October 22, 2012

Well Buenas!!

I am super happy to be writing you guys this week! It has been awesome and your letters have shown me that yours was too!! I loved all of them and yes I still miss you all dearly and think about you often and I have really been studying pictures because they help remind me of why I am here and why I do this. I am finding families like ours that will someday have what we have. I love it and I am living it! I hope you also start living it. Invite everyone to everything. Trust me ward activities are not meant to entertain us rather to give us a missionary opportunity. Remember that. That is actually something I have been learning out here is that all these things that I learn are actually not just for me but rather help me to become something specific so I can help someone else do the same. We are all very special specific tools in the hands of our master and this work is perfect and flawless. It will be a perfect product. Anyways--to lightning round. Wow I am super happy for Wes. How wonderful that he found the one he loves and that they are able to start the eternities together.   Yes Tampa is cooling off. Almost to the point of being a little chilly as we cruise on our bikes late at night because now all we have is bike due to the other Elder breaking his wrist. So two months and no car for us hahahaha. I am gonna get thin.... Things in Tampa are great and just getting better and better. I just feel everything I do coming together and starting to work. Dad yes I do feel like I am where I thought I would be but actually I am already a little farther. I never thought I could become what I have become and I am super excited to have so much more time to just learn and grow that much more. There are things that I just had to realize that have really just helped everything in my life improve. There is still a ton to work on but I am where I wanted to be and now going further. I have come to accept that this life is not about becoming perfect but rather learning to become perfect. The people of Enoch were not a perfect people they were perfect repenters. I feel like I have come to know the power of the atonement in ways that I did not even begin to think of before. I realize that we are meant to become much greater than we ever thought we could be and I am learning how to progress daily. It means everything to me and because it means everything to me so does the Book of Mormon and the doctrines and obedience and repentance and my thoughts words deeds and everything else that makes up who I am. Tomassa and Enrique have decided to get married but there is a little bit of a hold up. Luckily we got a member who is awesome to come over and she has just taken charge!! Like we don’t really even have to worry anymore because she is on top of it. There has been many a blessing thrown my way.  As for school when I get back-- I am really kinda just trying to stay focused on the mish SO we will discuss it a little later. BYU is out for right now. My comp is from Olympia Washington. I have not eaten anything weird lately but I have decided that Columbian food is probably the best out there. You guys have got to try it. I am definitely turning Hispanic because now I love hot sauce and things are not sufficient if there is no kick and a pound of grease in everything hahaha. Oh this weekend is la noche de hispanidad which is a HUGE activity in the which everyone represents their country and brings food and does dances and such. We are reppin the USA and we have quite the dance to show!!! Can’t wait to get it on film and show you.

Dad I loved your letter also and I am soo happy that work is killing you. hahaha better killing than barely surviving right? It’s kinda that way out here right now. We keep getting so many people that it’s hard to keep up with all of them. 4 referrals this week! One of them already had a baptismal date!!! not to mention we knocked into a bunch of really cool new families and last night I made like 40 something phone calls and got some appointments out of them of people who were pretty interested. one of them even said she had been waiting till she was eighteen to be baptized and that she will be in February so that’s another baptism coming up. Well I love you guys and I hope everything is just going great.  Not much time-- but this week was up and up and up. We found 4 new inv we had 4 people at church we had quite a few member presents we got 4 referrals and we have 1 date set with about 4 to 5 more to be set soon! We are so excited and things are great. However at the same time we got dumped a little bit and had fun doing it. Lizzardo the miracle lesson guy told us he would not be interested in learning anymore. So we asked why and he didn’t know what to say so it went from I am not interested to Ok I promise I will call you guys when I have off work somehow.. hahaha anyways though I have to go so I hope you all know I love you and I miss you and that I cant wait to hear from you again next week!

Love,  ELDER OLIVER

October 8, 2012



Well Well Well... Hola Mi familia hermosa!!
I am filled to the brim with such happiness after reading all of your letters, being fed by the apostles and the prophet, and after such an awesome week! I sometimes just sit on my little couch and just think about how happy I am and how much love I have for you and for everyone else. haha it is sometimes overwhelming--in a beautiful way. I just love you guys and am soo excited to have a whole lifetime with you all, not to mention the infinities. How great and beautiful was Conference? I feel like they had peered into my soul and taken bits and pieces and used them to form their talks. It is just awesome how the Lord works.

