Monday, November 26, 2012

Letter for November 26, 2012


Hey all!!

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great thanksgiving. We went out and taught like we did every other day. By mid day we were getting shut down and stuff so we went out and ate at the Valero/Gomez home. We had tostadas. They were really good. Then we went to another family's house to eat with other missionaries. We had enchiladas. Afterwards, we had Elder Burrup eat something we call chile de arbol. I think it's about the hottest thing in the world to eat. It was great. Ha-ha I had one too but it was his first and he loved it. So needless to say, I didn't have any Turkey on Thanksgiving. Hahaha it was great. But we did get some on Friday at our bishop's house. It was amazing. So thanksgiving was great for me!

What a great week it has been again. We have had a lot of great experiences. First, we had a great experience with Sonia. She actually told us one day that she knows that the Book of Mormon is true. We were so amazed. She even told us that before Elder Burrup got here that she was pretty set that she would never join the Church. We gave her the challenge of reading and praying and she received an answer that it is true. Amazing! She is on for the 16th of December. Now the next step that needs to be made is that we need to get her family in on this. Because her husband is actually a member of the church but hasn't gone to church since he was baptized in Mexico. We are going to try to get him on our side so we can get them to church and into this gospel. It was so great. I know that we can get them to church. So great.

We also have been working with Diego. We were only able to see him once this week. But he really has a desire to learn and to follow Jesus by being baptized. His goal to be baptized was this last Sunday. We just need to help him follow those steps in order to prepare him to be baptized. We are going to stop by a lot more in order to help him become more prepared. He really has the desire. That is so great. He is so young and when he does this. He will surely be so blessed in his life. So yeah.

We stopped by the Valero/Gomez home the other day and we saw Kate and Ines there. They are two of our investigators that we don't see too much of anymore. They have been coming over a lot lately for the holidays. We took advantage of this opportunity and talked to Kate. She is nine and doing awesome. She has been reading from the Book of Mormon everyday and is doing very good. I'm very impressed by her. She wants to be baptized so badly. The problem is that she needs permission from her parents to be baptized. That is a problem for us because Ines will let her be baptized but the father won't. That has been a problem since I got here. We are hearing from Kate though that her dad is starting to open up more and more about the idea of her being baptized. So we reset a goal with her. I don't know why I asked her to be baptized on this day, but we set Christmas Day as her goal. She accepted, and we made a baptismal calendar. A calendar that leads up to her baptism and how we are going to work together to help her get baptized. She is excited.

We also talked to her mom Ines for a little while. She was going to get baptized into a different Christian Church two Sunday's ago. For some reason though, it didn't happen. I decided to take this opportunity to talk to her. While we were talking, Ines brought up something that I loved hearing. She said, "Maybe I didn't get baptized into that other church for a reason. Maybe God is guiding me to this church." So what we did is we challenged her to read the Book of Mormon and pray and ask our Heavenly Father. Because we know that she can get an answer from God. So we are going to follow up on it tonight and see how it went. She and Kate actually came to church. That was amazing, and they said they are going to come next week. So we are excited about that. We are hoping to get her baptized with her daughter Kate on Christmas, too. That would be such a Christmas miracle.

We are also seeing Ana the mom of Jose and Anthony. We taught her a few times. She is doing okay. She still needs to find that answer from our Heavenly Father. We are hoping that we can help her.

We are also doing a lot of finding too. We have found a cool new lady to teach. Her name is Rosio. We found her through contacting on the street. We came back and taught a really good lesson on the restoration. Elder Burrup asked her if she would be baptized. She said maybe. We also did the same with a young guy we found named Luis. He said he would be baptized if he found out all of this was true. We are going to see him tonight. So let's hope that he says he got an answer. We also had this sweet dinner with Elder Larsen (my trainer) and his companion Elder Martinez. They are the zone leaders of the south zone. So we never see or ever hear from them. They had a referral to give to us. They are in the singles ward. So I guess one of the recent converts of that ward wants the missionaries to teach his mom. So we had dinner at the house of the recent convert and the mom. It was super good. And we are going to start teaching them soon. Very excited!

My companion Elder Burrup is amazing. He has a natural drive to go out and to preach the gospel to everyone. It's been a privilege so far to be his trainer. It's great to train. We do a lot of studying. That is our big focus with the new missionaries when they come out. We want them to know everything about what we teach and how we should teach it. So we spend about four hours a day studying everything. He loves to go out and teach. He is willing to teach and take the lead when I ask him to try it out. Like right now he is taking the lead in finding situations, inviting those to be baptized, and in teaching the first lesson. All within the first two weeks of being in the field. Of course I help him out in doing that. He does really well too. So I've been very blessed with a great companion. We work and get along very well. We have seen a lot of great rewards here in this area and we are going to see them as we continue to go throughout the training.

I love this work, I love being here. I hope and pray that you all stay safe. I'll hear from you soon.

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

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