Letter #21 February 17, 2014

Well Everyone,

This week has definitley been one of change and having to get adjusted to things again!!  Monday and Tuesday were spent saying goodbye to Members and investigators in San Vincente and then finishing packing.  It was difficult but at the same time I am growing to understand the need for change and understanding to have faith in the Lords need for me somewhere else.  Wednesday Bright and Early at 4 o'clock we hopped on a bus to head to Posadas and find our new companions.  I had to say goodbye to Elder Izurieta in Obera about 2 hours outside of Posadas so that he could stay and wait for his companion.  It was a fast goodbye and I am going to miss that guy a lot!!  When I got to the terminal in Posadas I was greeted by Elder Sattler and Elder Duke and it was great to catch up and talk with those guys!!  I knew that Elder Seethaler my new companion was coming from Paraguay and he would be arriving later so I just got comfortable!! We all talked and laughed together about anything and everything.  Then out of a taxi came Elder Seethaler.  First impressions,  well he was playing with playing cards doing magic tricks, he also was super sweaty and had a weird accent.  He came up and gave me the hug of death!! He squooze me so freakin hard my back popped like 5 times haha.  Elder Duke just started laughing.  I was like o' crap I may have got my first weird comp.  Elder Seethaler, Elder Piriz, and I hopped on a bus headed North towards our new areas.  It was a 5 hour bus ride to our first stop and then another 2 hours to Puerto Esperanza.  I slept most of the way but when I was awake I spoke nothing but Spanish surprisingly.  Elder Piriz doesn't speak English so I didn't really have a choice. haha.  We left him at our first stop and Elder Seethaler, our zone leaders and I rode the rest of the way to our new area.  Puerto Esperanza had missionaries 25 years ago but for whatever reason we are the first ones there in 25 years!! We have around 10 members here, all of which are from the same family, and all of which are inactive.  We had a grand total of 16 people in Sacrament meeting and we have no idea how!  In short Puerto Esperanza is awesome!! In 3 days of working here we have found 51 investigators a lot of whom have been people who just stop us in the street and want to know who we are.  We have 45 people with a baptismal date of March 8 and most of them are huge families of around 10 people or more!!  We are truly being blessed here and we can already tell that the church in Puerto Esperanza is about to explode in numbers!!! We had a really cool experience this week with the most active member in the city.  This family has an 18 year old son who has gotten into drugs, tattoos, and just a lot of bad stuff.   When we passed by on Valentine's day it was this son's birthday and he wasn't with the family.  The dad told us all about how he was feeling and about how he was very concerned for everything that his son was participating in.  We began to talk to him about faith and he told us all about how he knows that things are going to get better but he still didn't understand the trial and why it was happening.  I felt prompted to share D&C 121.  The story of Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail.  I shared it and then bore testimony of the truthfulness of what it said.  This father asked me to say a prayer for his son and so with this family we knelt and prayed.  When I finished I looked up and this father was in tears.  He walked over to me and hugged and held me.  I felt the love that this father had for his son and it really made me miss my dad.  I know that our Heavenly Father is the same way with us.  He really does weep when we are sad and when we mess up.  He loves us so much and this experience was something that I will never forget.  In short,  Puerto Esperanza is amazing and everything about it is perfect!!  Our pinch is huge, 2 stories!!!  Short rundown for the week, Elder Seethaler is from Payson, turns out he is super awesome and we have a great time!!  I live in a jungle,  super accepting people here, and our pinch awesome. Also there are some of the freakiest bugs here ever!! haha 

 

I love you all and I hope to hear from you all soon!!

I Love you!

Elder Ollerton

Letter #20 February 10, 2014

Hello Everyone!!

This week was super hard.  We didn't have a lot of lessons the reason being that I was super sick for 3 days and couldn't leave the pinch.  We ate with Hermana Kata on Wednesday and after we had a pretty good meal she brought out what I thought was peaches.  Long story short... NOT PEACHES!!  I woke up the next morning so sick I couldn't leave the apartment.  We called the nurse and she told me to go take an antibiotic, but the thing is I have no idea what it is called so it turned into a "tough it out" kind of thing. haha.  We studied a ton this week and the scriptures have just come alive for me these past 4 months!!!  I have decided to read the New Testament this past month. Reading about the life of our Savior is something very special!  I sit and read, and wonder if I would have had the faith to be healed.  It shows me things that I need to work on in myself and then helps me set goals for the week.  Once I got healthy again, (3 days later) we worked hard.  We knew the transfer was coming to an end and we wanted to finish strong.  Saturday night we went and visited Ramona´s family.  When we got there we could tell there was tension between the family.  What had happened is Ramona had text us saying that she wasn't home when she actually was.  Her daughter found out that she had lied to us and it turned into a huge fight!  Ramona tried to ask Christina for forgiveness but Christina was still angry!  Ramona began to cry while telling us this story.  Christina got mad during this time and just left.  We felt that we needed to share something special.  Elder Izurieta and I sang Love at Home and talked about the Lamanite  mothers that gave their sons to war.  We talked about how God knows our needs especially the needs of mothers.  She still had a hard time with it so we called Christina and told her we wanted to have a prayer before we left and she came back.  We went into their house, knelt down, and prayed for this family.  The spirit was strong and the next day when we went to their house, they were drinking Mate together (this is very significant here)!!  We shared more about the Book of Mormon, what it is and why we need it.  Then we challenged all of them to read it.  They accepted except for Christina.  Normally in these situations I let Elder Izurieta talk some sense into them, but this time I felt something inside me.  I looked at this family and suddenly it hit me, I knew these people before this life and now it was my job to help them.  I realized that I have been set apart to preach the gospel for 2 years. I bore my testimony about the Book of Mormon and told them how I felt about it.  Then I looked at Maxi, it was his first time listening to us.  We asked him if he would read and he told us he didn't have a book.  We gave him one and we heard him say to his cousin that he wanted to read.  While I was talking I looked over and noticed he had began to read and was in 1 Nephi 3.  He had taken the first step of Faith to find out if the church was true!! We had a prayer and left while the Spirit was still strong!! I know I was blessed with the Gift of Tongues to be able to help this family understand how important the Book of Mormon is.  

Today the transfer ended and we were going to be told whether or not we are getting transferred.  The hermanas called us this morning and asked us if we had heard anything so we told them that they are both getting transferred.  They called our bluff but we kept our joke going.  They came and talked to us in person and some how I kept a straight face.  They told us they wanted a copy of the tablera.  The tablera is a sheet with every missionary on it, who their companion is, and where they are going.  We said ok and then we had no idea how we were going to keep our joke going!!    We ran to the church and hurried and made a fake tablera!! It looked completely legit!!!!  The hermanas saw it and almost started to cry it was so good!!! Then we got a call from the zone leaders like an hour later telling us the real changes. The hermanas were not happy with us .haha.  I am now getting transferred to an area called Puerto Esperanza.  I will be opening this new area with my new companion!! Packing is the worst but I am excited for this new experience.  It is about 7 hours north of Posadas, and 30 minutes away from Iguazu falls. If you don't know what that is you HAVE TO look it up!!! It will take your breath away!!.

I love you all and I appreciate you prayers and thoughts!! Stay Safe and I will see you all in a quick 20 months!!!

Elder Ollerton

Letter #19 February 03, 2014

02-03-2014

Hey Everyone!!!

This has been such a good week!!  It started off rough because I was sick.  But once I was fully better and able to get out of our pinch, we worked hard!!  We did a lot of walking this week as we had families that we had to visit, but it was a great week overall!!

We had some great lessons with our investigator Ramona and her 4 daughters.  They recently lost their Dad and so we were pretty excited to share the Plan of Salvation with them!! It went awesome and I took the initiative with the whole lesson.  I have been trying to do that a lot more lately!  I felt the spirit so strong when we talked about life after death and how when we die it isn't the end.  I watched one of the daughters, Cristina, get tears in her eyes while we talked about the plan that our Father in Heaven has for us!! It was an awesome experience!!

We talked to Elder Merrill this week to make sure that we were still having a baptism and his answer was, "Ya we are. And, have Elder Ollerton bring his baptismal pants!!"  I was so happy and I started to cry!! Not only was the Marquez family getting baptized, they had asked me to baptize them!!  I called President to make sure that we still have permission to go and he said yes!!  We decided we would leave Friday night and have all of Saturday to visit people.  After our lesson on the Plan of Salvation with Ramona, it was about 7:40 because we had given Ramona a blessing after our lesson, and we had at least a 30 minute RUN to the house and then another 10 minute run to the terminal! We called a taxi, and then took off.  We got to the pinch with around 10 minutes before our bus left.  We changed our clothes packed a back pack and literally sprinted to the terminal!! We barely made it to our bus and we were off to Posadas.  We made it to Posadas in 3 hours which was a miracle!  And we stayed the night in Elder Merrill and Dukes pinch.  They are a good time!! We spent the night catching flies and gluing strings to their backs then flying them around. ha ha.  It was hilarious! The next day we had a meeting with President LaPierre in the morning and then we went to eat in the Plaza downtown.  While we were eating we had a homeless guy come up to us and drop cain on us for not buying him a sandwich.  He was kinda sketchy and he was getting pretty close to me so I was getting ready to defend myself if need be.  ha ha Crazy stuff!!  We went to the Baptism and It was such an awesome experience!!!  I also took the 1st picture in the history of the world with that whole family smiling!! It was such a different countenance on their faces after their baptisms!!  When It was time to leave the youngest son ran up to me and began to cry.  He buried his head in my leg and just told me thanks for everything.  He said he didn't want me to go!! I started to cry but promised I would be back soon!!!  It was great!!! The worst part of the day was when we learned that the next bus to San Vicente was at 4:45am in the morning.  We had a crappy sleep in the sketchy terminal ha ha.  Oh the Adventures of the mission!! We got on a crappy bus that broke down an hour outside of the terminal, and then had a baby throw-up as well. ha ha.  What a weekend!! I

 am so happy for the blessings that I have had this week and I am grateful for your prayers!!! I love you all and hope you are enjoying the cold!!!
Love you!!

Elder Ollerton

Letter #18 January 27, 2014

Hola Everyone!!

This has been a slow week here and we don't have much to write about. But to start off with we didn't get to go to Posadas because the Marquez family was missing some paper work and weren't able to get married.  They will be baptized this coming Saturday if all goes well!  We visited a lot of less active members this week in an attempt to raise the church attendance, and we also moved Sacrament meeting to the end of the block to try and catch those members that just cant make it out of bed in the morning.  That said we only had 15 members in Sacrament meeting this past week and that is counting us 4 missionaries ha ha.  We visited a lot of members that live really far outside of San Vicente to.  We walked probably 10 km to see 1 member.  Pretty crazy some of the places these people live!!  We also decided this last week to make some changes in the apartment.  We moved all the furniture around and made the Pinch our own!! The Elders before us were pretty crazy we were told so we decided to clean the whole thing and make it more comfortable for us.  After we had done this the pinch immediately had a stronger spirit in it.  Mom you were right cleanliness really is next to Godliness ha ha.  We also had the opportunity this week to dedicate some homes.  Elder Izurieta and I knelt in 2 separate homes this week and dedicated them to the Lord and it was a really cool experience.  Something that I had never been a part of before.  Also this last week we had a couple ask Elder Izurieta and I to bless their baby.  Next week in Sacrament meeting we will bless Miguel Rueben Alberto Velasco.  Quite the mouth full.  Probably the biggest thing this week is that we discovered the slow motion camera and the hyper speed video function on my camera.  Needless to say we haven't been bored very often!!!  It is also a good way for me to get to know the kids here even though I cant speak to them fluently!!  We ate with Hermana Navarro yesterday and she normally makes really good food!!! When we got there her sisters family was there to.  Her sister made these HUGE empanadas and I didn't want to be rude so I grabbed one.  It was freakin gross ha ha.  I don't know what was in it but I had never had it before!!! I ate the whole thing and then was happy it was over.  We got back to the pinch last night and i was fine.  When I woke up this morning I thought I was dying!!  I was so sick and I knew it was from the empanada.  So this is the 3rd time I have been sick here in Argentina and now I am on a strict diet of ... Nothing.  Lets hope this doesn't continue long.  I have gotten really into my studies this week to!  Its amazing how much I have learned in just the last week!!  I started reading Jesus the Christ and I have to read every sentence like 4 times to understand him!!  This has been a very different week but I am learning a lot!

Thanks so much for all of your prayers and just being great people!!! I Love you all more than french toast!!

