Week 63: Halloween as Missionaries

Transcribed from audio recording November 6, 2017

Hey everybody, this is Monday November 6, 2017, the beginning of week 4 of this transfer. So this week was pretty normal, until today.

The beginning of the week we had Halloween. But for Halloween we didn't really do anything different. So here they celebrate Halloween, but they've only been celebrating it for the last 15 years? And they celebrate it because it's a holiday in the US and they wanted to get in on that. So it's not HUGE. A lot of people don't like it but a lot do, mostly for the kids. I don't know if I've seen any adults who dress up, mostly just kids who go around trick or treating. So for Halloween my companion and I dressed up as each other. We switched plaques, not plaques, nametags. We switched jackets, watches, I gelled my hair and did it differently so it would look kind of like his and we switched bags and took a picture. So you'll be able to see our halloween costumes there. I thought it was pretty good, pretty clever. A lot of people confuse us for each other anyway because we're both white...and about the same size and hair color more or less. So that was pretty fun.

After that, in the week, we're finally done with all of our meetings. We're back to just normal missionary life. We did have district meetings on Tuesday, we went out to Requinoa(?) which is a little...well all of the sectors in our zone are out in the country more or less. They're like outside of Rancagua. Our sector is the only sector, well our branch is the only branch that is actually in Rancagua and all of our sectors are actually outside of Rancagua. There's another zone in our stake here in Rancagua that has all the wards and branches that are actually IN Rancagua. We get all the outsiders. So we went out to Requinoa for a district class. It was good. It was kind of funny...We saw Elder Tyce and Elder Inuwe(?), the Elders from there in Requinoa, they brought their Matés, which we thought was kind of funny, they kind of followed our example there. We're getting the new guy kind of addicted to Maté as well. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. But it was a good class.

On Wednesday, we went to the district class in Do ñihue which is actually our district. We went there. And Doñihue is really pretty. I like going there. It's really close to the mountains, it has a really big reputation for being the center of a lot of country culture I guess you'd say. Out here the cowboys are called Huasos. They have kind of a different style. I'm actually going to try to by a Huaso poncho today, it's called a Manta. Doñihue is really famous for that. It's a really really pretty little town.

And then after that on Thursday, the Hermana's called us late at night and asked us if we could help them with an investigator who has a drinking problem and was going to set an appointment with a psychologist in the morning. And they had told him that they were going to help him to go to the psychologist but they realized that they can't because they're two sister missionaries and them leaving at 6:30 in the morning with a drunk guy is not at all a great idea and so we had to help them out there.  So we accompanied their investigator to the Psychologist, well to the clinic to make sure he could get an appointment with the psychologist. So it was kind of weird but it was really good for him I think. He came to church this week. So that was the investigator. Well he's actually a less active member. He was actually baptized when he was 13 or 12 and he's been drinking for about just as long. He's been drinking since he was 12 or 13. But it's his mom who's the investigator. But he came to church with his mom, yesterday, so that was really good. It was cool they could see some progress with him because they've been working with him for quite some time.

We had to do a few favors for the Hermanas. And then we got a call from the assistants, last night and the Hermanas are having special changes. So that means one of the Hermanas is going to be leaving our sector here in Baquedano and they are going to be going to Buin. And the Hermana from Buin is going to be coming down here. And it's special because it's the middle of the change the middle of the transfer so they are going to be the only ones who will be changing. I think it's going to be good for our zone. The Hermana that's coming is supposed to be really good. I think it's going to help the companion of the Hermana who's leaving a lot. So I think it's going to be a good change. But that does mean that today we are going to help them. Well, whether or not they really NEED our help...I don't know...but supposedly the Hermana that's leaving has so much stuff that her and her companion and the two missionaries in Buin won't be able to handle all of her luggage. So I don't know WHAT she's carrying but Apparently she needs our help. So we will almost for sure be leaving for the terminal in about 20 minutes. Not sure though. So yeah, that'll be interesting. But it's gonna be good to have this other missionary in the zone. She's been an Hermana leader for the last few changes, but it should be really good.

Apart from that, this week's been pretty normal, pretty chill. We've had a few really good new investigators. We actually contacted one of them trying to find the other one. So the first one, Rodrigo, he contacted us when he was kind of drunk during the dies de ocho festival in September. He came up to us and was like, "I need to talk to you guys. You guys are awesome. I live right here." And we were like, OK. And we went back and he was still super receptive, but the area where we contacted him was a bunch of apartments and they all look EXACTLY the same so we went back and contacted all of the apartments that had his apartment number and while doing that we found another super super receptive lady and her three daughters. So we are now teaching them and also Rodrigo. I think Rodrigo has a good shot at being baptized. Well I think they all have a good shot at being baptized. We've got a lot of good investigators here. The trick for this sector tends to be getting them to come to church. We have one investigator, I think I mentioned him before, named Alejandro, he was super prepared. He'd been to church like twice before. He says he wants to be a member of the church. He basically considers himself a member already. He was waiting for us...when we knocked on his door he was like, "yeah Ive been waiting for you guys. I just didn't want to go to church by myself." He said he was basically a little shy to go on his own. So he's really great. It's been a trick getting him to stay for all three hours of church but we're working on it. A little bit at a time. Nobody can be perfectly ready for baptism.