Well things here are going really well. Baby boy Russell is handsome and strappling, a man of valor and sound understanding. I love him and we are just enjoying every minute, even though a ton of what we have been doing lately is tracting--day in and day out. I have finally come to the point where I LOVE tracting. Its like "oh who’s behind the next door?" and I always feel like Alma and Amulek when the doors slam so it’s quite invigorating. I also have really come to enjoy loving people at rapid rates. hahaha So yes we have been tracting a ton, but that’s what is suppose to be done. However we also have a good mixture of less actives and member lessons which are already showing signs of help for us. I can’t believe how straightforward the very apostles and prophet were with being missionaries. I hope you guys make every effort to start being a referral giving family. It’s the only way the work will get done. Every one of us needs to add our 1/12th of the teaspoon to that pound of honey! haha great example eh? Also we have tons of people to work with. The Lord keeps putting people in every place and we are just seeing so much success. Like I have never been so successful with knocking doors. but well come back to this.
Well this week we found 3 new people. 1 was a lady named Nancy who called us up and asked us to come over out of nowhere!! We set a baptismal date the first lesson, then 2 was the father of a lady we had taught who have two kids. His lesson was awesome and he actually prayed for like 7 min straight! 3 was another miracle! Last night after conf we got bailed on by a lot of people like plans and backups alike so I decided to go start doing some follow ups. We saw people but they only wanted to set up for other times during the week. Awesome right? This means I get to listen to the Spirit. So at about 8 at night I am looking through my list and I get this feeling about this guy we knocked into. Soo I put in like 2nd place behind someone who ends up setting another return time. So again this name comes to me and I decide to just go check on him. He had been fixing a toilet when we knocked his door so not much of a good relationship or nothing but we go anyways. Well we knock the door I wrote down and this pretty buff ripped guy opens the door. I ask him if Esterno is there and he kinda laughs and says no wrong number kinda jokingly. I even went so far as to ask him if they had recently had their toilet fixed! hahahahaha I was kinda like scramblin to find this guy. But the guy says no and kinda starts to close the door when all of a sudden Elder beautiful Russell pops the intro in Spanish which is still pretty hard for him. I of course come back and we start. We end up asking him if he knows anything about the Mormons. He said I know you don’t drink coffee. Perfect I think!! Now I got him!! hahaha I ask do you know why we don’t drink coffee? To which he replies no. I then testify that there is a prophet on the earth today who receives revelation for us and what he has said is that our bodies are temples and we should not partake of such things. He then goes "do you want to come in?" so at 8:10 at night we find this man who actually has been perfectly prepared. He was asking so many questions and told us how he had been searching all over in Cuba praying to find the true church. He led himself through the first lesson and asked so many questions about the atonement which he didn’t know about. He kept asking about forgiveness and saying God will always forgive us to the which we showed him a scripture in second Nephi that says the atonement is infinite and eternal. He just got soo excited and told us to come back whenever and as much as we could. He finished with a fervent and specific prayer asking if the Book of Mormon was true. How cool is that?? The Lord is powerful and strategic. I love to be a small part of this wonderful work. Not only that we set 2 other baptismal dates this week with a couple who are not yet married. Tomassa and Enrique. Both are just super positive and were asking us to tell them what not to do so they could do better or get closer to God. However we had run out of time so that lesson is tonight and I am super excited to talk about chastity! hahahahahaha This is my comps second time in 2 weeks. Well of course we also talked with a boy who doesn’t believe in God but rather an African deity and its saints. It’s a weird and kinda scary religion and when we talked about God I think he really liked it. Martel is his name. Also we ate at a Columbian restaurant that an investigator owns that was soooo stinkin good! Oh my dear I have to take you guys out when we come back! Let me tell ya! Well I do have to go so I love you and I hope you know how happy and great I am doing. I hope you all are just dieing to build a close relationship with a father who loves you and knows you better than anyone else.
LOVE ELDER OLIVER

(ps please excuse my excess in exclamatory punctuation, I am trying to become a more exciting texter and now 1 excalmation point just doesn’t feel sufficient. hahaha)