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Once again I am super happy to hear from you all and to hear all is going swell. Your letters are consistently getting better and more entertaining! haha As for me I am super sweet and dandy. Couldn’t ask for anything more really. haha Maybe my family and that would be awesome but I was just talking to my "dad" here in the mission (ELDER BERRY) and he goes home this coming week. I almost wanted to cry realizing how fast time has gone and how it’s already time for him to go. I feel like he was just telling me how he had hit 9 months! Now he is on his way home completely changed having given his mission everything he could. What an example eh? I hope the same for myself. But it was a gentle reminder that time is going quick! I am on the downward slope and time is only picking up. It's like an epic race to see how much work I can get done and how many souls I can change and help all before it slips right out of my grip and there I will be walking off the plane and into my family again ready to start life and get moving. I feel a determination just burning inside! It’s like a craze and sometimes I think it is making me a little crazy. hahaha but its super funny because as I have been burning and even a little scared about all this time going and stuff I have received so many answers to prayers. It’s like Heavenly Father just keeps telling me it’s all good and to be patient and win the great reward for great shall be the reward. I love all the small things from your letters because you’ll never understand how strangely they answer questions and the desires of my heart. This is Gods work. I am in this and I feel more in it now than ever before. My heart is full of gratitude for the wonderful time and experiences I have already had but it also is dieing to have more and to keep going. I have never wanted so badly to stay out until late working, I have never felt so bad for being 5 min late to studies, I have never been so willing to give up my will and accept the Fathers, I have never been so patient, I have never been soo humbled as I have been, I have never had such a testimony. I feel it, I love it, I hope for it and I hope you all feel the same. I just can’t wait to get back to work and to share the gospel. It’s inspiring and has helped me see not only who I can become but also who everybody else can become. I feel love for those I don’t know, I feel sadness for they who are sad, I feel happy as others become happy, I feel despair for those who are left alone and through all these things I am finally starting to realize how my Heavenly Father feels for us. Given it is only an insignificant amount of what He feels but it is closely binding me to Him. I realize how much everything we do here in this life is so that we can understand just a little part of it all. We fast to make sacrifice like Jesus Christ did. We repent to understand the power of the atonement. We pray that we may always be led by Him to help us become who He would have us become. Something special that happened this week changed my whole perspective and inspired me on a whole new level. It came in the simplest way. A going away testimony by an elder named Elder Schwanevelt. He talked about how his mission had started and how he had been so afraid that his weaknesses would prevent him from being successful. His hands would shake uncontrollably when he was in front of other people or in the spot light so to speak. He showed us how badly they would shake for he was nervous even then to be up in front. But he went on to explain how his weaknesses, these small things that made him weak, became his greatest strength because every time he would get in front of someone and they would shake it would remind him of the Savior and how much He had suffered and that because this weakness always brought him back to Christ they had then become his greatest strength. Remember seems to be the word most repeated in the Book of Mormon. I too have weaknesses but my weaknesses will be my greatest strengths. The gospel is infinitely powerful. All who live it will come to know their Savior very personally and it will be a foundation that cannot fail. The best part of it all is that we are all called to share it. Open your mouth because we never know how much it will mean to that person. I love my mission and I hope you love yours.
Transfers are coming this weekend so I will keep you posted on my whereabouts and the going ons. I am super sad! This has been an awesome and inspiring transfer. I have learned so much and am so grateful to have spent it in the presence of such great and admirable elders. I have come to know a little more about myself and just how weak I really am as I have been around them. Strong and firm in the faith, desiring to live to the utmost high standard of obedience, driven to work and share, never justifying but rather enduring well. It has helped inspire me to change a couple things and to just think a little differently. What I want is slowly becoming what God wants and not what I want. It’s been a long process but I have loved every step of the way, especially the struggles. They are few and far between but when they come my go time mode kicks in and I just try to lose myself. It’s been very hard but I feel like I have been very blessed and so it hasn’t been too hard.
As for you guys I am super glad to hear that you guys are great. I love you guys and hope all keeps on going great. You are the greatest family a guy could ask for.
LOVE, ELDER OLIVER
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