Week 101: Last Letter Home?

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)

week 99: Don't come down out of the holy mountain!

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)

Jaime is great

post soccer P-day pizza

week 97: Working Hard til the end

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)

PDay at the Buin Zoo. Birds

One of these things is not like the other 

week 96: Goodbye Licanten! Last Change

Just so everyone knows, starting this next week (beginning in July) the mission no longer permits chats/google hangouts.

Monday, June 25, 2018 (transcription from Audio letter)

Hey everyone, this is Elder Olson here. This is week 1 of transfer 16. We got the changes, the transfers this week but I'm gonna make you wait to hear. 

It's been a good week. We started off towards the beginning of the week in our zone meeting on wednesday, instead of doing a district class, we, as a zone, watched the devotional (I guess)...the celebration of the second official declaration of the announcement, the anniversary of the announcement, of the priesthood being extended to all worthy male members of the church. So it was celebrating a lot of African culture. And so that was pretty cool. I don't know how many of you saw it but it was fun...kind of something a little different, something that I don't normally see...a southern gospel type choir perform in the conference center. The music was pretty good. I really like that kind of music. It has a lot more energy...a lot more spirit...I mean more soul. So that was kind of fun. And after that, as a zone, we did exchanges. I went with Elder Perry in Curico in their ward there and his companion came to Licanten with my companion. Which was good to give my companion a chance to lead the sector before changes. 

Then on Thursday, we finished the exchange and we did divisions with a couple of members from our branch, to be able to do two lessons at the same time. Which also turned out super good. We have this investigator we found a little over a week ago. I may have mentioned her. Her name is Marcia. We contacted her in a kind of a town square where we always contact in the morning because in this place there are people. She was waiting for a bus and we talked to her and her 6 year old son. She was super nice and told us we could pass by. So we called her and set an appointment and passed by with the branch president and his wife. And it turns out the branch president knows her mom very well and so he knows her pretty well as well. She used to be living with her boyfriend and they used to live almost right next to the branch president and his wife. And the branch president's wife is a teacher and Marcia is also a teacher and so they know each other pretty well and they are pretty good friends. So that was pretty awesome to be able to teach her with them and the branch president and his wife are just thrilled that we are teaching her. And she accepted a baptismal date this week for the 28th of July and I think she has a pretty good chance of getting baptized that day. She's awesome. But she didn't come to church because she was on a trip to Santiago. But if she comes next week, that's kind of the determining factor there...how willing to actually attend church she is. That's kind of a common theme here. But it looks like, I don't know...I believe her...It looks like she'll come. But that was really cool. It went super well.

And then on Saturday, we found out the changes, and I was pretty surprised, to be honest. So my companion will be staying here in Licanten. And I am moving. I will be in my last change, I'll be going back to Buin...which was my second zone in the mission, but it looks like I'll be in a different sector. I'll be in the same church building but a different Branch and this Branch is called Los Jardines(?). Los Jardines is the zone leader's sector, so basically I'll be going back up as a zone leader. Which is interesting...not something that happens very often. It's not very common that a missionary is a zone leader and then goes back to being like a district leader or a co-companion, we call it. We don't have senior or junior companions in our mission, just co-companions, which is what I am right now. Normally you don't go "down" from being a zone leader and then go "back up." So it's kind of interesting that they've asked me to go "back up" for my last transfer of the mission. I was honestly really excited when I found out. I loved Buin and the branch. It was awesome. I am super excited to see some of the people who were there. It sounds like one of my investigators I had while I was there, I know he was baptized soon after I left, but from what I heard he's married and is listed to get sealed in the temple. So I'm excited for that. I had a lot of good friends there and had a really good experience in that zone. I don't know if any of you remember a video I sent in my time there where we made a song. I played the guitar, my companion played the piano and then we had a third  and another that was playing drums on a garbage bin. And that was in that zone. It was really just a great time there. And I'm with Elder Perry right now and He was in the sector where I'm going to. When I was in Rancagua, he was in Los Jardines(?) and he says it was his favorite sector. He says he loved it. So I'm pretty excited. My companion is going to be Elder Koche(?) and he's a Bolivian. I've met him a couple times. He seems like a really good missionary. He's really friendly, which is really cool. And I've heard only great things about him. My zone looks pretty good. There are going to be 5 of us who are...we say "dying" in the mission, who will be ending the mission this change. Which is kind of crazy. There are sooooooo many missionaries that are going home this change. There are 29 of us. And so, yeah, it should be fun. I'm really excited about these changes. 

It also was a little sad to leave Licanten. I know the branch president wasn't super excited to see me go. Talking with President Harris, I think he left me in Licanten for such a long time because I had a really good relationship with the Branch President...a lot of trust there...which frankly wasn't there before with the other missionaries...well I mean, the missionaries right before me, really didn't get along with the Branch President and basically the sector has been turned around a little bit. So I was really excited about that but I know that the Branch President was kind of bummed that I was leaving. It's kind of lame to say goodbye after such a long time to all of the people there. Last night we had a lesson scheduled with Darling and Karen. Darling is the girl who got baptized last transfer. That was also pretty sad. We went to the parents of, I don't know if you guys remember Camilla, the first girl who was baptized in my time here, but her family were the ones who...ok so, Camilla's step-dad's mom, is the cousin of Karen's mom and so the two girls that got baptized, Darling and Camilla, are like cousins twice removed, or like second or third cousins or something like that. I figured it out last night but I forgot exactly what they are. I think they're 3rd cousins. And so we did a lesson in the house of Camilla. The dad's name is Willy. And so we were in Camilla's house with Karen and Darling. We talked a little bit about missionary work and shared a really good message about enduring to the end...kind of trying to (motivate) them to keep doing what they know that they ought to be doing. And when we got there they were preparing soooooo much food. They were making guacamole (the audio get's garbled) and mexican and so we had celebrate that a little bit. And then we had Sopaipillas, which is basically piece of fried pumpkin bread and normally they have it with ketchup and mustard and maybe some hot sauce, but they also make it with this stuff called (?), which you basically melt some sugar and some Chancaca melted in a pot and then you take the sopapillas and you cook them in that sugar and they are sooooo good. I love it. I've only had them once before but they are really great. And then also they made a huge (?) pie...Which is kind of another difficult Chilean dessert. And they just made a ton of it, of all of it. There was so much stuff. So that was super tasty. And so we got there and they already were in the middle of preparing all of it and they were pretty determined to get it all done before we started having the lesson. 

Now we're on the bus to Curico. We also stopped by to some friends here in Curico from my time here. And also my companion wants to buy a few things and probably print a couple of pictures and buy a frame for a letter of congratulations from President and Hermana, Sister, Harris to Darling. I don't know exactly what we're going to do for the activity. I think they said we're going to play minute to win it games. I'm hoping they brought a soccer ball but I kind of doubt it. But I brought my soccer shoes just in case. 

So, yeah, I'm excited for changes. 

I wanted to prepare a better spiritual thought, but I realized that my scriptures I brought with me are my Spanish scriptures so I can't share a scripture with you. But as a small spiritual thought, I was studying leadership yesterday and there's a talk by Spencer W Kimball called "Jesus the perfect leader" which I really really like. I studied in depth the first section about "fixed principles," and about how a leader should be consistent and constant in their principles and always live what they say, have no hypocrisy, and that should be in every moment and that will give the people you serve a stable reference point to know what they need to be doing as well. It talks a little bit about the Savior's example in that and his consistency, really his perfection. But it talks a little bit about how the Savior has that famous line, "come follow me," basically saying do what I do not just do what I say. And so I studied that a little bit and I found about 20 different scriptures where Jesus Christ, in a variety of different ways, says "come follow me." And I know that following his example is something that will bless us in our lives and as we strive to be an example to the people who look up to us, that together we will be able to go to Christ. 

So I hope everyone is having a good week. We are getting pretty close into town here now so I'm gonna end. But I love you all. Have a good one. Ciao. 

Elder Olson

Farewell Licanten Zone

Last Lesson with Darling and Karen and family

Elder Olson plays Teach Me to Walk

Singing God Be With You Til We Meet Again

Week 36: Changes

May 1, 2017

Family and Friends,

It's been a week of pure farewells here in Buin. We had five missionaries finishing the mission last week. We had a farewell, or two, for Elder Strong here in our branch, and we sent him off Friday morning.

On Saturday, we got the transfers. Elder Terrazas will be going down to Santa Cruz, a smaller zone (In terms of active members) out in the country. My new companion is Elder Villegas ("ll" makes a "y" sound) from Columbia. He's coming out of the office where he's been a Mission Secretary for the last few changes.

I've also been assigned to be a District Leader here in Buin. It'll be interesting adjusting to my new responsibilities.

The transfers meant more farewells, and seeing how Elder Terrazas was here for 6 months, there were a lot of people to say goodbye to.

I don't know if I ever mentioned how much Sushi we ate the last change. It was A LOT. At least three times a week, for six weeks. Sadly, without Elder Strong's deep pockets and Elder Terrazas' sushi addiction, I don't think we'll be eating quite as much next change.

Yesterday we went to Buin Zoo, which was open for the first time on a P-Day thanks to Labor Day. It was a bit small, but it was great to go. They had a massive white tiger, but I couldn't get a good picture of it.

When the Sisters in my district gave me their call-in report yesterday, I was really impressed by their work in their sector. I asked what they'd been applying that had been making such a difference in the success of their sector, and they told me it was thanks to their commitment to follow the first impressions of the Spirit. Elder Rasband gave a great talk on that topic in General Conference in April. I've learn a lot about the importance of listening to the Spirit and following its promptings.

Love you guys,
Elder Olson

Elder Strong and Elder Olson

Elder Olson and Elder Thomson (and Elder Haar with a walk through in the background)

On the way to the Buin Zoo...getting chilly and wetter now that Fall is in full force down there

Heading into the Buin Zoo

He found Utah...almost

Week 35: Earthquakes and Changes

4/26/2017

Hey everyone,

We're getting down to the end of the transfer down here. We just found out that one of my Zone Leaders is being called as Assistant to the President, so it'll be nice to have a little inside hook up.

We've been having a ton of tremors this last week. The biggest one was a 6.7 earthquake on Monday. We're all ok, it can just be kind of hard to sleep when we wake up in the middle of the night with the floor shaking.

This week we taught an interesting family. The mom was an author, and the Dad is a CrossFit nut. They had a stripper pole, and a 3 foot tall bong/hookah thing in their house , and they spoke English, and the mom's a Buddhist. They're smart and say they'll read, but they lack real intent and desire to learn.

Our super promising investigator with a baptismal date moved north for work for two months without saying anything to us. So that's nice.

We had a training with President last week in Rancagua. He's putting a big emphasis on asking for references from members. The members here in Buin are great about accompanying us, but I'm yet to receive a reference from a member from my own sector. I've gotten a few from investigators though, one of his has a baptismal date now!

President's been changing a lot of the rules. We won't be having Zone meetings anymore, which is a bummer. We'll just be meeting as a District. Also, we can't play soccer in Ward activities with investigators any more, or give English classes without also teaching a PMG (Preach My Gospel) lesson. I get it, but it's still kind of lame.

Love you guys,
Elder Olson

Quote from a personal email: "One of the big lessons I've learned this week is the blessing of sacrifice. As endowed members we covenant to sacrifice whatever God asks us too. The more completely that we keep this law and consecrate ourselves, the more fully that God can bless us."

Note from Mom: Elder Olson also told his little brother the Chileans don't really celebrate Easter down there the way we do up here. They eat a lot of fish as per the Catholic tradition but that's about it. But they were able to share a lot of the #princeofPeace videos from the church and that was really nice.  He told his other brother that right now, Elder Strong, who lives in the same house, buys and shares a lot of sushi with them. He's feeling pretty lucky on that count. He loves sushi. He's fortunate to have such a generous Elder in the house too. :-)

Drinking Chilean Mate

Chilean opening a Mini-Mission Call

Elder Haar and Elder Olson

Buin Zone