Hey everyone! It has been another crazy week out here in La Habra, California.
So yesterday was a crazy day. Yesterday we had the confirmation of Humberto. He is so dang solid. You can already tell that he is going to be an active member for teh rest of his life. Our bishop, stake president, and mission president have been talking about him a ton. He is truely one of a kind. He was confirmed a member of the church, and he was also given and ordained to the office of a Priest in the Aaronic priesthood. Pretty crazy huh? so all within four weeks he will have been baptized, confirmed, and given the priesthood. So awesome. OH and we have been giving his brother and his brother's girlfriend the lessons too. We taught them the plan of salvation and the law of chastity and told them how their family (they have a 8 month baby) could be together forever. So we committed them to live the law of chastity by getting married. So we have a wedding we are going to plan and have for them in our church building. I believe that we arene't going to have it this week but we are giong to have it next week. If they get married they will be ont he straight path to enter the waters of baptism on the 24th like we had set with them. What a miracle. They even came to chruch to see Humberto's confirmation and everything. They loved church. So I think that they are showing a lot of promise! We are very excited for this.
So this last week we were planning on having a baptism for Vivi. But things changed as always. We have been working with her to get her baptized since I have gotten here to the mission field. She still has that main concern of how her family will react if she does join the church. Her family are very very catholic. Her Mother is actually okay with her joining the church though. But she looks up to her grandmother a ton. Her grandomther does not want her to have anything to do with the church. She keeps giving vivi threats that if she joins the church she won't accept her and stuff like that. It's really sad. but I guess that is how it is. She just needs to put her faith in Christ and be baptized. But we have received the impression that we just need to let things settle with her and not push baptism with her for a while. So that way she doesn't get a bad feeling or impression about the church. She has a ton of friends that areLDS so she has a lot of support. So hopefully that will get all situated out in the next coming weeks. We had a ton of great lessons with her that I thought would definitely seal her being baptized. Our young womens leader went through a very very similar situation. She was baptized and her Grandpa denied her. But eventually he softened up and accepted her again. So we hope that it will eb that way. We still are oging to talk, but not talk baptism for a while.
We have been teaching a lot this new investigator named Victor. He is actually my age. We found him through his mom we contacted out on the street once. We have been teaching them both together, but we have been teaching victor a lot more just because we know when he is going to be home. Last week we actually set a date to be baptized on the 24th. He was very skeptical. He is a very smart kid. He is in community college right now, but he is graduating with his GED so he can go to a university to become a brain surgeon. Pretty crazy huh? I think he can do it. He is a very large vocab in english and spanish. plus he is a thinker, so he knows how to discover. Plus he loves science. Anyway he grew up catholic. He knows the bible. He would read it a lot as a kid. so he knows how to interpret scripture and all that. We gave him a book of mormon. We testified of it, and we told him to reaad and to pray. We came back later in the week to teach him Lesson three (gospel of Jesus Christ) and he told us how easy it was to understand the Book of Mormon. He said that it is easier to understand than the bible, plus it makes sense. We told him that this could be his answer that he has wanted to receive. Now he wants to talk to us more. I think that he is going to get baptized. We ahve basically taught him everything that he needs to know in order to get baptized. All but the commandments. So let's hope that that goes well!
This week I went on an exchange with my district leader, Elder Centeno. He is a native from mexico. So it was all in spanish. Which was difficult at times, but i got the general idea and I could also communicate to him as well. But I learned some things from him. You know the only people we taught were less actives and recent converts. Which is really bad. President has said that we should stop doing that. We aren't here to babysit others, but we are here to find, teach, and baptize as preach my gospel says. I know they got people we could have seen. I think he decieded to be lazy or something. We just went out and knocked doors the whole day. It was my very first time really doing that on my mission. It was long. He wouldn't let me do any of the talking, and I learned that we have to show our passion for the gospel to the people we contact and teach. As we would talk to people he would make our message seem real casual. He would be leaning on something and like playing with his fingers, not even looking at the person, and so on. You could tell that the people weren't even interested, so that his why they all said no. so we went "hometeaching" I thought he would have known better since he has been out for over a year. but hopefully he'll learn sometime.
So last night we had a pretty crazy thing happen. We had our studies after we ate dinner. We decided to switch our orignal plan of finding a refferal to go see Rosa Estrada. She didn't go to chruch and we jsut wanted to see her. We were walking toward the apartment complex to see two fire trucks and an ambulance parked right by the complex. Elder Larsen and I turned to each other and thought "No way" we got there and the Ambulance had just pulled out and the trucks left. We learned that Lalo Estrada, Rosa's 10 year old son, Had been taken to the hospital. I don't know exactly what happened. but there was a can of some drink on the ground. He decieded to drink it. He went home and fainted. They had him take a shower and he came out and fainted again. He woke up and started to throw up all over the place. I guess he drank something that contained alcohol. Because the people said that it was alcohol poisioning. My heart sank as I heard this. I could have only imagined. Because that is like Trevor's age. I felt os bad for Rosa. She got the call while she was at work and hurried over to the hospital. Elder Larsen and I prayed for the both of them to be okay. We had a peaceful feeling come into our hearts. And he is okay. Could you please pray for them though?
Well that is basically my week! Lots of crazy experiences as always. but I am pushing forward always. I love you all and thank you for your support. for those of you who have sent me a letter and i have not responded. i am sorry, but i will get to you eventually. Les Amo siempre!!
Elder Dallin M. Ollerton
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