Pictures from 6/3/13

 Daniel and Dallin

Dallin and Jorge

Letter for June 3, 2013

Hey everyone! Wow, what a great and crazy week it has been. We have been working so hard in this area and we have seen some great miracles to end this transfer cycle.

So first off, I want give a shout out to SHS Football. Wow, third at the Ute Shoot. That is super sick and really impressive. Keep working hard and I know you all will do very well this year. Way to go Justin! Also Tre tre [Dallin's nickname for his brother Trevor] taking first at the Hershey Track Meet. Keep it up man! You are so awesome! Cameron keep being the man okay? I love you all to death and it’s always so good to hear from you.

This Thursday I got a call from President Bowen. He told me he was going to extend a call to me to be a zone leader. Ha-ha I was very shocked. I wasn't expecting a call like that at all! If I’ve learned anything from mission life is that you need to expect the unexpected. Ha-ha I have been called to be with Elder Robinson who has been the zone leader here for a very long time. I’m so stoked to be here with him in this area. In this mission we have three Spanish zones. So I'm in the central zone. Which covers the Garden Grove 10 and Santa Ana 10 wards. I'm really excited and we are going to see a lot of great things happen here in the zone! I'm so excited to be here. Elder Excell will be training in the area I just left. Elder Garza is off to my old area in Anaheim. We are seeing a lot of change. But change is good.

Yesterday we had a miracle. We had two investigators come to church, Carmen, who was a referral from a family in the ward. We found her by accident through another investigator. I think I’ve already talked about her before. Anyway, we went over to her home before church and we guided her to church. She loved it. And her two kids loved it too. She was talking with all the members as the member that referred her to us was showing her around and stuff. She really liked it and she told us she is going to come back soon. Hopefully Elder Excell and his greenie will be able to get her to the waters of baptism. We also had Maria. Another investigator we have been teaching for a while here. She is doing well. She finally decided she was going to come to church. This was the first time she has come since the elders have been teaching her in four months. She really liked it too. We had a member sit by her. Maria brought her daughter with her and the member we had sit by her in sacrament meeting has a daughter the same age too. They became the best of friends during the meeting and they really liked the services. I hope that helped her have a good impression of the church and what it is all about. She had been making some really good progress and we hope to see her and her family enters the waters too with the new elders coming in.

Other than that we have been out knocking on a lot of doors. Trying to find new people to teach. It's been fun and really hard too, but I know that the Lord will guide us in finding those ready to receive the restored gospel. I am really excited for the upcoming transfer and for everything that is going on here.

I love you all so much. I know that this is the Lord's work. This is His church. I will always know that too.  I can't wait to hear form you all soon!!

Elder Dallin M. Ollerton

Hey Dad,

Sorry I don't have too much time to email. We had to email at a library so now I’m down to only an hour to email. But about the last question you asked concerning our work area. We end up going to the same spots everyday. Ha-ha the only way to make it fresh is by knocking at different spots that you haven’t gone to in a while. I had the same problem when I was in Garden Grove too. Garden grove is primarily Asian people. We only had three areas where there were Hispanics. Sometimes they get sick of us. Most of the time they like us and think we are pretty cool and that what we are doing is pretty neat. With the Nephite/Lamanite connection. I love bringing that up when I introduce the Book of Mormon. When it does strike with them that's when they usually let us into their home and hear us out. Most it doesn't though. It's because people from tons of different churches go out and try to do the same thing we do. So some are just sick of different churches coming over and they don’t want to listen to anyone anymore. But some are different. We know that they will have a lot of potential when they understand it. A lot like what you said.

Loved hearing about what went on. Tell Trevor congrats on the Hershey track meet and tell jbird congrats on the Ute shoot. That's awesome. Tell him I’m sorry if I don't get an email to him. I’ll try. Love you dad. I'm so happy to be here. I love this mission. It’s changed me forever. Love you

Dallin

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)