Letter for July 22, 2013

Hey everyone!

Wow! What a week it has been. We have been very busy doing a lot of busy work. That is what happens as a zone leader in the beginning of a new transfer. Our area covers the mission office so the assistants use us every now and then when they need our help.  It's been fun! We have had a lot of great experiences and we have seen a lot of great things. Sounds like everything back home has been great and there are a lot of things going on. Congrats Camers on your lacrosse season and mom and dad with your anniversary. I love you guys so much! The weather here has been a little weird lately! We have actually had some rainstorms.  Nothing too big, but that never happens in the summertime apparently. So that has been really fun to have different weather lately. I never thought I would get tired of sunny perfect weather all the time. But I have been a little! The rain was really nice.

Richy wasn't able to come to church yesterday. He was ill and said that he wanted to wait til he felt better to come to church. We had a really neat experience with him on Tuesday. After our first lesson, with him, we were thinking of what member would be perfect to friendship him. We thought of a guy named Tony. They are the same age and like the same things. We brought him over with us and we began to teach the plan of salvation. Oh by the way he read and prayed about the Book of Mormon and told us he believes it's true. While we were teaching him the lesson Richy was like "wait, you're Tony?" and Tony said " you're Richy Hernandez?" they got up and gave each other a fist pump. I guess they had known each other before in school. They hadn't seen each other for about five years they said. Back then they were best friends too. So it was awesome. So Richy is in and has a really good friend in the church already. So it's awesome. We hope we can continue to get him ready for the 11th of August. He's awesome!  

The youth had their trek this week. There were about 120 youth in the whole stake that went. None of them had serious injuries. So that was great. The night before they left we were at the church and a Hermana came up to me and asked me if it would be okay if one of her girls could represent Alice Ollerton in the trek. I told the young woman that was going that it would be an honor if she did that. So the Ollertons were represented at the trek for our stake this year. Pretty amazing and they had a great experience. They were all beat after wards, so that was awesome.

We met a new guy named Francisco on the street not too long ago. We ran into him again later in the week and he told us to come back so that we could visit him. We came back and he invited us in. We shared the restoration with him, his wife, and son. They really enjoyed it and they are super interested in the church. They said that they are going to come this next Sunday. They all accepted to be baptized. Not on a specific day...yet. Our bishop is from the same part of Mexico as Francisco so we are going to bring the bishop over to friendship Francisco. They are going to feed us tonight and make some homemade tortillas. I'm going to ask the Hermana for a recipe cause I love homemade tortillas so much! I'm excited for them.

Lilliana is doing well too. She was unable to come to church. She had to take care of some family things. Her four kids were going to come too. She signed up to feed us last week so she fed us too. It's always a good sign when your investigators feed you. She gave us enchiladas de mole. They were soooo good. We taught her the word of wisdom and the law of chastity and she is already living both of them. So she is progressing towards baptism! We will have to move her date to a later date because she didn't come to church. We are very excited for her and hope that we can even get her kids on board for baptism as well. So yeah!

It's been a great week. Elder Robinson and I are tearing it up! I’m very excited for this week. We are going to play some baseball with some members today for p-day. What a great way to start off the week. I love you all and I cant wait to hear from you soon!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Letter for July 15, 2013

Hey everyone!

Wow, Another week has flown by out here in the mission field. I want to first off say congrats to my folks back home. My parents will be having their 23rd wedding anniversary. I love them so much and I’m so grateful that they are my parents! I have the best parents in the world! Thanks mom and dad, I love you both so much.  My cousin Easton was ordained an Elder this week. Congrats man! I'm so dang proud of you! You are going to be such a great missionary out there in Argentina! I’m gonna miss you too. But I’m so excited for you!

 It seems that with the more time you are out in the field the faster transfers go by. We just had transfers not too long ago and here they are again. We are staying together. I'm still with Elder Robinson! We are stoked. I’m going to be "killing" Elder Robinson, meaning I’m going to be his last companion out here on his mission. He goes home after this next transfer. Which is so crazy because he was one of the first missionaries I met when I got here. So it's crazy!

We had a pretty good week last week. Liliana came to church! Yahoooooo! Since we felt so bad about what happened last week we told here that we were going to walk with her to church. We also called a member of the relief society, who had accompanied us to a lesson the week previous, to come with us. So that way Liliana would have a friend at church and wouldn't feel uncomfortable. The member really did a great job at taking her in and showing her around and  explaining what the services are all about. Everyone was friendly with her and that was so great. I love that because almost all the members in our ward are converts and know exactly what she is going through. So they really took her in quite well. She is still progressing to baptism on the 28th of July. She is so awesome and it's so cool to see how applying the gospel in her life is really making such a difference. She reads and prays everyday. Something she never did before. She is even noticing the difference in herself as well. She is really eating it up! So it's awesome! We are very excited for her. We have a great lesson plan for tonight, so we hope and pray that she continues on and progresses towards the waters of baptism! :)

We had a cool experience finding someone new. His name is Richy. He is seventeen. We kept stopping by his families apartment and asking for his parents and he always said they weren't home. So we decided to stop by and teach him. His mom was there and said that he's never really gone to church and if he wants to join then he can. We had a really neat lesson with him. The spirit was there and I loved it. We invited him to read and to pray and he accepted. It was so awesome. He even accepted a date to be baptized as well. We are going to work with him and get him going. It really was a miracle. He is an awesome kid and is going to make a great member of the church.