Elder Ollerton

Letter #17 - January 20, 2014

January 20, 2014

Hello, 

This week went by fast but also slow!!!  We started the week off by doing divisions with the Zone leaders which was great but awful at the same time!  It was great because we got to have twice as many elders in our area to try and find as many people as we could to teach.  Tuesday night I went out and tracted with Elder Saldaña.  He is from Colombia and doesn't speak any English. It was a good opportunity to work on my Spanish and I was surprised to see that I understood everything he said!  It was a little harder to be able to respond the way that I wanted to though.  We found a lot of new people in the short new time that we had.  We found a guy named Humberto who was just solid as a rock!! He was really open about his life which was great!! He told us that when he was younger he had a problem with drugs, and he is only 21!!!  He doesn't smoke but he drinks a little.  He is trying to quit because his girlfriend is pregnant and they are going to get married!! We were both like, "this guy is gold"!!  We went back a few days later to try and teach him and his wife, but it turns out his wife is a very very very stubborn Catholic who doesn't want to listen to us.  We have a lot of work to do there.  We also found a woman that can't see small words to read, and her son doesn't know how to read (really common here).  Still trying to figure out a way to teach her.  The worst part of our divisions was that we had to cram 4 guys into 2 beds (if i can figure out how to do the photos I will send pics)!!  It was the worst nights sleep I have had since I got here!!  My body didn't fit on the bed and so I got maybe an hour or two all night.  The next morning we were up and at it again this time I went with Elder Lumpkin from Fort Collins, Colorado.  He doesn't like other people to talk in lessons so I didn't get to talk hardly at all!!  He is kind of a control freak.  We did find a great family that we think we will be able to work with!!!  They recently lost their dad to a heart problem so we talked about how the gospel can bless our families even in the most difficult times!  They are really great and we are working with them as often as we can!!

There is a member in the word who is an ex missionary and now he is inactive.  This week we decided to take a trip to his house to see him and introduce ourselves.  And yes it was a trip. He lives 10 km outside of town and we got to walk every step of the way. haha.  It took us just over an our and a half to get there and have his wife tell us he wasn't home. haha.  10 km back and it was nothing more than good exercise!! But then again I do have a few more lbs to lose. haha.

We also got to talk to Elder Ake (my old ZL) in Posadas this week.  Elder Izurieta and I were both curious about our old investigators that we left.  Elder Ake told me that the Marquez family...... IS GETTING MARRIED TODAY AND BAPTIZED ON SATURDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  After long hard hours of work this family is finally going to be baptized!!!!!  I called President and got permission to go to Posadas for the baptism!! I could not be more excited!! I know that this would not have been possible without your prayers so thank you so much!!!  I know I am not very good at answering questions about everything so if you have questions about anything here go ahead and hit me up haha!!

I love you all and I hope everyone is loving life!!!!

 

Elder Ollerton

Letter #16 January 13, 2014

HOLA EVERYONE!!!

I hope everyone has had a great week and is doing well!! We are working hard in San Vicente and taking the Gospel to what has to be one of the farthest corners of the earth ha ha.  We had a pretty good week but I am still trying to get adjusted to the whole balancing a branch and doing the whole tracting thing.  It has been hard to find the balance but either way we are working hard.  This is the 2nd week in a row that we have had to email from Obera because internet in the jungle oddly enough is a joke!!! We have one family that we have been working with and trying to get them ready for baptism.  Ramona has 4 daughters and all 4 of them have baptismal dates for the 8th of February.  The only thing is that they live about 2 kilometers outside of San Vicente so we have to wake up at around 5 every Sunday morning, get ready and then walk to their house to bring them to church.  And then when we finally get to the building we have to get everyone inside and start the meeting.  

We have had a lot of adventures this week including getting lost in the middle of the freaking jungle!!! 

On Saturday we decided to go to a less active family´s house and try and get them to church the next day.  We have a really crappy map of the area and just a general idea of where they live!!  So we set off to take an hour walk to their house.  We had been walking for probably 2 miles when we stopped to ask a man if he was familiar with where this family lived and he said not really but that the road to our left would get us there.  So we believed him.  We started walking up this super steep hill in about 5 inches of fresh mud following the last 2 days of rain.  It seemed liked we had been walking forever when we finally made it to the top we saw shacks to our left and shacks to our right with little naked children running around in the mud and the occasional group of teenage guys trying to "mad dog" us.  We continued to walk for another 30 minutes around corner after corner and flicking a crap load of mud off my boots.  We finally ended up in a clearing with a few shacks around us on top of a mountain.  We were completely lost and it was getting dark.  I looked at Elder Izurieta and said "Dude, we gotta pray."  We said a prayer and just sat and waited to know where to go.  At like the same time we both pointed the same direction!! It was seriously a spiritual experience!!  We continued to walk and after about a mile of walking we found the family!! It was such a cool experience to know and feel that even when 2 guys are in the middle of the jungle, Heavenly Father knows them and their needs.

This week we were on LDS.org and found the new youth theme song for 2014.  It is entitled "Come unto Christ" and if any of you haven't seen it yet you should go watch it!!  I have watched it a solid 20 times and it is always easy to feel the Spirit when I listen to it! There is one line in particular that really touches my heart every time I hear it,  It goes... "So let him in, and he will take away your pain.  When you feel his love you will never be the same." When we truly let Christ into our lives and we have a sincere desire to follow him and help others do the same, then we truly feel the true love of Jesus Christ. It really is true that when we feel that love, we are changed forever.  I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to be able to share this message with the people of Argentina and I would urge each of you to do the same.  We have been blessed to know of our Saviors love and it is something we need to share!

I Love you all with all my heart.  Have a great week.

Elder Ollerton

Letter #15 January 7, 2014

January 7, 2014
Hola Everybody and Welcome to the JUNGLE!!!

The internet was down all day yesterday in San Vicente so we are now in Obera using the nice Cyber here!  Obera is a 3 hour bus ride away and we take it once a week for District Meetings or Zone Conferences!! It's a pain but it is also nice because we get to use the bus ride to catch up on sleep!!! 

This last week has been crazy!!! Elder Izurieta (My new companion) and I arrived in San Vicente last week and have been trying to get the hang of how to run a branch and everything!!  I am now the 1st counselor in the Branch Presidency which is crazy, and I have to learn how to do everything like Tithing, Temple Recommend interviews and things like that!!  Last Tuesday, Elder Izurieta, Elder Lumpkin (New Zone Leader), and I, jumped on a bus in Posadas and headed off to Obera.  When we got here there was supposed to be an Elder here waiting for us. There wasn't.  Instead we got here to find out that there had been a riot inside of the terminal between the Police and the workers because the workers wanted more money. We sat and waited without a cell phone, for 2 hours with no idea what to do!!  Finally, he came running around the corner and took us to the terminal after they had cleared all the blood and bodies out.  We waited for our bus and then finally got on and arrived in San Vicente (5 Hrs East of Posadas) at around 11:00 at night!! Crazy day (Just kidding about bodies and stuff haha)!!!! 

We had 33 people in Sacrament meeting this last Sunday which is great!!! There is about 200 baptized members in San Vicente so inactivity is a huge problem!!!  Another crazy thing about my new area is that it is over 300 Km wide!! This is a huge reason there is so much inactivity, because people live very far from the church and very few have cars!  We had 4 men in 3rd hour on Sunday and now even all of them are Priesthood holders!! We have 1 ex-bishop that was excommunicated and we are working to get him re-baptized!!!  There is so much drama in this branch it is ridiculous!! Some people won't go to church because they don't like other members and others get offended over the smallest things, its like being back in Jr High!!!! We have been trying to find the perfect balance between working with the branch, and trying to tract and find new people to teach!!!  Our chapel is the smallest thing ever and it is pretty run down.  Also the man that we rent the building from is now kicking us out so Elder Izurieta and I are going to have to start looking for a new place to have Church!! So many things on our plate and we have only been here for 1 week!!!  

More about the area!! I live in the jungle everyone!!!!!!!!! It is awesome!!  It literally rains for days at a time and the roads turn into small rivers!!  People live in small homes sometimes on stilts, its like things I have only seen in the movies!!!!  My pinch is super nice and almost twice as big as my last one!!!  We have air conditioning and everything to!! Definitely an upgrade!!!! I do my laundry by hand now which was definitely a learning experience the 1st time haha.  I love my new companion!!! He has the perfect balance of fun, and work!!  Also it is almost always the perfect temperature here!!!  Much better than Posadas!!! I thought I was going to die there!!  

We had another funny experience this past week! On our way to our District meeting, Elder Izurieta and I woke up late so it was a big rush to get to the Terminal on time for our bus!!  The Sisters had left to Posadas earlier that morning for an emergency transfer so we were on our own to figure everything out!!  And on top of everything, it was raining harder than I had ever seen in my life!!!!  Rivers in the streets so strong they were sweeping cats away haha.  I had forgotten that I had water proof boots in my bag to so we were running to the terminal and I was soaking wet!!!! We got into the terminal and realized we were still 20 minutes early for our bus.  My shoes were full of water and I was soaked to the bone!!  It was a long, cold, wet ride to Obera.  When I finally got to Obera, we found our way to the chapel and found out that we were still 1 hour early to our meeting!!!!! I got to stand out soaking wet for an hour!!  We had our district meeting and on the way home I fell asleep on the bus.  When I woke up, our phone was gone!! I got robbed for the 1st time hah.  Pretty crazy 1st week to say the least.  O ya and we live like 20 seconds away from the sisters so we have been able to receive a lot of help from them!! They are awesome!!  

I love you all and pray everyday that you will all be watched over and protected!!! Much love from South of the Equator,

Elder Ollerton