May 29, 2012

Hola Familia Oliverio!

Well it has been quite the week and many good things are a happenen. I am super happy to hear that you guys are now finished with school for a while and that you are now able to relax and enjoy the free time! I challenge all of you to have as many crazy adventures as you can think up and then write me back about them. I personally have already started my adventures for the summer but that will come a bit later in this letter. haha Congratulations! to Cassie Mcgraduate Oliver! You have finally successfully passed through that known as High School and now the real big adventure begins. Don’t forget that death is the ultimate adventure but that this is a mighty and great one. I am so happy that Chelsey our wonderful and very wise sister was there to give her love and support as you finished the great adventure. Trust me when I say that family is where it is at when it comes to starting anew and fresh. So you are lucky to be part of a beautiful and caring family. Just keep me posted on how everything goes. I am sorry to you guys that I did not write yesterday. Of course Memorial Day means no libraries are open and therefore we the Elders of Apollo Beach have no means of communication

Now as for me over here in Florida. Apollo Beach has turned out to be great. I have an awesome companion Elder Shields who is definitely a worker and super fun to be around. He is calm and serious but knows how to love people and definitely knows how to be fun. It’s like we are already best friends. haha However this area is really slowing down lately so it’s up to us to pick it back up and keep going. It’s funny because I actually had a dream where people where telling me this and telling me that right now we are the only ones capable of doing it. It actually really impacted me a lot and kinda made my fire burn just a bit brighter than it already was. So we are pumped and ready to go and do. Also yes Elder Shields is super into working out so we go to the church every morning to do p90x and it has been going great. Not only that but he loves eggs so all we have eaten is egg after egg hahaha protein.... So things are going well and the members already seem to like us and now we are starting to get a little deeper into it. Like setting up splitz and family nights and ward activities and a couple other things so it should be great. But here is a little something interesting. We live in pretty much a shack. Like 20 by 15. so not much and we live in a very woodsy area so there are many a bug-- and big ones they are. We have already killed about 3 spiders as big as my hand one of which I paid Elder Shields five dollars to eat and we have a guardian gecko named Pedro who keeps out the roaches. We have billions of ants in our back yard, we found a grasshopper the side of half a dill pickle (the ones Grampy gave us as kids) and there are chickens everywhere. Now here’s where the cool stuff comes in. Because we are near the end of the month we do not have miles nor money for food so being p-day yesterday we thought about what we could do to satisfy miles and food problems. So we ended up having to stay at the house but to make the day interesting we decided to get us some food by hunting the neighborhood chickens. hahaha (they belong to no one so they are free game. We made two spears and proceeded to hunt. Long story short we got one and now he is cleaned out well and in a marinade waiting to be cooked over a fire either by us or an investigator who said she wanted to cook it for us. hahaha Yep we can make huge fires in our backyard because Florida is wet and it’s not against the laws so we sometimes just whip up a fire for like a half hour before we go to bed. Yep so we have been having quite the bit of fun. Oh yea we also got to do service and while we were there the lady has a mini horse and she said we could go play with it so after using my horse whispering skill I mounted and rode into the wind! hahaha It was actually pretty cool. We also have had a couple of very spiritual experiences where I happened to say something that apparently meant a lot to Elder Shields about things that he has been thinking of and we almost set a baptismal date. The spirit was so strong that the lady was actually crying probably because she knew she needs to do it but something is holding her back that must be pretty hard so we will continue working and testifying. I just really already like this area and I am super excited to get even more into it. I love this work and I can’t believe I have already hit a year! HOLY SMOKE! haha its going by too quick! I have nightmares that I am back home and I don’t feel like I completed my mission and you guys keep asking me what did I learn like 5000 times and then it resounds in my head all day! hahaha So apparently as much as I would love to be home my heart is here in the work for right now and I am loving every minute of it. I feel like I have already learned a ton but there must be more for me to learn otherwise this dream would cease to repeat itself haha. Well I love you all very much and I really do miss you. It makes a guy happy to know that everything is well back home. You guys are the best family!

LOVE, ELDER OLIVER