get some farewells in. Don't think there will be too many, but on Friday morning, there's this one guy named Jamie, (who I've mentioned before, we went to lunch a couple weeks ago) who just does so much for the missionaries. So on Friday morning we are going to go eat breakfast with him. And on Friday, I'M GOING TO GO TO THE TEMPLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2 YEARS! And then on Saturday, do basically nothing, haha. Well we have a self reliance class at night but during the day we don't have anything. The President will be doing final interviews all that day, but mine isn't until Monday afternoon. My interview is going to be the very last of the 29 people who are leaving so that's...nice. But at 3'oclock in the afternoon on Monday is my final interview and then on Monday night we go to the airport and they drive us up to the airport and we fly home! THAT'S CRAZY! My flight goes from Santiago to Dallas and then I have about a 2 hour layover. And then from Dallas to Utah. I think most of the gringos are going through Dallas and then to America to spread out. But I've got some Elders here who are friends and we'll be able to hang out at the airport and then our flight gets in to Dallas at 5 in the morning I think and then our flight leaves from Dallas to Utah if I'm not mistaken, I dont have the information right in front of me at about 8:30 from Dallas to Utah and get to Salt lake about 10:00 in the morning (note: Elder Olson is wrong here...his flight arrives at 11am in Salt Lake, American Airlines 1541). So yeah! That's what's going to be happening this week.
Who knows...maybe I'll send another recording but I don't know if I'll...well, I'll probably get on at some point this next Monday, but if I don't, I just wanted to kind of close with a spiritual thought from the Scripture that's written on my plaque that we hung up in my home ward. It's Jacob 5:71-72. Here we go. It says, let's see, to give some context, this is in the famous Vineyard Parable where the Lord of the Vineyard representing our Heavenly Father, he and his servant, who I assume to represent Jesus Christ, they go out and they work in the vineyard and take care of all the trees in the vineyard. And basically they work and they work and they work and sometimes the vineyard produces fruit and sometimes it doesn't. The vineyard is the world and in a way we are the trees but in this verse we are also seen in another way. And there's a lot deeper symbolism about specific trees and specific branches of the tree. But I love verses 71 and 72 which say,
71 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto them: Go to, and labor in the vineyard, with your might. For behold, this is the last time that I shall nourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labor with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself against the time which will soon come.
72 And it came to pass that the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them; and they did obey the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard in all things.
I know that in my time that i've been blessed to serve in the mission, that I have been blessed to be one of those servants who has been able to go and labor with my might and I know that the Lord of the vineyard also labored with me. So I just wanted to share that with you guys and thank you for all of the support you've shown me, especially, obviously, my family, over these last two years.
I hope you guys are all doing well. And I'LL SEE YOU ALL VERY SOON! Have a good one!
Elder Olson
(Note: I am assuming this is the video Elder Olson and his companion showed on their Pday activity "MTC CRIBS" last week where they all showed videos of their apartments. And these two obviously put in some inside jokes via the pictures taped everywhere. I would love a translation of the video but we'll just have to wait til he gets home next week for more explanation)
(This is Elder Olson's zone singing the Spanish translation of the song Savior Redeemer of My Soul which was written by Jenny Oaks Baker )
(Here is the original video for the song if you want to listen to it in English. It's beautiful and moving)
Hey all, Sorry for not being able to send audio or video this week. We´re going to try to go to a different ciber this next week because the internet in this one doesn't let me send all of the stuff I'd like to (although iut wasn´t much anyway). This week was great! We've certainly felt the support of many prayers. We had triple our average lessons with member and we found more as many new friends as we had in the entire transfer. We had a great activity today, MTC Cribs (based off mtv cribs) and another little talent show with choripan. My comp and I sang a hymn in Haitian Creole and it turned out solid.
We ran into an old friend (who we haven't taught in my time here but my comp had) in the street on sunday morning. He's had a rough time, and has turned to marijuana to try to forget his troubles. We invited him to church and he came with us! He only stayed a half hour, but I was glad he came. We were blessed with a mission leader this week. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, but I think he's going to do a fantastic job. He's excited to work with us. I'm grateful for his service. This week I read a short autobiography from my Mom's grandfather Wayne Hansen this last week that was on our familysearch. I was impressed at all of the ways he gave of his talents to serve the lord, in church callings, career, and on a mission in Israel. I had no idea!
Love you all, sorry for the short letter, see you soon!!
Elder Olson
Monday, July 9, 2018 (transcription from Audio letter)
Hey everyone, This is week 4 of transfer 16.
It's been a pretty good week. We've been busy. We started off the week with exchanges with the Elders of Hospital where they have, it's a super country like rural sector. Super fun. I was with Elder Kammerman who has my time in the mission but he's been here a month and a half more than me because when he came he already knew Spanish. So the interchange was really good. We mostly just contacted a bunch and then we had a Family Home Evening with some members which a person investigating was supposed to come to but in the end they didn't come.
On Wednesday, we had interviews with President Harris. Which went well. (Hold on, we are just getting to the cyber.) We had to do a training during the interviews. We talked about unity and working with members, which was good. We applied some of the things we taught in our sector these past several weeks and it's been going really well. Mostly about working with the branch council. They finally called us a new branch mission leader this week. They have a habit here of calling less actives to be mission leaders and they've kind of done that in our branch here which is just how it goes. He's a really nice guy. He's from Venezuela. We have a lot of Venezuelans in our Branch which is fun. They are a lot of fun to work with. The interview was pretty normal. I talked a little bit about my mission goals with President some more. (Sorry, I'm looking through my notes right now of what we've done this week.)
On Thursday we did divisions so that one of the District leaders of our district could do an interview for the sisters for an investigator of the sisters who's an 83 year old man. He's kind of a fun little old guy. He's super nice. Very repentant. He's half deaf and half blind and kind of shuffles around but he was very excited to be baptized. He cried at the end of the interview when the Elder told him that he "passed" his interview. It was pretty funny though because he's hard of hearing and the other Elder has about 6 months in the mission so he speaks pretty good Spanish but he's still got a bit of his old accent, but I'm in a public place so I can't tell you EXACTLY what he said. But it was basically like...Imagine an 83 year old Chilean man who's partially blind sitting across from a 19 yr old American who speaks decent spanish but with a pretty thick accent. So at first he couldn't hear him so then he had to speak really loud and it went something like, " SO BROTHER HAVE YOU EVER HAD A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?" (said very loudly)
And the old man kind of looks at him, and was like, "Oh when I worked, I used to have a work companion who was like that, who was homosexual."
And the Elder was like, "Ok....did you ever have a homosexual relationship with him?"
"What?"
(Louder) "DID YOU EVERY HAVE A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR WORK COMPANION?"
"Uh, No. NO. No!"
"Okay."
And so for every question it went something like that. I thought it was pretty funny. These two yelling across the table at each other. But anyway, it was pretty good.
So after that, on Saturday, we had the baptism for him. He is the father of a member. They got there about 40 minutes late to their dad's, to his baptism. My companion and I had to go before the actual baptism. So when they got there, they were taking pictures and stuff. And in the beginning, I walked into the chapel, and this is like after I've been there for a half an hour, and the branch president was like, "hey, the person who was supposed to give a talk didn't show up so do you want to give the talk?" And I was like "sure." So I gave a talk at his baptism. It was pretty good. It was fun. And it is just really awesome to see older people get baptized, because at that point in life, there are very few people who are willing to make that big of a change. And he was just so willing to make that change. I was VERY happy to see him do that. I think that's about it for Saturday.
On Sunday, we had church like normal. We worked a bunch. We contacted a ton. We have a person that is interested named Veronica and she is awesome. I don't want to jinx it, knock on wood, but I feel like she's going to get baptized in this change. Hopefully, I'll be able to see that. And she came to church for the second time this week and she's excited for her baptism. We still need to teach her the word of wisdom but she doesn't seem to have any problems. And that's about it, but she's great. Be praying for her. And be praying for us to be able to find some more people. We have a goal of 4 baptisms this change, which is pretty high. But it looks like we are probably going to achieve our zone goal, which when we put it, it was also pretty high, so I'm pretty happy with how we're doing as a zone.
But this transfer our focus has been on obedience and I've been memorizing scriptures that have to do with obedience. My goal is to memorize at least 10 this change. I mean I probably could do more, but I want to be able to remember them. So far I have 4 and so far I remember all 4. And those are Alma 57:21, John 14:15,21, Matthew 7:21, and D&C 93:1. All really good scriptures about obedience. One of my personal favorite scriptures about obedience comes from Leviticus 26 but that one is kind of long to memorize, but the whole chapter talks about the blessings and consequences of obedience and I think it's really interesting.
Also, this week in my personal study I was reading the "war chapters" (in the Book of Mormon) and reading a little bit of the story of Amalickiah and the Lamanites. And Amalickiah basically takes command of the armies of the Lamanites and then there's a rebellion and a lot of the Lamanites don't want to go fight against the Nephites. And so they go up and they come high up on top of a mountain and the king gives Amalickiah control of all the armies that ARE willing to fight and tells him to go obligate the people who are up on the mountain who are led by a man named Lehonti to force them to join the army and go fight the Nephites. So Amalickiah goes, but he's got kind of a different idea and he sends a message asking for Lehonti to come down from the mountain. And Lehonti won't come down. So he sends another one and then another one and Lehonti won't come down from the mountain. And Amalickiah finally goes up closer to the camp, sends another message saying, come down from the mountain and bring your guards. So this time Lehonti listens to him and comes down and brings his guards and him and Amalickiah form a plan to have Lehonti's army come down and capture Amalickiah s army and Amalekiah would be put as second in command to Lehonti. So that's what they do. But Amalekiah has one of his servants slowly poison Lehoni until he dies leaving Amalickiah in charge of both armies. The thing about this is I think there's a little bit of symbolism in the fact that Lehonti was up on top of the mountain. Mountains normally represent temples in scriptures or a holy place. So we can learn a little bit from that about standing in holy places and not being moved. Satan's gonna come and tempt us to come down out of those holy places, but no matter how many times he comes and he tries to get us to come out, we've gotta stay where we know we ought to be.
So yeah, it's been a good week. Doing well. Working hard. Hope you guys are all having a good time at home. I didn't mention that today we had a little P-day activity playing soccer and eating pizza. I've been taking advantage of having some pizza places here and have been eating a ton of pizza. Haha!
But I love you guys. Have a good week. Take Care. Bye!
Elder Olson
Jaime, the mission "dad" of the Buin zone took us to lunch (last week's letter mentions this)
NOTE: THE IMAGES ELDER OLSON TRIED TO SEND WITH THE EMAIL THIS WEEK DIDN'T COME THROUGH BUT SOME FROM LAST WEEK CAME IN ANOTHER EMAIL. MAYBE NEXT WEEK WE'LL GET THE ONES FROM THIS WEEK. Hey everyone,
Sorry but I don't have an audio for this week. We've been running nonstop all-day everyday.
It's been a pretty good week. We've been working very, very hard and talking with a LOT of people. I'm proud of us for having brought many members to our lessons (though we're only at about 50% so we have a lot of room for improvement). Members are the key to successful missionary work.
It rained a ton while I was on exchanges this week. Most of the streets were literally covered shin deep in water. Everybody here very concious of the rain and the fact that we get wet. You think we'd win some pity points, but more often we hear "what are you guys doing outside it's raining?!? Go home!" Sacrifice brings blessings.
I was asked to talk in sacrament meeting this week about "Hastening the work". President Harris has been talking to us a lot about a quote from President Nelson which says that missionary work will accelerate exponentially as we work with the ward mission leader and use family history. I'm working on finishing my My Family pamphlet (Mom I'm going to ask for help) and I've seen multiple times sparks of interest in the people we talk to as we mention family history. So, I talked in sacrament meeting about missionary work on the other side of the veil. It really called the attention of one of our non-members (we are now supposed to use the word "person" instead of investigator church wide) who attended. The members did a great job at greeting our people after the meetings. Pics below.
On the fourth I sported a red white and blue tie and brought a flag and the lyrics to the national anthem to our District council. It was the best I could do, but I was glad to celebrate somehow.
Today we did a zone activity doing yoga! We have a member here named Nayaret who is super into yoga, like came-to-church-last-week-with-a-forehead-jewel into yoga. She's traveled to india and thailand and japan and a bunch of other places learning about it. I think most of us were surprised at how much yoga can make you sweat. Afterwards we went to a super nice restaurant courtesy of my old friend Jaime, the mission dad of the Buin zone. I love that guy.
I ran out of computer time today with mission related stuff, sorry for not writing any of you back. Love you tons!!!
Elder Olson
IMAGES AND VIDS FROM LAST WEEK THAT DIDN'T COME THROUGH THEN BUT CAME THROUGH TODAY...
Happy Birthday to....
Can you spot the white tiger? This guy was in the Buin Zoo.
Tiger Video!
"Don't Touch Me!" says the sheep.
