Letter for December 3, 2012

Hey everyone!

Once again, good week this week. We are starting to teach more and more. We still are teaching a lot of people. We have found a lot of new, and really great people to teach. Hard to believe it's December already. The time out here is flying by!

Okay, we weren't able to find a time to teach Sonia too much this week. We did find out something that might be keeping her back from coming to church. She told us a long time ago that if she is going to do this she would like to have the support of her family. I can definitely respect that. We learned that her husband is actually a member of the church. He hasn't gone to church since he was baptized at the age of nine. So he has kind of forgotten about that. With that, we have come to find out that we are not sure if the husband of Sonia is exactly supportive of this. All she needs to do is go to church now. We know that she can be ready to be baptized on the 16th. We just need to get the husbands support. If we can't do that we are going to be bringing some members into the picture to be her friends. We brought one over this week. Sonia was just waking up. We invited her with the member nonetheless. She appears to be doing pretty good. We hope and pray that she comes to church this week. If she doesn't then we need to set a new goal with her of a day we can help her get prepared to be baptized. We know that she knows it's true. There is no doubt about that. She just needs the support. So we are going to do our best to work with her.

I also talked about a new person we had found last week named Rosio. She's awesome. She has been reading out of the Book of Mormon and she believes that it's true. We were teaching her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While we were teaching her she was like "I don't doubt what you are telling me, I just don't know what your limitations are." I was a little confused by what she meant. Then we brought up how she didn't know what the commandments are and what we share. We invited her to church. Like Sonia though, she would like to have the support of her husband. Of course I respect that. We are now in a search to find a time when we could talk to the whole family and get them all in on this. That would be so great. That is what we are hoping. We hope and pray that she can get to church this week with her husband. We know we can do it.

We are still teaching Kate and Ines. Kate, the nine year old, told us that she still wants to get baptized. We talked bout the plan of salvation and how she can live with God and her family for forever. She loved it. Now we just need to find her a way to get to church too. Her parents are separated. She goes with her father on the weekends. That is why it’s difficult. If we can find her a way to get to church she will be baptized by the end of this month. We can work a miracle here. I just know it. She is doing well and loves to read the Book of Mormon. She reads it for at least 20 min a night.

Ines is doing pretty good. She wasn't baptized into that other Christian Church. She came to our church with her friend and loved it. They said they were coming back the next Sunday. I called her last Saturday night and she said that she is going to the other church and she is going to be baptized there. We aren't going to give up on her either.

We had an interesting experience with Ana, the mother of Anthony and Jose, the other day. I honestly had no idea what to teach her. I thought I had tried everything to help her be able to make the clear choice of whether she knows she needs to join the church or not. She believes that all churches that talk of God are just fine and it doesn't matter which one we join. I told her that any church that talks about God is great, but there is only one church that is true. Because when Christ was on the Earth He only made one church. This is what we share. We share that the church left the earth for a while because Christ was killed, and so were His apostles. So the authority He established left the Earth. It was restored through Joseph Smith and she could know that that is true through reading the Book of Mormon and praying to know. Later on she still didn't believe me. So we came back and I had Elder Burrup give the lesson. Then she told us how she got invited to another church somehow.  (By the spirit of course) I brought up a problem that she is having right now. I told her that I knew 100% that she could find an answer to her problem if she would come to church with us. She said it didn't matter where she went. Then she said something interesting. She said she wasn't going to go to either. That she was going to stay home pray and ask God for help. She said if she gets help she knows it doesn't matter what church she goes to. If she doesn't get an answer, then she said she knows that she needs to go to our church. So we said "okay" and we told her we would be coming back and seeing what happens. We will see what happens I guess.

We also found the other Ana we are teaching. She was about to be baptized, but then backed out for some reason. We found out that she is going through some hard times right now. We were talking with her cousin about how we could team up and work together to help her out with what's going on. I know that we can help her. Let's pray together that we can.

We have found a ton of new investigators, a family of five who we found through helping them lift some stuff. Said we could come back. The daughter that is 21 was pretty interested. The dad, who is 45, is pretty interested too. We'll have to have a miracle with him to find him again. He works a ton and is really hard to find. I know that we can find him though. We have a lot of other new people too.

That is our week. Going forward, and not backward. I love this work. I know it is the work of the Lord. I know that I'm just His instrument doing what I can to help Him out. I love you all. If there is anything I can do to help let me know.

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton