22 June 2010

22 June 2010

23 June 2010

so this week was a little rough, but it had some bright spots. Edson and his family were not baptized, Marcia the wife is really really sick, so we are going to wait to see if she gets better.. she has been in the hospital, so everyone please pray for her to get better. this family is amazing, they are really special and we really want to see them be baptized. We also had a great thing happen. We took a family to the city center to get married!!! Marcelo and Mariana, we have been working with them for awhile, but they really didnt want to get married, they have already been to church 3 times, but they really dont want "commitment" ( oh by the way the have already lived together for 14 years and have 4 children!!!!") so one day we didnt know what to do, so i went there and just told them all about the blessings of seeing my parents married and happy in life... Mariana started crying, and said she wants to get married.. so we took them on thursday and marked the wedding!!!! on the 8th of July they are going to get married!! It is going to be awesome! everyone in the ward already knows them, so we are going to have a big party in the church, with everyone, and i am going to be best man!!!!! haha :) it is going to be awesome! They have 4 children, and 3 are old enough to be baptized (11 yrs, 15, and 18) and they are all going to be baptized together on the 9th of July!!! It is going to be way amazing. me and my companion are fighting aobut who is going to be here (transfers are on the 6th) but i am like 99.99% that he is going to leave and i will stay :) haha. but it is going to be way cool. we had 3 confirmations in church on sunday, and that was really cool, Elis and Tulio who were baptized are really excited, Elis already went to choir practice of the ward and is going to sing in the choir, and tulio went to church in a blue shirt and tie!!! ( i gave him a awesome tie on his baptism) things here are really going amazing, i love being here and i love this area. please everyone pray for Edson and his family.

Hurrah for Israel!!
Elder Olsen

16 June 2010

Wow, so this week was amazing. i have never been more blessed on my mission than i am being blessed right now. we are really seeing the Lord in our work. So this week we had 2 baptisms!! I have already talked about them, Elis and Tulio, they are the mom and brother of tales, who we baptized like 2 months ago. after 5 times in the church we finally were able to baptism them. The mom was really hard, she had been hiding something from us, but the spirit lead me. On sunday we were all ready to baptize just tulio.. because she had said that she didnt want to be baptized this week.. so we decided to just baptize tulio.. well i was filling out the forms with her about her son, and i just bore my testimony about the word of wisedom, and about eternal families. she started to cry, and said, "do you still have more white cloths?" haha wow, it was amazing. so she and her son were both baptized. she had been drinking coffee and didnt want to stop, because she didnt understand why she needed too. but she was to nervous to tell us, so every time we asked, she said she had already stopped. the spirit is amazing!! I totally thought the problem was the law of chasity, but the spirit knows all things, and lead me to know the truth! I love the spirit. This week is going to be just as special too!! Edson Marcia and Danielle are going to be baptized! This family is really special, and they are going to change lots of lives in the future. we are going to visit the temple with them tomorrow and go on a tour of the temple. they are all set for this sunday. it is going to be awesome. i am really excited and loving the area here. i really hope that i can stay here for like 6 more months or so. but who knows, we will have a new president here in 2 weeks, and i hope he doesnt take me out of here.
things with my companion are going good, he is a good elder. i like him. i just think all these blessings that we are recieving are going to his head a little.. i try to remind him that we are doing nothing, that it is all the Lord, but i think he might be getting prideful. in our zone meetings he talks himself up in front of the elders.. yeah, i am a little worried. i think that he suffered so much in the beginning of the mission (6 baptisms in one year) and now in two week he has already doubled that. he thinks that it is because of him.. ahh... the enemy works really well. he knows how to try and stop the work.. but it will all work out great.
I am really excited to work in the field. i love being a missionary.

Thanks for all the love and prayers!!!

ELDER OLSEN

9 June 2010

I agree with Mikey, when you get over 1 year on the mission it looks like no one likes to write anymore, but hey its part of the deal. This week was amazing!! It was one of the greatest weeks on my mission. It was really awesome because we had 4 baptisms!!!! It was really amazing! I had alot of special expeineces this week that really changed my life! Well i will share two really quickly. first is that on friday i went to anhanguera and did some interviews, anhanguera is my first area, where i stayed for 8 months. well i am not sure if you all remember jose milton and his family.. they are the family of 5 that i baptized when i was there towards the end, well when i was there i didnt baptized one of the daugthers.. she had had a problem and didnt want to be baptized, and how it was the first transfer that i was senior i wasnt a very good missionary so i just let her go and just baptized the parents and the other 2 daughters. well on friday when i was in anhanguera, all the appoinments feel through, so i decided that we could go to their house and try and teach the daughter. the elder told me that they had already try lots of times, and that ever since i had left the elders had been going there to try and teach her, but she would never accept anything. but i told him that that day she was going to accept. It was a really crazy thing, because i have already dreamed alot of times with this family in the temple, and every time that i have this dream the daughter was never there, and then when i leave she is on the outside and she starts crying and telling me how because i didnt help her be baptized her life was runied. and alot more stuff that has happened since i left anhanguera. so i have always felt really strongly that it was my purpose or calling to baptize her and her family. so we went there and when i got there they didnt believe that i was there. they said that they had been talking about me that day, and all the things that i did to help them. we started of the lesson singing a hymn and then the elder bore his testimony and then let me talk. the spirit was really strong as a testfiyed of eternal families. after teaching about the importance of following the savior, i invited her to be baptized on the next day on saturday. she accepted. it was amazing, everyone was crying so much. so on saturday she and her family went to my area in Jd amanda and i baptized her. it was really awesome!!! the whole family was really happy to see her be baptized. now the whole family are members of the church! I know that they will enter into the temple!!!
On sunday we had 3 more baptisms. It was really amazing!! We have been teaching a part member family for a while. the husband is a member, and his wife was from a different church, and she would always go to church but didnt want to be baptized. on wends. i went there with a member and we taught about the book of mormon, the spirit was really strong and she and her child accepted to be baptized on sunday and they were!! The husband was so happy!! haha, he hasnt recieved the priesthood yet so i had to baptized them, but it was still really amazing!
And Reginaldo was also baptized on sunday. he is sergios friend. sergio is our recent convert that is amazing. he is really excited about the work. our teaching group is basically his friends and family that he has. we are going to try and baptize all of them.
this week we have 3 more baptisms. we are going to help complete another family of the ward. it is going really awesome.
We also have a family of 3 that will be baptized on the 19th. defintely the most beautiful family i have taught. they are way ready for the gospel. they are well off and have 2 children (12 yrs and 4 yrs) on saturday we had stake conference and the dad of the family Edson, he went in a white shirt hhaha, his wife went in a skirt and all dressed up. it was really awesome. they are going to visit the temple tomorrow night with us, and we are going to enter in there with them in one year. they say they cant wait to be baptized.. really they were prepared to hear the gospel!!
I am loving my mission. i am loving everything about my area. please pray for:
Edson, marcia, daneile, elis, tulio, valeska, marcelo, mariana, kasia, maria and carlos. all them have a date for this month, but they will needs lots of prayers!!!!

Hurrah for Israel!!!
Elder Olsen

This is another one out of order sorry 26 May 2010

Wow this week was really exciting and filled with new news. This week we had one bapitsm. Henrique was baptized. I was really awesome to have one more baptism with Elder Standage... in 8 short weeks we accomplished alot together.. we had 10 bapitsms which was really great. Then on Sunday night he was transfered. And I recieved another companion.. Elder Feitosa.. Brasilian. It is the first time that he is going to be zone leader too.. so it will be the 3rd time i will train a zone leader haha. i think i found out what my calling on the mission is. He is a great Elder. He has 1year on the mission and works really hard. The only thing that will be different is that he really hasnt baptized alot on his mission.. haha he only baptized 1 person in the first 8 months of his mission, and in total he has about 6 or 7 baptisms.. so when we sat down and i told him that we are going to baptized at least 10 people together.. he really didnt believe it.. So, it will be a great adventure to help him get a great vision on baptizing. He works really work, and is really dedicated.. he just needs a little help baptizing :) our zone had alot of changes too, so it will be a interesing transfers for alot of reason.. this transfer started out with President Castro Deus and is going to end with a new President.. President Tanner.. he is going to be here in about 4 weeks.. so it is going to be really weird to move presidents.. i am not sure if i am really ready.. i am so used to working with my president, but i know that it is going to be a great opportunity for me. President Tanner sounds like a really great man. We will see what we can do together.
This week we have 2 baptisms that are going to be great. I dont know if ya'll remember when i told you about Tales.. the young man that we baptized.. that basically lived on the streets because his mom was never home.. well he has changed so much because the gospel that his mom and brother have now been to church 3 straight times!! On sunday we taught his mom and she started crying, thanking us for all the changes that have happened in her life and her sons lives... it was a really special moment for me.. to see the changes that happen in peoples lives through the gospel.. she and her son are going to be baptized this week :) it is going to be really special. There is going to be alot of work this week. My companion needs to learn to work :) and learn to bapitze. So, i dont have alot of time. but please pray for me, that i can have the strength to always work hard and never give up... :)

Hurrah for Israel!!!
Elder Olsen

Sorry I have been slacking because of my broken arm.. 2 June 2010

Well it was great talking to everyone. I cant believe how grown up the kids are. I cant believe that Sam, Andrew and Adam all sounded like they were 10 now!! They are growing up alot. It sounds like everything at home is going great. I am so thankful for my wonderful family that supports me. Today I just wanted to tell you all how much I love you, and how i am so grateful for every single person in my family. I am so very grateful for all the examples that you are to me. I am so blessed to have been born in the gospel. To have been raised in a family where I could feel the Lord in my home and with my family. I dont think that I ever appreciated the blessings that I have been given until i came on a mission. I know that the blessings are real. I know that the Lord has blessed our family alot. I am so humbled by the feeling of love the Lord has shown our family. I am so grateful for my calling as a missionary, for the opportunity that I have to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.. I know that he lives, and they He loves me and trusts in us. I am so happy to know that he wants us to be happy here on the earth.

This week was really great. Yesterday we had a great district meeting. I left the spirit really strong as it guided me on what I needed to say to the zone to help every missionary know how much I love being a missionary. We had a "fire demostration" it was really cool. I used the story from 1 Kings 18 as part of my message to the zone.. haha you will all have to see the video after the mission, we got it on film. Afterwards I made a soap box.. which was really cool, i painted it and it is beautiful. It's blue and says on it "what would Christ say.." then we went to the bus stops in the city, and a few Elder's had to show their faith and climb on the box and preach to everyone.. I know that every single one of them will remember it forever! It was really cool. I got the idea from Steve. haha. We also got it on film. I will show you all after the mission.

This week we are preparing alot of people to be baptized. It is oging to be awesome. But, we are going to need miracles in our zone. We have established the biggest goal in the history of the mission in one week. The record is 19 baptisms in one week... This week we want to baptized 41 people!!!! We need ALOT of prayer and fasting. We are working hard then we have ever worked before!!!

I love this gospel. The Lord is preparing the way for us. He is with us and loves us.

Hurrah for Israel!!
Elder Olsen