More Pics from 5/13/13

 Elder Thorne, Christian, Joby, Carmen, Elder Castaneda

 Joby, unknown girl, Carmen, Christian, Elder Ollerton

Mari and Elder Ollerton

Some Photos 5/28/13

 Demolition Service Project

 Dallin and his friend from high school, Carolina

 Dallin and Bro. Castillo

 Dallin and Arturo

 Sandilla con tajin

Dallin and Elder Farnsworth (MTC comp)

Letter for May 28, 2013

Hey everyone!

Wow! What a week it has been. We have had a lot of great adventures. First off, I just wanna give a shout out to my Dad. It's his birthday today and I just wanted to let him know how much I love and appreciate him. You mean so much to me. You have been such a great example and role model in my life. I don't know where I would be without you. I hope I can become a man like you someday. One who is firm to the faith, his family, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love you Dad. I hope you have a great day and I hope you know that I’m thinking about you today. I've been so blessed from my Heavenly Father to have such a great mortal father. I love you Dad. Keep it real. 

So yesterday I had an interesting experience. So about a year ago I went to a dinner at our bishop's home. It was when I was serving in the Anaheim 11th Ward. He asked me where I was from and I told him Springville. He said he had family there. We came to the conclusion that his niece is one of my dear and good friends, Carolina.  He told me they come up every year and visit them during the summer time. It was pretty cool. Anyway, yesterday we had a stake activity called an "Elotata”.  It's where all the wards in the stake get together and have a huge potluck picnic. All the wards brought different foods and everyone would go around and try the different foods. I got there and began to walk around to all the wards in our stake. Out of nowhere I hear a girl scream "ELDER OLLERTON!" I turn around to see my good friend, Carolina Villalobos...hahahahaha can you believe it!? She came up to visit her family and I guess she came with them to the elotata. We just happen to run into each other. Ha-ha! Seriously I wasn't expecting it at all! Like at all! We caught up and talked about you for a little bit. We talked to her grandparents who I used to eat with every week when I first got out to the city of La Habra. Ha-ha crazy huh? We chatted for about 10 min with her family and then we parted. She told me that she's going on a mission and I told her good luck and everything. Ha-ha it was so funny! The Elotata was the best. I ate Tinga, ceviche, carne asada, tons of different salsas. Sandilla con tajin. It was delicious. We even got to play sports with the members. I got to re-live the glory days as I played football with the members of the Garden Grove 10th Ward. It was a blast and I was beat after the activity. It was really fun to catch up with all the members from the old wards I’ve served in. I've served in 5 out of the 9 wards in the stake. So I know a lot of the members here. It was really fun. 

This past Sunday was a great one as well. We were able to attend the confirmations of Mari, Joby, Carmen, and Christian. I had the honor and the privilege of confirming Joby a member of the Church. I was so happy for them and they looked so happy. Angel, one of Joby's sons who hasn't been baptized yet asked me if I would baptize him. I said I would be delighted to. So I will be returning soon for his baptism. What a miracle this is. I heard that Joby's husband has also accepted a date for baptism. What a miracle. So many things are going on and it's so great. I love those guys and they are so awesome! 

Let's see. Oh on Thursday while we were studying in the morning we got an unexpected call from our zone leader, Elder Robinson, asking us if we could come and help with a service project at members home. I gotta say, it was probably the most fun service ever! Ha-ha we got to help in a demolition project. Ha-ha a member is remodeling her kitchen and I guess they were pretty much destroying it and rebuilding it. So I got a sledgehammer and went to town on their walls. Ha-ha I learned something cool. I guess California homes aren't required to have insulation. Ha-ha it was super fun and it took us from 10am to about 2pm then we had to leave because we had an appointment with a member. It was fun though. Ha-ha it reminded me of when we tore down Grandma and Grandpa Ollerton's kitchen when they were in Greece. Good times! 

So we are still teaching Eliseo as well. We are thinking about changing his goal for baptism to the 9th of June. He has had a hard time overcoming smoking. We've been trying to work with him on it. We know that the Lord can help him overcome this addiction. He has a lot of other stuff going on in his life right now so he gets stressed out and smokes to relieve his stress. We are going to do our best to get him to substitute something else, or even give him a blessing as well. He is a great guy and wants to do the right thing. Please pray for him that we may know how to help him overcome that challenge. We are still teaching his roommates Daniel and Alan too. They all struggle with smoking. So we have some work to do don't we? Ha-ha I have complete faith that the Lord will help them overcome this problem. He has helped a ton of other people do it. I know it. 

We are now teaching some new people. Well, I guess the missionaries have been passing by their place for a while now, but I haven't really taught them before. Their names are Maria and Maria. Ha-ha they are two young women and they are in laws and live in the same apartment. We had a great discussion on the plan of salvation with them. They loved the puzzle and were able to understand that it's so important that we do and choose the right here on Earth. It all depends on what we do now with the time that God has given us. They loved hearing how their family could be together forever. They said they were going to come to church. We even went over and woke them up, but they said they were not going to be able to come. We talked to them last night about the restoration. They have this question that is so great. "Which of all the churches is the true church?". We told them how they could find out. It all made sense to them. It was great because they would ask questions like "So has the church been restored?" or "How can we know that it's the restored church?" We gave them Moroni 10:3-5 in the Book of Mormon to read and pray about. We know they will get an answer as long as they read and pray. It requires both parts. I know they'll get an answer. 

We have another cool new investigator named Pureza. We found her this week through knocking doors. We weren’t even talking to her. We were talking to another woman.  She was inside the home though and I guess she was listening even though we couldn't see her. We were talking about the restoration and how because of it families can be forever. She came up and asked us if we had a pamphlet or something. She told us straight up that she was pretty interested. As you could imagine, that made me brighten up. Ha-ha she told us to come back and we did. She had forgotten about our appointment and only had a few minutes. We went in and taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She really liked it and told us that she didn't work on Saturday’s or Sunday’s. She also told us that she would be baptized if she came to find out it was true. It was really neat. So we are excited for that. 

It’s been awesome. It's the last week of the transfer. So we'll see if I stay or if I go. Ha-ha. I love being a missionary. It has changed my life for forever. I love it so much. I know that this work is true. I'm only the Lord's instrument. I'm an instrument in His hands. I always will be too. I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Letter for May 20, 2013

Hey everyone! 

Wow what a week it has been! It has been such a great one! I love being out here in this area with Elder Garza. He is what we call a hoot! Ha-ha but we have seen some great things happen. 

Yesterday was the craziest and the best day ever! First, we were at church yesterday waiting for the services to start when an Elder in my district told me "Elder Ollerton, do not look to your left." So then instantly I look to my left. Then to my surprise I hear a little boy yell "Ollerton!" It was my little man Jose! The boy I baptized in Garden Grove. Ha-ha He, Anita, Sara, and Dania came over to our ward to see me. Ha-ha it was funny! We caught up on everything. I learned that Anita is progressing well in the gospel. She's so close! That is what she told me. Now she's talking about "when" she will be baptized rather than "if" she will be baptized, which is soooo great. So it was sooo good to see them. We had such a miracle. I told you all last week that Elder Castaneda told me they were going to baptize five people that we taught when I was there. Well, they had the baptism! It was sooooooo amazing! Four of them got baptized: Joby, Carmen, Christian, and Mari. It was soo amazing. You could tell they were just so excited and they were so full of joy and the Spirit. They were all radiating with the spirit. I couldn't help but smile the whole time I was there. I had the great pleasure of giving a talk on the Holy Ghost. Elder Thorne (Elder Castaneda’s trainee) and Elder Castaneda baptized them. I also was able to be one of the witnesses with my old MTC companion Elder Farnsworth. It was soo great. Afterwards they all told me that they were just so warm and so happy. I could see it on their faces too. I felt that love and warmth all through the day. What a miraculous day. 

We had zone conference this week. That was really fun. We had a great time and we really could feel the spirit. I loved the talks by the assistants. The best was the talk given by the mission president's wife, Sister Bowen. She talked about the importance of staying away from "spiritual crocodiles" she showed us a clip from President Packer's talk. Ha-ha She even showed us the song from the movie Peter Pan called "Never smile at a crocodile". She even had us sing the song during the meeting. Ha-ha it was fun! I love the talk that President Bowen gave. He is the man! I love that guy. Every time he talks the spirit just smacks us! I love it. He spoke a lot on repentance. I loved what he talked about it. How the importance of us as missionaries is to preach repentance. That is what we do. We just do our best to help all participate in this gospel. It’s the best! It's so true! I love it. 

