Week 19: I'm a trainer

Week 19, 1st week of 3rd transfer

December 16, 2019

This week I had a trip into the city again. Luckily this time it wasn't by bus. We had a member take us in because Elder Rodriguez was transferred into the city. He's a zone leader there now.  And I had to stay with him and pick up my companion the next day so we got there...we left tuesday and we spent the afternoon cleaning the transfer house because it was TRASHED. And then that night, I stayed with Elder Rodriguez and his new companion, and we worked for a couple of hours making contacts and stuff. The next day, in the morning, I went to the bus station to pick up my new companion Elder Bezerra. I'm training him! He's from the north east part of Brazil. So that was kind of a LONG trip. It kind of took away from...I lost a day and a half of work basically. But it was kind of fun because it was different. I got to see a lot of other missionaries. I got to see some of my old friends. 

This week, all of my friends I had been teaching with Elder Rodriguez, well, we basically had to cut all of them so we basically started over here with teaching people and finding people. We've been doing good with making contacts with everybody. We made a goal to see how many "no's" we can get basically. So once we finished our real goal of contacting people, we still want to contact more people to see if they'll say no. Not that we are trying to force (or even want) people to say no but we are trying to motivate ourselves and be happy even when we get rejected.

We had a reference from a member this week and it was WAYYYYYYYYYYY out off our map. Like it wasn't even on our map. It was a 30 minute speed walk, because we only had 1 hour left of the night. And when we got there, All we were able to do was to say Hi, tell them who we were and then leave because we had to get back home before 9. So that was basically running to get home. My legs are still kind of tired from it. Haha.

So yeah, this week has been good but we haven't been doing a lot teaching. Mostly trying to find new people to teach. We had an activity with the members this week. We had a Christmas family home evening, which was good. It's funny because it started at 7 but nobody showed up til 8:00. So that's kind of annoying, haha, but it's all good. Then yesterday we went caroling with the members to some of the older members of the ward. Some of them aren't able to make it to church because of their age or health problems because of old age. So that was kind of a cool spiritual experience.

So on to things that I hate: The transfer house. I had to sleep on this mattress that was basically springs and without a pillow so I basically didn't sleep and I had to get up at 5 (an hour and a half earlier than usual) to go get my new companion. Me and another elder who were going to the bus station to get our companions, we had to ask people on the street to get an uber for us because we didn't have a way to get to the bus station. (and we don't have smart phones with the necessary app). 

Things that I like: In the bus station I got to see a companion from the CTM, Elder Neely. So that was cool to catch up and talk with him. The first thing he said when he saw me was "Oh, you've gotten fatter!" Haha. Which was funny. But which is very true. It was funny because in the CTM they all made fun of me for being really skinny and now I've gained like 20lbs. But yeah, that was good.

This week was a lot of work, a lot trying to find new people and hopefully this next week we'll be able to do more teaching.

Spiritual Thought: I watched the new nativity video the church released, and thought a lot about the example of the shepherds and the wisemen. They dropped everything to search for christ, and when they find him, you can see the pure joy in their eyes. I want to invite you all to watch this video, The Christ Child, then think of what you need to give, or give up, for Christ. Have a great week and a Feliz Natal!

Elder Olson

1st transfer souvenir t-shirts

The 4 ninja turtles

New missionary, new companion Elder Bezerra

week 9: First Baptism

Week 9, 3rd week of first transfer

October 6, 2019

I never thought I'd say this, but I found something worse than spiders and that's cockroaches. I hate them so much. Anyways...

I hope you all enjoyed conference. I tried. It was all in Portuguese so I just got bits and pieces but it was good. 

The other day at lunch, we were at a members house and the grandpa lived there and he asked our names and then asked where we were from and all that stuff and then we proceeded to have the same conversation about 30 times.He asked my name, where I was from, what the capitol of the United States was...hahaha. Then he told us this story about missionaries and then he bore his testimony and showed us a picture of his parents. And then he'd go into the other room and do something then come back and restart the conversation. It was pretty funny. There was also this man on the street and we were walking along the street at like 8 o'clock, we were finishing up for the night, and this guy would always follow us and he would be like "ELDERS! ELDERS!" so we'd stop and he'd  ask for a pamphlet because we hand out pamphlets sometimes and he was like, "I want a pamphlet about the word of god" (he sounded a little out of it) so we'd just give him a  pamphlet, haha. But it was pretty funny.

Last week I said the baptism of Juan wasn't til next week but I guess I was lost in translation because it WAS this week. The confirmation isn't until next week because of general conference. So I baptized him on Saturday. It was good. The baptismal meeting was supposed to be between sessions at 4pm in the afternoon but we went and opened up the font and the ward mission leader had forgotten to clean it (that's his job when we tell him there's a baptism) and it was full of centipedes which, oh, they're so gross. There was one the size of my forearm. It was pretty nasty. Luckily, other ward members came and cleaned it out because, oh, there was no way I could've done that. It was GROSS! But they cleaned it out and after the second session we did the baptism. It was good. The first baptism. Exciting.

We are also teaching a man named Uemerson and his girlfriend Ilani and his brother and wife (not really teaching the brother, he doesn't want anything to do with us) but they all live in the same house. We're trying to help Uemerson and Ilani get to baptism, so first off they have to get married. So we will see how that goes. They are in their mid twenties and they are struggling with money issues so he has been having questions about how he's supposed to provide for his family and stuff like that. So hopefully that can lead somewhere good. Uemerson really likes the lessons we share and we've shared a couple of videos with him and he's gone and watched a couple videos on his own, but they have a problem with keeping commitments. We've invited them to church quite a few times and they haven't come so hopefully they can progress or we will have to drop them because they aren't keeping commitments. 

Back to conference, I thought it was really cool that all the talks were focused on Jesus Christ and how He needs to be a central part of our lives and how we can only find joy in Christ. They talked about disconnecting from our phones and connecting to the spirit more and how the devil tries to deceive us with the things of the world but we just need to focus on Christ because He is the only way we can have joy. He atoned for our sins and all of our pains and afflictions. So when we have hard struggles, we can turn to Christ and he can help us. I also heard there were some changes to the organization of the church but I didn't really understand it because it was in Portuguese so I'll have to have that explained to me today when I call home. 

That's all for this week!

--Elder Olson

Pictures of the house where Elder Olson lives. Right now there are only 2 elders there but 2 more will join them in a few weeks at the next transfer.

Elder Olson's bed on the left

other end of bedroom

study area

bathroom

kitchen

back porch (the laundry area)

Elder Olson and Elder Rodriguez

First Baptism. Elder Rodriguez, Juan, Elder Olson