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.
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!
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.
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!
(Elder Olson's Mom's transcription of his audio letter)
Alright, Elder Olson here. This is the 28th of August 2017, just so I can keep track of the dates here.
This week has been crazy. It's been really long. We've had a lot of stuff to do this week. A lot of really crazy stuff has happened.
Well we'll start at the beginning. Monday was awesome. Pday. We went and got a class at a Juijitsu gym, which was pretty sweet. We got special permission from President to be able to do it because normally they don't let us take the zone places to do activities. WE took the zone over there. We have a hookup over there with a guy named Cristobal. We contacted him and he came out in his "I like Weed" shirt and he's like, "Ah yeah, I like to do martial arts," and I was like, " Me too. Sweet!" And then there we go. We found out that their gym is right next door to the chapel. And they let us come and they opened the gym in the middle of the day especially for us to let us do a free class. The owner of the gym actually studied at the University of Utah. He spoke English and was really chill. So that was really fun. A great way to start off the week. Nobody got tooooooo hurt. My comp did end up asking for a blessing for his arm because we practiced arm bars. But I think he's doing alright now.
So this week we did exchanges twice. Once with another sector here in Curico, in the ghetto. It's called (?). Then the other day we did them in (Molina?) which is a little pueblo outside Curico. So nothing all that special happened during the exchanges. It was good I finally got to go to a different sector. Normally, I stay here in the sector during exchanges because I know our sector better, so my companion who doesn't know the sector goes. But this last week I got to go down to (?) and do exchanges there. I forgot my towel and a change of clothes and pajamas and a toothbrush all that because we had to go out to Molina(?) early in the morning and did the exchanges back to back and I forgot all that stuff. So I got to "sleep in my tie" type of thing on the exchanges. So that was neat.
This week we found a TON of new people. We found a lot. We found 13 new investigators this week. Which is not a common thing. It's not unheard of but it's not common either. We've already found a new investigator for every day in this change. And that was our goal. We made our goal a week early. So that's cool. But we're going to have keep working hard this week to not let it get to us that it's the end of change...that we've already met the goal...We want to keep that success going. We want to start of the next one strong.
The changes are going to be this week. We find out on...well we'll probably find out early, because my companion will ask one of his friends in the office...but we should be finding out Saturday. So we'll see when we actually know. But honestly I think that I'm gonna be staying here with Elder Guadiglia. Because it's gone really well for us and I think one of the only reasons they'd take me out of Alameda right now is to put me in as a secretary. And rumor has it that somebody else is going to be a secretary. So I should be safe from being a secretary. Don't know if I really WANT to stay another change. For me I like to go to different sectors. But it's okay. If I'm gonna be left in a place, it's a good ward, a really good ward so I won't be too bummed out about it if I stay.
Other interesting things that happened...
This week we talked the Bishop and he was like,"Yeah we've this member who's got a daughter who's 10 years old who's not a member, who's been coming to church for the last few weeks and she wants to get baptized." And we were like, "Oh that's cool." So we went and talked to them and we set a baptismal date right away and she's for sure going to get baptized and we thought we were going to get away with getting her baptized this sunday but some of her family won't be able to make it out that day so she's going to be baptized on the 17th of September. That was nice. A nice little baptism we don't have to work for. Not quite as satisfying but nice that we are able to help there.
On Saturday, late at night, just about time to get home, well 9:20 and we need to be in the house between 9:30-10:00, we were out contacting and not really having much success but at 9:20 we said a prayer, it's the end of the night, we've gotta find somebody. But then we weren't finding anyone and started heading home and I was like, "No. We've gotta find someone." So we started contacting again. Literally the last house we said we were going to contact, we contacted it and this guy came out, and he was super nice, super excited. He said, "Yeah come in. No worries." So we started talking to him. His name's Roberto, he's an atheist, and he's super smart. He's a mechanic, well he works in part as a mechanic, he's an engineering student right now. That was 9:20 on Saturday night. He committed to come to church and the next day he came to church. Normally we visit with people 5 times and they have to commit, "YEAH! I'm for SURE coming to church this sunday. I'm for sure coming." Normally they have to say that about on 4-5 separate occasions for them to really mean it. But this guy said he'd come to church and he came to church. So that was really awesome! He's good. We've got high hopes for him. But he's hesitant to pray because he doesn't believe there's a god. He said, "yeah I'll come to church and I'll read the book," and he liked church but that step of humility that he's gonna have to take to admit that maybe there is a God, and pray and ask for an answer is gonna be kind of an obstacle for him. But it is ABSOLUTELY necessary for him to do to get an answer. You're never going to get an answer if you don't ask. So we're going to have to help him recognize the spiritual experiences he HAS had or is GOING to have as we work with him so that he can kind of open his mind to the fact that there is a god. We're excited to work with him.
We also found another investigator and her name is Pia. She had a baptismal date for the second week of this change and...we lost her. My companion still hadn't met her. We hadn't found her all this change. She hadn't been answering us and she actually moved houses and we got in contact with her again and she was excited and we taught her a lesson about the Sabbath, about keeping it holy and she came to church. Which until now had been one of her biggest difficulties the last time we were teaching her. So that was awesome that she was able to take that step right away as soon as we found her again.
Also this week we found a lady named Rose who seems kind of crazy and I think may be a pathological liar, but she accepted a baptismal date. She was actually baptized 10 years ago but never confirmed. I feel like she may have just never come to the sacrament meeting after being baptized. Not exactly sure what happened there. But we're going to try to work with her again. She was a reference so we'll see if we can help her. But she's told us she was going to be at her house or going to come to church like 10 times but she's not doing it sooooo.... Well one time, she told us she wasn't in her house and we went to her house and called her and she said she wasn't in her house so we were thinking about where else we were going to contact as our plan b and she just walks out onto her front porch and she didn't see us. Then she came out and walked almost right past us and we were like, "Oh hey, remember when you told us you weren't here like 20 seconds ago?" Ha. That's cool. But hopefully we'll be able to help her out.
This week i began ponderizing a scripture (I think that was a thing from general conference in 2015, memorizing and pondering a scripture) and I'm doing it in spanish but I'll send you a picture of my study journal and what I'm doing for that. I'm studying 2 Nephi 2:25-27 to kind of mix things up with my scripture study.
So yeah. I'm excited for changes this week. We'll see what happens. I'm really hoping somebody from my group, somebody I'm tight with, will come down to my zone. I'm kind of lonely a little bit. Not too bad. It'd be nice to have one of my friends from the beginning of the mission like Elder Haar, Elder Robinson or Elder Mussleman come down here to Curico, that'd be sweet. But if not, that's cool. I'll keep working like a boss Like I should be.
Love everyone. Take care.
From our apt... The world is beautiful right?
Intercambios con Elder Steenblik
you can take the people out of the flayte but you cant take the flayte out of the people
Well Alright so this is my 3rd audio recording for transfer 8 week 5.
So this last week was a pretty good one, it was a great one actually, but really long. It was a Long week.
To start off the week: Tuesday was my hump-day, my half-way point in the mission. Because my mission is a little shorter than 2 years, because I'm speaking a foreign language and the way the transfers work out and all that, even though I finish 1 year, the day after tomorrow, this last week was my half-way mark.
So on Tuesday night the secretaries from the mission came over and slept in our house because they had to do some stuff for their visas here in Curico. It was kind of cool to talk to them. It's been a while. It's been kind of lonely here in a house with only two people instead of four...a little boring sometimes. But that's alright. I'll just stay focused. But it was nice to have somebody else in the house. And then Wednesday night we also had a visit from the Assistants who came and slept in our house as well because we had our zone conference on Thursday.
Zone conference was great. We talked about the atonement of Jesus Christ, what that means for us missionaries and what our investigators need to really understand about the atonement to become converted. And the things we need to do to access more power in our lives. President Russell M Nelson from the quorum of the twelve gave a great talk on that in this last general conference. He talked about what we can do to become not only more Christlike but what we can do to have more of His power in our lives. So that was cool. Then in the afternoon we talked about Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. And we brought less actives and investigators, well there were probably about 3 who made it because it was at 3 o'clock on a Thursday so there weren't a lot of people who could come so there were 3 from BOTH zones who were able to come out. But it was good. The zone conferences always give a little bit of a boost, a bit of energy.
Then on Friday, we had intercambios, uh exchanges, with a sector here in the zone which was fun. I was with Elder Christiansen, a gringo from Idaho Falls who's got about 5 weeks in the mission. The poor kid is still working hard at his Spanish, but he's a good guy. I had fun with him. It was great.
That day we had a pretty cool experience. I've talked in my other letters about the Eye of Faith and how the Eye of Faith works and we got to apply that. In our planning we had set the goal to find 3 new investigators and we needed to find those 3 new investigators in order to meet our weekly goal. We went out and we were working all day and about 9 at night, basically we needed to get into a house pretty quick there, and we had one street left to contact that we really had time for so we said a prayer and basically said, "Father in Heaven, we know that this goal is inspired and we need three new investigators to meet our goal. Please guide us and help us to find at least three news." Right after that, the second or third house we contacted, this family of three let us come in. We had actually contacted their son (we didn't know it was his house, he was actually upstairs at the time we contacted the mom) but the son we had contacted in the street one day but he hadn't given us his address because they are Seventh Day Adventists and they are pretty firm in that but we'll see if we can help them out there. But that was really cool because we had barely said that prayer asking specifically for 3 new investigators and right away we found exactly 3. And we were able to meet the goal for the day in the last minute. And that's not the first time that's happened recently. It's been really cool. We've had a lot of experiences like that with finding new people. We've set a goal, my companion and I, to find at least 1 new person every day in this change, and we are on our 4th week in a row of doing that. I've never been able to do that and honestly I've never seen anyone else be able to do that. And it's been cool to work with all these new people. The work now is getting them to progress and to come to church and to actually be baptized. But you've gotta start somewhere.
This week we had 3 baptisms as a zone. We had a crazy experience with that. The sisters from our ward had a baptism (well they had 2) and the Hermana that was going to be baptized, she had asked me to baptized her. But she had also talked with President and had asked permission to allow the missionaries who had found her to be able to come back and baptize her. That's normally a pretty big No, No, because we'd have missionaries traveling all over the zone to do baptisms. But two nights before the baptism, or Saturday morning, President called us first thing in the morning and said, "Listen. I've been up since like 2 or 3 in the morning. I've had an inspirational experience." And he said these other Elders who had found this Hermana needed to come down and baptize her today. So they came down for the baptism today. Which was kind of cool, kind of different. President was there as well. It was kind of a different experience. I don't know WHY that needed to happen, but I'm sure it was what needed to happen. It was kind of interesting to see that.
As a zone, this change has been awesome. We've been having a lot of baptisms as a zone which is AWESOME. It's been great. As of now we've had 7 baptism in this change and we're almost guaranteed to have another 3 or 4. The average number of baptisms in a zone during a change is between 0-3 baptisms. So the fact that we have 7 already and we might have 10 before the change is incredible. Almost every sector is going to have a baptism this change which is pretty awesome.
Today we're gonna have a pretty fun activity, I'll see if I can grab some pictures. We found a JuiJitsu instructor. And I talked to him and told him that I had done some Martial Arts before the mission and we got him to accept to do a class for the Zone. (WOOOOO!) It's gonna be pretty sweet. Hopefully nobody breaks an arm. It should be pretty light, pretty...chill I guess would be the word...tranquillo. So that'll be fun. So we're doing that today.
I've been a little...not sick..., well I don't know how I could be even a little bit sick with all the vitamins that my family sent and that I've been taking every day. But I've got a bit of a sore throat and a plugged up nose. But it's alright. It's just because I've been talking a lot...I've been spreading the gospel. So it's worth the pain. Worth the trouble.
So to finish off I just wanted to share a scripture we'll be sharing with the zone. Because there are a few sisters and a few Elders in the zone who are a little bit discouraged. We're going to share with the zone today this scripture. I really liked it and the way my companion had phrased this. It's in 2 Timothy 4:7 and it says, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." I like to look at that and think of it as a question... Have I fought a good fight? Have I finished my course? Have I kept the faith? It's just something all of us can be asking ourselves this week.
I love you all. Take care. Have a good week. Ciao!
Love,
Elder Olson
The Curico Zone with President and Sister Harris
One Mission Journal Complete
Our JuiJitsu Class (the instructor with 2 thumbs up actually attended University of Utah)
I'm doing great down here in Curico. it's been a solid week.
We started off with Oreo empanadas and soccer for P day. We were smart enough to delegate the food part this time, so we actually got to play again. Good stuff.
I've had quite a few chances to practice my creole this week. We have some new Haitian investigators, and I actually gave a baptismal interview to a Haitian. We had to get special permission from President Harris so that we could use our friend Fafu as a translator during the interview.
We had a lot of rain this week. It also happens to have been the week that we both forgot our umbrellas in an investigator's house. We've been practically swimming from lesson to lesson instead of walking (but I haven't gotten sick thanks to all of the vitamins the fam sent! Thanks mom!)
This change we’ve been seeing big-time miracles as a zone. We’re baptizing (well when I say we I mean they but I like to think that I’m helping somehow) more than we have here in a LONG time. By the end of change possibly 4 times more. We still aren’t quite Brazil, but we’re seeing great improvements.
On Friday, a convert asked us to give a blessing to his uncle who is currently in an induced coma. He (the convert, Lupo) expressed his faith and asked us to perform a miracle for him. We had to explain to him that we can’t change God’s will to him, but it was cool to see such firm faith in a new convert.
This week some members had family visiting from a city called Portomon (not sure how to spell that) in the south. I don’t know if all southern food is that good, but what they gave us (a kind of salad, fried bread, and salmon with cheese and southern sausage) was awesome. That was the first time I’ve eaten salmon in a year.
PS- We climbed a hill (and maybe some other stuff)
Note from Elder Olson's Mom: He sent these videos but didn't talk about them. He evidently experienced another earthquake this week but this time was in his 5th floor apartment. I don't think he's ever been in an upper level of a building during an earthquake.
Elder Olson sent another Audio Letter this week so I put it to the pics he sent as well. Enjoy!
August 6, 2017
Hey guys,
Well this is my second try at this because in the middle of the last one we got a call and I'm recording this on my cell phone and it cut everything I had. But that's cool. It's alright.
So I wanted to start off by saying thank you to all of you who sent me birthday wishes this last week...to the family especially for the package they sent, that was awesome. Thank you for that. I have a little video I'm planning on sending to show what was in the package.
This week's been a pretty good week. It's been kind of crazy but we've had a lot of miracles and a lot of little things that have worked out just too perfectly. It's been amazing. At the same time, we've had some trials. It's been a tough week, but it's been worth it. We've been seeing a lot of progress in our sector and in the zone.
To start off at the beginning of the week, after Pday we were going out to work and we had an appointment with an older lady that we had contacted out in a town called Sarmiento outside of Curico. So out there in Sarmiento, about two hours before the appointment she calls us and says, "Hey, I've got some family situations out here and I'm not going to be able to have the appointment here today." We were luckily able to get ahold of a family, literally the only family in that town that is active, and they got home at exactly the hour we were going to have the appointment and they were able to, the son was able to take us over and pick her up from her house and take her back to their house where we were able to have the visit. And she was super receptive. Her daughter and her daughter's family are all super active...they're endowed. They're from Santiago. But she also lives with one of her sons who is atheist and makes fun of religions a lot. So we were able to have that visit with her and as I said, she was super receptive and now she has a baptismal date for the 3rd of September. So we're going to be working with her a lot to try to help her with that.
Then later in the week was my birthday, so that was fun. That was something special this week. On that day we had interviews with the mission president, President Harris. He came to Curico at our chapel, the stake center. While he was doing the interviews, my companion and I gave a training to the zone about quite a few things. Sister Harris talked about the schedule and the importance of the schedule and a couple of small changes that we're making. The Hermana, or sister leaders, I think they're called sister leaders, I'm not 100% sure in English but that's the translation...They talked a little about positivity and kicking out that culture of people saying, "In this mission we don't baptize that much, You'll probably baptize SOMEONE in your mission, but we really don't baptize." That's a culture we really want kicked out of the mission. We talked a lot about the goals and plans we've set, which we've been working on as a zone, which have been going great. They're killing it out there. It's been awesome. Then we talked about some principles from Preach my gospel. So that all went really well. My interview with President was GREAT...it's always a good little renewal to have that talk with him. He's really a great guy, I look up to him a lot.
After the interviews, we got back to the house and we saw that...OUR BIKES HAD BEEN STOLEN. When we left the house, we hadn't noticed but we think in the night someone had clipped the lock on our bikes and had taken them from the apartment complex. So not from inside our apartment, but they were on a bike rack inside the complex which is all fenced in with a guard post to get in and out. But somebody had cut it and somehow taken the bikes out. What I think happened was that they just jumped the fence over on our side of the complex, cut the locks and passed the bikes out. So, that was a nice little birthday present. We get to walk for the next couple of weeks until they get us some new ones. Hopefully they don't make us pay for the bikes, but we'll see what happens there.
But then after that we went down to Centro, downtown, ...we stopped by a member who works as a barber down there, some converts actually...she was a "hair cutter?" I don't know what you call that (in English). And they said, "Hey, we need you guys to come by our house, like right now." And we were like, "Okay." So her son took us to their house. We got there and their family was all waiting there and another family, the family of our ward mission leader, and they were waiting with a cake and everything. They had a little surprise party planned so that was cool. That was REALLY nice of them. So that was what ended up happening on my birthday.
Oh but that morning, it was really funny, because...well at midnight...I was already asleep, but my companion had put my phone on the shelf right next to my head. And then at midnight he calls and I'm kind of half awake and I look over and see my phone and I'm like, "who's calling me right now? I don't even remember putting my phone right here. I don't know what's going on." I roll over and look at the phone and he had changed his contact information in the phone so that it said, "MOMMY." And I read that and I was so confused. I just thought I was having the weirdest dream of my life. I answer it and I was like, "Hallo?! Como.." I was super confused about what was going on, and then I just hear from the bottom bunk, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU...." shouting the song in english. Haha. I was super confused ...it took me a minute to figure out what was even going on. I thought it was all a dream. But that was pretty funny, something a little different.
Also this week we've had a lot of little miracles. We've been starting to set goals, like in the morning we have to achieve this goal before going to lunch, as a motivation to get out of the house, right on time and get working, and really take advantage of the mornings...because mornings are TOUGH down here. Everybody is always prepping lunch, because that's their big meal, and most of them just sleep until like 2 in the afternoon, like they don't do a whole lot. So we had a bunch of stuff that we were supposed to do that morning as far as planning, pass the keys to some other people, and we weren't on bikes so we had to walk downtown. We made it down there and in the end, we had about 15 minutes to get to our lunch with a member family which was only minutes away walking. But we thought, "we have to make our pre-lunch goal or we can't go to lunch." So we said a prayer. Our goal was to give a Book of Mormon and get an appointment. So we start contacting houses on our way to lunch. We were actually in the sister's sector because all the members live in the sister's sector. We only have 3 or 4 families that live in our sector. But on our way to lunch, knocking doors, and the first person we actually talked to...because nobody came out of the first few houses and people who we had tried to stop on the sidewalk weren't feelin' it. But we were contacting this house and the lady came up to her porch at the same time as we were contacting her house. We got talking to her and she had a ton of questions and was super receptive. She accepted the Book of Mormon and we set an appointment like right away. I honestly was super surprised that God helped us and that we were able to meet that goal so quickly, because there are times where you can contact in the morning for an hour and a half and nobody will give you an appointment. The mornings are tough. But she was super super super receptive and it was immediately after that prayer. And we were able to get to lunch on time AND still make our goal. So that was awesome.
I guess I'm getting kind of long here on the recording. But also we've had a lot of miracles in the last few days. A lot of situations have just worked out perfectly. We're meeting our goals, we've set 5 new baptismal dates this week, we've been working a TON...we've been working really hard. And it's been good.
I wanted to share a spiritual thought because I think I kind of missed that last week. Right now in the mission we've been talking about using the "Eye of Faith," which is seeing what you WANT to happen before it actually happens and really believing it. And then you go out and actually ACT as if it's going to happen. For example, with that goal of placing one Book of Mormon and an appointment before lunch, ...so we had to see it in our minds' eye, which we did by planning and praying and asking for revelation and saying, "please help us know HOW we can do it and we promise we are going to do everything we can to meet that goal." By doing that, the heavens are able to be opened and we are able to receive miracles. I'm sure everybody has heard before...FAITH MOVES MOUNTAINS. Faith is how we get miracles. I want to share this scripture of where the eye of faith comes from. Since we as a mission have started using this eye of faith theme, we've gone up in baptisms, in new investigators, in investigators in sacrament meeting by like 50% and it's really been crazy. In Ether 12, it talks about faith. It gives examples of miracles in stories and the miracles that come by faith. And in verse 18-19 it says, "And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God. And there were many whose faith was so exceedingly strong, even Christ came, who could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes the things which they had beheld with an eye of faith, and they were glad." And that eye of faith is our minds and our hearts. The way we do it in the mission is we make a plan. That's the way we show we are seeing with the eye of faith, if that makes sense. We put down on paper what our goal is and what we are going to do to receive it...showing that we SEE this goal, that we see that it can happen. Then we go out and do it. And through that faith, anything is possible. In moroni 7:33 it says, "And Christ hath said: ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me." I know that that's true. I know that through faith we can see miracles and we can work miracles ourselves. And that's what I wanted to share with you guys.
Thanks again for the birthday wishes, and to all of you who keep contact with me out here. And I want you to know that I love you tons and I hope everything's all good out there back home. Talk to you later.
Love,
Elder Olson
The scripture cover Elder Olson bought himself for his birthday
Elder Olson with the members who threw him a surprise bday party (see the video below)
Elder Guariglia and Elder Olson bummed that their bikes were stolen
Making Oreo Empanadas
Videos Elder Olson sent this week...
Elder Olson opening his birthday package from home...
Elder Olson's story of stolen bike...
Elder Olson's surprise birthday party from ward members...