We are just working so hard to find more people to teach. I love this area. There are a handful of streets that have Latino people. So we usually make our way around all the streets everyday. Ha-ha Pretty soon everyone is gonna know me personally, but we are doing really well and trying our best to find. We had a great story this week as far as investigators go. So we told you about Daniel and Alan. We learned something very interesting this week. The third member the "recent convert" named Eliseo. It turns out that the missionaries in Mexico baptized him about two months ago. But an emergency came up and he had to leave to come here to California. So he never got confirmed a member of the church. When we taught him we found this out. We called our bishop and he said he would like us to re-teach him everything and re-baptize him and confirm him a member of the church. We weren't sure why though, until we went to the mission office the next day. Sister Butterfield, a senior missionary in the office told us that the reason why we do this is because there is no record of him to be found in the church. So we talked to him and we set a date for him to be baptized on the 2nd of June. It's really exciting! He has a few bumps to get over. Like he smokes every once in a while and stuff. We know though that he is a pretty solid investigator now. So that is pretty exciting! We are really excited. He was unable to come to church, but we are going to get him there! 

Another cool story is that we talked to Daniel for a few minutes and we asked him if he knew a person that we could visit and teach. He directed us to another apartment complex and we went over to an apartment he told us to visit. We stopped by and this lady that answered the door said she had some friends that are Mormon and that invited her to church as well. We asked and found out it was a family of members that are in our area and that we know really well. She said they called and invited her to church and she said she was going to go. Ha-ha we left the apartment in shock. We came to find out that it was a referral that the family had given us earlier that week. They had no idea where she lived. Well God guided us to her home. That is no coincidence! Ha-ha So awesome. We are going to have a family home evening with her and that family too. Very exciting. 

As you can see, God is totally guiding us in this work. I can remember one of my earlier companions telling me of an experience he had with President Monson. One time president Monson looked at my companion in the eye and said, "there are no coincidences" I believe it. God is all-powerful. This is His work. We are just his instruments. I know it. I love it. I love you all. We will hear from you soon! 

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Some pictures this week (5-13-13)

Letter for May 13, 2013

Hey everyone! 

So first off, I just wanna give a little shout out to my mom! Happy Mother's day Mom! It was so great to be able to talk to you on Skype. The time went by so quickly, but it was so good to be able to see everyone! I love you mom. You are the best! I'm so grateful that our Heavenly Father blessed me with such a great mom. 

We had a lot of fun this week and saw a lot of great miracles too. I loved it. P-day last week ended kind of funny. So I guess the Hermanas from my last district made a cake for me, ha-ha. I was their district leader and they knew I have a great love for chocolate cake. So they made it and they told me to eat it right off the plate. As I was going in for it my lovely companion and my district leader smashed my face in the cake. Ha-ha it was great fun. That is a tradition known among Hispanics that they do for birthdays. It was really funny. Ha-ha Another fun thing that we did is we had a dinner with some fun members. They are the Acosta family. The father was the last stake president here. He got released and last conference he got called to be an area seventy. Ha-ha it was awesome. So we ate dinner with him at his home. No big deal. I just had dinner with a general authority of the church. Elder Acosta is the man! He is fan of the Anaheim Angels (As am I). Ha-ha those were some fun things that happened this week. As well as it is starting to burn up here in Anaheim! Ha-ha it was in the 90's yesterday and it was the mid 80's at 10:30 this morning! So crazy. It's gonna be a good and hot summer. 

I just got some great news guys. I just talked to my old companion elder Castaneda. He told me that they would be having a baptism this Sunday. Get this, they are baptizing 5 people! All of which we found and taught together. Remember Joby and her family? They are getting baptized as well as Mari. What a miracle! All to the Lord on that one. What a blessing! So amazing. The Lord really is helping us out here. So great. I'm so excited for them! I guess they are pretty solid too. Wow! 

We had some great miracles out here in the area. We found an apartment occupied by two men (Daniel and Alan). They live with a recent convert that just got here from Mexico. They let us into their house on Saturday and we taught them about the restoration and they really liked it. Which is really interesting because I’ve found on my mission that the men are more receptive than the women. But they are really interested and accepted to be baptized and to come to church. They all came to church yesterday and they really enjoyed it. We had a scare because Alan left Elders quorum for some reason. We thought he had gone to the bathroom. 15 min past by and he wasn't back. So we thought he got lost in the building. We all went around and looked in every single room and he wasn't in the building. Ha-ha he left in the middle of church and we didn't know where he went. So we went home and then went to a member’s home and called our families. Worried that something had happened. We went over to his home and thank goodness he was there and everything was all good. He just had to take care of some family things. Ha-ha that was fun. They are a miracle. They were the first investigators to church this area has had in 14 weeks. Another miracle. 

