week 77: Interesting Investigator and Being Holy

February 12, 2018 (transcription from audio file)

Hey everyone, this is transfer 12 week 6. 

We are already coming to the end of the transfers. Pretty crazy.

This week was good, we started off on Wednesday doing exchanges with the Zone leaders. I went with Elder Tyce in Curico and Elder Hiatt got to practice leading the sector here in Licantén. It was good, kind of just a really normal exchange. As far as being with Elder Tyce, we were talking about it and we've been in the same zone in at least 4 different zones during our mission. We've been together a lot of the time. I was his zone leader for four changes now he's taking a turn being my zone leader. So fun stuff, being able to hang out with him. 

It's funny, in their house there are 4 elders there and they drink A LOT of Maté, all four of them. Our district has a cold Maté habit. We drink a lot of it with juice. It's pretty good. So that day, the morning of our second day of the exchange, we taught a Columbian investigator who was progressing really well and it was looking like he was going to get baptized but he doesn't feel ready to be baptized yet and they weren't sure why. So we had a lesson with him. It was really good. But he doesn't want to be baptized because he says he needs to go back to Columbia and fix some things in his life. And we thought it was just his girlfriend that he left there in Columbia and he needed to figure some stuff out so he could live the law of chastity. But I talked to the Zone Leaders yesterday, and it looks like he talked to them after church and he kind of let them know why he felt like he couldn't get baptized. And he has been telling them he works in a bakery. But he doesn't work in a bakery, he works as a hit man, basically. The loan sharks who lend people money, they hire him to go beat people up and so that is what is keeping him from being baptized. Luckily he didn't keep lying to them and he told them before instead of just thinking he was fine in getting baptized, he knows what he is doing is wrong. But that is a pretty hard process to go through for the repentance of a sin like that. It is very illegal and he'd probably have to turn himself in or confess to the cops. So the Zone Leaders were pretty heart broken about that one. He's a super nice guy. Super nice guy. We were pretty surprised when we heard about that. So yeah, that was interesting.

On Saturday this week we went and did a service project for Pamela's Dad. His name is Willy. He's the Elder's quorum president. We took out a bunch of his grass and helped him put in a fence on the side of his house...like help him dig holes and put in the wooden posts where he's going to put a barbed wire fence. So that was fun. It was some good work. And then we had a lesson with Pamela. It looks like she's going to get baptized on this next Saturday, which we are pretty excited about. She really wants to and she's been keeping her commitments so far. She's been keeping the word of wisdom and yeah we are just missing like one more visit and then the baptismal interview. We'll see. But she's doing really good. So keep her in your prayers please. Pray for her to be baptized this week. We are really hopeful for her.

Today, for Pday we came out to this little bridge and cultural center that we've seen on our way back from the little country sector where we come out to work sometimes. So we came out here to see the bridge. It's really cool. It's a really pretty place. They have a little cultural center that is a tribute to some author, who...not really sure who exactly he is or why they have this place to him. They have a little museum but it doesn't say much about him.  It talks more about the culture here in this part of the valley and it has some old hand woven stuff. One of the things that's kind of cool here is that the woven stuff that they've worn here for a long time, they still have it. They make it differently now. It's not quite as long of a process. And it's kind of expensive to get it but it's pretty common here to wear these poncho type of clothing. So it's pretty cool to be able to see that. 

So it's super pretty out here. We've been hanging out here all day. We did clean the house this morning. I built some shelves, put together some shelves. (sorry, getting on the bus). That's about it I think. This week are going to have the visit from Elder Christofferson. We are going up to Santiago on Wednesday. On Tuesday we are going to have a meeting with the whole mission so it'll be good to see my buds. It'll be the first time I'll have seen everybody in my whole group in a long time.

So this morning to prepare spiritually for the meeting with Elder Christofferson, we listen to and read the talk from Elder Christofferson this last conference, which I think is called "The Living Bread Which Came Down From Heaven." It talked a lot about the sacrament and our quest I guess, our search for holiness. And he talked a lot about trying to bring holiness into our every day lives and make ourselves more holy. I really liked the example he talks about with the pioneers and the early saints who put "Holiness to the Lord" on a lot of their everyday items. So that's pretty cool. One of the things that's also cool, in Spanish is that the word for holiness and the word for saints is basically the same. The word for holiness is santidad and the word for saint is santos. And so it's kind of just a reminder that who are is, we are supposed to be holy as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

(sorry. Getting off the bus now)

So yeah, that's all. I hope you guys are having a good week. Love you tons. Take care. Bye!

Elder Olson

ADDED NOTE: Elder Olson also told us his Mission President's Wife brought a keyboard to their apartment so he could practice. He now plays the piano for the Branch's Sacrament Meetings. He said, "I make a lot of mistakes, but that's ok. :-)"

He also said...

"I've gotta keep up on fruits and vegetables and start cutting out bread though. These last few months are called "sexy six" here. I did put up 200 lbs on the bench this week though! I should have put that in my letter. I've still got it. E Hiatt and I have done some cleans and thrusters as well trying to work in a bit of crossfit."

week 76: I saw the Ocean

February 5, 2018 (transcription from audio file)

Hey guys, this is week 5 of transfer 12. Today's gonna be a short one. We just got back from a trip to a Lake called Lake Vichuquen and the beach. So we're heading to the library right now to write and Licantén is pretty small so it's a short walk. But it's been a good week.

Earlier in the week we found a lot of new investigators. We went out with the Branch President and he helped us. He brought us some references. He knows just about everybody in this town because he works in the bank and it's the only bank for about two hours. I think I may have mentioned that. So yeah, he knows a lot of people so we just show up at people's houses and he talks to them for a minute and they're like, "Oh, Juan, so good to see you. Come on in." And they just invite him on in, and we go in with him and share something and it's great. It's really great to be able to work with the members. It helps a lot. A LOT! We found a family, two families, of less active members who were baptized about twenty years ago. There were some missionaries who just baptized a LOT of people in that time but none of them stayed active. 

But then, Wednesday we went down to Curico for district meeting. Then after lunch we had a meeting for the District leaders, the Zone leaders and the sister leaders...a little leadership meeting. And then we did splits. We went in the sector of the Elders there in Bombero Garrido, one of the sectors in Curico, and so I went with Elder Mora, who's Brazilian, he's pretty new in the mission...he got here with Elder Hiatt. And Elder Hiatt went with his companion Elder Bundy from Nevada. So we worked there all afternoon and in the night we ate Sushita which is sushi wrapped in pizza. Pretty awesome idea.

On Thursday we had Zone conference, so we stayed the night there because it's like a two hour drive to Curico from Licantén. Other than that the week has been good.

We found a new investigator a couple weeks ago who's really awesome. He's intelligent and receptive. He's a single dad. He's divorce and has his daughter on Tuesdays during the week. And he accepted a baptismal date this week for the 17th of March. He seems pretty excited to read and pray and get his answers. He understood really well.

And that is about it. I'll send you some pictures from the week. We are in the library now. Take care, I hope everything is going good back home. Love you guys. Bye!

Elder Olson and Elder Hiatt at Lake Vichuquen

From the Lago

Accessible almost exclusively through rich people's backyards. They were nice and let us take pics tho

Elder Olson says, "my "son" makes me look short"

week 75: Service Opportunity

January 29, 2018 (transcription from audio file)

Halo from Licantén. This is the fourth week  of change 12.1

Hi guys, that was Elder Hiatt helping me out. So we are on our way to the Library right now to write. Our Pday has been pretty relaxed so far we just made some pizza and went to the gym and that's about it...and a smoothie, we also made smoothies, which were super tasty. 

This has been a good week. It's been kind of crazy, a lot of stuff to do. On tuesday we did a service activity, well a service, for a part member family who were receiving the missionaries a while ago and they came to church a lot. They came to church for 2-3 months straight. That was in August of last year and then their missionary that they loved so much just left them so when the other missionaries came it just wasn't as good and they stopped coming to church. So we are trying to get some trust with them so we did like a six hour service project with them on Tuesday. We helped them lay cement. They moved out to a house in the country and it's a REALLY old like adobe brick house. They had destroyed half the house to rebuild it and we were laying cement with them...making the mix and putting it out. I don't know exactly how you make cement in the states but I'm pretty sure it's a little different here because we just got two mountains of dirt and rocks and cement mix and you just put it all in one of those things that spin around, haha, I don't know what they're called. And then you have to dump it out and it's like one wheelbarrow at a time. It takes probably over a hundred wheelbarrows to do the amount of cement that we had to do. So we worked for about 6 hours without stopping. But we got it all done. We got it all laid out. There were a bunch of us working as well, it wasn't just the two of us. the owner of the house and a couple of his friends were also working. So he is not a member, but his wife is and his kids are members, but they don't go to church. But one of the big obstacles for their progress has been that they weren't married, but they are getting married on the 14th of February now and we are going to try to get them to accept a baptismal date this week for probably the beginning of March. So we're excited about that.

Apart from that, we went and did exchanges with the Zone Leaders which was fun. I got to be with Elder Crompton from my MTC group. I haven't seen him very much at all in the mission honestly. He was one of the last people from my group that I saw a second time, like after the MTC and the meetings with the new missionaries. So it was cool to be able to catch up a little bit. Love the guy. It was super fun. While we were on intercambios, we found a little trail that took us to a little cemetery we had no idea existed so you'll get some cool pictures of that. 

A couple of days after that, on Saturday, we went down and were there in Curico all day, all afternoon, doing the Book of Mormon activity that I told you about that we did last week here in Licantén. We helped the other district out to do it down there. Found a lot of people. I got to practice my Creole a little bit. There are some Haitians down there. One of the people I contacted was a member from Haiti. He started singing How Firm a Foundation in Creole so that was pretty fun...I got to see something a little different.

Pamela is doing really well. She's progressing. She went to church again this week. She seems super excited for her baptism. And her family is really cool.

We just got here to the library to write so that's about as much as I'm going to be able to get to for my reporting this week. But I'm excited for this next week. We have zone conference. That'll be good. I'm excited about that. But yeah, we're working hard. We're seeing a little bit more progress in our sector this change than I think the missionaries have seen in a little while so I'm excited about that as well. Me and Elder Hiatt are still getting along great, having a good time. I hope you guys are all doing well.

A little thought: I was just the other day talking about General Conference talks and I realized how little I took advantage of the easy access I had to General Conference talks before the mission and now I listen to them quite a bit more often. But before the mission I never really took advantage of that opportunity we have so often to hear the prophet's voice and to listen to the Lord's message that he has for us in our day. So if you haven't listened to a General Conference talk recently, I invite you to do that. I think it'd be a good opportunity because we are so blessed to have such easy access.

I love you guys. Hope you're all doing well. Have a nice week. Bye Bye!

Elder Olson

Hanging around town

Little hidden Cemetery

Elder Hiatt and Elder Olson

cake in a cup

week 74: Book of Mormon Activity

January 22, 2018

Hey everyone, 

It's week 3 of transfer 12 and I'm here in Licantén with my boy Elder Hiatt. So we are going to be spending our Pday in Licantén here this week because Curico is super far. So we are just going to have a kind of chill day. We went to the gym this morning. WE FOUND A GYM! That's another thing that happened this week. We found a gym here in Licantén and it's super small. It has like 3... well it has a leg press machine, 3 racks to do squats on, no room in the middle of the racks or anything like that, and an incline bench, a bench and then treadmills and dumbbells and that's about it. So super small but it's better than nothing and we'll be able to stay in shape. I stopped buying protein though which I was doing last change because it was super expensive. 

(Hopefully you can hear me, we're kind of on a large street.)

So this week's been cool. We started off the week with a lesson with a girl named Pamela who's the daughter of our Elder's quorum president's wife. She's about 24-25 years old. She grew up for most of her teenage year in Holland. So she came back to Chile a couple years ago. She lives in Santiago but she wants to get baptized by her dad here in Licantén. She's super excited for it and obviously her family is super supportive of that because they're all members. Her mom is in the primary presidency. We are super excited about that. She's excited. We had a good lesson with her last night as well. In the first lesson we set a baptismal date with her for the 13th of February and I feel pretty confident that she'll get baptized. Keep her in your prayers though. But I think she's got a really good shot. So that was really cool. 

We also found quite a few new investigators this week. We achieved more than our goal so that was good. Also Pamela came to church so we were pretty excited about that. It's been a long time since they've had an investigator in church here in the sector. So that's good that we could kind of start this change off right. We also had interviews with President Harris this week. It was pretty good. It was short. We just had to ask him a little bit about some of the details with our investigators like making sure that we were handling some situations right, but it was a short little interview. While I was there I saw Elder Davis, my previous companion, who finishes his mission this change, so it was good to be able to see him. I guess I'll be able to see him again when Elder Christofferson comes. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that...that he's coming. If not, read my other emails, it'll tell you more about it. 

On Tuesday we watched the transmission from Salt Lake with President Nelson and the announcement about him and the new first presidency. It'll be awesome having a different first presidency as well. You get to hear them talk 2-3 times each general conference so it's pretty cool to be able to have that change, even though I love all of the apostles we've had, especially the first presidency I've known for most of my life. 

On Saturday night we did a Book of Mormon activity. Our district came out here to our sector in the Plaza, the central park I guess, we set up a table and we have these big banners for the activity we are doing in the mission now. So basically, we have these big banners and the questions people have a lot of the time, like "Does God exist? Does my baby need to be baptized? What happens after death?" That kind of thing. So we had all those set up and we go around talking about the book of Mormon with everybody there. It works pretty well. We had about 15-20 people saying that they want to come, that they would accept us in their house, that they would accept missionaries into their house. A lot of them live in other parts of Chile but were here vacationing. In other sectors you normally find a lot more, but considering the size of Licantén, we probably contacted about half the people who live here, so it wasn't bad. It was fun. One thing that was cool about that is that the mission is now like measuring the number of references we get by doing that and if it turns out to be really successful, which so far it has been pretty successful, the area is going to kind of sponsor it and use it in other missions too. So that'll be pretty cool. Maybe my companion and I will end up in a Church magazine in a picture of missionaries doing a Book of Mormon activity. Haaha. probably not but it still is a pretty cool thing that's happening here.

A pretty fun experience we had the other day...we went to lunch at a member's house who live way out in the middle of nowhere and we had no idea how to get to her house. So we got some directions from her and had to tell the bus driver to let us know when we'd passed a certain point and he didn't let us know. So we'd been in the bus a little longer than we expected to and we asked him "hey did we already pass the place we asked you about?" and he was like, "ahhhh shoot!" And I think he felt really bad but he just pulled over and left us there on the side of the road. I have a little video of that I will try to send as well. But yeah that was pretty funny. So we started walking for a bit and finally a car stopped, kind of by itself, and took us the rest of the way. But it wasn't too far. We probably could've made the walk. It was about a kilometer away.

This morning we went hard on scrubbing the mold out of our study room. There was a BUNCH of mold there when we got there. We finally got it all good and clean. So that was good. Nice to have a cleaner house now. 

I think that's about it. We are doing good here. Having a good time. Elder Hiatt and I are still getting along really well. I think. I don't know. He's giving me weird looks right now so I don't know if that's true. But, hahaha, nah that was a joke. But yeah he's great. A great missionary. We're getting along really good.

Oh, then also last night, when we taught Pamela the lesson, we went out to her grandparents house in the compo, in the country, so we went out there and it was just this little old old house that her dad had grown up in and it was like they had dug their own well, their own wood stables with...

      Oh sorry we're getting completos right now and one of them kind of flipped. OH MY GOSH! Wait a sec..Alright, sorry. We were eating lunch and a bunch of our food fell over.

But yeah I'm pretty sure that's about it. I hope everybody's doing good. Love you guys a ton, have a good week. Bye!

Elder Olson

walking the long road when we were lost

Pretty fields

Our walking adventure

week 73: Licantén

Elder Olson and Elder Hiatt in Licantén

January 15, 2018 (audio letter transcription)

Hey everyone, Elder Olson here,

So this is week 2 of transfer number 12. We are here in Curico right now for Pday. We just got something to eat. We're gonna make some sandwiches. We just had a zone activity down here with the zone. We played soccer and then we went to go get burgers at a place that was supposedly really good but it was closed. So we just went to a bakery and got some bread and meat and cheese...which is probably better us anyway just because of how much money we've spent on travel these past couple days. It's a two hour drive from Licantén to Curico then two hours back so it's quite the trip. So this week has been good. 

It's been cool to be here with Elder Hiatt, that's my trainee's name. He's from Orem Utah. So not too far from home. He's super cool. We're having a good time out there in Licantén. It's a SMALL town. It's so small. We went out running the other morning and we ran around the whole town and back to our house and it took us about 15-20 minutes and that was with some pretty big hills. So it's not a big town. Our chapel that we have isn't actually a chapel, it's a little house. I sent pictures before but it was about in the second or third month in my mission. Tiny little chapel, well house. They have it kind of modified to have a sacrament meeting room in the bottom floor and classes on the top floor and then there's a little pool in the back for a baptismal font. So that's cool. 

This week on Friday I had a District leader meeting for all the new district leaders because they've changed some things for the District Leaders since I was one. I went with the other DL from our zone who was also a zone leader. He came here from being a zone leader, along with me. We went up there. It was good. We watched the funeral of President Monson which was great. The thing I took out of that, there was a part in the closing hymn, after they'd talked so much about all of his lifelong service, and then the closing hymn was...I don't know if the title was "Weary Not" but I know it said "weary not" a lot and President Monson was good example of that. A good example of being perseverant and continuing on in Christlike service for a long long time. I imagine what it would be like to serve a mission for 60 more years and that would be a lot of work so I have a lot of respect and love for him for that. 

Our days working the sector have been a lot of contacting. We've tried to work with the members to figure out who we ought to visit. We've had some visits with members in their houses. We've had mission coordination with the ward mission leader or branch mission leader on Saturday night and he told us Saturday night that we were going to have to give a talk on Sunday. So we were kind of nervous about that seeing as how it was already 10:00 when he told us that we had to give these talks so we rushed and prepared talks and then on Sunday we kind of got saved...some people from the Stake came and were giving talks as back up...well not as back up I guess WE were the back up that day. And then we're going to have to give our talks next week instead. The branch is small. There were, counting us, 19 members who attended church on Sunday. We had some visitors, some people come out to the beach and so there were probably about 30-35 people in the branch but there were about 14 visitors. So it's small. But they are good. They have a REALLY good branch presidency. They are all really focused and really dedicated in the work. The mission leader is good. In all of our contacting we've found some people who are pretty promising. We also have found that there are a lot of part member families in the town so we are going to be working a lot with those. That's kind of the basic update. We don't have much time because we came down to Curico today and I forgot to record on the bus and now we have to leave time to write and then get the two hour ride back and we're sitting down eating lunch right now. So today's not going to be a very long recording.

But I'm doing good. I'm excited.

oh yeah...

Also something really cool that's happening is that Elder Christofferson is coming to the mission. I may have mentioned that I'd heard a rumor that he was coming, but now President made it official. Elder Christofferson will be coming down to visit our mission and Santiago South on Valentines Day. So on the 13th the WHOLE mission is going to get together in Rancagua. I have no idea HOW we're going to do that because there's like 200 of us and then we're going to sleep in Rancagua that night. So I don't know, I have no idea how we're going to do that...if we're going to all be in houses of missionaries in Rancagua or what the plan is. And then the next morning we will drive up to Santiago in a stake called San Bernado where we will have the conference for about 2 hours with Elder Christofferson. So I'm really excited about that. That's something that I ...well it's kind of rare to have a Seventy come and then a month and a half later have an Apostle come to visit the mission. So hopefully it's for a good reason, not because there are a lot of problems in our mission. But we have a good mission. We are seeing a lot of improvement. 

I think that's it. Love you guys. Hope everybody's doing good. Have a good week!

Elder Olson

The tiny apartment (and YUCKY mold)

Coming into Licatén

Licantén church (in a house)

The song sung at President Monson's funeral

week 72: Changes...going to be a trainer

January 8, 2018 (transcription from audio letter)

Hey guys,

So this is week 1 of transfer number 12. We are about to have some changes. We found out the transfers on Saturday in the evening. And it looks like I'm leaving Baquedano. I'm going to be going down to Curico again, but kind of far outside Curico to a little sector called Licantén. It's right by the beach so that's pretty cool. It's about two hours from the city of Curico. It's in the other zone in Curico, the one I was NOT the zone leader in. And I'm going to be there as district leader and training, in a whitewash. For any of you who don't know what a whitewash is, a whitewash is a missionary term for two new missionaries getting to the same sector at the same time. 

So the last two missionaries who were both in that sector, one of them went home from the mission, he just finished. And then the other one was Elder Villegas, and they took him out of the sector. He was one of my old companions. Now it will be me and a new missionary who hasn't gotten here to the mission yet. So that will be super fun. I've never trained before so I am excited for the opportunity. It'll be something very different from being a zone leader I'm sure. There are only 3 Elders coming into the mission this change so there will be two other trainers with me. I know all the elders in the office and I was talking to them and they have the records for the missionaries who are coming. So it looks like there's one from Orem, Utah Valley, there's one from Argentina and one from Brazil who are coming into the mission. So it's going to be one of the three that I'll be with. So I'm excited to see which one. We won't find out until president Harris has interviews with them and all that. That will be on Tuesday and that will be the day that I'll be there in the morning doing a training, receiving a training for the new trainers and then we'll have a meeting with all the trainees and the trainers together, I would assume....that's how it was when I got the mission at least and then we'll head down to our sector. It's about a total of 4 or 5 hours from here in bus but it looks like the assistants are actually going to help us out. I was talking to them and they're going to drive us down in their car all the way to our sector and one of the assistants, Elder Pollard, he was in Licantén before. 

I've mentioned Licantén because in my second change in the mission I went there on intercambios, on splits. When my companion went home and the companion of Elder Pollard, the now assistant, also went home, we went there together for two days and so I got to know the sector a little bit. I feel like the Lord might've been preparing me, I'm not sure. But I remember it quite a bit. Actually that day we had kind of a special situation because there are 3 towns that are part of the sector. One called Licantén, one called Hualañe, and one called Iloca and I got to know all three during that two day intercambio. Which is something different. Also it sounds like they'll be giving me quite a bit of money working down there. It won't be on bike. All the towns are too far apart to bike. About half and hour on bus each on from each other. But they want us to work more in one of the towns, the one that's NOT on the beach, the one called Hualañe. They want us to work there because that town is starting to grow it sounds like and that town has a lot of potential. But the missionaries haven't been able to go there because it's too expensive and they end up without money at the end of the change. So now they've given us a little bit of extra money and are asking us to work there as well. So I'm excited for that. So that's what's going on with the changes. I'm super excited. 

I don't know really what to expect. I've been asking around though, because a lot of my friends, people with the same time in the mission as me, they've all trained already but seeing how I've been a zone leader for a while now, I haven't had the chance to train. So I'm super excited about that.

This week on Tuesday we had exchanges, intercambios, splits with the assistants so that was fun. I went with Elder Montano from Mexico. It was a good time. We kind of contacted a lot. All four of us were working in the sector of the assistants. I don't know, it wasn't anything too special. It was kind of like just trying to help them out in their sector because they don't get a lot of time there. 

And then on Wednesday we had to go to the hospital. Don't worry, it was just to help the nurse translate. There's a new nurse who just got here so we had to go help her with translate for a companionship that didn't have an Elder who spoke english so we had to kind of go in the middle there. So that was a lot of our day wednesday. 

Thursday and Friday we had some time to actually work. We taught a lesson to a reference from a member family. He's from Columbia. He's the boyfriend of a member...they met on the internet and he came down and is now living at their house and I think they have plans to get married at some point. But he really likes the church. They'd sent the missionaries to his house there in columbia and he was liking it and he had a baptismal date. The only reason he didn't get baptized there was because he ended up working a lot in order to save money to be able to come here to Chile. So he's got a lot of potential.

We've got a lot of new investigators who have a good chance of getting baptized in this next couple of changes so I'm excited for them. Replacing me here, Elder Lee is going to be with Elder Stevenson from Idaho, who I was in the same zone with in Buin. He's a good guy. They'll do a good job here.

Jorge got the priesthood this Sunday, which we were really glad about! We were talking to him and he told us that the Branch president had interviewed him and we were like "awesome! yes! So did he tell you you were going to get your priesthood?" And he's like, "yeah he told me in March I'm gonna get it." And we were like, "what's up with that?" because he should be able to get the Aaronic priesthood in a week after his baptism. So he should've received it LAST Sunday. So we were pretty confused there. We weren't sure what was going on. But then on Sunday we found out that Jorge had just misunderstood. They called his name in Sacrament meeting, they had him stand up and they sustained him also to be, they called him as a ward missionary, which is interesting because the branch missionaries should be helping us to give the discussions to Jorge a second time...normally the branch missionaries do that with us after baptism. But now Jorge is the Branch missionary so it'll be all on my companion now. He did get the priesthood that day. He was kind of surprised himself. He didn't quite understand. I don't know if it's just because the branch president didn't explain it very well. We talked to him about it and I think he understands everything now.

Today we're going to go pass by the mall and eat some lunch. There are some places like Pizza Hut and KFC that you can only find here in Rancagua so we're going to go enjoy one last lunch over there and probably buy some new pants as well. Then I'll be packing all evening...getting ready to go.

One thing that happened this week, that I'm sure most of you heard about before I did, was that President Monson passed away. I think it was his time. He's been sick for a little while and I think it'll be good for him and his family that he can go on to his work in the next life. I think it was Elder McKonkie quoting another prophet saying that it was graduating. Graduating to the next life where he'll be able to contribute even more to the work. I'm excited to see the change. It's gonna be super weird having a new first presidency as well because basically for my whole life it's been, well for as long as I can remember, for half my life, it's been President Monson, President Eyring and president Uchtdorf really. So it'll be interesting to see what the new first presidency looks like and what happens with all of that. I'm more than confident that those who will be called have been prepared before their call and will serve very well in their callings. I'm excited to see the changes. 

Also, other news, this isn't official, they haven't announced it but it sounds like we might be getting a visit from an Apostle in February. I'm not a hundred percent sure but in talking with the office, it sounds like Elder Christofferson might be coming by and giving us a visit with our mission and Santiago South together. So that's really cool. I'm excited about that. That's not something that's very common either. We just barely had a conference with Elder Bragg of the seventy and so it'll be really cool now to be able to hear Elder Christofferson speak to us. 

I know that the prophets we have today, that the quorum of the twelve apostles, are called of God and I know that our church is led by inspired leaders. Whether they be your bishops, your stake presidents, or the president of the church. I know that they are called of God and they are there for a reason. I know that especially the prophets and apostles communicate directly with God. I hope you all can feel that, the importance of modern prophets as we see these changes coming in the next few weeks, the next few months. 

I love you guys. I hope everything is going well.

Take Care! Bye!

Elder Olson

Rancagua, Baquedano zone

Brother and Sister Carrasco, members who help us a ton