Rainy Week. Awesome Week.

 Hi everyone!

Things are going super well! Stuff is picking up a bit more and we have been able to have a lot of lessons. We finally had a video lesson with Tetiana and her boy. Her husband is very less active, but her 8 year old boy, vitaliy, was just baptized a few months ago. She is super awesome, she loves the book of Mormon and has been to church many times, she even came this Sunday! We are just trying to find out what we can do to help her, and see what is holding her back from baptism. We have also been having short, daily lessons with an older lady named Mary Gee. She has been meeting with the missionaries for years, but has multiple word of wisdom and health problems. She was feeling depressed this week, so we made her some cookies and dropped them off! 

Another great thing we have been able to do this week is meet with a lot of members over zoom. I had a cool family history conversation with a member named Brother Crowther. I had been reading that morning about my great great grandpa Carl Albert Olson, and about how he had land in Virginia, Idaho. The member heard my name and asked if I had heard of virginia, Idaho. I told him I had actually been reading about my Great great grandpa who lived there that morning, and he told me that his grandpa was Carl Olson's brother! I thought that was pretty cool.

Spiritual thought: Moroni 7:40 "And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?

41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.

       42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope." 

Kinda a long one, but it's important. There is so much to have hope for. Have faith and you will find hope in Christ.

Things I like: It's been raining a lot which has been nice, and we got propane last pday so we have been able to use our grill!

Things I hate: so a member brought us food, and she is from south america. The rice was amazing, but as I learned in Brazil, in some places they eat the chicken bones. dont get me wrong I'm very grateful for the food, but it was not good to have crunchy chicken rice haha.

Photos, only one this week

Week 17: Happy Thanksgiving

week 5 of transfer 2

Hey everyone, I forgot to do an audio recording so, sorry! I'm just gonna write this one.

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a great dinner. My companion and I had pizza for Thanksgiving dinner! I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve a mission and for all of you that support me in my service.

Anyways, This week started out with splits. I was with Elder Burt, the other American. He's more green than me, so I was the senior companion for a day. That was interesting. I realized how much I rely on my fluent native Brazilian companion to help people understand what I am saying. Most people here have never talked with an American so my accent is hard for them to understand, even when what I am saying is technically correct. Sadly, all of our appointments fell through, and we spent an hour or so looking for a house that turned out to be an empty lot. We were pretty discouraged, and I didn't really know what to do. So, I pulled out the map and said a prayer. We started knocking doors, and ended up finding the house of a contact that Elder Rodrigues and I had been looking for. 

Later this week, Elder Rodrigues taught the person Elder Burt and I found. His name is Dail, he lives with his wife and 16 year old daughter. We invited them to church, and felt really good about it, but they didn't come. To add to that, our friends that seemed to be progressing have suddenly stopped. But, I still have hope for them. Sometimes we just have to be more patient. People will find the truth in their own time. This Sunday, we also taught another Family Elder Burt and I found. We shared the Restoration and It was a very spiritual lesson. It was a blessing for me, because I was feeling a bit down due to the lack of success we have had this week.   

Things I hate: It has started raining in our house too. We have to turn the lights off when It rains because the lightbulbs drip water. Also, there is only one Atm in this city that will read my card, and the line was a 40 minute wait this morning so that was fun

Things I Like: I received a package from my parents with peanut butter and maple extract, so I made pancakes with peanut butter and syrup for breakfast. My Brazilian companion loved it. I'm going to have to hide my peanut butter haha.

Spiritual Thought: This week, we had a devotional with the parents of President Piros. His dad was also a mission president, and they shared some really cool thoughts that helped me a lot this week. They talked a lot about being patient in your trials, humbling yourself before God, and having faith. I really needed that this week, there were many times this week when I felt like giving up. But, when I humbled myself and prayed, and searched for guidance, The Lord provided a way for me to complete my goals. When you have difficulties, stay patient and keep your faith in the Lord. He will help you.

Amo vocês!

-- 

Elder Olson

Elder Rodrigues and Elder Olson celebrating America's Thanksgiving with a pizza

chatting with Elder Olson today

week 16: Many new friends

Week 16, 4th week of 2nd transfer

November 25, 2019

This is week 4 of transfer 2. This week was good. We had splits this week with Zone Leaders so that was good. So I was with Elder De los Santos and we found a man that doesn't believe in God, which is interesting here, because almost everybody is religious and believes in God and Christ here. So that was interesting, trying to explain our religion to him because I haven't really had to do that yet, without people having a knowledge or a basic belief and understanding of God and Jesus Christ. So that was interesting, trying to teach a person that doesn't have the same basic belief. 

This week in church we had 5 friends come. Which is an improvement because we've had 1 or 0 the past couple of weeks. So Larisa was in church again. I think I talked about her before. Like I said, it's been hard to teach her because her mom doesn't like us and she's always really busy. We've only been able to teach her one more lesson than the first and we've spoken with her a few other times. Then, two of the other people were siblings, Iago and Kelen, brother and sister. And we found them the other day. It was actually pretty interesting. So we had passed this house once before, a week or two ago, and the man there said they were busy, so we said we'd pass by another day. So it was raining and we were looking for a different person on the same street and we couldn't find the person but my companion said, "we could knock on this door here." I said, "oh, we already did. But we can again." So we did and they invited us in. It's a family. Moises is the dad and he has 3 kids, Iago, Kelen and João Vitor. Iago is 22. Kelen is 17. And João Vitor, I think he's 15 or so. But the lesson went well. Then we came back this week to them and we had left a Book of Mormon for them and left a part for them to read. And when we came back, Kelen had read the part (3 Nephi chapter 11) about when Christ visits the people in the America's after his crucifixion. But the lesson was really awesome because we asked her about how reading the Book of Mormon was and she shared the parts that she liked, the verses that she liked. And we talked more about them and shared more about the restoration and we asked how Kelen felt about the book, the Book of Mormon, and she said she believes it's true and that she feels that the Church is right. Which is really awesome because she hadn't even gone to church with us yet. So today, her and her brother Iago came to church. So that's exciting. We invited them to be baptized too. So we have a baptismal date set for them...the 7th of December. Hopefully we can get them ready in time, but I think we will.

And then the other person that was in Sacrament meeting that we brought today was Dalma. She's an older lady, I think in her 50's. She has 2 kids, 12 and 7 years old. She brought them too. She also said she that the Church is true and so we have that same baptismal date set for her. So that's exciting because we hadn't really been finding people that wanted to progress until now. So that's really exciting. So hopefully they can continue to progress and not fall away. 

On to things that I hate this week: We're going to start with RAIN. Because it makes the power go out. So one day the power went out in the entire city. It was night and there were no street lights and it was SUPER dark and it was hard to get back to our house.

Things that I like: RAIN. Because it makes it not so hot when it rains. It's a LOT cooler when it rains. It's probably still 80 degrees but to me that is soooooo much cooler because usually it's like 90 to 100.

Also, an interesting experience I had this week: I met a man from Sweden here, which is crazy because it's a really small town and there aren't usually tourists here or anything like that and he doesn't even speak Portuguese. But I talked with him in English and he was visiting with his wife who's from here but it was just kind of a random experience to meet someone from Sweden in Hidrolandia, porque (oh oops, I'm starting to put in Portuguese instead of English), anyways, because it's a really small city.

Spiritual Thought: Always be ready to follow the spirit. I had a cool experience this week finding the family of Moises (that I spoke about in my Email, Iago, Kelen, and João Vitor). We had already knocked on his door once before, and he didn't let us in to share a message because he was busy. Another night, we only had one hour left, it was dark and rainy and our appointment fell through. We were passing that same house and my companion told my to knock and the door of Moises again. I was reluctant because he had rejected us once before. But, I did and it lead to finding some great people to teach. Sometimes we have fear to follow the spirit, but when we just go and do, we will be blessed.

So that's all for this week!

Elder Olson