week 93: Locals need bus money to get to church

Transcription from Audio Letter June 4, 2018

Hey guys, this is week 4 of transfer number 15.

It's been a pretty normal week. We're here in the cyber. I forgot to, well I didn't make an audio recording before now so trying to make one real quick.

This week I was talking with my comp trying to think of something interesting to tell you guys about. During the week we worked a lot in Hualane,a little town near Licanten. Which went pretty well. We talked with A LOT of people this week. Trying to up our game to find new people. But we feel like since we've been doing that, we've been having the opposite effect. Well, we have this goal as a mission of contacting 200 people every week of the change, and in Licanten there aren't a lot of people there. So we're putting in extra effort, contacting the buses. We stand up and talk to everyone on the bus. Actually on exchanges with another missionary, with Elder Christensen, we stood up at the front of the bus and sang hymn and then went around and contacted everybody on the bus. And yeah, so...we've been trying. We've been trying really hard to find new people.

The new family that I told you guys about, that we found last week, didn't come to church. They said it was because they didn't have money for the bus. So we'll see what ends up happening with them. It really was because they didn't have money, because here that's not such an uncommon thing...that they don't have the four dollars for the round trip. So yeah, we're going to have to see. We haven't been able to have another lesson with them since church yesterday. 

Yesterday we had the devotional. The mission president had asked us to watch that. So that was good. It was cool to see President Nelson's energy again. It always surprises me a little bit...just how much energy he has. And I loved how direct and how specific he was in his challenges for the youth. I think that's great! Especially as a missionary I've seen when we make specific invitations, that's when we're going to act. So I think it's great that he made such specific invitations such as the 7 day social media fast and the weekly sacrifice of time for 3 weeks. I think those are really realistic invitations and I know that we will be blessed for doing them. And I think that they are great ideas. So if any of you didn't see the youth devotional, President Nelson invited the youth to go for 7 days without using any form of social media and for 3 weeks to make a sacrifice of time in doing something they like to do, to use it to serve the Lord or serve others in some way...well to serve others and by doing that we serve the Lord. That can be temple work, that can be actual service, which will be great. So for any of you who didn't see that, I think it's still a really great idea for any of us to try that. I would be doing the 7 day social media fast and the sacrifice of time but I'm doing both already, so there's not all that much I can change to do more than that right now but the other things he said, I'm looking for ways to apply those in my life. He also really called my attention to what his wife said about (ministering?) really impressed me. 

Then this morning we had a little zone activity. We just put on EFY songs and had to interpretive dance to the EFY songs so that was pretty good. Ha. Something a little different. That's about it. We are here in Curico after the activity. I'm probably going to go get a haircut because somebody this week told me my hair was too long, so that means it's time to cut it. 

Alright. Well, love you all. Hope you're all having a good week. Take care! Bye!

Elder Olson

week 84: General Conference

April 2, 2018 (transcription from audio)

Eschange 14. Week One. Ok? This is Elder Hiatt.

Hi everyone, this is Elder Olson .

This week has been good. We found out the changes on Saturday between sessions of General Conference. And so we found out that I am going to be...staying. Elder Hiatt is going to leave me. He's going down to Lircay, a city sector in Talca. And I will be staying here with Elder Figueroa from Uraguay. He will be finishing his mission this change so I that means I'm going to be here another 3 months at least. So that's pretty crazy. Because I'll be here for at least 2 more changes and then after that I'll have one more change. And so I'd rather, well it's possible now that I'll finish my mission here in Licantén or they'd have to take me out for just one change in another sector. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. It's gonna be good. It's a good sector to be staying in. I'm gonna know it like the back of my hand by the time I leave. Well, I already know it pretty well, but it's so small I'll probably know everybody's name before leaving.

But yeah, this week was good. It was pretty normal. Nothing really all that special happened.

