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 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