So today we were going to deep clean the house but that looks like it's not going to happen because of the whole transfer thing, so we'll have to just give it a little light clean.

To leave you guys with a spiritual thought. Today's spiritual thought comes from Luke 21:19. "In your patience possess ye your souls." I'm working a lot on my patience and so I've been making a wall of patience quotes right in front of my desk so every time I look up I see my wall of patience quotes. 

So I do really like this scripture because I think there's a lot that goes into something so simple. But I can let each one of you pull your own meaning out of it. I hope you guys are all doing well, hope you have a good week. Take care. Ciao.

Elder Davis and I were each other for Halloween

Elder Davis nailed his impression of my smile

week 62:Food Poisoning & Elder Bragg of the Seventy

TRANSCRIPTION FROM AUDIO LETTER:

Hi gang,
This is Elder Olson. So this week was pretty interesting. We met a dragon. His name is Phil. But he's not that nice. But we're also finding many new leprechaun investigators. But I think the red one is going to progress. Also, I saw a dog today. It was pretty interesting.

Alright, Hi everyone, THIS is Elder Olson.

That was Elder Davis talking to you. He's not doing too well. He's stuck in bed. So we're here at the house. Elder Davis is sick. Actually the other missionaries in our Branch are also sick. And Basically half of the mission is sick. I talked with Elder Robinson last night and he said there are over 70 missionaries who are sick and there are still more calling in. We had a conference with a Seventy, Elder Bragg, on Friday (and Saturday) and people have been getting food poisoning from the food we ate afterward. They thought it was just the south half of the mission because they had their conference first. But it looks like it's gonna be everybody, well not everybody, but a lot of people on both halves of the mission...not just people in the south half. One of those people is my comp, Elder Davis, who's got the double headed dragon, poor guy. I'm praying I don't get sick. I haven't gotten sick up to this point. I felt a little weird, but I think I'm not going to get sick as in stuck in bed or the bathroom sick.

But this week has been a pretty good week. It's been a loooong week. It feels like we've done so much stuff but it's only been a week.

We started off, on P-day, we had to go and do a choir practice because my companion and I sang in/we did a little musical number during the visit for Elder Bragg. After that we did normal P-day: write home, buy things, get home as quick as we could.

And then during the week, on Tuesday we had a lesson with a family we've been teaching for a while.  They've been receiving the missionaries for quite some time. We decided to leave them. It's kind of sad. It's sad to leave, to stop teaching a family, but they just weren't progressing or keeping their commitments. Then we had to go stay at the assistant's/secretary's house again because last week, I think I mentioned it in my last letter, we had to go do the same thing... stay in their house the night before, get up at 6 in the morning and go do stuff for Elder Davis's Visa, but last week it totally failed and we weren't able to do it. So this week we had to do it again and this week it worked. We still had to get up at 6 in the morning and I had to go save a spot with one of the other companions of one of the other missionaries in the Chilean FBI and we were waiting there about 4-5 hours, no it was 3 hours there and then another 3 after that before we got all the stuff done there. Then we had to go to another place and do some other stuff there...basically we were waiting around for a long time. I got to practice my Portuguese a little bit though because I was waiting with Elder Alcara? from Brazil. Everything was alright. (he says a phrase in Portuguese on the recording) Learning a little bit.

Wednesday was pretty normal. We had a lesson with the assistants that afternoon. We asked them to come with us because One of them, Elder Covey, had contacted this girl, and we started teaching her. And so invited him to come because their sector is pretty close to ours, to accompany us to a lesson so he could have the opportunity to teach her as well and also we needed somebody to come with us to the lesson. It's hard to get members to come with us a lot of the time here. But the lesson went awesome. It was great. She would've accepted a baptismal date but she lives with her boyfriend on the weekends. So can't accept the baptismal date yet. We have to talk about how that's not allowed before she's allowed to actually  get baptized. But she's really good. And she understands REALLY well and I really hope she progresses.