We set a baptismal date, actually. THAT was pretty good. With an investigator from Hualañé, named Belen. She's like 17 and she listened to the missionaries before in Santiago. And then her boyfriend, Estevan, is a member who's baptized like when he was 12, so like 8 years ago. He's been inactive for 4 years and I don't think very active before that either. He doesn't understand much about church and has problems with smoking, but they're good. They're good kids and we're excited to be working with them. Belen is super excited about the gospel and about listening to us. And I think she's just really sensitive to the spirit. So that's cool. They were going to come to General Conference. We talked to Belen in the morning, and she said they were going to come to the afternoon session (well they're both afternoon sessions for us, but the later afternoon session here, which was at 5 in the afternoon). And so we waited out for them. They didn't end up coming. So we were kind of bummed about that. A lot of people are on vacations for Easter Weekend. The only investigator that did make it out to General Conference was Max, our Haitian neighbor, who has a baptismal date for April 14th. We're gonna have to push his date back I'm pretty sure. Just because he's not super willing to commit but he's doing good and gets really involved and participates well in the lessons. So I think it's just a matter of time with him. He speaks English and a little bit of Spanish. His English is perfect. He speaks really good. And we're kind of fighting to help him understand everything that we're teaching. 

General Conference was awesome. I was impressed with the number of big changes that were announced this conference. I've been saying that we were going to be having a Brazilian Apostle for a while so I was pretty happy to see that. The changes, as far as the Elder's quorum and the high priests are concerned, won't change anything in Licantén. I think they have to release the Elder's quorum president, but they may call the same Elder's quorum president afterwards. But it doesn't sound like there are going to be any big changes here in Licantén. I think the "ministering" changes will help a lot, as far as the home teaching is concerned. Although, I don't know. I think the biggest difference will be that they don't have the report to make them talk once a month about how nobody does their home teaching. haha. But now it should be "easier" to do this ministering effort, so hopefully that means more people will kind of (I don't know how to say it in English), in Chile they say "put in the batteries," kind of get moving,I guess. So I'm excited to see that. I'm mostly excited to see the differences that that will make back home and maybe in any other, or if I go to another branch or ward in my time here, to see the differences that are made there. We're going to be working hard here to try to make these changes mean something here in Licantén. 

As far as the conference was concerned, I really liked...Oh, as far as the news about the temples in Russia and India...I thought that was incredible! I've been listening to a lot of BYU devotionals on missionary work and a lot of them have talked about China, and Russia, and India, and Africa and the establishing of the Church and the gospel there. And so it's a pretty big deal that they're putting a temple in Russia. I'm pretty excited about that. 

I really loved President Nelson's energy. This conference was just very different from anything I've ever experienced. Not only because of the solemn assembly, but because of the way they explained and introduced the changes. The involvement of President Nelson was impressive. He was constantly either announcing things, or leading the session or giving a talk. So I enjoyed being able to see that.

I think my favorite talk, as of right now (I haven't re-listened to any of them or read any of them yet) but I really loved Elder Bednar's talk on meekness. That's something that (I think I've mentioned before) that I've put in an effort to try to develop in my time in the mission. So that was really good and I think that's going to be very useful for me and I think I'm going to enjoy having that talk to learn from. So that one was really good. I will definitely will be studying it afterwards and I recommend you do the same. 

That's about all. I hope you're all doing well. We're on the bus on our way to Curico right now. We'll be having a little BBQ to say goodbye to a couple of the Elders in our district here in Curico. So we've got the nice little 2 hour bus ride down to send them off. 

I hope you all enjoyed conference. I love you all. Have a nice week!

Elder Olson

This churrasco was bigger than I am.

Maté Movie

Singing time

week 74: Book of Mormon Activity

January 22, 2018

Hey everyone, 

It's week 3 of transfer 12 and I'm here in Licantén with my boy Elder Hiatt. So we are going to be spending our Pday in Licantén here this week because Curico is super far. So we are just going to have a kind of chill day. We went to the gym this morning. WE FOUND A GYM! That's another thing that happened this week. We found a gym here in Licantén and it's super small. It has like 3... well it has a leg press machine, 3 racks to do squats on, no room in the middle of the racks or anything like that, and an incline bench, a bench and then treadmills and dumbbells and that's about it. So super small but it's better than nothing and we'll be able to stay in shape. I stopped buying protein though which I was doing last change because it was super expensive. 

(Hopefully you can hear me, we're kind of on a large street.)

So this week's been cool. We started off the week with a lesson with a girl named Pamela who's the daughter of our Elder's quorum president's wife. She's about 24-25 years old. She grew up for most of her teenage year in Holland. So she came back to Chile a couple years ago. She lives in Santiago but she wants to get baptized by her dad here in Licantén. She's super excited for it and obviously her family is super supportive of that because they're all members. Her mom is in the primary presidency. We are super excited about that. She's excited. We had a good lesson with her last night as well. In the first lesson we set a baptismal date with her for the 13th of February and I feel pretty confident that she'll get baptized. Keep her in your prayers though. But I think she's got a really good shot. So that was really cool. 

We also found quite a few new investigators this week. We achieved more than our goal so that was good. Also Pamela came to church so we were pretty excited about that. It's been a long time since they've had an investigator in church here in the sector. So that's good that we could kind of start this change off right. We also had interviews with President Harris this week. It was pretty good. It was short. We just had to ask him a little bit about some of the details with our investigators like making sure that we were handling some situations right, but it was a short little interview. While I was there I saw Elder Davis, my previous companion, who finishes his mission this change, so it was good to be able to see him. I guess I'll be able to see him again when Elder Christofferson comes. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that...that he's coming. If not, read my other emails, it'll tell you more about it. 

On Tuesday we watched the transmission from Salt Lake with President Nelson and the announcement about him and the new first presidency. It'll be awesome having a different first presidency as well. You get to hear them talk 2-3 times each general conference so it's pretty cool to be able to have that change, even though I love all of the apostles we've had, especially the first presidency I've known for most of my life. 

On Saturday night we did a Book of Mormon activity. Our district came out here to our sector in the Plaza, the central park I guess, we set up a table and we have these big banners for the activity we are doing in the mission now. So basically, we have these big banners and the questions people have a lot of the time, like "Does God exist? Does my baby need to be baptized? What happens after death?" That kind of thing. So we had all those set up and we go around talking about the book of Mormon with everybody there. It works pretty well. We had about 15-20 people saying that they want to come, that they would accept us in their house, that they would accept missionaries into their house. A lot of them live in other parts of Chile but were here vacationing. In other sectors you normally find a lot more, but considering the size of Licantén, we probably contacted about half the people who live here, so it wasn't bad. It was fun. One thing that was cool about that is that the mission is now like measuring the number of references we get by doing that and if it turns out to be really successful, which so far it has been pretty successful, the area is going to kind of sponsor it and use it in other missions too. So that'll be pretty cool. Maybe my companion and I will end up in a Church magazine in a picture of missionaries doing a Book of Mormon activity. Haaha. probably not but it still is a pretty cool thing that's happening here.

A pretty fun experience we had the other day...we went to lunch at a member's house who live way out in the middle of nowhere and we had no idea how to get to her house. So we got some directions from her and had to tell the bus driver to let us know when we'd passed a certain point and he didn't let us know. So we'd been in the bus a little longer than we expected to and we asked him "hey did we already pass the place we asked you about?" and he was like, "ahhhh shoot!" And I think he felt really bad but he just pulled over and left us there on the side of the road. I have a little video of that I will try to send as well. But yeah that was pretty funny. So we started walking for a bit and finally a car stopped, kind of by itself, and took us the rest of the way. But it wasn't too far. We probably could've made the walk. It was about a kilometer away.

This morning we went hard on scrubbing the mold out of our study room. There was a BUNCH of mold there when we got there. We finally got it all good and clean. So that was good. Nice to have a cleaner house now. 

I think that's about it. We are doing good here. Having a good time. Elder Hiatt and I are still getting along really well. I think. I don't know. He's giving me weird looks right now so I don't know if that's true. But, hahaha, nah that was a joke. But yeah he's great. A great missionary. We're getting along really good.

Oh, then also last night, when we taught Pamela the lesson, we went out to her grandparents house in the compo, in the country, so we went out there and it was just this little old old house that her dad had grown up in and it was like they had dug their own well, their own wood stables with...

      Oh sorry we're getting completos right now and one of them kind of flipped. OH MY GOSH! Wait a sec..Alright, sorry. We were eating lunch and a bunch of our food fell over.

But yeah I'm pretty sure that's about it. I hope everybody's doing good. Love you guys a ton, have a good week. Bye!

Elder Olson

walking the long road when we were lost

Pretty fields

Our walking adventure