A great week for service! :)

Dearest,

What a week!

Last monday: not p-day, but we don´t have scheduled lunches with members on mondays.  However, a fantastic family in our branch just randomly decided to offer us lunch!  So generous.

Tuesday we played volleyball at the branch activity!  We miraculously found a net and ball.  The local volleyball coach loaned us a net after we called like 5 different people while talking to someone at the municipal gym behind our house.  Woo!

Wednesday we set a goal to have 3 lessons per hour.  We need to find new people to teach, and we hadn´t been doing a very good job of talking to everyone.  So we truly talked to everyone on Wednesday, basically the whole day.  I don´t think we had any fixed lessons, so we just knocked doors and proselyted!  woo!  The day passed slowly, but it was a great experience.  We achieved a lot that day -- not quite 3 per hour, but with good reason -- we had some quality little lessons and found some interesting people who can progress.  We learned that an investigator we had only talked to once just died!  Oh  my.  We knew she was old and sick, and we had passed by many times to no avail.  The first time we met Laura García, she told us she was looking for the true church of God and didn´t know where to find it.  She was super open to the message of the Restoration!  I am sure she is accepting the gospel in the spirit world now.  We were able to talk with her sister a bit and testify of eternal life and comfort her.  Very interesting!

Thursday was another awesome day of talking to everyone.  Our old investigators are kinda falling through right now, but we are finding some new people.

Friday we moved a bunch of furniture from a member´s upstairs apartment down below --- it was awesome!!!  You should have seen the mad staircase we had to climb and descend with heavy stuff.  It was basically the best.

Saturday we went to Alejandro´s house in La Cruz again to help him build it!  However, this time was less useful than last time.  He has a new car that is cualquier choripan . . . I have some awesome pictures but the computer doesn´t like them.  It is slow, has a radiator that consumes water and angrily steams and explodes while driving, and it is basically awesome.  :) :).

(my reaction to his car)

Sunday was fantastic.  We had a dream charla with an investigator of gold.  He is Emanuel, 17 years old, and has an incredibly sincere desire to learn truth and be baptized.

So much more to say.  I love this church!  It is truly the Church of Jesus Christ.  He is our Savior.  Trust Him.  Love Him.  Know that God is real.  I love you all!

--Elder Max Olivier

Arrived safely in my first area!

Mom and Dad,

Hello!!!  I have 15 minutes now to write you.  On Martes (or tuesday), we flew to Uruguay.  It was a very short flight of 45 minutes.  We went to the mission home in Montevideo, which was very pleasant.  President and Sister Cook are wonderful.  The missionaries here are amazing and full of energy and good attitudes.  We had the opportunity to go proselyting with an experienced missionary that first day.  Elder Quezada accompanied me -- he is one of the secretaries.  It was an amazing experience -- he knows exactly what he is doing!

We then received our trainers and arrived in our areas.  I am so lucky!!  My trainer is Elder Aviña, of Mexico City.  He is fantastic.  He has been a district leader and was just a zone leader.  I am his second trainee.  Here, new missionaries are called oros, or goldens, instead of greenies.  How nice!  We already get along well.  He is very nice, patient with me, and a great teacher.  We arrived in Florida yesterday, our city.  It is beautiful.  We arrived at about 7pm, and we were teaching at an appointment at 8!  The ward mission leader also called us and we met him.  E. Aviña said that this never happens and that our area is amazing and already full of miracles.  That night, a man tossed us a bag of pastries up to our window from the street below.  Apparently, he brings treats every night to the missionaries in that house!  Wow.  Also, we eat lunch with members every day here -- crazy!  Today, we have been working on cleaning the filthy house . . . the shower curtain was frightfully moldy, so we replaced that.  Everything is much cleaner now.  We already had lunch today.  

So much to say, but no time.  I am so excited to be here!  I love it!  I am working on understanding more spanish, but I feel pretty okay right now.  I can usually understand my companion quite well, and he is patient with me.  He also knows some english.

Chau!!!

Much love,

--Elder Olivier

How much I have learned here...

If only I had the time to explain to you all the many wonderful things I have learned here in the CCM.  I have grown immensely in these very short weeks.  

