Pictures from the ward activity

 Young Men's President explaining about Boy Scouts

 Members bringing in the food

Cultural Hall

Letter for November 25, 2013

Hey all!!

It's been a very busy week being the first week of the transfer. That's usually how it is for the first week as a zone leader. We had a lot of meetings. We had about four hours of meetings on Wednesday. Almost five hours of meetings on Thursday. Thursday was a pretty exciting day as far as the meetings go. We had training via Skype from Salt Lake City on online proselyting. They said they have chosen 30 missions out of the 405 to be the guinea pigs of this new tool that the brethren talked about a few months ago. We are now allowed to use Email, Skype, Facebook, mormon.org, and texting to find, teach, and baptize investigators. We can also use them to reactivate and retain new converts and less active members of the church. It's really so cool. They were telling us that we could literally teach using members from all over the world to teach investigators that we are teaching. We can Skype them in their homes if they don't have time to chat face to face. Or if they are too shy to meet missionaries face to face they can add us on Facebook and teach them online. It's pretty cool! So don’t be surprised if you see us on Facebook a little more. We just might ask you to help us out with those we are teaching. It's a cool and harmless way to spread the gospel. They shared a statistic with us that when friends "Like" a post someone puts on their wall about 54,000 people see it. So if you ever see a missionary post something "like it" please. So that way we can spread the gospel abroad even faster than ever before. It's going to be a cool experience. It's hard for us too cause no one else has ever done it before. So it's going to be interesting!!

Sister Ramoz was confirmed yesterday. That was awesome! Elder Prieto got the opportunity to confirm her a member of the church. She is really happy about that. She is still struggling with her problems that she has back at her home. Good thing we have a great ward that really gives a lot of support to her. Her visiting teachers are going to see her this week. We are too. She is really doing well with the change. She's already making a great missionary too. She has gone out with the sister missionaries we have in the ward and bore powerful testimony to a couple that was baptized yesterday. It was awesome! So she is progressing right along! 

We are still trying our best to work with Ana and Jorge. They just don't want to budge sometimes! We are hoping we can get some good fellowship in there with them so they can be motivated to come to church. The work is progressing well with them. Jorge has opened up so much and that has been key in discerning his needs. So we hope to help them out. 

We had a cool activity for Thanksgiving on Friday. We had a dinner as well as a tour of the chapel. The tour was first. So as members and non-members would come in they would go from room to room. Members were there explaining about all the different programs of the church: Relief Society, family history, young men and women’s, boy scouts, the baptismal font, and the sacrament room. It was amazing. Then the ward played a bunch of FHE games. It was a blast. Over 30 non-members came to the activity and loved it! It was so cool! We are so stoked because that was a perfect way for the non-members to really open up and share the gospel. I'll send some pics. 

What a great week! I'm so excited for this next week! It’s going to be awesome! I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Pictures of Sister Ramoz

 With Sister Ramoz at the temple grounds

 Dallin, Sister Ramoz, Elder Prieto

The Wades, Dallin, Sister Ramoz, Elder Prieto

Letter for November 18, 2013

Hey all!

Hey I just wanted to start this letter out by saying a big ‘ol FELIZ CUMPLEANOS!!!! to Cameron!!!! Happy birthday big guy! I hope you had a great day yesterday! Congrats on making your basketball team and winning your first game! I'm so proud of you and all the things you are doing right now! Love you man! I can't wait to see you soon!

Speaking of having a great day.... we witnessed a huge miracle yesterday. Clara Ramoz got baptized. That's right I said it. Clara Ramoz got baptized. It was amazing. Remember last week I said that she wanted to postpone her date for a few weeks due to problems with her husband. That all turned around this week. We went over on Monday night and tried to talk to her and see how she was doing. We went over there and her husband came home when we were there. He was totally drunk. He hasn't gone a day without drinking in years. I mean years. He got caught up in an argument with her and we were right in the middle of it! It was pretty crazy what happened. He tried to involve us in it and we just wouldn't have it. It was so sad. We went to the mission office the next day and I was talking to Sister Wade who is our secretary. She was telling us how she had a similar experience with this and how hard and scary the situation really is. I invited her and her husband to come to a lesson with us so she could give Sister Ramoz some advice. That was one of the most powerful lessons I've ever had on my mission. We translated for her. Sister Wade shared her story and how Sister Ramoz needed to put trust in the Lord and His church and that all would turn out well. Sis Wade has had two marriages with husbands with addictions. She said it was hard to leave them and continue on. She knew that she had to trust the Lord and she got a divorce with them. She told and testified to Sister Ramoz that she needed to do the same. Sister Wade is happily married in the temple with Elder Wade. Sister Ramoz was so impacted to see that it's really possible that she can overcome this trial in her life. We read with her in D&C 121:7-9. Also Mosiah 2:38, and 41. Telling her that this is possible. I was impressed to invite her to be baptized this Sunday. She accepted. It was so powerful. We went over everyday to get her ready for the interview. She came to a temple grounds tour we had at Newport Beach. We had a beautiful service. She was so happy and she was bawling throughout the whole service. It was so great. It was such a miracle of the Lord. I'm so grateful that I had the chance to be apart of it. I had the privilege of baptizing her. It was so powerful. She got up after she was baptized and bore a powerful testimony on how she knows that the Lord will help her get through these problems. She thanked Elder Prieto and I for teaching her. She called me her Godfather...haha! The whole congregation got a kick out of that. Bishop told me that they are going to call me Godfather from now on, ha-ha! I loved it. What a miracle. We are seeing so many miracles over here. I have feelings a lot like Ammon. I’m so grateful that I can be an instrument in the Lords hands. I love it. Transfers are today. I'm staying with my same comp in the same area for another six weeks. We are going to see more miracles! I love it! Have a great week!

Elder Ollerton

Pictures of the week

 Dallin and his companions at bishop's breakfast

Dallin and the bishops family

Letter for November 11, 2013

Hey all!

Long time no chat eh? It's been good since Thursday! We have been working so hard. We try to use up all the time we can to teach the gospel as the sound of a trump! We are doing our best. Honestly on Friday and Saturday we had hard days. We literally didn't get into any house we knocked on. We had a bunch of appointments and none of them were home when we would knock on the door. It was frustrating and hard. It was a great learning experience. We just need to do our best and trust that the Lord will take care of the rest because He really will. We are promised that in Proverbs 3:5-6. So we continued to press forward. We saw Sister Ramoz on Friday to check up on her commitment. She said that her husband still won't answer her about anything. She asked if we could postpone her baptism to a few more weeks down the road. That was pretty hard to hear as well. We know though that she will get baptized. That is the most important thing. If I’m in the area when it happens, great. If not, that’s okay too. As long as she gets baptized that is the most important thing. She came to church for the ninth time on Sunday. Her little granddaughter, Tamara, had a memorized portion of the primary program. She did so well! Normally she is really shy. She did really well. Her grandma was really proud of her too. They are doing really well. I'm so proud of them. She still wants to do this. I know she'll do it. I hope soon! We were assigned to teach gospel principles yesterday (bishop asked us at sacrament meeting) about the gathering of Israel. It was a full class. We tied it into missionary work and how we all need to make those covenants with God in order to have a happy ever after. She said that got her excited even more to be baptized. I know she will do it someday! We are still working with the same people. We are hoping to get some more going on the road to the waters of baptism. I know that if we are obedient, and worthy. The Lord will guide us. I love this work. I love His church. I will forever be apart of this grand work. I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Some Pictures

 Dallin at the Newport Beach Temple

 Dallin, Elder Prieto and Gilberto.

 Newport Beach Temple

 Dallin, Elder Prieto at the Temple

 Dallin and his district

Dallin with Ana and Jorge's family

Letter for November 7, 2013

Hey everyone!

It's been a while! What happened is today we had the privilege to go to a session at the Newport Beach Temple! It was awesome! Every time we go to the temple they've asked that we change our p-day. So today is our p-day! It's been so great. I love going to the temple! I believe I've said this before, but I love the temple so much because it's the one place on earth where one can go and feel such peace. All distractions are left at the door when you enter, and you enter into the peace and rest of the Lord. I love it so much. I know that the temple is the house of God! I'll send some pictures to show ya'll the fun we had!

Wow, so where do I start? We had mission council a week ago Tuesday. It was so great to be able to hear from President and Sister Bowen. The assistants gave a great training, which we in turn gave to our zone on the fundamentals of missionary work. When you new missionaries get to the mission field your trainer will go over the basics of missionary work. Just like sports, missionary work has fundamentals. Without these fundamentals we cannot do this work the way the Lord wants us to. We wont have success either. We are seeing a lot of success in our zone. Normally we have an average of 13 baptismal dates between the 7 companionships in our zone. We set a goal at the beginning of the transfer to have up to 31 dates. More than double. We really have the vision and faith that we can accomplish this goal. With more baptismal dates, the more we will baptize. Right now we have 29 baptismal dates in the zone. 22 of them are from the 4 companionships in our ward. We are seeing miracles! It’s been so awesome!

On Saturday we went over to teach some of Gilberto's co-workers that live in his same apartment complex. One is named Maricruz and her husband's name is Jesus. We got talking about the restoration. Turns out they are pretty prepared. I asked them "Have you noticed that there are a lot of churches around here? Have you ever asked yourself "Which one is the right one?" They said they've had that thought all the time and that's why they never go to church. We committed them to be baptized on the 8th of December. It was pretty awesome! So we have some new people that we are working with. It's really exciting because we are finding a lot of new people to teach that are really receptive. We are loving it!

Jorge seems to be doing well. We still can’t get his family to church! It's because the hardest thing for them to do is get up early in the morning for church. We start at 10 am, which seems like a great time for church but I guess they are used to sleeping in on Sundays. We have some big plans for them. We need to get them to church. We are going to have to invite them to be married so that Jorge can be baptized. We are working on inviting their nine-year-old daughter to be baptized as well. I remember going over to their house this week to eat with them (it was a family member's birthday) and seeing Jorge and thinking. He would make such a great member of the church. I really could envision him three years down the road as an elder’s quorum president. It was pretty wild. I hope we can make that vision come to pass. I believe we will. We are going to visit them tonight. Really excited!

Sister Ramoz...We are so close with her. She is still suffering from problems in her marriage. She has been married for about 33 years with this man who has been really rude to her. He literally works, comes home, showers, eats, and leaves to go and drink with his buddies and doesn't come home until late. She told us as we came to set an appointment that she is going to move back to Mexico with her son. Her husband doesn't want her to. She also doesn't want to be baptized without her husband’s permission. He won’t even respond to her at all about anything. That would be so frustrating. We had a great lesson where a couple and another member who lives just down the street came with us to teach her about faith. We started by reading my favorite verse of all scripture Proverbs 3:5-6. We talked about how she needed to put trust in the Lord and make the decision to be baptized. We testified of the blessings that would come from doing so. Really we have to walk by faith. It's almost walking blind but we have to trust Him. The members did a great job at being persistent and bold with her about being baptized. They all shared very personal stories about how they took a step of faith and were blessed. She said that she hasn't told her husband she wants to be baptized. We invited her to pray for the courage to talk to her husband and that if she would we promised her, as representatives of the Lord, that he would approve of her being baptized. It was a powerful lesson. One of the most powerful I've had. I know she will be baptized. I know we are going to witness a miracle. The husband has been changing his ways a little. What a miracle that is. So I know he will approve.

What a week huh? I know that we will continue to see success as long as we put our trust in the Lord rather than our own understanding. For His ways are higher than our ways and His thought are higher than our thoughts. I know that this is the work of the Lord. I know that this is His true church and that in it we find life eternal.

Have a great week.

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton