Hey everyone, This is week 4 of transfer number 14. It's been a pretty good week. We did not have a lot of time in the sector for work. We had meetings and meetings and some more meetings.
On Wednesday, we had district class and then after the district class we did divisions with the District leader here in Curico. So we were both in their sector working. So we stayed the night. And we had Zone conference the next day. Which was cool because it was together with Talca where Elder Haar and Elder Lee and Elder Hiatt, where my good friends are all at, so it was cool to be able to see them. And that was good. We talked a lot about the Gospel of Christ, the third Preach My Gospel Lesson, about working with members as well. They're really trying to crack down on the members taking dinner here (giving the missionaries dinner). They don't like the missionaries eating dinner (with the members) here. We just eat lunch and that's it. So yeah, we talked a lot about that. But that wasn't really a problem for us in our sector either.
And then on Sunday morning, the Zone Leaders called us and said "Hey we have a meeting with the mission president and all of the branch presidents and mission leaders and area 70 in the afternoon today." So that was kind of a surprise for us. We ended up driving down with the Branch President to the meeting in the afternoon and it was really good. Talked a lot about the quarter mission meetings and the Branch Council meeting.
So that's about it.
I'm doing good. I'm feeling a little better. I've been feeling a little under the weather the last couple of weeks. But I'm back to being able to exercise in the morning. My comp's not too big on the idea of going to the gym but that's okay.
Today we had an activity in Curico. We just played football or soccer and that was pretty much it. It was solid.
As far as a spiritual thought, I was listening to a BYU devotional, I think it was from 2012. It's called "Optimism and Joy (in the Gospel of Jesus Christ)" which was really good. It had some shout outs to Snowboarding there so I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed what it said about keeping a diary and about how that'll help us to be more optimistic in our lives.
So I hope you guys are all having a good week. Love you all. Take care. Bye!
Elder Olson
(Elder Olson forgot his camera when he went to the Cyber Cafe today so he apologized for no pics. Elder Haar's mom posted this one of Jacob though. Looks like he stole Elder Haar's camera for a stealth selfie.)
Well Alright so this is my 3rd audio recording for transfer 8 week 5.
So this last week was a pretty good one, it was a great one actually, but really long. It was a Long week.
To start off the week: Tuesday was my hump-day, my half-way point in the mission. Because my mission is a little shorter than 2 years, because I'm speaking a foreign language and the way the transfers work out and all that, even though I finish 1 year, the day after tomorrow, this last week was my half-way mark.
So on Tuesday night the secretaries from the mission came over and slept in our house because they had to do some stuff for their visas here in Curico. It was kind of cool to talk to them. It's been a while. It's been kind of lonely here in a house with only two people instead of four...a little boring sometimes. But that's alright. I'll just stay focused. But it was nice to have somebody else in the house. And then Wednesday night we also had a visit from the Assistants who came and slept in our house as well because we had our zone conference on Thursday.
Zone conference was great. We talked about the atonement of Jesus Christ, what that means for us missionaries and what our investigators need to really understand about the atonement to become converted. And the things we need to do to access more power in our lives. President Russell M Nelson from the quorum of the twelve gave a great talk on that in this last general conference. He talked about what we can do to become not only more Christlike but what we can do to have more of His power in our lives. So that was cool. Then in the afternoon we talked about Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. And we brought less actives and investigators, well there were probably about 3 who made it because it was at 3 o'clock on a Thursday so there weren't a lot of people who could come so there were 3 from BOTH zones who were able to come out. But it was good. The zone conferences always give a little bit of a boost, a bit of energy.
Then on Friday, we had intercambios, uh exchanges, with a sector here in the zone which was fun. I was with Elder Christiansen, a gringo from Idaho Falls who's got about 5 weeks in the mission. The poor kid is still working hard at his Spanish, but he's a good guy. I had fun with him. It was great.
That day we had a pretty cool experience. I've talked in my other letters about the Eye of Faith and how the Eye of Faith works and we got to apply that. In our planning we had set the goal to find 3 new investigators and we needed to find those 3 new investigators in order to meet our weekly goal. We went out and we were working all day and about 9 at night, basically we needed to get into a house pretty quick there, and we had one street left to contact that we really had time for so we said a prayer and basically said, "Father in Heaven, we know that this goal is inspired and we need three new investigators to meet our goal. Please guide us and help us to find at least three news." Right after that, the second or third house we contacted, this family of three let us come in. We had actually contacted their son (we didn't know it was his house, he was actually upstairs at the time we contacted the mom) but the son we had contacted in the street one day but he hadn't given us his address because they are Seventh Day Adventists and they are pretty firm in that but we'll see if we can help them out there. But that was really cool because we had barely said that prayer asking specifically for 3 new investigators and right away we found exactly 3. And we were able to meet the goal for the day in the last minute. And that's not the first time that's happened recently. It's been really cool. We've had a lot of experiences like that with finding new people. We've set a goal, my companion and I, to find at least 1 new person every day in this change, and we are on our 4th week in a row of doing that. I've never been able to do that and honestly I've never seen anyone else be able to do that. And it's been cool to work with all these new people. The work now is getting them to progress and to come to church and to actually be baptized. But you've gotta start somewhere.
This week we had 3 baptisms as a zone. We had a crazy experience with that. The sisters from our ward had a baptism (well they had 2) and the Hermana that was going to be baptized, she had asked me to baptized her. But she had also talked with President and had asked permission to allow the missionaries who had found her to be able to come back and baptize her. That's normally a pretty big No, No, because we'd have missionaries traveling all over the zone to do baptisms. But two nights before the baptism, or Saturday morning, President called us first thing in the morning and said, "Listen. I've been up since like 2 or 3 in the morning. I've had an inspirational experience." And he said these other Elders who had found this Hermana needed to come down and baptize her today. So they came down for the baptism today. Which was kind of cool, kind of different. President was there as well. It was kind of a different experience. I don't know WHY that needed to happen, but I'm sure it was what needed to happen. It was kind of interesting to see that.
As a zone, this change has been awesome. We've been having a lot of baptisms as a zone which is AWESOME. It's been great. As of now we've had 7 baptism in this change and we're almost guaranteed to have another 3 or 4. The average number of baptisms in a zone during a change is between 0-3 baptisms. So the fact that we have 7 already and we might have 10 before the change is incredible. Almost every sector is going to have a baptism this change which is pretty awesome.
Today we're gonna have a pretty fun activity, I'll see if I can grab some pictures. We found a JuiJitsu instructor. And I talked to him and told him that I had done some Martial Arts before the mission and we got him to accept to do a class for the Zone. (WOOOOO!) It's gonna be pretty sweet. Hopefully nobody breaks an arm. It should be pretty light, pretty...chill I guess would be the word...tranquillo. So that'll be fun. So we're doing that today.
I've been a little...not sick..., well I don't know how I could be even a little bit sick with all the vitamins that my family sent and that I've been taking every day. But I've got a bit of a sore throat and a plugged up nose. But it's alright. It's just because I've been talking a lot...I've been spreading the gospel. So it's worth the pain. Worth the trouble.
So to finish off I just wanted to share a scripture we'll be sharing with the zone. Because there are a few sisters and a few Elders in the zone who are a little bit discouraged. We're going to share with the zone today this scripture. I really liked it and the way my companion had phrased this. It's in 2 Timothy 4:7 and it says, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." I like to look at that and think of it as a question... Have I fought a good fight? Have I finished my course? Have I kept the faith? It's just something all of us can be asking ourselves this week.
I love you all. Take care. Have a good week. Ciao!
Love,
Elder Olson
The Curico Zone with President and Sister Harris
One Mission Journal Complete
Our JuiJitsu Class (the instructor with 2 thumbs up actually attended University of Utah)
