January 7, 2013

 

Buenas!! Familia mia

Well I have some news for you!!! I have a lot to talk about and not so much time to say it all so I will try my best. First off this week has been awesome!! Second I loved the letters they just get more and more beautiful as time goes on. I seriously appreciate all the time you guys take to keep on writing me. Third I hope the ward forgives me for arming a bunch of boys with slings to kill goliaths with! Plead my case if you can!! hahahaha Ok so to start I am getting very close to the end of my mission right? and all of a sudden an idea kept coming to my head. I started pondering more and more on it but I finally came to the point of taking action and so I talked to my president about it. I am thinking of extending 30 days... so I would come home the end of June rather than the end of May. However --as it says in my blessing I feel I should listen to the wise counsel of my parents. SO I need to know soon how you guys feel about it. President Summerhayes was actually very excited when I asked him and actually started planning for it. This then of course led to Elder Vasher who started the same day I did wanting to extend which was great because President wanted someone to extend with me. So Elder Vasher went in and as soon as we know from you guys we can push the go button. However I don’t want you to feel pushed into saying yes. If you would pray about it and write me during the week to let me know that would be awesome!! He plans on us becoming traveling missionaries and going all over the mission helping all the Spanish leadership in the mission for those last thirty days. I just feel good about it and hope you will too. However I need your counsel. Please write me during the week so I can relax a little about it!! hahahaha Aside from that yes our week was full of some pretty cool miracles. To give you one to talk about dad, at the end of December we were setting monthly goals for January and we set in faith the goal of baptizing a family of three that we were going to find before January began. Needless to say everything that we have been finding has been families of three. Or at least 3 that can be baptized. We found a Peruvian family named the Garritos who are awesome the 2nd to last day of December. We revisited them this last week while on splitz with baby boy Russell and they are super positive!! They cried as we left the Saviors peace and blessing with them and then they set up the return appt for two days later. Something came up so they set up our next appt for today!! We are so excited and I have never had anyone set up our appts for us. Nor call us and reschedule for us. We are pumped. And I truly believe heavenly father has heard our cries. I feel so humbled as we just watch him perform miracles. I have kinda come to the point where I realize that the only thing I do in the mission is ask. He does all the rest. This is the promised land and the Lord is fulfilling his promises. I love the gospel. We also did some area book work this week and we were led to find a part member family that has been forgotten since my trainer began his mission almost 3 years ago! They are awesome and part of the miracle is we specifically asked for a Dominican family and they are Dominican! We are going back tonight and they are making us the Dominican special known as MANGOO. hahaha Its pretty good let me tell ya. We hope to be able to work with them a lot and see them unite as a family under the gospel. We are also working with a family known as the colon family and they are 100 percent in to everything we are teaching. The man has come a LONG way and is actually writing a book called "out of the darkness into the light" he already has about 50 pages typed up! He is so into the gospel that all we have to do is guide his thought process and he figures it out himself! They already asked us about baptism!! However they are only a family of two but still we are super excited about them. I just hope time doesn’t run out with elder vasher before we see these fruits. I love the lord and I can honestly say that we are serving the very best we can. I feel so much more tender of heart as I get to write about all these tender mercies the lord sees fit to give us. Not to mention Mario (guy who got baptized when I was in 5c in September) has finished the book of Mormon and is 40 sections into the doctrine and covenants. Not to mention he has read the manuals. To put a cherry on top he bore his simple and beautiful testimony on Sunday and it was awesome. To know that I got to play a part in his conversion is such a blessing and a testimony to me. I love my mission!! Aside from all that there is much more going on but I have no more time!!

As for you guys I am so glad to hear how great the week was. I love that we are such an awesome family and when things are chill life is good! . I enjoy everything you have to say and I also can’t wait to share all my stories with you.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!
LOVE ELDER OLIVER
PS as a zone leader we are mostly working, we just have a lot more meetings and more responsibility to make sure things are going well in our zones and that each companionship is working hard. It’s really a blessing because our districts are awesome!