Week 23: Change to the Missionary Schedule and Faith

February 1, 2017

Friends and Family, 

It’s been a pretty interesting week! The fires down here are still out of control.  The wildfires are everywhere. They’ve had to pull several missionaries out of their sectors due to the fire danger.  All of us Talca missionaries were stuck in our houses for about 3 days because the streets were filled with smoke.  The fires in the forests near San Clemente are controlled now, so we should be alright. Once side-effect I didn’t see coming has been the soldiers with machine guns all over the place.  The fires before now were apparently started intentionally, so they’re working hard to protect their forests.

This week we also had the opportunity to participate in a worldwide training broadcast.  Some of you may have heard, it brought some big changes for us.  The first change was to the schedule.  We now have a slightly less structured schedule. We plan in the morning now, and can choose what time of day we want to study.  They’ve also changed the number of stats we report from 9 to 4, which will really help us missionaries in general to focus on repentance and baptism.

This transfer we’ve been working with an inactive member named Aldo.  Aldo left the church after a divorce with his wife several years ago. We’ve been teaching him for a while now, and he’s come to church 4 Sundays in a row.  He had an interview with the branch president, and we’re starting to work on getting him to the temple.  It’s really been awesome to work with him.

This week we’ve taught a lot of lessons on faith.  May people we teach talk about how fait his super important, but really don’t understand what fait is. we often explain faith has having 2 parts: belief (It took me a minute to remember that work in English) and works.  As we’ve surely all heard, faith without works is dead (James 2). In Alma 32 we learn that faith is like a seed that must be nourished by works in order to grow.  We can read in the end of that chapter that the fruits of the see will be sweeter than anything we have before tasted.  I promise you all that fait accompanied by works will bring you blessings and miracles.

Much love, 

Elder Olson

Elder Olson and Elder Haar at Zone Meeting

Elder Olson's Zone

Smoky skies

Dogs in the area

Chilean Countryside (called compo)

killing bugs in the casa

PLAYING POOL ON PDAY

Elder Haar, Elder Aguero, Elder Olson

Elder Aguero, Elder Olson, Elder ?

 

Elder Haar and Elder Olson

Week 22: The Doctrine of Christ

January 25, 2017

Hey guys,

It's been a good week! It started off with a training from President Harris, which has given me a bit of a boost for this week, but I'm sorry to say that apart from that this week has been pretty uneventful.

One thing that's been happening in the past weeks has been an outbreak of wildfires. They're all over the region, and apparently the fire in Talca is the biggest in Chile's history. (click link for news coverage). Argentina, Brasil, and supposedly even France have been helping the Chileans fight the fires. The sky is often full of smoke. With the earthquakes and fires, we often end up thinking of Second Coming scenarios.

The past couple of days, Elder Jorgensen (the 6'6"elder from Arizona he mentioned in past letter who lives in the same casa) has been pretty sick. We're in the same district, and we've done exchanges so that I can stay home and talk to him in English. I've enjoyed the opportunity to just relax for a day.

This week during our training with President, a large portion was devoted to teaching the Doctrine of Christ, which consists of Faith, Repentance, Baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. During both the training and my personal interview 3 weeks ago, President Harris really stressed the importance of teaching repentance as a part of this process. Too often missionaries skip straight to Baptism as soon as their investigators start to demonstrate faith, and rob them of the amazing change of heart that comes as a part of the repentance process. Because of this, there are thousands of inactive converts in our mission alone.

Outside of the mission, we sometimes make the same mistake. We look forward to becoming clean by partaking of the sacrament, but we forget to use the gift of repentance. I hope we can all make use of the blessing of repentance a little more in our lives.

Say your prayers,
Read your scriptures,
Go to church,
I love you guys,
Elder Olson

The smokey skies at least make for beautiful sunsets

Elder Haar (thanks to him for all these pictures), Elder ?, and Elder Olson in the flowered hat, eating watermelon to stay cool in the 100 degree heat

smoke filling the skies 

NOTE FROM ELDER OLSON's MOM: Elder Olson mentioned that the firefighters in Chile are all volunteers. There is no organized fire fighting department. These people have to take time off of work  (often unpaid leave) to go fight the fires for no pay. In addition, agriculture is their main source of industry so these fires are really taking their toll on the people and the country. Please pray for rain and for the wild fires to cease for the Chileans and for the safety of all.