Week 96 Office

I'M GOING SOUTH!!!!!

First off the question on everybody's mind as to where I'm going!  Short answer: Marcona, Nazca with Elder Roylance!!  Long answer: President Richey called me in his office when he and the assistants were doing the transfers and he showed me the transfer board before it was even finalized and ready and he pointed to my name in Nazca and said "there you are and your companion is going to be Elder Roylance, the district leader."  He said that he has seen a lot of potential in Elder Roylance and wants me to help him become the best leader that he can be.  It's going to be the Elder's first transfer as a district leader but he'll do great I don't think I'll need to do teach much with him haha.  I met him a couple of transfers ago because he was a trainer and we train the people who are training on how to be healthy.  He is from Utah I believe, he has more than a year in the mission, he is super humble and super positive, I can't wait for the work we will do in Nazca!  I will tell you more about him next week.  President told me that it was close enough to the beach that I could go run there every morning for exercise, it's got some beautiful coasts.  Apparently I will have one of the nicest apartments in the mission.  I'm going from the highest north area in the mission to the furthest south.  It's going to be a 12ish hour bus ride and I'll have to take 3 separate buses. Fun.

Fun little side note while we are talking about transfers, I'm going to go back to my normal writing schedule.  I'm no longer going to write on Saturdays but rather on Mondays.  This week is going to be transfers, therefore I'm going to be on a bus all day on Monday, so I'll write on Tuesday next week.  But be prepared to write on Mondays again.  It's going to be a super excited transfer as an in-field missionary.  Especially in a little town in the middle of no where haha, they say it's already super hot over there.  I'll definitely send pictures next week of the little town, along with Johrgenis' baptism photos.

Valeria was baptized successfully!!  Her best friend who referred her to us, Estefanía, sang for her baptism.  The members really helped us out with getting her fellow-shipped!  She had a great experience investigating the church and now she is the ward's newest member (well not for long) Yohrgenis (I spelt his name wrong last week) is now going to get baptized today at 7:00!  To answer dad's question Yohrgenis is from Vargas Venezuela, he says it is just above Caracas.  He is super excited to be baptized!  He is going to get baptized on fast Sunday and asked that the members not bring food so that everyone can participate in the fast Sunday.  Super cool, the guy definitely made a complete turnaround with his life.  He said that he had to make some big changes with his life to follow this path in his life, and he did it.

Valeria's baptism

Well that's about it for this week, thanks for the package I am enjoying it for sure, I love you and pray for all of you!  Thanks!!


Hablamos el martes, con amor,
Elder Olsen


PS https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5q_daua2JdizO_fo-wZlw

Week 95 Office

Happy Saturday!

We had ourselves a great week!  I'm showing Elder Jensen the ropes with the whole health secretary thing.  It's funny how he's just like how I was when I started out.  It is like a fire hose of information and you can only catch so much haha.  He's doing an amazing job, he is already starting to understand the proactive part of his job.  A lot of it is not knowing how to do stuff and just figuring it out haha.  He loves the phone calls just like I did!  It's our favorite part of the job!

Things have been going good this week!  The stars aligned just right so I could teach Elder Jensen about every little detail about what I need to do.  I even trained him on how to make some Permethrin hahaha, I told him about the whole story of me trying to get Permethrin haha.  We have been working extra hard in the proselyting area so that Elder Jensen can start of on the run!  We are in transfer prep mode right now!  I have the feeling this one is going to be a doozy haha.  We are going to be on 'go time' pretty quick here!  And we haven't been working as a trio.  A couple of weeks ago we received a missionary who has tendinitis on his knees so that he could stay with us and chill.  Usually we have dropped him off at a Melchizedek Priesthood holder and picked him up after.  But now that we have Elder Jensen we have 2 companionships go out and have one on the "bench" with him in the office.  I still have no clue where I'm going.  The other day President sat me down and said "Elder Olsen, where do you want me to put you next transfer?"  My natural man was thinking "Ayacucho, Ayacucho, Ayacucho!"  But I just said "President you can put me wherever is convenient for you and wherever the Spirit says I should be."  We don't really know yet, but I feel like it might be somewhere in the south.  There are rumors that they are opening up 2-3 areas in the south.  I might be sent opening one of them.

Everything is still going really well as far as the proselyting area goes, we are seeing so many miracles!  Valeria is getting baptized today at 4:00!  We are super excited about that, she has been reading a lot in the Book of Mormon and is really excited about the big day! We saw a super big miracle on Sunday.  We were waiting for people to show up and greeting at the door, when all of the sudden Yorghenis shows up with his brother to church!! I don't know if you remember him but we were teaching him weeks ago but ended up dropping him because his job wouldn't allow him to come to church.  Apparently his boss asked him which day of the week he would like to have off work, and he said "I don't want a weekday, I want Sunday so I can go to church every week."  The boss approved it and now he is going to be coming every Sunday!  We visited him the next day and said that he was going to pray to know if he should be baptized now or wait for his family to come from Venezuela.  A couple of days later he told us that the Spirit told him yes!  He is going to be baptized next week, the 28th!!   We are super excited!

Here's a picture of an ensign photo with
super super bad grammar

Here's Elder Jensen, Elder Schank thought we
looked like brothers haha

That's about all for this week, thanks for reading this little note!  I love you!!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 94 Office

Happy Saturday!

In today's news, I took out a flight for my replacement to come into the office on Monday! His name is Elder Jensen, he's going to do an amazing job!  I can't believe I have four transfers in the office hahaha.  All the missionaries I meet say I've been in the office forever, but I feel like it's been so little time!  I'll send you a picture of Elder Jensen next week, we were trained by the same missionary the two of us.  Elder Mozo trained us both, I'm gonna have my brother up in the office representing the Mozo family!  I'm going to be training him for two weeks then I'll be off in the field!  I am super super excited to be a field missionary again, I'm going to have more than 3 hours to proselyte now haha.

As far as the area goes we are still hopeful!  We got iffy news and some super great news with Valeria.  Iffy news is that her baptism had to be pushed back a week due to scheduling conflicts with the baptismal interview.  Super great news is that she's still super excited to be baptized!!  She is ending 1st Nephi!  She's reading a whole bunch haha.  Other area news, we talked to this one guy in our ward named Brother Rodriguez.  He is a returned missionary, he was an AP in his mission he definitely made that clear haha, and he told us about something he did in his mission called burning streets.  It's where we go on a street and we knock on every single door in the street.  We have been having a lot of success with it!  We get like a good 2 future investigators every time we do it for 30 minutes.  Really does pay off.  So that's what we are going to be doing to find more people over these next few days.  That way we can continue keeping our baptisms up over these next few months.  We are really excited with how much the members have been helping us fellowship our investigators.

Hey.  Did you see it?  Did you see the miracle?  I'm talking about this: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/season-three-filming-book-of-mormon-videos That's right.  THEY RELEASED AN OFFICIAL BOOK OF MORMON TRAILER!!!  We are definitely going to show our investigators the trailer to get them fired up about reading the book!  So what they are planing on doing is on the 20th of September, Friday they are going to release season 1 episode 1 of the Book of Mormon series. They are going to release one new episode every week from the 20th until the end of the year!!!!!  And that's just two seasons!!  That covers up until Enos!   I'm so excited!

This P-day we are probably going to watch a movie, the APs are in Ayacucho for a zone conference and interviews over there with President and Sister Richey so it's just us four today.   I hope you guys have a great week!  Read this talk for FHE or something, I got the lesson this week hahaha https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland/remember-lots-wife/  It talks about a lot of things, like when we make big changes in our life we should go back to where we were, rather just look at what the future brings.

Thanks for reading this note!   I'll do a bit better about photos this week!   I love you all!!  I pray for all of you!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 93 Office

Happy Saturday!

It's been another incredible week here in the oficina.  We are happy with another little successful week!  We are going to spend P-day in someplace in Lima, we still aren't sure where we are going but it's probably going to be another mall somewhere, we'll see haha. Last week was pretty cool, going to the temple and the usual mall haha.  I practiced the piano for a little bit, getting some of my rustier hymns polished up.  I'm still the designated piano player in our ward haha, I've been playing every week.  That's been fun, they didn't know how to sing "O, God the Eternal Father" two weeks ago, so the ward music coordinator 15 minutes before sacrament meeting last week pulled everyone in to practice it hahaha.

It's been a great week in the proselyting area!!  Yesterday we just regained contact with Valeria and she says everything was ok and she is persistent about her baptism being on the 14th still!  I guess we have a surprise baptism next week!  She's been attending for the last couple of months, we lost contact with her, then we got back in touch again.  She is going to invite her mom to church for tomorrow, we are excited about that.  Where there's new light of Christ it can affect family members a lot.  Manuel and Mariana are still doing really well, they have a friend, Carlos that they've invited to church and is starting to show some progress as well!   We have high hopes for him, Manuel and Mariana are really excited to share the gospel and go to the temple.  He is going to accompany us for some appointments next week.  We've found some investigators this week, I'll tell you about them as they come to church.  We are still finding Venezuelans, they love it when I tell them that dad served in Venezuela some time ago.  It usually gets a conversation sparked up about what Valencia and Caracas is like, always a super awesome icebreaker.  Every time I find one from there I'll let you know!

I don't know if you guys remember when I was in Ayacucho, we taught Alex Tello and Danny Urbano.  They both got baptized. Alex then had some ups and downs in his activity up until the point I got transferred.  Here I am about a year and a half later, I received a letter from him.  He wrote thanking Elder Gutierrez and I for being so persistent in trying to find him, he then thanked us for having taught him about the Atonement of Christ when he needed it most.  Then the super awesome incredible part, after saying that he says "I wanted to tell you that I sent my papers to go on a mission, I am preparing and everything and it's all thanks to you and Elder Gutierrez."  I've never felt that kind of joy, when someone makes such a righteous decision in their life it's just amazing.  He's awesome!

Well that's all I got for this week.  Thanks for reading this short note, I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Con amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 92 Office

Happy Feriado~

I've been super great this whole week!!  Manuel and Mariana's baptism was a SUCCESS!!! They got in the water last Saturday!!!  God has been really good!  We are super happy with their true conversion.  They keep on sharing the gospel with their friends.   Manuel invited his friend Carlos to an English class held at the church and now he wants to go to church with his friend!  We are super happy with the things that they have felt and seen with their conversion.  They are faithful members of the church.  The next step with them is getting Manuel to get the priesthood and get them to go to the temple together to do baptisms.
We went to the temple today for our P'day!  That was a fun experience, just so happens to be that it was one of those rare sunny days!  It was awesome!  We then went to the Mall del Sur to go look at stuff to maybe buy but we didn't end up getting anything.  It was awesome nevertheless.

This week has been great as far as the work goes.  We decided to set the goals a bit lower because we have been missing quite a bit with transfers and everything.  Right when we did that it just kind went right up to the goals.  It's kind of like a magnet haha, you just gotta lower until you can achieve it and then raise it up higher.  We are finding some new investigators, I'll talk about them as they start coming to church.   Valeria is still progressing well, we are super happy about that one.  She has been super excited to keep learning and get baptized like her friend in the other ward over.

Me picking something up

Me and Elder Blanco

Baptism pic!!

That's about it for this uneventful week.  I'll leave some pictures to make up for it, thanks for reading this!  LOVE YOU!!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen


Ethan,
Has it been a drama alert in school?  hahaha, I bet!  Usually they think they are boss because they are fresh out of elementary school hahaha.  They think they can be all cool and swear and stuff, as we know though, *In Sonic voice* "that's no good!"  And THAT'S MY LITTLE BROTHER!!  Gets into band and is bored because you already know everything! You sir, are a beast.  Keep learning in your own style at home and perfecting your playing skills!!

-ElDeR oLsEn


PS. Yeah probably a good idea to get my registration going.  I'm still planning on going on the Spring semester.

Week 91 Office

Happy Transfers!!

Surprisingly, everything went super well!  We didn't have any super big problems thank goodness.  The missionaries in Na'ca were super late getting out.  We coordinate with the missionaries in Nazca to make sure all the zones in the South of Lima get on the same bus. In the same bus the missionaries in Nazca, Ica, Pisco, Chincha and Cañete need to arrive in Lima.  So Nazca leaves at X time and everyone needs to be waiting in the station at X time minus their distance.  I called the Elder coming up from Na'ca with a phone going to Lima and he said they left 2 hours late.  So I called the zone leaders and they said they left only 40 minutes late.  And I was like "oh is that so?  I just got news from the Elder traveling in the bus that they were 2 HOURS late" and he was just like "yeah sorry we missed our first bus." Yeah, fun stuff, that was the only hiccup in the plan.  Also I can't remember if I already told you about the last minute transfers with the Elder who was about to go to Ica then the assistants remembered he has family there.

Another funny thing. President talked to me this week.  He expressed the fact the he might change his mind, and I think probably have me die training, for the last transfer having me go back out to the field.  When he asked for my opinion about it I just kinda said, whatever is convenient for you and the Lord it's good with me.  He probably brought it up because the mission is going to lose only 5 missionaries this transfer and balloon up 15 new missionaries this transfer.  I bet he's thinking about having me train.  After so much time behind the scenes you get good at seeing President Richey's little gears going hahaha.