This is the WORD OF WISDOM pamphlet. I think it's a little out of place. Haha.
Monday, July 2, 2018 (transcription from Audio letter)
Hey everyone, Elder Olson here. This is week 2 of transfer 16.
It's been a pretty good week. We had transfers. I came up to Buin to be finishing my mission here in the Los Jardines branch. It's a big branch. It's about 80 people in sacrament meeting...a little bit more maybe 90 people in sacrament meeting. It would be a ward probably if they weren't in a district but they don't have enough branches that are big enough to be wards to make this district into a stake and so this branch stays as a branch...it's just a very big one.
So, it's been CRAZY! We've been working sooooo hard. My new comp's name is Elder Koche, he's from Bolivia and he's super cool...a machine for talking with people in the street, which is awesome. He's a really good, really focused, missionary. So, on Tuesday we had changes. It was cool to see some people in the bus terminal. We got the new sector, ate lunch and went out to work right away. A couple of our investigators have baptismal dates. One of them is a Venezuelan named Luis, who's pretty cool. Super cool. But he hasn't come to church these last two weeks so we had a pretty heart to heart talk with him. It looks like he was supposed to be baptized this coming Saturday, but he's not ready. And he says he wants to be baptized, but it's gonna be a little bit longer.
On Wednesday, we had a goals and plans meeting with the zone, something we do every transfer. And it was good. It was a little long. We've got kind of a bigger zone here...18 missionaries. When I was here there were even more. There were 24 missionaries. But we've been slowly going down in the number of missionaries in the mission. But we set some pretty high goals in that goals and plans meeting for the zone. In the last transfer they had 7 baptisms in the zone here, which is good for our mission. But we have the goal this change of beating it. And it seems very possible. This last weekend we had 3 so we are already about a 1/4 of the way there and we have 4 more weeks to get that goal.
This week I did a baptismal interview for a Bolivian investigator named Herald, who the Elders of Buin, my old sector, have been teaching. Super cool guy. Super good. He was baptized the next day and then confirmed on Sunday. It was really cool actually....while I was there to do the interview and I don't know what else, I passed by a couple times the chapel and I saw a few members from Buin and it was pretty exciting to see them. One of them, is a convert who I taught and was baptized very soon after I left the sector and so it was really awesome to see him. His name is Bernie. So that was cool. Then there are some other people who we'd visited...some less actives who started coming to church while I was here...who I saw in church on Sunday, so that was really cool as well.
So I think I explained this last week, but I'm not in the same branch as before but I'm in the same building. This is one of, I think there are two places in the mission, where they have 2 branches sharing a chapel or a building. So here that's one of those places. So my branch shares with my old branch from three or four branches ago, when I had about 6 months in the mission.
On Thursday we had leadership council as a mission. That went really well. Also set high goals that kind of reflected the high goals of the zone. I think a lot of it has to do with my group of missionaries, because we are 29 who are all going home together. I think a little over almost a quarter of the mission, about a fifth of the mission...a little more than a fifth. So there are a lot of us going home and a lot of us want to go out with a bang. So there are a lot of high goals and a lot of energy to be working hard this next change. So that was really cool. It was kind of weird to say some of my first "last goodbyes" to missionaries there at the leadership council. In the leadership council, we set a new focus for the mission. We started focusing on attributes of Christ...which I really like. I think they help us focus a lot as a mission. Last transfer, our focus was on diligence. This transfer, instead of telling you what the focus is going to be I'm going to give you two scriptures which I've been memorizing. I'm trying to memorize 10 scriptures this change that all have to do with this Christlike attribute. The two I've memorized so far in this first week are Alma 57:21 and John 14:15,21. And this attribute is something super important. In the MTC you hear a ton about it. It's one of the Christlike attributes in Preach My Gospel chapter 6. And PMG promises if we have this Christlike attribute, we'll have more FAITH, more PROTECTION, more LIBERTY, more CONFIDENCE and we'll have POWER AND AUTHORITY in our CALLINGS. There are a lot of promises if we are able to develop this Christlike attribute. So, I've been working extra hard to not "die" (the missionaries who are ending the mission here, they call it "dying.") and I've been trying to end my mission well. So far, I've been working my butt off. Harder than I've had to work in a while. So hopefully it pays off. And I'm sure it will.
I love you all. I hope you're having a good week. Take care. Bye!
Elder Olson
(more videos will come next week when the person who forwarded them grants my email address access)
