Week 63: Halloween as Missionaries

Transcribed from audio recording November 6, 2017

Hey everybody, this is Monday November 6, 2017, the beginning of week 4 of this transfer. So this week was pretty normal, until today.

The beginning of the week we had Halloween. But for Halloween we didn't really do anything different. So here they celebrate Halloween, but they've only been celebrating it for the last 15 years? And they celebrate it because it's a holiday in the US and they wanted to get in on that. So it's not HUGE. A lot of people don't like it but a lot do, mostly for the kids. I don't know if I've seen any adults who dress up, mostly just kids who go around trick or treating. So for Halloween my companion and I dressed up as each other. We switched plaques, not plaques, nametags. We switched jackets, watches, I gelled my hair and did it differently so it would look kind of like his and we switched bags and took a picture. So you'll be able to see our halloween costumes there. I thought it was pretty good, pretty clever. A lot of people confuse us for each other anyway because we're both white...and about the same size and hair color more or less. So that was pretty fun.

After that, in the week, we're finally done with all of our meetings. We're back to just normal missionary life. We did have district meetings on Tuesday, we went out to Requinoa(?) which is a little...well all of the sectors in our zone are out in the country more or less. They're like outside of Rancagua. Our sector is the only sector, well our branch is the only branch that is actually in Rancagua and all of our sectors are actually outside of Rancagua. There's another zone in our stake here in Rancagua that has all the wards and branches that are actually IN Rancagua. We get all the outsiders. So we went out to Requinoa for a district class. It was good. It was kind of funny...We saw Elder Tyce and Elder Inuwe(?), the Elders from there in Requinoa, they brought their Matés, which we thought was kind of funny, they kind of followed our example there. We're getting the new guy kind of addicted to Maté as well. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. But it was a good class.

On Wednesday, we went to the district class in Do ñihue which is actually our district. We went there. And Doñihue is really pretty. I like going there. It's really close to the mountains, it has a really big reputation for being the center of a lot of country culture I guess you'd say. Out here the cowboys are called Huasos. They have kind of a different style. I'm actually going to try to by a Huaso poncho today, it's called a Manta. Doñihue is really famous for that. It's a really really pretty little town.

And then after that on Thursday, the Hermana's called us late at night and asked us if we could help them with an investigator who has a drinking problem and was going to set an appointment with a psychologist in the morning. And they had told him that they were going to help him to go to the psychologist but they realized that they can't because they're two sister missionaries and them leaving at 6:30 in the morning with a drunk guy is not at all a great idea and so we had to help them out there.  So we accompanied their investigator to the Psychologist, well to the clinic to make sure he could get an appointment with the psychologist. So it was kind of weird but it was really good for him I think. He came to church this week. So that was the investigator. Well he's actually a less active member. He was actually baptized when he was 13 or 12 and he's been drinking for about just as long. He's been drinking since he was 12 or 13. But it's his mom who's the investigator. But he came to church with his mom, yesterday, so that was really good. It was cool they could see some progress with him because they've been working with him for quite some time.

We had to do a few favors for the Hermanas. And then we got a call from the assistants, last night and the Hermanas are having special changes. So that means one of the Hermanas is going to be leaving our sector here in Baquedano and they are going to be going to Buin. And the Hermana from Buin is going to be coming down here. And it's special because it's the middle of the change the middle of the transfer so they are going to be the only ones who will be changing. I think it's going to be good for our zone. The Hermana that's coming is supposed to be really good. I think it's going to help the companion of the Hermana who's leaving a lot. So I think it's going to be a good change. But that does mean that today we are going to help them. Well, whether or not they really NEED our help...I don't know...but supposedly the Hermana that's leaving has so much stuff that her and her companion and the two missionaries in Buin won't be able to handle all of her luggage. So I don't know WHAT she's carrying but Apparently she needs our help. So we will almost for sure be leaving for the terminal in about 20 minutes. Not sure though. So yeah, that'll be interesting. But it's gonna be good to have this other missionary in the zone. She's been an Hermana leader for the last few changes, but it should be really good.

Apart from that, this week's been pretty normal, pretty chill. We've had a few really good new investigators. We actually contacted one of them trying to find the other one. So the first one, Rodrigo, he contacted us when he was kind of drunk during the dies de ocho festival in September. He came up to us and was like, "I need to talk to you guys. You guys are awesome. I live right here." And we were like, OK. And we went back and he was still super receptive, but the area where we contacted him was a bunch of apartments and they all look EXACTLY the same so we went back and contacted all of the apartments that had his apartment number and while doing that we found another super super receptive lady and her three daughters. So we are now teaching them and also Rodrigo. I think Rodrigo has a good shot at being baptized. Well I think they all have a good shot at being baptized. We've got a lot of good investigators here. The trick for this sector tends to be getting them to come to church. We have one investigator, I think I mentioned him before, named Alejandro, he was super prepared. He'd been to church like twice before. He says he wants to be a member of the church. He basically considers himself a member already. He was waiting for us...when we knocked on his door he was like, "yeah Ive been waiting for you guys. I just didn't want to go to church by myself." He said he was basically a little shy to go on his own. So he's really great. It's been a trick getting him to stay for all three hours of church but we're working on it. A little bit at a time. Nobody can be perfectly ready for baptism.

So today we were going to deep clean the house but that looks like it's not going to happen because of the whole transfer thing, so we'll have to just give it a little light clean.

To leave you guys with a spiritual thought. Today's spiritual thought comes from Luke 21:19. "In your patience possess ye your souls." I'm working a lot on my patience and so I've been making a wall of patience quotes right in front of my desk so every time I look up I see my wall of patience quotes. 

So I do really like this scripture because I think there's a lot that goes into something so simple. But I can let each one of you pull your own meaning out of it. I hope you guys are all doing well, hope you have a good week. Take care. Ciao.

Elder Davis and I were each other for Halloween

Elder Davis nailed his impression of my smile

week 62:Food Poisoning & Elder Bragg of the Seventy

TRANSCRIPTION FROM AUDIO LETTER:

Hi gang,
This is Elder Olson. So this week was pretty interesting. We met a dragon. His name is Phil. But he's not that nice. But we're also finding many new leprechaun investigators. But I think the red one is going to progress. Also, I saw a dog today. It was pretty interesting.

Alright, Hi everyone, THIS is Elder Olson.

That was Elder Davis talking to you. He's not doing too well. He's stuck in bed. So we're here at the house. Elder Davis is sick. Actually the other missionaries in our Branch are also sick. And Basically half of the mission is sick. I talked with Elder Robinson last night and he said there are over 70 missionaries who are sick and there are still more calling in. We had a conference with a Seventy, Elder Bragg, on Friday (and Saturday) and people have been getting food poisoning from the food we ate afterward. They thought it was just the south half of the mission because they had their conference first. But it looks like it's gonna be everybody, well not everybody, but a lot of people on both halves of the mission...not just people in the south half. One of those people is my comp, Elder Davis, who's got the double headed dragon, poor guy. I'm praying I don't get sick. I haven't gotten sick up to this point. I felt a little weird, but I think I'm not going to get sick as in stuck in bed or the bathroom sick.

But this week has been a pretty good week. It's been a loooong week. It feels like we've done so much stuff but it's only been a week.

We started off, on P-day, we had to go and do a choir practice because my companion and I sang in/we did a little musical number during the visit for Elder Bragg. After that we did normal P-day: write home, buy things, get home as quick as we could.

And then during the week, on Tuesday we had a lesson with a family we've been teaching for a while.  They've been receiving the missionaries for quite some time. We decided to leave them. It's kind of sad. It's sad to leave, to stop teaching a family, but they just weren't progressing or keeping their commitments. Then we had to go stay at the assistant's/secretary's house again because last week, I think I mentioned it in my last letter, we had to go do the same thing... stay in their house the night before, get up at 6 in the morning and go do stuff for Elder Davis's Visa, but last week it totally failed and we weren't able to do it. So this week we had to do it again and this week it worked. We still had to get up at 6 in the morning and I had to go save a spot with one of the other companions of one of the other missionaries in the Chilean FBI and we were waiting there about 4-5 hours, no it was 3 hours there and then another 3 after that before we got all the stuff done there. Then we had to go to another place and do some other stuff there...basically we were waiting around for a long time. I got to practice my Portuguese a little bit though because I was waiting with Elder Alcara? from Brazil. Everything was alright. (he says a phrase in Portuguese on the recording) Learning a little bit.

Wednesday was pretty normal. We had a lesson with the assistants that afternoon. We asked them to come with us because One of them, Elder Covey, had contacted this girl, and we started teaching her. And so invited him to come because their sector is pretty close to ours, to accompany us to a lesson so he could have the opportunity to teach her as well and also we needed somebody to come with us to the lesson. It's hard to get members to come with us a lot of the time here. But the lesson went awesome. It was great. She would've accepted a baptismal date but she lives with her boyfriend on the weekends. So can't accept the baptismal date yet. We have to talk about how that's not allowed before she's allowed to actually  get baptized. But she's really good. And she understands REALLY well and I really hope she progresses.

We also this week, on Thursday I believe, we had a lesson with the kid, Jose Ignacio, the soccer player who was a self reference to the church. I can't remember exactly how much I told you about him. But we're teaching him and his family. He's 17. So him and his parents and his younger siblings. But they're also really awesome. They have a lot of desire to learn more. They had promised us last night that they were going to go to church today, and they didn't. I guess I should know better at this point to believe people when they tell me they are going to go to church the next day but that's what happened. So that was kind of a bummer. We were really excited to see them. We actually dragged Elder Davis out there to sacrament meeting even though he's very sick...he wanted to come too...because we wanted to accompany the investigators. But then they didn't get there, and none of our investigators who had committed to come to church came to church. I think it was because it was kind of cold this morning so I think they all got up, looked outside and decided to stay in bed. And we also had a lesson this week with Alejandro, who we found contacting. He's super super receptive. He had a friend who was a doctor who invited him to come to church one time. He came to church and he thought, hey this is really awesome, and then the doctor moved to Argentina so he was too embarrassed to keep coming to church by himself so he didn't. But we contacted him one day and he was like, "ah yeah, I went to your church. I loved it. I've been waiting for you guys because I wanted to come back but I was too nervous to do it myself." So he came to church two weeks ago now, but he didn't come last week because he had to work and this week I don't know what happened and he also did not come today, which was a bummer.

On Friday we had the meeting with Elder Mark A Bragg of the quorum of the 70. He spoke in April conference of this year and his talk was called, "Brighter and brighter, until the perfect day." It was cool to be able to talk with him. In the morning he came and we actually had a special meeting with him first, a small meeting with all the zone leaders, district leaders and the Hermana leaders, so basically mission leadership and Elder Bragg. So that was pretty good. It was kind of short. More like a testimony meeting than anything. He talked to us a little bit about the importance of being an example as leaders. And then after that we had  the actual conference. I felt like I was kind of off to a slow start. I wasn't really...I'm sure it was me...I was having a hard time finding anything I felt applicable to myself. Obviously I'm not perfect but there was a lot of things I felt like I had already heard a million times. But as it progressed and went on I learned A LOT. It was awesome. It was a really good experience. One of the things he promised us, that was very similar to something President promised us a little while ago, ....and he said this as in, "I'm gonna make you guys a promise and here's the promise...if you guys begin to talk with everybody, like everybody in the street, you will triple the number of investigators you have and double the baptisms." So that was cool, because it was a very firm promise. It wasn't like "you will have maybe some more baptisms if you talk with everybody." It was "you will DOUBLE your baptisms and TRIPLE your investigators." So that was cool. That went along with my goal personally and the goal of our companionship to contact 20 people a day. We only actually had one normal day where we were able to go out and do things like we should be able to do and on that day we met the goal, we contacted like 24. Then yesterday we had an almost normal day, we had to do weekly planning and Elder Davis got sick at the end of the day, but we still contacted about 15 people. I want to keep it above 10 when we have other stuff and 20 or more when we don't have anything to do. On those days we did pretty well. We tried to talk to the taxi drivers when they took us places and tried to talk to everybody. It can be tough to find the opportunity but it's really just about opening your mouth.

We had a lesson with a person we contacted in the street just a couple of days ago. We had walked by him and he said, "Hello, Elder." And we're like, oh he knows we're elders. So we ran over to him and were like, stop stop. And we made hims stop and talked to him for a minute. He actually spoke English. He learned English playing video games and listening to music. There are actually quite a few people who learn that way. But he speaks really well. Couple days later, we were actually able to have a lesson with him. So that was cool. He's very..., well he's smart, so that makes him not quite as teachable. He 's not argumentative but he still is pretty fixed in his views. I would like to see him progress as well. He reminds me of the atheist investigator that we had in Curico.

So that is my week. But also today we are going to have interviews with President in the evening. It should be interesting. It doesn't sound like anyone else in our zone is sick except for the ones in our branch, and I'm fine, I'm not sick at all. But we're going to have to do a training there. I don't know how we're going to do that while President is doing interviews because my companion is very sick. I may have to do it myself while my companion hides in the bathroom, I'm not a 100% sure. I think he'll probably be able to compose himself long enough to do the training part. So that's what we're going to be doing today.

But to end, I want to leave you with a small spiritual thought from Elder Bragg's talk in that general conference. It was a pretty good talk. I liked it. He speaks about light and hope more than anything. Light as in Hope. There are a lot of ways we can define Light in our lives. One of the most common gospel definitions is knowledge and truth. But he talks about the hope that comes with light the church, the gospel, the light of Christ.

Now, with all the happiness that will come to us as we more fully understand the Light of Christ, it will not match the joy that we feel when we see the Light of Christ working in others: family, friends, and even complete strangers....May we see the Light of Christ in others constantly and help them see it in themselves. ---Elder Bragg

I know that Elder Bragg is a representative of God. And I know that President Harris here in our mission is also a representative of God. And they are called to the positions they are in and they are guided by the Holy Ghost to be able to address our needs and to lead us. I also know that sharing the light we have with other people will help our light to grow. And when our light grows, we will be able to give more light to others, and increase their happiness and our own.

Thank you guys, love you tons, take care, 

Elder Olson

The gang is back together. My MTC/CCM missionaries

my buddy Elder Haar and Me

week 61: Sick Comp & Tender Mercies

Hey all,

Sorry for not doing a voice thing.

So, after transfers this has still been a pretty busy week. My bike pedal arm broke while I was riding so we are temporarily stuck to missionary work the old old fashioned way (walking). I am starting to lose weight here though (about 10 pounds, 50% because of the gym and 50% because of the size of our lunches).

On Wed. we had to go stay with my man E' Robinson in the office house bc E Davis had to do stuff for his Visa. In the end it didn't work out and we're doing it again tomorrow. After that E Davis got sick and we were stuck in the house all day. I took advantage of the time to write a spanish version of "Be Still My Soul" and clean the house again. I think my overall cleanliness as a human being has gone up about 100 points during the mission.

A lot of you guys asked me about Camilo (the wal mart water bottle flower guy). We've passed by but he hasn't been home.

The other day we had a lunch appointment fall and some members gave us last minute lunch. Tender mercies.

We had Leadership Council on Saturday. We set a goal for 35 baptisms in November, and 70 before new years. We also saw the new Christmas iniciative video which is exciting...

I am currently working on my meekness, which I am defining as humility + patience, two Christlike atributes which I wouldn't consider personal strong points. I'm loving what I'm learning.

Also in our meeting President told us that if we contact 10-20 people a day we will baptize 1-3 people a month. I am going to contact 20 people every day of this change that we don't have meetings. Help me with this! Please ask me how I'm doing with my contacting goal every once in a while.

We have a conference with Elder Bragg of the 70 this Friday (see genconf april 2017). We'll have a special leadership meeting beforehand, and I'll be singing in a small choir for a musical number. Should be fun!

Love you all!

Elder Olson

Neighbor likes to rock out...makes for interesting study 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

week 59: God directs us

Bonswa, kouman ou ye?

Sorry I forgot to do a recording again, whoops! Time management is a skill I'm still working on.

But hey this was a great week. We found a ton of news this week! Some of those were in a house full of haitians. My comp was inspired to start learning creole, so I've had some opportunities to practice! Fun stuff.

This week we went to get an emergency water supply from wal-mart on an odd prompting we had. As we were leaving the store with 40 liters of water a guy pulled up in a car and offered a ride if we could drop flowers off at his co-workers girlfriend's house for him (long story). The girlfriend was super excited and we got the guy's number and address and we have plans to teach him. I think God guided us into that situation.

In other news, changes are this week! I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe I'll go train in a whitewash. That'd be fun.

Yesterday we had a new investigator who had attended church with a friend years ago and really wants to attend again but feels nervous to go. He has some real potential. Also we got a referral from Mormon.org who had a dream that he needed to become a Mormon. I'll let you all know how the appointment goes! But the moral of the story is share the gospel with your friends and one day they could find their way to the missionaries.

Love you guys take care!

Elder Olson

Chile in one picture

The name of this pepper is a swear word

week 58: See Others As God Sees Them

Transcription of Audio Letter.

October 2, 2017

Hi guys, Elder Olson here. Trying to get my recording done nice and early here. Today is week 5? week 5 in transfer number 9. Wow! This transfer's really been flying by.

Well it's been a SUPER busy week...an incredibly busy week. We had meetings every day, except for...no Thursday we still had meetings. We've seriously had meetings every day this week...unless you count P-day. We started off last Tuesday, we had a meeting with the District to watch the General Women's Session of Conference. It was really good. I'll save all my sexist jokes, seeings as how I'm a representative of the church and all that, but... it was good. I learned a lot and I really enjoyed it.

Wednesday we had our zone conference. We talked A LOT about the Book of Mormon. It has really been a big focus in the mission recently, especially this transfer. We've been trying to find new ways to use the Book of Mormon, to use it more effectively, to use it better in our teaching, to use it to find people and really just take advantage of this tool that we have because more than once the prophets have told us that the most powerful tool, along with the Holy Ghost, that we have as missionaries, is to convert people through the Book of Mormon. That's true for a mountain of reasons...I guess that doesn't make sense anyway... but haha for a lot of reasons. But mainly because it's the key to our religion. It's a really powerful tool and we need to use it better. So that was good. We had that part of the zone conference...so that was with President and the Assistants.  Then (with the zone) my companion and I we did a practice and a demonstration and we talked about how we could get people to better read because a lot of times we give people the book to read and they say they're gonna read it, but then they don't. So the trick is really verifying and making sure that they read. That went well. We were up LATE the night before practicing. Luckily the practice and everything went really well. My companion and I were really coordinated. It just went well overall.

Then Thursday we had almost a normal day. Well, we had a normal day but we had our mission leader coordination meeting with the ward mission leader that night, which was really good. Our ward mission leader here is FANTASTIC. He's probably the best mission leader I've had in my mission. He's the only one that I've had that actually coordinates the visits so members will be with us. So we can call him and be like, "hey, on Thursday we have this appointment with this person and we need a member to accompany us at that time...preferably an Hermana from the Relief Society or something like that." And he helps us out there and he's normally able to get the person in that time which is a huge help for use to not have to be calling a million people searching for somebody to do that. And that's really the mission leader's responsibility so it's good to have somebody who's actually doing what he's supposed to do.

And then on Friday we had what's called a capital abierta, which is an open chapel in Rengo, where my family's from. It was cool. It's a big ward. It's probably one of the bigger ones in the stake...if not the biggest it's one of the biggest. It came out really well despite the fact that we had a couple miscommunications about timing and about the number of missionaries that were going to be able to attend. We got together as almost the whole zone. We got everything set up on time. Then basically what it is , is like a tour of the Chapel. But at the same time it's more of talking about what we believe. The sister missionaries go through doing rounds of this tour with people coming in off the street. And they talk about first, our belief in Jesus Christ, and then they give like a super basic version of the missionary lessons and then there are a couple missionaries dressed in white in the baptismal font teaching about baptism and then the groups go through to each organization individually. The organization presents like two minutes about what the organization does. And then at the end we wait with Books of Mormon and pamphlets and we get references...or referrals...I guess is what they call them. My friend didn't know what references were the other day and I didn't know how to explain them. Referrals. Anyway, so that went really well. We brought in quite a few people off the street.  I also thought it was a really good opportunity to show some of the newer missionaries how we should be talking with everybody. During the open chapel especially, if there was somebody riding their bike on the other side of the road, my companion or I would run over to the other side of the road and stop the guy on his bike and talk to him about the chapel and invite him in. I think that's something that's not super common to see in our mission culture and so it was really good for the newer people because we have a lot of trainees in our zone...to see that and see that example.

It was also kind of cool because I found out a couple things with my family. I met one of my Aunt Marianela's cousins, her name's Valeska. She was there working in the open chapel. I also found out one of my cousins had been on a date with the wife of our ward mission leader here in Baquedano. So that's kind of funny. Just the connection that my family has to this area is kind of cool.

Then Saturday and Sunday we had general conference, so we went to the stake center in the center of Rancagua to watch it. Which was cool. It was good to have the opportunity to get together with all the other gringo missionaries in Rancagua and talk about and watch the general conference together. A lot of themes really stood out to me. I had several questions that I went into the conference...well with three questions, looking specifically for those answers and I found probably more than ten answers for each one of those questions. Because they weren't just like yes or no questions, they were more in depth. But I found a lot of answers and a lot of things that will really help me.

So one of the themes from general conference that I noticed that I really liked was the importance of seeing the divine potential in ourselves and in others. In Women's conference that was especially a theme and I feel like it's always a theme in Women's Conference from what I've seen, but I felt like it was a theme in other sessions as well...that we need to recognize that we are children of God, that we have the potential to become like him, but I think at least as important is that we realize that others have that same potential. To think "how does God feel about the way I'm treating His children? Is he happy about the way I'm treating his children? And really loving them and seeing their potential even when they HAVE WEAKNESSES? It's okay because we all have weaknesses and they have just as much of a right to move on from those weaknesses as you or I do." So I really liked that theme. I also saw that more than once when talking about local leaders. Here in Chile in particular, a common problem that I notice is quite a few people that don't support their leaders. Who have a branch president or a bishop and say basically that they don't do anything or that they aren't fulfilling their calling. But even IF that is true, saying that about that person is not going to help. That's not sustaining your leaders, that's not really seeing them as children of God. And the only way that we're gonna help the situation is if we help sustain them, if we do what they ask, if we magnify our callings or our priesthood or family responsibilities to the max...as much as we can. So I really enjoyed that and I really hope that people, including myself, can take that to heart and be examples of that kind of charity...seeing other people as God sees them.

It's been a good week. It's been a busy week. With all these meetings, we had a total of probably a total of 8-10 hours to proselyte, which is basically one day of work. But it turned out well and it was definitely worth it to have all of these experiences this week.

I want to share a short testimony with you that I know that God leads this church through prophets, through Thomas S. Monson in our time, and through the apostles that are supporting him especially in this moment that he is passing through difficulties with his health. I know that they receive revelation and that they are called of God. If we apply what they teach us in our lives, then we will be happier and have more success in our lives, the kind of success that is lasting and a more eternal success.

Also with all the messages about the Book of Mormon, I would just like to share my testimony as well that the Book of Mormon is true and that if we read it every day and meditate and ponder its precepts, we WILL come closer to God. We will come closer to him by doing this than we could ever come by applying the principles in any other book. I know it's true. And it was a long process for me, even though it was quite a while ago before my mission, to find that out for myself that the Book of Mormon is true. But when I really put in my part, and was sincere, I got my answer. I know that that book is the word of God.

I want you guys to know that and that I love you guys. I hope everything is well back home. I hope nobody's died from Hurricanes or Korea because that's what everybody talks about down here. Take care, have a good week!

Bye, Bye!

Meeting Aunt Marianela's cousin, Valeska

"Food Tasty" food truck :-)

Elder Davis "mowing" the missionary's lawn

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)

week 56: Prepare for General Conference

9/20/17

Everyone,

Wow, I can't believe it's already conference season. I forgot to mention anything in my short recording, but I just want to say how grateful I am for the opportunity to listen to God's word for us in our time specifically. Few people know about this opportunity and even fewer take advantage of it.

Thomas S Monson is a prophet of God.

He knows the way.

Love you guys.

Elder Olson

(Audio Letter transcription...)

Hey everyone Elder Olson here, this is week 3 of my 9th transfer here in the Mision Chile Rancagua. Right now I'm on the bus going to intercambios, it's Wednesday morning right now. We're going to go to exchanges I think it's called. We're going to go do intercambios with the elders from Rengo, which is the city where my Aunt Marianela is from if I'm not mistaken. I forgot to mention that they were in my zone. I don't know how I forgot to mention that. But yeah, so...gonna maybe run into some family down here, you never know. We'll see if I can find em down here.

It's been a good week. We started off the week with interviews with President which went really well. We gave a training to the zone which also went really well...it was kind of a longer one because the interviews always go long. But it was good. I think everybody liked it and I think it kind of motivated everybody a little bit which is good.

Also this week the big deal was dios de ocho, the 18th of September, which is basically like the 4th of July for us, but here they celebrate it a little differently. Basically they just all get drunk and that's about all. No...the food kind of changes. A lot of seasonal foods for the 18th here. They make a lot of empanadas and BBQ, like Chilean BBQ, not American. And a couple types of drinks they make only at this time of year as well. So that was kind of cool to see the culture. They do a lot more dancing, the Cueca. Cueca is like the national dance here. It wasn't really a joke about the drinking. They all use it as kind of an excuse to drink. I'll see if I can send a video of the drunk people in the street. (it was too dark) We see a lot of drunk people just passed out in the road asleep. So that's kind of fun, kind of interesting and different. I don't see a whole of of that kind of thing in Utah. 

So we had some members invite us to eat lunch with them. We ate a lot of food. More than one member invited us to eat with them. And it was on Pday so we kind of took advantage there. We also cut the front lawn which was nice. But it was kind of a pain because you have to do it with a weed whacker instead of a lawn mower. It makes me feel more Chilean cutting it with a weed whacker. It's not much of a lawn but it was just waaaa-ay too long. We've been cleaning the house bit by bit. So we did that in the morning and then had to run to the chapel to pass the zone numbers and then after that we went and ate lunch with some members. I feel like we did something else too but I can't remember what we did. Then we ended up eating with some other members and then we went out to work like normal in the evening. We have to go in a little bit early this whole last weekend because it is a little bit more dangerous supposedly with all the inebriated people out in the streets. But for me all the drunk people just mean more people shouting "HEL-LO, Hel-lo!" in English so it was kind of fun.

So that's the majority of what's happened this week.

We have a couple of investigators that are progressing pretty well. One is named Francisco, he's a kid, he's about 11, he has a baptismal date for Nov. 11th, that's further out then it would need to be but that's because he's pretty much alone. His family is made up of less active members. But he reads the book of mormon and comes to church himself, and he loves it. But we've gotta make sure that's he's not just gonna get baptized and then stop coming... it's really difficult because he doesn't have that support system. It just makes me really grateful for the support I had from my family. And then we have some others...a father son named Filipe and Filipe, they both have the same name. They've also come to church a couple weeks now. And they also have a baptismal date for the middle of October. They've got a good chance of getting baptized. The dad just really needs to...well we haven't gone over the word of wisdom with him yet. We were focused on getting him to church and now he's started attending, we're going to teach him the word of wisdom and help him quit his smoking. It's an addiction I guess but it's not a huge problem for him either. It's one or two every couple of days. It really shouldn't be all that tough for him to just leave it.

So since I'm on the bus, I hadn't really prepared a spiritual thought to share with you guys so this is going to be a short one. We had a short time to write today. I don't know if you can hear all the country music in the background... 

But love you tons. Have a good week. Talk to you later!

Elder Davis trying Mate

Mate Adventures

Cueca Dance

week 55: Hello Rancagua!

9/11/17

Hello!

So this is the first week of transfer 9 now. It's crazy. Time is really flying. I'm going to apologize in advance for the background noise. I forgot to record in the morning and now we're on our way to the cyber, the computer place, to write you guys. So now that I'm here walking, there's going to be a bunch of background noise and I'm probably going to be super scatterbrained but hopefully you guys can understand what's going on.

So yeah, we had transfers this week. I came to Rancagua. This is my first time in Rancagua in the mission. I'm in a branch here. It's a pretty big branch, definitely bigger than San Clemente but smaller than Buin, the last branch I was in. It's called Baquedano. It's pretty centric, central, something like that. It's the only sector in our Zone that is actually here in Rancagua. I'm a zone leader again here with Elder Davis from Washington. He's a stud. I like him. He's a solid 7 out of 10 hahaha. No, he's awesome, he's awesome.

Got here on Tuesday. To be straight, I've gotta comment on the conditions of the house that the last Elder that was there kind of left it. Not in tip top shape I would say. So we did a little bit of cleaning, did a little...honestly it was basically an exorcism of the house...because of all the stuff we had to clean but we almost had to do a real exorcism I guess because it sounds like the house is haunted apparently. Nah they were just saying some weird stuff was happening with the house before the change and the change before that. Having some weird stuff happen with an investigator but I won't go into too much detail. But honestly I haven't seen any weird stuff happen I think we're gonna be just fine. Basically the bathroom was really dirty. The sink had been clogged for like a week and it wasn't fixed still. So we got here and I spent the first couple hours cleaning like the necessities and then today I finished off the rest.

The sector seems really good. It's like a suburb. There's only one supermarket and there's bunch of chinese food stores. It seems like there's a lot of Chinese food in this sector. So that's kinda cool. But a lot more suburb. I've always been in sectors that are a lot more central that have more stores and a main street and stuff like that but this is my first sector that is just suburb, just houses basically. We got bikes. My companion's bike was broken so we had to take them to get fixed earlier this week to the office. It's kind of nice, the office is really close. I got to see my boy, Elder Robinson, who is from my CCM, MTC group, who I haven't seen up until this point in the mission. So it was cool I got to see him. I got to see him in the leadership council as well.

This week we had a lot of meetings. Tuesday we had changes, Wednesday we had a meeting to set goals and plans as a zone, and Thursday we had leadership council with all the zone leaders and sister leaders. And then Saturday we had to give a training to the District leaders and tomorrow we're going to have interviews with President. So that'll be fun. I'm excited for that. Looking at the zone (stats?), it looks a little more complicated as a zone than Curico. I don't know. Curico was kind of an easier zone than here. Last change there weren't any baptisms and it was really tough to get people to church in our sector last change. But we're already looking up. This first Sunday we had a couple investigators in sacrament meeting. One of the sectors already had a baptism. So we're already seeing improvements in the first week. We are already being blessed. I obviously didn't do anything...I just barely got here. We're just getting blessed to start out the change. So that was cool.

Today we did a pday activity and made Choripan which are like a hot dog with a sausage but a different kind of bread and then you put an aji which is like a spicy salsa. I don't know how to explain a lot of the food down here. You just have to see it to know what it's like but it's pretty common to see down here so that's a pretty common zone activity that we do. We did that and played football.

So our zone is almost pure new people. Every companionship, except for my companion and I, is a training companionship. So there are two companionship that have elders in their second change in their mission and then we have 3 who are brand new. We had a Filipino and two gringos. So we have a lot of new people. Hope we can keep them all excited. Not let them "die". Keep everybody, give them a lot of energy and an optimistic first look at the mission is the idea.

Other things that happened in the week: We got rejected pretty hard a lot of times. We've been looking a lot for new people. Both Elder Davis and I, in our sectors, have had a lot of success in finding people. But this week, we both felt like we were working hard, not only hard but really smart, but we both got shot down pretty hard a couple times. One investigator who had a baptismal date, I hadn't met him before, but we went to his house, and we called for him, (you yell, you don't knock on the door), so we called out "ALLO!" and we yelled like 5 times and then called him a couple times, but this guy did not...well we passed by his house a couple times and we were like "we know you see us." We just wanted to talk to him but if he didn't want to talk to us that's fine, but we don't want to waste our time passing by his house if he's not gonna want anything. But he came out and he seemed really mad. He came out and threw the Book of Mormon at us. He like shoved it through the fence and was like, "I DON'T WANT ANYTHING ELSE! STOP COMING BY MY HOUSE, STOP COMING AROUND HERE. STOP COMING CLOSE! JUST GET OUT!" I was like, " Oh, OK." That was kind of rude, I don't know. One that was out of nowhere. Usually people are pretty nice. If they don't want anything, then they say they don't want anything right away. So it's kind of weird to have somebody who's kind of receptive at first saying, "yeah, yeah," and then they have such a big change and be like that to be that rude I guess. I guess

But I guess I'm kind of spoiled. I know there are missions where people are a lot ruder than that. ...We're blessed. We're lucky.

I've got a funny experience. So we were contacting the other day and we go to call at a house and say, "Allo!" But we had been saying a lot of prayers that day, trying to go by the spirit. So Elder Davis, my companero, my companion, he goes to say "Allo!" but instead of saying "Allo!" he yells "Padre.." Like he was going to say Heavenly Father but yelling it...like he was going to start a prayer but yelling. but he was saying hi to the house, like knock on the door. Ahhhh it was soooo so funny. So so funny. I just about died.

That's pretty much all I can think of for now to tell you guys. I'm optimistic for the change. It looks good. A lot of good missionaries in the zone. The district leaders we have working with us are awesome, awesome people.  Elder Rogers and Elder ? are the names and they're solid. And another weird thing is all those trainees...there's a bunch of them from Utah. I have never had so many people from Utah in my zone. There's one from Salem, one from St. George, one from Orem and then me. And then there are two more gringos, one from California and one from Washington. There are only 2 Latinos, 3 Brazilians and 5-6 gringos. Which is really weird. I've never had a zone like that. My last zone I was like the only or 2 gringos. I don't know, there weren't a lot of us. But that's cool.

I love you guys. Take care. Read your scriptures. Say your prayers do all that good stuff obviously. Look for ways to help people. I hope everyone's ok with all the natural disasters that are going on up there. I've heard a lot about the hurricanes especially and a lot of crazy stuff that's happening. But we can always trust that God will take care of us when we're doing what he asks. Or if we are in a situation where it doesn't look like he's taking care of us, it's not so because sometimes we've gotta learn to do things for ourselves too.

Take care. Ciao!

week 54: Goodbye Curico! If you want a thing bad enough

9/4/2017

Hello, Friends, Family, Beautiful People of the United States of America,

This is Elder Olson coming at you from the beautiful Curico Chile Alameda Ward. It's a beautiful morning looking out the window here. Well I honestly can't see much because the sky's full of chimney smoke but that's okay. It's still a beautiful day for a BBQ. We're going to go have a farewell BBQ with one of our investigators because...I am leaving. I am leaving Curico. We got the transfers on Saturday night. We got them super late because the assistants changed the password to our account, well to all the zone leaders' accounts, because a lot of zone leaders and other people try to get the transfers early and so we ended up getting them super late but it all worked out ok.

So I will be leaving Curico after just 2 changes here, I thought I would be here a little longer. But that's ok. I'll be headed to Rancagua to a ward that's called Bacadal(?). I'll be with Elder Davis there. I'm gonna be a zone leader gain there. So that'll be fun. I HOPE we can do the same thing there as we did here because we had a TON of success here this last change. It was awesome! A lot of success in the sector, a lot of success in the zone. In the sector we have at least 2 definite baptisms in the next change and at least 2 or 3 that are probable. I'm kind of sad that I won't be able to see them but I am really stoked that I'll be leaving here on a high note.

So this last week we've been teaching Roberto. I think I mentioned him last week. He's an atheist we found at 9:30 at night last Saturday and he came to church Sunday. We've been teaching him through the week and he came to church again yesterday. And he's awesome. We've been teaching him and he has a lot of questions but he's really sincere with his questions. You get a lot of people who just want to fight about philosophy or who want to Bible Bash or who knows, but he's really sincere and he actually wants to know. And when we explain something and it makes sense to him,  he's like, "Ok yeah, that's cool. I understand that." And so that's been really cool. And we've seen some progress with him this week. He reads everything we give him right away and then he's like, without even looking at the book, "I've got questions about verse 27, verse 32 and 33 and he really understands what we're talking about. That's not something that I'm really used to. It's awesome. I love that. And this week he prayed for the first time. I don't know if it was the first time in his LIFE...I doubt it. But it was his first time with us and we've invited him to pray before and he was like, "No. I'll read, I'll come to church to learn more but I'm not gonna pray to somebody who doesn't exist." And we talked a lot about faith...about hope in things which are not seen which are true and a lot about how action is part of that faith. Really faith is everything as far as missionary work is concerned. So this last lesson we had with him, we invited him to baptism and he rejected us but he did accept the invitation to pray at the end. And he didn't say that he'd NEVER be baptized but he didn't accept a date. He accepted the lighter invitation, that if you pray and read and you feel that these things are true, would you be baptized. And he said, "Yeah, if I think it's true, then yeah I'll be baptized." So it's something but a little bit at a time. Despacito. (I don't know if that song's super popular up there...I think it would be because there's a Justin Bieber version that's going around here now as well. But that song's been really popular here for a while).

This weekend we were doing some farewells, well last night more than anything, with one of the families that's been really great to me here. This ward is definitely one that I want to visit again at some point because it's been a lot of fun here, even though I've only had a short time. We had a good FHE yesterday with these converts about not being afraid to stand alone. We watched that video with President Monson and the Navy which is awesome.

Apart from that, this change we've had this goal of finding 7 new investigators a week. I mean you can't compare with other missions, whether that's a lot or a little compared to other places but here that's a lot. That's not something that I've ever seen any other sector do, to find one new investigator for every day of the week of the change, or the whole transfer. But WE DID IT, and we did it a week early. We found 13 in one week and 8 the next so that made it like an extra 7 so in week 5 we'd already met our goal. And that put us at 42 for the change so we were like, "alright, we've gotta find 8 in the next week instead of 7 because if find just 7 in the next week it'll only be 49 and it's not as cool. You've gotta get 50. So we worked a lot to get those new investigators this week and we got to Sunday and we only had 4 new. And we were pretty desperate going everywhere we could think of to look for "news." We contacted for a little while and nothing. We were going by "futures" and no one was home. Everyone leaves their house on Sunday. At the end of the day, it was literally the last minute. We had an appointment for that FHE (talked about before) at 8 and it was probably like 7:45-7:50 we passed by this house with some Hatians that we'd passed by before and there were a couple of them that speak Spanish...I mean even though I'm basically a pro at Creole, I'm not really actually that pro...I can introduce myself and tell them I speak a little bit of Creole and that's about it.  But we got there and knocked on the door and nobody was there. So we call them but their phone cuts out, we can't hear them, we have no idea where they're at. We call them a couple times. But nothing. Nobody's there. It's a young married couple there in that house with a bunch of other Hatians who live there as well, but the young married couple speak better spanish. But right when we...we were knocking for like 5 minutes...when we were leaving, I said a silent prayer while my companion was on the phone. I was like, "we need these 4 news to meet our goal and I know that it's possible and you can help us." And right when I finished saying the prayer, they pulled up in a car...the married couple got dropped off and they were like, "hey come in!" and when we went in there were 2 of their friends who were just kind of kicking around not doing anything. So we invited them to listen too so then we had our 4. It was 4 exactly. It was exactly what we needed to meet our goal. That was a nice little miracle.

We also had a TON of people in sacrament meeting. I haven't had that many people in sacrament meeting in my whole mission. We had a bunch of baptismal dates as well. It's been awesome.

Earlier in the week I broke one of the axels on my bike's back wheel so we were on foot again for a little while...which is...well it's a pretty long walk. Not as far as Buin, but it's still pretty far.

I wanted to share something I read a little while ago but I love it, about goals. I really want to testify about the power of goal setting, because that was the way we had so much success during this change. By setting goals and saying, "We're not giving up until we meet this goal." And it's a poem I found in one of the talks that I have that I read. It's called, "If you want a thing bad enough." (altered to match the real version found from multiple sites online)

“If you want a thing bad enough to go out and fight for it,
to work day and night for it,
to give up your time,
your peace and your sleep for it…

if all that you dream and scheme is about it,
and life seems useless and worthless without it…

if you gladly sweat for it and fret for it and plan for it
and lose all your terror of the opposition for it…

if you simply go after that thing you want
with all of your capacity, strength and sagacity,
faith, hope and confidence and stern pertinacity…

if neither cold, poverty, famine, nor gout,
sickness nor pain, of body and brain,
can keep you away from the thing that you want…

if dogged and grim you beseech and beset it,
with the help of God, you will get it!”
---Les Brown

Really that's true. I've always firmly believed in that. If we want something bad enough, we'll get it. It's really just a matter of becoming motivated enough to put in the WORK. Really no matter what it is, it's just a matter of work and how much we are willing to give to achieve it. That's especially true with missionary work or anything in the gospel. Only when we have our will aligned with the will of God. When our desire is the same as God's desires, when we want what He wants, we will get it almost every time. God might try our patience, he may make us wait for it, or maybe we'll screw up and that's ok, but really when have a righteous desire and exercise faith to achieve that righteous desire and it's according to the will of God, we WILL get it. And we can't make the excuse of "oh maybe it's not God's will, not what He wanted..." if it's a righteous desire we have to go at it with everything we've got and that's when we will get it. And I'm really excited to apply that in the new sector this change. I'm really hoping this sector wasn't a "one-hit-wonder" and that I'll get to this new sector and everything will just go to dirt, but by really applying this we'll have success there. And I'm super excited to have a chance to do that.

I want to let you all know that I love you and I think about you guys. I love you. I know the church is true. Read your scriptures. Pray. Go to church. Have family home evening. Do all the stuff you know you should do. I love ya. Take Care!

Freaky Elevator

inside freaky elevator

drum corps

Curico Alameda District

hmmmm what's up with my haircut, Sister?

Milanesa

Goodbye BBQ

Goodbye Familia Ruz and friends