We are still teaching Yadira. She didn't come to church so we are going to have to postpone her baptism for a bit or so. She is reading and is praying too. So she is doing pretty good. We are excited for her and her progress. 

We finally had a sit down lesson with Suly. She loved the restoration. She was having some serious family issues that she had to resolve. They got resolved and now she has more time. So we talked to her about the restoration and she loved it. She was unable to come to church so we are going to work with her on that. 

That is basically it. We are seeing miracle upon miracle out here in the mission field! I love it. I love being out here in the mission! I can't wait to talk next week! Love you all!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Letter for May 6, 2013

Hey everyone!

Another week has just flown by in the mission field. I swear they just keep flying faster and faster every week. Hard to believe we are already to May. Happy Cinco de Mayo by the way. There weren’t too many things going on in the neighborhoods yesterday. Normally on the weekends nights (Fri-Sun) we go out and tract and we can always hear parties going on. I love it. The people here know how to throw parties. They have their music going on. Sometimes if we get lucky we see a party with a mariachi band and everything. It’s legit! But that's what was going on yesterday. It was great fun! 

Anywho, things have been going pretty well out here in the beautiful city of Orange. I love being with Elder Garza. He is such a funny guy. Being with him is such a hoot. We always have a laugh. Well, he laughs at me because I laugh a lot at what he says. I always love to have a good laugh. That’s what makes life more fun! We always joke about weird things. Like how he believes that I’ve seen Peewee Herman’s Adventure even though I have no idea what show that is. I guess I quote a lot of lines and parts from it so he's convinced that I’ve seen it. I've also helped Elder Garza become a huge sports fan. (Ha-ha) He's asked me to tell him the teams that he should cheer for so for baseball I told him the Yankees, basketball the Washington Wizards, and football the Detroit Lions. Ha-ha we have fake arguments about why he likes those teams and stuff. He doesn't really watch sports so he doesn't know too much about them. Oh by the way, it's official. I'm now a die-hard Anaheim Angels fan! Ha-ha Go Angels! They are the best!! Elder Garza is great. He really knows the scriptures well and he teaches well too. He is really big into movies. He's a registered nurse too. He also likes to make films. He's a pretty cool guy and I love having him as my companion. 

We have been seeing some really cool things happen. We still haven't been able to see Suly, but we stopped by yesterday and spoke to her mother. She said that Suly is going through a lot of hard times right now and is really busy. I guess she's been reading pamphlets that we hand out at night though. We know that she is very interested. So we hope we can see her on Wednesday night because that was the time we set up to come back and to see her. We also were not able to find Yadira at all this week. We have heard that she is reading and praying to know about the truth, which is super awesome. We tried to get them to a Mother’s Day activity we had the other night. They were unable to come, but we hope to get her to church soon! 

We also had a great lesson with an investigator named Juan Sanchez. We had a good sit down lesson with him and taught him about the restoration of the gospel. He really liked it and accepted a date to be baptized on the 26 of May. We are really excited. We haven’t been able to find him though. He works a lot and so it's been difficult to find him. I know that we will find him though! I’m really excited! 

Really other than that we have been spending a lot of time tracting. Knocking on doors and doing all sorts of stuff. Trying to find someone to teach! We have found some good potentials that we hope to turn into investigators that way we can get them going onto the waters of baptism. It's been pretty hot and so we come home all sweaty and stuff. It's the best! I love it! I know that the Lord will guide us. We just have to trust Him and follow those promptings. Which is exactly our plan! 

Well that is basically it. Nothing much to report. Oh, we had a cool ward activity on Saturday for Mother’s Day. We had a dinner for all the mothers where the youth did a lot of dances and skits for the moms. It was really fun. But the coolest part was at the very end when they invited all the fathers to come up to the front to sing a classic song dedicated to mothers in the Hispanic culture. On the stage there was a curtain, and as it opened, a mariachi band was there. There were two guys on the trumpets, two on the violin, and two on the guitar.  They played some songs and it was soooo cool. It was great fun! I’ll get pictures to you all next week. 

I'm hearing of a lot of things going on back home and it's really exciting to hear. I hear my home has lost a lot of the trees and everything. That will be so crazy to come home to and see. I love you all! This work is the Lord's work. I’m really excited for this week. It’s going to be good. Like today for p-day we are going to eat at a way good Mexican restaurant called Rincon Chilango and then play some sports. We have three appointments tonight. One with Yadira and I’m really excited. It’ll be good. I love you all! Feliz dia de Madre’s!

Elder Ollerton