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned here is that we must abandon our own wordly understanding and trust completely in God, relying on the merits of Christ and following completely the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.  I remember that Elder Gebs and I had a very terrible lesson with our IP Genoveva (our practice investigator who in reality is our morning teacher, Hna. Rios).  She said that she no longer wanted to be baptized, and my heart died. :) I did not really know what to do or say in that moment, but I tried my best and felt horrible.  The lesson felt like a failure because of me.  (hopefully I haven´t told this story already!)  

I realized that I felt that way because I was trying to figure out, of my own intelligence and thoughts, what her needs were and how I could meet them.  However, this is completely the wrong approach!  Of ourselves, we can do nothing -- even great prophets of the Lord have written that statement.  I am learning to turn over my knowledge to God and lean completely on Him, trusting in Him who knows everything perfectly.  When I am able to do that, I feel the Spirit, and others can feel the Spirit too.  It is still necessary that I prepare and work hard, of course!  But leaning on the Spirit is what changes lives and hearts.

Yikes I have no time!!!  Hopefully there will be more time in the field.

Oh yeah, I leave this tuesday for Uruguay!!!!  So excited.

We went proselyting last week, for the last time, and it went well.  The people had generally less interest, but I felt successful because I was able to talk to more of the people and work harder.

Much love!

I am getting kicked out already.  Oh well!

Read 2nd Nephi -- it is the best thing ever!

Apologies to those who may receive this message twice :)‏

Dearest friends and family,

I must share an important story, although the time is short.  I was able to go proselyting again on Saturday, for the second time.  Yay!!!  My companion was ill, so I went with two elders in my district whose area was adjacent to ours.  We were able to spend time in both areas.  (I am going again this next Saturday, too!!!)

The first outing, we gave a Book of Mormon to Griselda as I wrote about last week.  We also gave a Book of Mormon to Carlos, a very friendly middle-aged man who was working on his lawn.  We talked to him for a good 45 minutes or so on his little lawn, and when I explained the Book of Mormon and gave it to him, he was very interested!  He believes in God, but doesn´t yet have firm creencias (beliefs) -- he has read many canonical religious books.  

This last outing, I was determined to follow up with Griselda and Carlos.  No luck whatsoever with Griselda -- she was not home.  I thought we wouldn´t be able to talk to Carlos either, because we tried three times throughout the day and he was not home.  To my utter joy, as we were waiting at the meeting point for our bus to pick us up, I saw Carlos walking across the street!  I ran to him, and he even turned away a cell phone call to talk to me.  He was able to read in the Book of Mormon and he told me that he loved the vision of the tree of life.  Since this was Saturday, I gave him the address and time for the nearest LDS church, and he said he would go!  I hope that he did.  I hope the local missionaries are able to get in touch with him and teach him, because he needs the gospel desperately and I think he is ready for it, too.  What a miracle that I got to talk to him!

This has been one of the greatest weeks of my life.  We had a terrible lesson with our practice investigator Genoveva, because of me and my pride.  I felt so bad afterwards, and I didn´t feel the Spirit during the lesson at all because I was leaning unto my own understanding.  She was not keeping commitments or progressing at all, and I felt like it was my fault.  I am learning that I must RELY on the Spirit, and do so COMPLETELY, and it feels amazing when I am able to do so.  I wish I had time to explain all the wonderful experiences and things that I have learned this week, but I only have two minutes left in here.  It will suffice to say that I love God, He is merciful, and He answers our prayers.  I love my teachers so much -- they follow the Spirit to teach us the things we need to know to progress in our abilities as servants of Christ.  

I have been fasting English since Monday this week!  I love it!

Monday: 26 english words

Tuesday: 12 english words, plus a grammar lesson with a fellow missionary in english

Wednesday: 1 english word, plus 20 in a class grammar lesson and 30 in a companionship vocab quiz, but those do not count.

I will continue to speak only spanish until next wednesday!  Joy!!!!

I look back with wonder on the days when I though Spanish was an ugly language.  It is so beautiful and I love it so much.

¡Chau!

--Love from Elder Olivier

Apologies to those not receiving this message :)‏

Dearest,

¡No hay mucho tiempo para escribir email, siempre!

 

Sorry for the lack of time, as usual.

 

Wow upon wow this week was amazing.  I cannot even remember if I told you all that last Saturday, we had proselyting!!!!  Proselitismo was simply amazing and wonderful.  At first, I was scared to be sure, but not too badly.  Then Hermana Ríos gave us an incredible lesson and told us that God sent us to Argentina for a reason.  She exhorted us to make a covenant with God, and that if we do our best to talk to people, then He will guide us to those that He has prepared to meet with us.  She told us that we have friends from the premortal world waiting for us in Argentina, and that they need the gospel desperately.  I cannot recount everything she taught us, but the Spirit was very strong, and we all said individual kneeling prayers before heading out into the real world for the first time.

 

Elder Gebs and I were in a residential area.  In my estimation, it was definitely on the poor side of the spectrum -- I have never personally been to such a humble place before.  The language was definitely difficult, and some people were more understandable than others . . . but all was well.  The first man we talked to was very nice, but it did not really go anywhere.  The second man we talked to was a mad drunk . . . he mostly just lectured me for about 45 minutes or so . . . and I only understood a portion of what he said.  Mostly, he was drunk.  He started off praising our church because we show love rather than anger, so I was really excited!  But then he started saying that every church is true, and that God appeared to him on the street and called him to be a prophet or something.  Eventually, I just forcefully excused myself and he troubled us no more.  It was interesting, to be sure!!

 

It was somewhat difficult to approach strangers in a strange land and talk to them in a language I barely know, but wow!  I am grateful to have so many opportunities here to practice teaching and even proselyting so that I can learn more and improve.  I keep feeling that I could have done better on Saturday, but I feel like it was good for the first time . . .

 

I had one particularly powerful spiritual experience out there that I must share.  We saw two boys in front of their house doing some kind of chores and struck up a little conversation.  They probably thought it was strange, because we started asking about their beliefs in God and were using the formal "usted" form the whole time, because we are missionaries.  I asked if we could teach them a lesson in their house, and one of the boys went to get his mother.  I spoke with her right on the street for a good half hour, teaching her what I could about God and His love for us, and prayer.  She was receptive enough to stay there and listen.  When I introduced the Book of Mormon to her, I felt the Spirit in a very strong way that I have not quite experienced before.  When I asked her if she had heard of this book before, and she said no, my heart exploded.  Of course I have always known that many people know nothing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but something just changed in me at that moment.  The Book of Mormon is SOOOO important to me!!!  I have learned so much about life and received so many answers to my questions by means of that book -- it has helped me so much to draw closer to God and to develop greater faith, leading to greater actions.  It has helped me to repent, and feel peace.  To think that people everywhere are trying to get through life without the help of the Book of Mormon is saddening to me . . . .  When I read to her some paragraphs from the introduction and testified of the truth and power of the book, I felt so strongly that she and her family NEEDED the Book of Mormon.  She accepted the book when I gave it to her, so that was good.  I could have done so much more, though.  Every day I think about what I could have done better, how I could have gotten more to the point, how I could have invited her to do more, and how I could have helped her feel the Spirit more.  I am a very imperfect servant of the Lord, but I am trying to get better.  Every day I have prayed that she will read the book, because I know how much it will improve the quality of her life.  You should pray for Griselda, too.

 

When proselyting, I occasionally had the terrible feeling of being just another salesman or evangelist of some kind . . .  I hope to find ways to show people that the church is far more than that, and that I am far more than that.  Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ, by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.  Our purpose is to love, to share God´s great love, and to help people feel peace in their lives.  I pray that I may become a more humble, more teachable, more effective servant of God.  It is hard for me!  It is hard to learn to teach the gospel effectively, in Spanish!  But I am loving it so much and I feel that I am learning a ton out here.  I hope that I can sow some seeds in this field that will one day ripen into better lives . . . . . . . . .

 

I wish I could tell you everything that happened this week, but I only have 4 minutes left in this room . . . .  Yesterday, our district had an English fast for the first time!  After dinner, it died.  Not me, though!  I only spoke about 20 English words yesterday!  The gift of tongues is so real, and I realized yesterday how much I really can communicate in Spanish already.  We even planned our lessons in Spanish only.  I am going to do it more often!

 

Aaaaauuggggghhh, there is so much more to tell you, my dear friends and family!  I love you.  Thank you so much for the messages and prayers.  Know that I am having the time of my life out here, and that I am eager to become a better missionary.

 

No photos today, sorry -- we are not allowed to take pictures except on every other Sunday, when people leave the CCM.

 

Much love, always,

--Elder Olivier