We also this week, on Thursday I believe, we had a lesson with the kid, Jose Ignacio, the soccer player who was a self reference to the church. I can't remember exactly how much I told you about him. But we're teaching him and his family. He's 17. So him and his parents and his younger siblings. But they're also really awesome. They have a lot of desire to learn more. They had promised us last night that they were going to go to church today, and they didn't. I guess I should know better at this point to believe people when they tell me they are going to go to church the next day but that's what happened. So that was kind of a bummer. We were really excited to see them. We actually dragged Elder Davis out there to sacrament meeting even though he's very sick...he wanted to come too...because we wanted to accompany the investigators. But then they didn't get there, and none of our investigators who had committed to come to church came to church. I think it was because it was kind of cold this morning so I think they all got up, looked outside and decided to stay in bed. And we also had a lesson this week with Alejandro, who we found contacting. He's super super receptive. He had a friend who was a doctor who invited him to come to church one time. He came to church and he thought, hey this is really awesome, and then the doctor moved to Argentina so he was too embarrassed to keep coming to church by himself so he didn't. But we contacted him one day and he was like, "ah yeah, I went to your church. I loved it. I've been waiting for you guys because I wanted to come back but I was too nervous to do it myself." So he came to church two weeks ago now, but he didn't come last week because he had to work and this week I don't know what happened and he also did not come today, which was a bummer.

On Friday we had the meeting with Elder Mark A Bragg of the quorum of the 70. He spoke in April conference of this year and his talk was called, "Brighter and brighter, until the perfect day." It was cool to be able to talk with him. In the morning he came and we actually had a special meeting with him first, a small meeting with all the zone leaders, district leaders and the Hermana leaders, so basically mission leadership and Elder Bragg. So that was pretty good. It was kind of short. More like a testimony meeting than anything. He talked to us a little bit about the importance of being an example as leaders. And then after that we had  the actual conference. I felt like I was kind of off to a slow start. I wasn't really...I'm sure it was me...I was having a hard time finding anything I felt applicable to myself. Obviously I'm not perfect but there was a lot of things I felt like I had already heard a million times. But as it progressed and went on I learned A LOT. It was awesome. It was a really good experience. One of the things he promised us, that was very similar to something President promised us a little while ago, ....and he said this as in, "I'm gonna make you guys a promise and here's the promise...if you guys begin to talk with everybody, like everybody in the street, you will triple the number of investigators you have and double the baptisms." So that was cool, because it was a very firm promise. It wasn't like "you will have maybe some more baptisms if you talk with everybody." It was "you will DOUBLE your baptisms and TRIPLE your investigators." So that was cool. That went along with my goal personally and the goal of our companionship to contact 20 people a day. We only actually had one normal day where we were able to go out and do things like we should be able to do and on that day we met the goal, we contacted like 24. Then yesterday we had an almost normal day, we had to do weekly planning and Elder Davis got sick at the end of the day, but we still contacted about 15 people. I want to keep it above 10 when we have other stuff and 20 or more when we don't have anything to do. On those days we did pretty well. We tried to talk to the taxi drivers when they took us places and tried to talk to everybody. It can be tough to find the opportunity but it's really just about opening your mouth.

We had a lesson with a person we contacted in the street just a couple of days ago. We had walked by him and he said, "Hello, Elder." And we're like, oh he knows we're elders. So we ran over to him and were like, stop stop. And we made hims stop and talked to him for a minute. He actually spoke English. He learned English playing video games and listening to music. There are actually quite a few people who learn that way. But he speaks really well. Couple days later, we were actually able to have a lesson with him. So that was cool. He's very..., well he's smart, so that makes him not quite as teachable. He 's not argumentative but he still is pretty fixed in his views. I would like to see him progress as well. He reminds me of the atheist investigator that we had in Curico.

So that is my week. But also today we are going to have interviews with President in the evening. It should be interesting. It doesn't sound like anyone else in our zone is sick except for the ones in our branch, and I'm fine, I'm not sick at all. But we're going to have to do a training there. I don't know how we're going to do that while President is doing interviews because my companion is very sick. I may have to do it myself while my companion hides in the bathroom, I'm not a 100% sure. I think he'll probably be able to compose himself long enough to do the training part. So that's what we're going to be doing today.

But to end, I want to leave you with a small spiritual thought from Elder Bragg's talk in that general conference. It was a pretty good talk. I liked it. He speaks about light and hope more than anything. Light as in Hope. There are a lot of ways we can define Light in our lives. One of the most common gospel definitions is knowledge and truth. But he talks about the hope that comes with light the church, the gospel, the light of Christ.

Now, with all the happiness that will come to us as we more fully understand the Light of Christ, it will not match the joy that we feel when we see the Light of Christ working in others: family, friends, and even complete strangers....May we see the Light of Christ in others constantly and help them see it in themselves. ---Elder Bragg

I know that Elder Bragg is a representative of God. And I know that President Harris here in our mission is also a representative of God. And they are called to the positions they are in and they are guided by the Holy Ghost to be able to address our needs and to lead us. I also know that sharing the light we have with other people will help our light to grow. And when our light grows, we will be able to give more light to others, and increase their happiness and our own.

Thank you guys, love you tons, take care, 

Elder Olson

The gang is back together. My MTC/CCM missionaries

my buddy Elder Haar and Me

Week 60: Normal but good

Alright everyone, this is going to be a quick recording because I had no time to do a recording again. I guess that was because today we had transfers. We did it a little different this change. We did it on our Pday instead of on Tuesday I think just because of the day that all the new missionaries were getting here to the mission.

So right now we are in the cyber, writing, and seeing as how I had forgotten to send a recording last week I'm gonna get a short one in this week.

We got the changes this last weekend and I am staying in Baquedano with Elder Davis, which is awesome because he's a good comp. I can definitely be alright here another change. It'll be good. Which probably means, well you never know, but I could be here another two changes because he could leave and I could stay but you never know in the end I guess.

Almost our whole zone stayed basically the same. Only one elder left, an Argentinian, Elder Ginardo?. And one of my buds from my zone at the beginning of my mission, Elder Tias, from Brazil, is coming up, well he got here this morning. But other than that, all the other missionaries in the zone remained exactly the same. So that'll be good. It'll be more of the same thing this exchange.

This was a good week. There was this reference that we got this last Sunday that I mentioned last week. We had the visit with him...it was great. We had one visit with him and then another visit during the week with his whole family. He accepted a baptismal date right away and is super receptive..ready to change. But he didn't come to church. His whole family had promised to come to church, they seemed really really excited about it but then they didn't answer the phone and didn't come to church. Not exactly sure what happened there. We're going to have to keep calling them and seeing what's up. But it's the first week. And it's not a super common thing for people here to attend church in their first week as an investigator.

Although, we did have another one, his name is Alejandro, who came to church just the first hour but he loved it and he said he was going to bring his family next week. So we're excited about that.

Apart from that...

The week's been pretty normal but a good week. We cleaned the house a bit more, that was good and actually got things straightened out. We changed the furniture from where it was so everything's a little more open. We got things swept out from underneath so that was all good.

Also, we were supposed to have a branch council meeting on Sunday so we got up early and we get there and (the recording went really muffled here but he may have said..."found out it was cancelled so that was nice.")

Apart from that, it's been a good week but the last week of changes is always kind of a weird week (muffled recording again) as missionaries we try not to talk about it and keep our minds focused but for me I always end up thinking about it.

(he asks himself, did anything else interesting happen this week?) We got all our goals as a zone which was good. It's the first week of the change that we made all our goals as a zone, so that was awesome.

Also today we're making our zone souvenir which is kind of a common thing but it's usually a t-shirt or something. I've done a hat I got a picture of a couple changes ago. But this time we got slippers, which I'll try to get a picture of, I'll try not to forget. We just picked them up this morning. The slippers are AWESOME! They turned out really good. They're not the best quality, but they turned out to be 2800 pesos which is super cheap, which is like $4...like max $4. So they're awesome. They turned out really pretty. That's kind of cool. I've always wanted to do the slippers. We were going to put President's face on the slippers, but I didn't want President watching me from inside the house always, that's kind of a little creepy, so we didn't put the President's face on them. We were going to put our own faces on them but didn't know how stoked the zone would be about that so we didn't do it. But yeah. It's been a fun week.

(he turns to his comp and asks, did anything else happen, comp?)

So, my companion and I drink an interesting amount of Mate' and so this week we bought a HUGE thermos which we fill with hot water and sugar, which is great for us, and then today for the changes we had to be in the terminal, we had to Wait in the terminal for like 4 hours. So we brought the thermos and the Mate' to the terminal and we got to sit there just drinking Mate' for the 4 hours. So that was kind of fun, it was different.

Apart from that it's all been pretty normal. Hopefully I have some more interesting stuff to tell you next week.

Oh, also something else that's pretty cool, this change a Seventy is coming to the mission. His name is Mark Bragg if I'm not mistaken. He spoke in general conference, not this past session but in October, not October, April. He spoke on (I think it was on) "Brighter and Brighter until the perfect day." I have it and I've listened to it but I don't remember it very well. So that'll be exciting to finally have a general authority down here. I saw my cousin in London shaking D. Todd Christofferson's hand and Elder Holland's hand and the rest of us down here are like, oh that's kind of nice. And when President Nelson came down to Chile he went Santiago and the Santiago missions and then he jumped our mission and went to the mission right below us. He went on both sides of us but didn't come to our mission so that was kind of... nice.... haha. But we're getting somebody so that will be kind of fun, something different.

So I hope you guys are all doing well. I'm here in the cyber and I saw the family just got a puppy. I bet you're excited about that. But I love you guys, take care! Bye!

rickety fan...it's so hot here!

singing a hymn with Elder Davis...We're no David Archuleta