This week in the good news, the baptism for the Hernández couple is still on!!  Their testimony is super strong.  We went over to prepare them a little more yesterday and when we went to visit them they had read a talk from Russel M Nelson, "Come Follow Me!" Normal investigators never do that!!  We taught them about missionary work and I said something along the lines of "We have a great opportunity to share the gospel with our friends and family."  Manuel cut me and said, "We had the OPPORTUNITY of knowing the true gospel of Jesus Christ, it is our DUTY to share the gospel with our family and friends." And I was like "yep that's about it, that lesson just taught itself haha."  They already have their plan about how they are going to share the gospel.  Sister Hernández shared their big "plot" to share the gospel haha, she is having a birthday on Monday, so she invited her work friends over to share some cake and have a family home evening.  They are so awesome!! That's happening tonight at 7:00pm.  We still gotta get the font figured out and stuff.

Questions.  I'm making an effort on the Spanish here in the office.  It ain't easy with everyone being from Gringolandia but I'm still with the goal to keep improving.  We don't have many keeping commitments, we need to get another fresh batch in our teaching pool. We have some plans to find like crazy.  We found an investigator that had been attending the Campiña 1st ward.  Now she says she is going to start attending the Campiña 2nd ward and start to prepare to baptized.  We are excited about her progress.  She is doing everything she needs to, reading praying and attending church.

Well that's about all I got.  Thanks for reading.  I LOVE YOU! Keep being awesome!  I'll get pictures this week of the baptism and our Pday in the Mall hoping to get some 2 sol ties! Haha

Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Week 90 Office

Happy Saturday!

We have the transfer madness going on this week!  That's super fun!  This time isn't nearly as bad and stressful.  It's only taken me three transfers to get the hang of it all but it's getting a whole lot easier now haha.  This transfer we got an old document from about two years ago that they used to use for travel plans and I revived it.  We are gonna use it to inform the zone leaders about the travel plans and make it a whole lot easier.  Now I won't have to call or text everyone.  That'll be pretty fun.  This transfer is going to be super easy as well because we are losing only 5 missionaries and gaining 3.   They are small groups for sure. The mission will have to close two programs, it's getting super small.  Next group we will have a net gain of five missionaries.  They will have to open some programs for sure to fit all of the missionaries in.

Questions, transfers are going to be happening all this week.  The main transfers are going on on Monday, that's the day I get little sleep with going to the airport and taking early morning phone calls and getting my health presentations ready for the new arrivals.  We are seeking to find at least one prepared person ready to accept the gospel every day.  We have a pretty rich area but we also have some outskirts that are a little more humble.  At least our current area isn't a tourist area like our last one was in.  That was something super funny about Bolognesi that most of the people we contacted in the street weren't in our area and sometimes not in our country haha.  And dad, me as a pretty old youth, I would be interested in hearing from missionaries.  And to get in you have to bring two nonmember or less active friends.  Nah, but you know those face to face question things?  You could do like a local one and it can be based on the Atonement.  The youth can ask their biggest questions and the Bishopric could answer with the Atonement.  You can end with like a refrigerio or some juegos.  Maybe even a películita.

We have had a super successful week in the proselyting area as well!  Manuel and Mariana are still firm in their decision to be baptized!  They have been receiving so many blessings from investigating the Church!  Manuel has lost his job but decided to continue firm in his beliefs and in keeping the commandments.  He has seen miracles because of it.  They truly have had a mighty change of heart!  They are miracles!  They are going to have their baptismal interview today and next week at 7 they are going to get baptized (best P-day ever!)  We are putting our focus into finding new investigators this week.  We need to increase the pool to keep baptizing even though we are office Elders.  It is not easy but we can do it!

Before I forget...again, you all remember the Venezuelan couple Elder Arreaga and I were teaching forever in Las Villas and trying to get them to get married right?  Beatriz and Jandri?  It turns out they got married about a month ago and they got baptized!  That was some good news for sure!  She is still an active member!  She takes her kids to all of the primary activities over there.

That's about it for today!   It's gonna be a fun week for sure! haha.  I'll tell ya all about it next week for sure.  It's gonna ba a party.  Thanks for all the support!  I love you all!!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Olsen

Transfer trabajo

my compa takin a selfie on my camera

Me and a mission buddy Elder Streber,
he stamped me and wanted a pic.
He looks kinda like Trent without a beard haha.
He's from Argentina surprisingly.

PS I'll get an excuse for one of my companions to take a closeup pretty soon. Thanks!  And, The Hammer Museum looks like a place Thor would like to hang around haha.