Well I’m out of computer time. I love you all and I hope that you all have a great week this week. I know that the church is true! Love you all!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Letter for July 8, 2013

Hey all!

Wow. Well, actually quite a bit has happened since I last wrote on Wednesday!  Sounds like all is well back home. Justin is off to football camp and everyone else is off to their normal thing! On Wednesday night I had the delightful opportunity to teach the Young Women at mutual!  I'll tell you why. So the stake is doing their first ever-pioneer trek. The stake is about 20 years old and has never done one before. So they have been preparing for it and getting all the youth excited for it. They are doing it the same as we do it back home with the exception of them doing it somewhere in California. A few weeks ago I spoke in church and I mentioned that I had pioneer ancestry. So the Young Women's president asked me if I would come and share my family history with them. They gave me a whole hour to talk about it. I'm really grateful that Grandma Ollerton sent me the written family history.  I studied up and really ended up learning a ton about my family history and I just fell in love with it. So, I talked about John and Alice Ollerton. I didn't think I was going to take that long but I ended up taking about 50 min. I talked to them about my trek experiences and how much I loved it and how they were going to love it and I was really excited for them. I also related my story to them and they really ate it up. They had seen 17 miracles not too long ago and I would relate scenes from the movie that were just like what had happened to my family. It really made it more personal. I told them as well that the decisions they make now in their lives are going to affect generations and generations of their posterity. I told them that I am a sixth generation member of the church. They were all amazed at that. Most members in this stake are converts to the church. So I told them how much I appreciated my relatives listening to the missionaries and then coming to Zion in Utah. Who knows where I would be without the gospel in my life? My life would be totally different.  I hope that made an impact on them. They seemed to have enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it too. It was really powerful.

Thursday we had a great zone meeting. We met as a zone to get ready for the training we will be receiving as a mission. We received training from the assistants on Tuesday. Normally we would’ve given the training to our zone on Wednesday, but we had the temple trip on Wednesday. So we gave it on Thursday. It was interesting because when we got to the church to set it all up President Bowen was there. He told us "Don't get nervous because I’m here, I’m just here to listen."  I couldn't help but be a little nervous because the mission president was there to observe us. It was a great training on how to become powerful teachers. There is a sentence in Preach My Gospel on page 104 that says "The Book of Mormon, combined with the Spirit, is your most powerful resource in conversion" We focused last month on the Book of Mormon as a mission. Now we are putting a focus on the Spirit and really having in our lessons to help those we teach become truly converted to the gospel. It was really powerful and awesome. We had to go 30 min over because of all the participation we had and everything. President Bowen really liked it too. It was also July 4th so we went to a member’s house for dinner where they also shot off a bunch of fireworks. It was something I had never seen before. All the streets in Santa Ana were full of people blowing off fireworks. It was sooo loud and bright. Big ones. Little ones. It was awesome! We were told that there was a truck from Mexico selling fireworks from Mexico. It was nuts! Then we went to the top of our complex to watch the Anaheim Angels lite their fireworks. It was awesome. We had a lot of food and fun with investigators and members.

Friday we had a pretty humbling experience. We were walking to a member’s home at about 8:40 pm when a man stopped us and said he wanted to talk to us. You could smell alcohol on him. Then he told us that he's been looking for guys like us to talk to. He told us that he wants a lot of help right now. He has a drinking problem and wants to change his life. His wife and him keep getting into fights and problems. He has work and money to pay for the stuff he is just making the wrong choices. He was just bursting into tears because he knew that Satan had gotten a grasp on him. He knows that God can help him. He said something that I will never forget. "I know that God put you two in my path to help me." That really impacted me and I knew what he said was true. God really did put us in his path. I'm really glad we went over there instead of going home ya know? We got his phone number and we hope and pray we can find him again and begin to help him. Please keep Frank in your prayers tonight. He really needs them.

Liliana didn't come to church. We went with some members over to her house to teach her the rest of the plan of salvation and she really enjoyed it. The Spirit was really there as the members bore their testimonies. It was awesome. We called her Sunday morning and she told us that she was getting all ready to come to church. We got really excited. When sacrament started she still hadn’t shown up. We got a text from her. She said that she had walked and got to church. She noticed that all the women were dressed up in dresses and skirts. She was wearing jeans. She felt embarrassed and decided to go home and come another week. We felt really bad and we hope we can get her to church. She just needs more friends and that is exactly what we are going to do with her. Get her some more friends in the church.

Well that's about it! It's been a great week and I’m excited for another one! I love you all!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Letter for July 3, 2013

Hey all!

It was another crazy week! It’s been fun to hear about all the family is doing right now. I hear they are in Lake Powell or probably have just recently returned from that trip. It sounded and looked like a blast! Congrats to my brother Tre Tre who took 6th in the state Hershey Track Meet! That's awesome bud! Great work. Everyone is just growing up so fast and I can't believe it. Ha-ha I love all the messages my mom sent me from all the family down in Powell. Ha-ha I Love you all so much and I miss you all so much too.

I'm emailing later than I usually do. Because we went to the temple today  in Newport beach. It was soo awesome!! I always love going. It's a place where I have felt the most peace as well as knowing that I’m also assisting in the work of the Lord in helping those who have passed on be able to participate in the saving ordinances. It was soo great and we probably won’t go again for a bit but it's something on my mission that I've always cherished.

So, we have had a busy week. We had another service project that we did for someone in the mission office last Tuesday. It was really fun and we were able to help him throw out some old furniture that he had been keeping in a storage unit for a long time. It had been pilling up for a long time and since he was helping setting up apartments for the new Irvine Mission he needed some help throwing it out. So we helped him out with that and it was fun. Some missionaries would go with him in a U-Haul and fill it up while other missionaries loaded the garbage into dumpsters. Ha-ha it was good times. I also had my first stake reports. That was really fun. Basically, it is when all the zone leaders from the Spanish mission get together with the stake presidency and talk about how the missionary work is going in the wards. We only have two wards in the zone so we didn't talk too much. But it was fun to see how it all worked on a stake level. Our whole mission in Spanish is one stake. So it was really fun and we had a good time with the stake presidency.

Other than that we have just been busting it, trying to find and teach more people. We had a good day on Saturday. We went on an exchange with the Garden Grove district leader. I got to be with his companion in my area. It was pretty interesting because I haven't been in the area for too long and I really only had a small knowledge of the area and people.  Elder Robinson has been in the area for about nine months and knows everyone here and everyone knows him. Ha-ha So we went out finding. With faith that the Lord was going to guide us to someone that was ready to hear the restoration of the gospel. We were in the same apartment complex where Liliana lives when we knocked on a door and a large man came out and we began to talk to him. All I said was that we brought a message of Jesus Christ and how it could bless his family forever. Then out of nowhere he gets up and comes to the door. As opposed to when he was sitting down in the first place. We had a great discussion on the restoration and he said he would love it if we came back and that he wanted to come to church as well. So we were really excited about that. We had a great exchange and we really were able to learn a lot. Like, just go out and find. No effort is wasted. A lot of the times as a leader I see discouraged missionaries who think that they are wasting their time here. No effort is wasted on the mission, or in life as long as there is a benefit involved.

We are continuing to teach Liliana. She is doing well and we are hoping that she comes to church this week. We had a church tour with her and her kids. They really liked it and the spirit was there, especially when we showed her the baptismal font and as we went to the chapel.  I played a hymn to show her what the music we sing is like and she really liked it. Sunday came around and we got a text form her saying that she was really depressed. She is really going through a hard time right now. Her husband left her this past week. And all four of her kids are blaming it on her. Its really sad and we hope and pray that as we continue to teach her the gospel she will be able to experience true joy that only can come from our Heavenly Father. Sometimes we have to suffer to learn how to experience real joy. It's how the Lord reminds us that He's there. I know that true joy comes from living the gospel. It’s so great to know that we have it today on the earth. So please, please keep her in your prayers. I know that we can witness a miracle together as we pray for her.

Something else that was pretty neat that happened yesterday was that we had something we call mission council. Basically it's when all the zone leaders along with the assistants gather together at the mission home with President Bowen and talk about what's going on in the mission and how we can better help our zones.  We also receive training from the assistants as to what we will be training in district meetings this next coming month. President Bowen spoke about how soon, missionaries will be able to use Facebook, Skype, text, email, and other things to find, and teach investigators. It's really neat and something really historic. We will be able to do so much work and be able to help retain all new members too. It's gonna be great. The assistants trained us on how to have the spirit with us as we teach and the importance of teaching by the spirit. In chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel really outlines it well. I love it because Ezra Taft Benson said that without the Spirit you will not succeed in this work regardless of talent or ability.  That is a pretty profound statement. So we are really going to focus on that as a mission to be able to do the Lord's work the Lord's way, because if it's not done His way it is not of God. So I’m really excited and we are going to see a lot of good things happen in this month!

I know that this is the work of the Lord. I love it so much! I will never stop being a missionary. I love it so much. It was soo good to hear from you all and I can't wait to hear from you all soon!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton