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 83: A Really Good Week

March 26, 2018

Hello everyone, Elder Olson here. this is week 6 of transfer 13.

This week was a good one. A really good one. I don't know if this sector has seen this good of a week in longer than 6 months. We found a lot of people. We had quite a few people in church and we have some new people who are working toward baptism so we are really excited about that. It's been a really great week.

Towards the beginning of the week, we met with the Nuñes family, who I think I mentioned last time, that they came to church. The dad is a less active member but has been inactive for over 15 years and his wife is not a member and neither are their kids. So we've been working with them. The Branch President and his wife have been really supportive. They gave us the reference so they've been really involved in the teaching process with them. So that's been really good.

So this week they accepted a baptismal date for the 28th of march. 

We weren't able to meet with Darling (I think I mentioned her) because she has had to work. She wasn't able to come to church because she worked. She's a nurse and a nursing student right now. So she was down in Curico and got called into work on Sunday, so we were kind of sad about that. But her mom, Karen, the one who I mentioned about with the prayer last week, who gave the really awesome prayer, she came and brought her little boy. She's a less active member and is really great. Also, a convert, who the first time I came out to Licantén, (if you remember about a year and a half ago, I came out to Licantén for one day with Elder Pollard (?) on a special intercambio, exchange) and that day we had a baptismal interview out at the beach with a kid named Mario. Mario has a lot of problems in his life, but he came to church this past week for the first time in quite some time. So we were really excited that he was able to come out. We've only been able to see him a couple times. We don't get out to the beach very much here. I'm sure a lot of you think we're crazy for that but it's a really small town out there. 

So that has been cool. That's a little bit about the work this week.

On Friday, we had an Elder's Quorum activity, something they've been trying to get done for a little while here. We had a BBQ. It was AWESOME! The food was really good. It was just pork and what's called Choripan (basically just sausage and bread), but it was done kind of a different way. Normally, the sausages are pre-made in these little like individual, like a really short, fat hot dog, but a lot more sausage flavor. But this time, the way they cooked it, they had a really long one and they rolled it up in this big spiral and stuck wooden sticks through it and put it onto the BBQ. Today we kind of copied them. We did our own little Choripan BBQ in the house and it turned out AWESOME! We did it Gringo Style too. We bought BBQ sauce and threw cheese on it and this hot pepper sauce that I made. So yeah that was pretty good.

Right now we are in the church because at the library, they are closed all day and that is the only place that has a computer in Licantén. So me and Elder Hiatt are going to take turns on the computer here in the chapel. So we're just hanging out here.

Other that that, this week's been pretty chill. I have a few more pictures this week. I realized I haven't been sending too many so we've been out in this place called Placilla a bunch. That's where most of the pictures will come from. And Placilla is basically this tiny little one street, well, it's kind of just everywhere between here and Hualañé, the other town I mentioned. In between is called Placilla. The houses are really far apart from each other. It's really rural out there. But it's really pretty. I enjoyed being out there. That's where Darling lives and another investigator with a baptismal date named Juan. Everybody out there is super receptive and nice. There are quite a few parts of this sector that are like that. Licantén not so much, because the missionaries have been pretty limited to working in just Licantén before now so it's been pretty knocked out. Everybody comes and has worked this tiny little town over and over and over again. So when we get out of the town a little bit, we are in places where the nearest missionaries are 2 hours away and so if the missionaries from Licantén haven't talked to them, nobody has talked to them. And so we found some pretty receptive people out there.

One of them, her name's Evelyn, we contacted in the plaza here in Licantén a little while ago and she said we could pass by her house in Placilla. A lot of the time when we contact people who live in a place where we don't stop and proselyte often, we don't always do the best job at getting out to them. Mostly for the sake of time and money, we can't just be using our time stopping by people's houses who live twenty minutes apart. So if we do visit them, we have to get ahold of them by phone. But Evelyn, we said we were going to pass by one day and we did not pass by. And while we were looking for another investigator out in Placilla, we had forgotten she lived there (it had been about a month since we contacted her) we were looking for another investigator and we came across her but we didn't recognize her. She was like, "Hey how are you? Oh you finally found my house." I was like "I don't know who you are." We didn't really remember her. We reintroduced ourselves, I guess. I felt pretty bad about not remembering her. But she was really nice. She let us in. We had to teach her on her porch because her husband wasn't there, but we shared something short with her and set and appointment for this week to go back and teach the whole family. And she has cousins from Santiago who will be coming down here during this next weekend. So they'll be here for General Conference, which will be cool.

So that's been our week. There hasn't been anything else particularly interesting that I can think of. Hold on just a sec.

Oh yeah, at the Branch BBQ we had some investigators come, a group of Haitians.  I'll see if I can get one of the pictures to send that they supposedly sent me, we'll see. All of the Haitians who are investigating the Church that live in Licantén, I think we found the majority of them, we've been trying to teach them. They're all friends at this point. They've all met each other by either coming to church, or because it's a pretty small town. Pretty easy to notice other Haitians. So they all came. There were about 5 of them. Even though they didn't speak much Spanish, they had a pretty good time at the activity this week and we had a few of them in church as well. 

So yeah, that's it. You guys all have a nice week. Love you guys. Take care. Bye!

Elder Olson

Video of the Haze (and Frogs)

Out in Placilla

Elder Hiatt and Elder Olson

Elder Olson said, "Is this picture hipster or what? Not even trying..."

week 57: God's Help

September 25, 2017

Hey everyone!

Sorry about this but I forgot to do the voice recording this morning so you'll have to make do with an old fashioned email!

This change is flying by. This week was kind of a tougher one, so from saturday to sunday I fasted, and during that fast the heavens opened for us. We started finding new investigators, we had visits with members, and we suddenly had a LOT to do, which was fantastic. I was very grateful for God's help because on our own we haven't been accomplishing much.

I did intercambios (exchanges I think) in Rengo this week with my "Brother" Elder Bento, the only other trainee of Elder Santini (my trainer). Afterwards we spent a while fixing the Hermanas' alarms bc the secretaries have delegated that to us now. Lots of work.

I've talked to my man Elder Guariglia down in Curicó and it sounds like they're having lots of success down there! One of my investigators who's baptismal date we'd set was baptized last week and my awesome atheist friend Roberto has attended a baptism and the devotional for young adults and prays on his knees now and has a baptismal date for the 15 of October.

Idk if I told you guys about the rec center with the free weight room by our house, but we've been there twice now and its great. It's my last hope of remaining in shape. Love it.

I quickly want to share my testimony with you of general conference. Take advantage of the opportunity to listen to the Prophet's voice! It's a true privilege. 

Love y'all,

Elder Olson

Note from Elder Olson's mom: I thought it was funny in his closing to me he said "bye" but admitted it took him 3 tries to spell "Bye" correctly. He's truly becoming more and more immersed in the language and culture.

helping the Hermanas (Sisters)