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

 Elder Ollerton and Elder Walker (last day together)

 Elder Ollerton, Elder Walker  (French Toast Contest)

 Men in Black

 Dallin prepares his french toast for the contest

Dallin

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

Letter for November 19, 2012

Hey everyone!!

First off, I wanna give a shout out to my little brother who just turned nine yesterday! Happy Birthday Cameron! It sounded like you had a great birthday. I love you so much and I hope you had a great birthday. Look out for a letter from me!

What a great week it has been. A lot of things happened. It's been pretty crazy busy.

So first off I've been called to train. I picked up my trainee last Tuesday. His name is Elder Burrup. He is from the great grand state of Idaho. He is from the northern part. He says he is about four hours away from the border of the U.S. and Canada. So yeah, he is pretty stinkin’ awesome. I've been so blessed to receive him to be my companion. He is so ready to be out here and to be a missionary. He was so stoked to get out and go to work.

His first day in the field was pretty interesting. So I couldn't get a hold of our dinner to confirm it. So what I had to do was call another family to feed us. Luckily I had planned to call the Valero/Gomez home that night. I called and asked them if they would feed us something small because I knew that Elder Burrup had had a great big lunch when he got here. So I took him over there and they fed us some hot dogs and some fruit. It was really good. Afterwards I saw Ines, one of our investigators, sitting on the couch. I decided to talk to her about the message we shared. She gave us the news that she was going to be baptized into another Christian church this Sunday. I asked her if she was absolutely sure that she was going to be baptized into the right church. She said yes. Then in the middle of us teaching her she took a phone call into another room. Then after she was done she just left the apartment. Ha-ha so we basically taught a half of a lesson for my trainee's first lesson in the mission. Ha-ha it was great. I just learned though that she didn't end up getting baptized yesterday so that is good news for us. So we are going to work with her and hopefully we will have some luck there!

We also went back and started to teach Sonia again. The first time I brought elder Burrup there to teach her was awesome. The lesson though started out to be a disaster. She was going off talking about how bad one of the members she really knows well is. Calling him a hypocrite and everything. It was starting to make us look really bad. But then she had to take care of some business with a customer at her food truck. So Elder Burrup looked at me and was like "What do we do? I have no idea what is going on?" I told him that we were going to focus on the Book of Mormon and praying to know that it's true. Then I told him to invite her to be baptized. So that is what we did. Then the focus on the lesson was about finding out for herself if all that we have been teaching her is true. We both testified of the Book of Mormon and how we know that the church is true. The spirit really settled and was helping us testify with such power. Then I committed her to read and pray about it. Then I looked at Elder Burrup, He asked her if she would be baptized, and she accepted. It was incredible. She had never accepted a date so easily like that. We set a goal to help prepare her by the 16th of December. It was incredible. She even came to the ward activity with us this last Saturday and she loved it. So hopefully we can get the rest of her family to join in.

We also started to teach Ana, the mother of Jose and Anthony, again. We had a great and powerful lesson on Saturday. We finally figured out what has been keeping her from being baptized. She broke some news to us about some things that have been going on in her life. She always prays to God for an answer and she never got it. I told her that we are representatives of the Lord, and we are here to help her. I told her we were the answers to her prayers. And that she could overcome all things through the Atonement of Christ, and through faith. It was so great. Then Elder Burrup came in and invited her to be baptized. She accepted it. It was so great. Right now she isn't sure about it, but I promised her some blessings that would occur if she did get baptized. So she accepted. We have set a goal to help her be prepared by the 23rd of December. So we are going to work with her a lot more. I hope and pray that she finds out this is all true. She came to the activity we had too and is doing well. She couldn't come to church due to her son being sick, but we are going to do our best to help her be ready.

So we are also seeing the other Ana, the one that was supposed to get baptized two weeks ago. She is going through a hard time right now. We had a really good lesson with her about praying to know that it's all true. I think that when we initially invited her to be baptized she accepted not really knowing what it required in her life. I believe she wasn’t firm in doing it because she doesn't really know if it's all true. Having that answer would solve all of the problems that she is having right now. So we are working with her. We don't have a new date yet, but we hope to soon.

We are also seeing Diego still. He is doing pretty well. We are hoping to have a break through lesson with him tonight. So whenever you all get this please pray that this lesson will go well. He is supposed to get baptized this Sunday. He is still not sure about it. He was unable to come to church this week because of his aunt's baptism into the other church. We are hoping though that we can help him see the blessings of doing this. He is doing pretty well. He also needs to read from the Book of Mormon too. So will you all pray for that too? I know that if we can all ask for this help, God will help us out.

Those are some of the main investigators. It's all going well. I have a really great trainee who loves to work. He has already taken the lead in finding new people to teach. He's invited people to be baptized, and he even knows a bit of Spanish. I think that I’m going to learn a lot of things from him. Maybe even more than he'll learn from me. Ha-ha But I know that we are going to see miracles together. I love this work; I know that this is the Lord's work. I love you all and Have a happy thanksgiving!!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Letter for November 13, 2012

Hey everyone!

It has been a great week. A lot of crazy things have happened and are happening as I'm typing to you all. So first off, the baptism for Ana fell through. She was sick the day she was supposed to be baptized. So she wasn't able to go to church. They have to go to church the day they get baptized. So we are hoping and praying that she gets feeling better quickly so she can be baptized this coming Sunday. She has been having a struggle with the decision of being baptized. We are going to work with her and help her every step of the way. So we hope that she will be able to make this covenant this Sunday.

We also had zone conference this last week. That was a great experience. We went to a chapel in Irvine. It was from 11am to 5pm. A lot of it was this member of the seventy that came to speak to us. His name is Elder Kopishke (sp). He is from Germany, but he speaks English really well. He gave a great presentation in the morning about how we need to dream as missionaries. We need to make goals and set plans in motion to fulfill the dreams we have. Then the dream can become a reality. I loved that part. When we dream, we have set in our mind our desire. The Lord is always there to help us fulfill them as long as they are good and right. Later on he answered questions about how we can better work with the ward council, and how we can contact and find more investigators. It was a very fulfilling conference. I had the honor of speaking during the conference. I shared the success stories of Rachelle and Humberto.  Later on we talked about them and how we can bring more to pass. It was so great. I learned a lot.

Last Thursday night I received a phone call from President Bowen. He called me to be a trainer. I'm going to be training a brand new missionary to the field. I will be picking him up very soon. I still don't know anything about him. I guess president is going to decide whom I get when he interviews them. So I'm very nervous and very excited at the same time. It's been a very humbling experience thus far, and I haven’t even done any training yet. I guess I’ve got a feeling of inadequacy and that I wouldn't be able to be the best trainer this missionary needs. But then I remembered a scripture, one of my favorites ever. It's found in 1 Nephi 3:7. The Lord would never give us a commandment without being able to complete it. I know that I can fulfill this calling that the Lord has given me. I might not know how to do it. But again, like Nephi, the spirit of the Lord will guide me in all things (1 Nephi 4:6).

As far as investigators go we are still seeing the same people. We reset a date for Diego for the 25th of November. We are also doing something a little different with him. The seventy that came showed us a new idea that really worked well with helping people get baptized. It's called a baptismal calendar. It's a calendar that helps them and shows them their progress to baptism. We are hoping that will help us out a lot. He is just struggling with reading the Book of Mormon. We are hopeful and prayerful that he will read from it. I know that if he would just read one page on his own, he would know that what we are sharing is true. He has come to church four times in a row. He is really starting to like it. So we are hopeful!

We are also currently teaching the cousin of Diego as well. Her name is Daisy. She doesn’t have a date to be baptized yet, but we are trying very hard to help her obtain a date. She comes from a good Christian home. Her parents are very religious. She likes coming to church as well. She is doing well and we plan on giving her a date to be baptized as well.

We are still teaching their other siblings, but that is really all we have right now. We are going to be doing a lot of finding this week too. The Valero- Gomez Family has been giving us a ton of referrals too. So we are going to put our attention in finding them all and preparing them to be baptized.

Well, that is it. I have been having a great time out here in the mission. I'm excited to get my new companion and go to work. These next three months are going to be amazing! I loved being with Elder Walker. We had a ton of fun and we witnessed a lot of miracles out here in Garden Grove. I loved being with him and his fun and hard working attitude about the work. I have learned a lot just by being with him. He is now off to Santa Ana. I hope all goes well with him.

Thank you everyone for your support and prayers on my behalf. We still need them out here. Please pray for Ana and Diego. I know that as we work together we can witness so many miracles. Again. Les amo siempre. se que la iglesia es verdadera. Nos vemos

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton