Week 76 Office

Happy Saturday!

We had another great week in the office.  I gotta tell ya though, some of these missionaries get pretty aggressive with their health problem phone calls haha.  They sometimes get pretty mad when they tell me about their sore throat and I tell them they should take some hard candy haha.  They think they are all dying or something this week.  I've found out that they do NOT like to take Tylenol, Ibuprofen, nor Pepto Bismol.  They will 50 times out of 50 think their condition is more serious than to take a common drug.  The best part about this whole health secretary thing is hearing the President say over and over, "these are people in the prime of their life, 18, 19, 20 year olds, and they are having worse health conditions than me, being 3 times their age!"  It's so true haha.

I wanna tell you guys of my first learning experience, AKA failure in the office, it's a good one!!  So I was getting flight tickets ready for the people that had transfers from Lima or Ica to Ayacucho, and I had finally bought them all.  700$, no not soles, AMERICAN dollars, worth of flight tickets.  A lotta money no?  So we get everything ready, we coordinate their travel and tell them they have to be in the airport at 4:00 in the morning.  The taxi we had set up just got a little bit late, and I didn't accompany them to the airport.  It turns out they had just kinda waited for someone to go up to them and ask where they are going and they totally missed their flight.  They totally irreplaceably lost their tickets.  Super great time, it was a great way to start off week one of being the travel secretary!  Learned two handy dandy things from that one! 1. It is probably a good idea to accompany the missionaries when they go to the airport 2. You can do the check-in online and I should probably do that as well!

Well we are getting our area all good and everything now.  We are slowly finding more and more that might stay.  Dioselis has been progressing a lot!   Now they are actually going through with the action part of it and getting their papers ready for their marriage!!  We are super excited for them and their progress!  They almost have all of their papers ready!
Skype tomorrow, I'll call at 8:00 PM my time, means you will receive the call at 6:00ish your time.  I will be calling on Skype.  That's about all we have for this week, see you tomorrow!


¡¡Ya conversamos mañana!! Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 75 Office

Happy Saturday!

We had a super great week!!  This week really did fly by!   My companion and I sat down for weekly planning and we had thought we just barely did it the day before!  It's been a great little week in the good ol office.  We had another office P-day.  The 6 of us watched "Facing your Giants."  Before today I had never watched it in English and their accents are super funny haha.  Just the same I recommend it, it's a good show.

This week we have been getting a lot of work done.  We have been trying to figure out the balance between our area Bolognesi and the stuff we have to do in the office.  Especially the impending doom in 3 weeks with the transfers haha.  Carolina got some misinformation about the Church of Christ and has basically stopped investigating.  Yolanda is about in the same boat.   It surprises me every time how people will put more faith in Google than they do in God.  Respectfully we just took the heat, and then kindly told them to read the book, and pray about it and they will never be the same.  They couldn't stomp a good testimony out!  No one ever can.  We keep visiting Jonathan and Dioselis.  They are progressing super super well.  We are happy for what progress they are having.  Jonathan came over the other night and we showed him how to do family history and indexing.

Speaking of indexing, in this week I have done more indexing than I have in my life.  20 years of 0 indexes, this week I hit 49 haha.  Sometimes we just run out of things to do in the office, I'm like a week ahead of my work, but even so we have to be in the office until 5:00pm.  So it was suggested to just index, and that we've done.

That's about all for this week.  Thanks for the support I keep receiving.  Take care, I love you all.


Con mucho, mucho, mucho amor,
Elder Olsen.

Week 74 Office

Happy Saturday, Ha Ha!

It was a pretty good little week here in the good ol office.  We had a fun little P-day today, we got the office crew together and took a squad hike to the Christ statue in Chorrillos.  It was awesome, we had a good little time.  We were tossing the good ol pigskin around, and a big dog came up and just stole it, went all the way down the hill with the ball and just ate it haha.   Good thing it was a Nerf ball and not actually a real deal, those american footballs are pricey here.   I'll have to send some squad pics when I get them.

Dad asked me for a rundown on what I do in a normal day.  Usually I wake up, do exercises, shower and change, go to the office and eat breakfast there, and then we do daily planning and personal study.  We do all of that before 10:00 am because at 10:00 we basically start work haha, it's like a 10-5 job honestly.  In the morning I usually like to focus on the health side of my assignment getting appointments taken out, organizing myself about who is taking medicine, updating health logs, and talking to President about health stuff I don't know (thank goodness he is a doctor haha).  And after lunch in the afternoon I like to focus on travel.  Organize travel plans for the zone leaders in Ayacucho to come to Lima for the leadership council meeting, organize travel plans for President to go to Ayacucho, organize bus travels for missionaries going to doctor appointments from the south, and get ahead with the transfers.  And after that we (finally) get to go out and proselyte.   It is a stark difference between the spirituality in the office and going out and just testifying of Christ and the Atoning sacrifice he made for us.

Question time!  Dad, I kind of arrange flight plans for the missionaries that are ending.  With the North American missionaries the church headquarters handles it, but with all the rest of the missionaries it's my job to take out their flights and accompany them to the airport to make sure they are all good.  To answer another question, my Spanish is actually improving even more, I have learned a lot of new words, trust me!  I learned "otorringolaringología," not sure what it means in English other than ear stuff-ology haha.  Even though we do speak a lot of English with the office Elders, all of the health calls I get make up for it haha.

We are seeing quite a bit of success here in Bolognesi, it's kind of fun to pull out a lot of something from nothing haha.  We started this transfer with a huge pool of one single investigator named Julio and we have been able to add another 6-8 investigators in these two weeks.  The two who are progressing the most are Julio and Dioselis.  Julio is now getting serious about his marriage and is saying that he is now looking into finding a massive marriage so that he can get married and complete a true law of chastity repentance, we are excited for him.  And Dioselis is still progressing well, she is going to be coming to church this week.

Well my hour is about up and I still need to get President Richey a short note, thanks for all the love and support you give me, I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Cordialmente,
Elder Olsen

One of my mission buddies Elder Melenje
drew me on my desk haha.

Squad Cristo statue hangout

Week 73 Office

Happy Transfers!!

Another happy landing.  I survived transfer week haha.  The other health secretaries made it look so easy haha.  There is a lot more to being a secretary than I thought!  I quickly found out that when I accepted the "health secretary" assignment, I signed up to the Mission doctor, emergency first responder, flight booker, travel organizer, airport guide, and President's personal secretary!  It's a little change in pace now, I'm realizing just how different it is!

Nevertheless, we are definitely going out and saving some souls as well.  We only have to be at the office until 5:00PM.  I try not to be a workaholic and go out and do some work in our proselyting area.  We are quickly realizing that we have a challenge in our area as well haha.  We are gonna start from nothing and just go from the ground up!   We are excited to start giving it our all in the good ol Bolognesi Ward.

We have a total of two investigators, we had one to begin with and we just barely found one. Julio is one of them, he has been investigating the church for a very long time.  We are going to see if he is going to be progressing now.  The new investigator that we just barely found this week is Dioselis.  We hope she progresses, she was super open and just trusting in the blessings that will come to her as she asks God if it's all true.  With her there's good news and bad news haha.  Good news is that her boyfriend is a member!  Bad news is that he's less active and they are living together.  They seem down to get married and just live a happier life though and we are grateful for having found them.

Well that's about all of the news this week.  We played basketball today for P'day with the other office Elders.  We are all already buddies.  There's 6 of us in the squad.  Me and my comp, other secretaries, Elder Craythorne and Elder Mortimer and the APs Elder Kirby and Elder Schank.  We will probably go and eat burgers in a bit here.

Thanks for all you guys do!  I love you and pray for you all of the time!!  Have a great week.


Con amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 72 Office

Well, That Was Unexpected....

So I got an emergency transfer.  I was expected to stay awhile in my area but they ended up taking me out of there on Wednesday morning.  I stay in my same zone but I'm going to be in a different ward.  I went from Las Villas to the ward Bolognesi.   I'm super stoked to be working here, it's gonna be a party hahaha.

Some stuff you gotta know now, one thing is that my P-day will be on Saturday from here on out.  The reason for that is because I'm an office missionary is that I will be the mission health and travel secretary.   I've been told I'm the personal secretary of the President as well, no clue what that means nor what the difference is but it sounds pretty cool haha.  My companion is the travel and migration secretary.  He's also new.   His name is Elder Blanco. He is from Puno Peru.  He is super cool, he and I are gonna get along super well.

As far as the area goes I'm super excited to work here.  The ward seems pretty cool.  The
area is just absolutely dead because the previous supply secretary apparently didn't organize his time enough to go and proselyte.   I am also opening an area.  That means that I don't know how to get around my area and my companion doesn't know how do get around the area either, so we figure it out together hahaha.

We had our P-day of excellence I was planning with my last companion Elder Arreaga.   I was a participant instead of a leader, that was kinda wierd haha.   It was fun, we just had a grill and played some sports.

It's gonna be a fun time getting to turn the page in my new adventures in the mission.  I've never learned so much in three days haha.  It's like trying to drink out of a fire hose.   What we do is super easy, but there's a million easy things you have to do and if you miss one easy thing you're in a panic haha.  I'm excited to get going with this though.   I'm lucky to have my semicompanion Elder Usevitch.  I'm replacing him so hes showing me the ropes. It's kinda funny talking to him because I feel like the kid in Meet the Robinsons talking to his future self hahahahaha.

Me and comp

Me and Sergio, a member

My nametag I almost lost at sea

Well that's about all of this week. Thanks for reading this short little email. I love you guys!!


Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 71 Chorrillos

Happy Monday!!

We had a great week, we worked a ton with less active members this week to maybe please the Bishop haha.  We are working with 4 inactive members that are now activating.  3 are fully activated and with 1 we have to work a little bit more with.  They were all strong members, they just had some problems with leadership or whatever their reason was.  They are going to be super strong members coming back.

As far as investigators go we are still working with Beatriz, she just needs her marriage date now, she has all of her papers!  We are now working with a new set of members, Frank didn't come to church and neither did the Castro family, Rosa and Juliana.  We are working with Matìas and Milagros right now.  They are super good, we are working to get them progressing.  We are also working with one named Bradly.  We finally found an investigator named Bradly!!!  He does wood and stonecrafts, it's kinda cool.

I forgot to knock on wood when I said I wasn't actually having a lot of meetings with the two stakes, that was a complete lie haha.  On Saturday I met with the Campiña Stake President and he told us in our conversation to come to another meeting on Thursday.  So then we went to 3 different meetings in the Chorrillos Stake, we were in the Stake Center for a good 3 hours.  And we asked the Chorrillos Stake President to meet with us on Tuesday.  We also have a combined activity we set up with the two Stakes to do a multi Stake family search activity on Sunday.  Now we are getting busy haha.

I loved conference!!  I loved all of those talks but I'll have to choose a few that I liked.  First place goes to President Russel M. Nelson of course, his talk was so good.  In second place I'd say Tadd R. Callister, he's always been one of my favorites and it was kind of sad to see him released, he really did go out with a bang.  An excellent testimony of the doctrine of the Atonement.  Then I'd go with President Uchtdorf with his suggestions to help in the missionary work.  There were some great promises in there.  Then I'd go with Elder Stevenson. That was a super great talk on always having a game plan predetermined.  An honorable mention is the one about the Band of Brothers quorum.  That was a super sweet talk about the power of 1 convert and the power of a tight knit unit.

Conference was great, we got to watch 4 sessions in English and 1 session we watched in Spanish.  We were with a group of missionaries so we just went to a different room to watch it in our native tongue.  They transmitted everything in the Stake center.

Well thanks for reading this, we have transfers next week so I'll be writing on Tuesday.  We are going to be having P'day on Saturday again so I'll send you pics next week.  Thanks so much. Love ya guys.


Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 70 Chorrillos

I Totally Didn't Forget This Time!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMA!!! I hope your birthday will be good and full of joy.   I am positive it's gonna be an awesome day.

It's been a great week here in Chorrillos.  We have been working a lot this week with a bunch of stake leaders.  We have been working a bit with the leaders of the Chorrillos Stake as far as missionary work and chapel open houses go.  They plan on having a different ward do an open house every month of the year.  It's a good idea, we will probably see success out of that.  The Stake Campiña is starting to get the hang of things, we just met the high councilor over the missionary work.   We will start working with him and the stake president.

Well just a little report about who we are working with, Beatriz is still going strong, her husband is an active member now we just gotta get the ring on now and get her baptized. The Castro family didn't come to church this week, I guess they went to visit their grandfather in the hospital.  We will definitely have a visit with them and focus on the Sabbath Day.  I'm sure they can visit grandpa at 10:00 instead of 8:00 when our meeting starts.  Frank has been a little bit hard to find, we need to have a better hold on him and make sure his friends in the young men are working with him so that he has friends.   We are teaching Luz Valverde and her daughter Adriana again, Luz came to church after so long of not going.  The meeting happened to be about the power of the Book of Mormon, and she really liked it.

This sacrament meeting was super good, for 5th Sunday we talked about the power of the Book of Mormon and ministration.  Did you guys do the Book of Mormon fifth Sunday or was that something for our area?  It was super cool, they invited the ex Stake President of Chorrillos and his family to speak about the Book of Mormon seeing that they are members of our ward Las Villas.

Well that's my time for this week. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!  Thanks for all you do mom, I appreciate your hard work for raising me right!

Foto bautismal, I think I forgot to send it haha.

 A fun little ward activity we did, we acted haha

Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen