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Well it has been a great and wonderful week. I feel like a lot of great things have happened and I am happy to report back to you all. Super happy to hear that you guys get to go to Utah and that Aly is getting married. How beautiful is that? What a blessing to have found a priesthood holder to take her into the temple and to be sealed for time and eternity beginning the greatest adventure life can ever give us. Tell her how much I love her and how excited I am that this is happening! But as for you all I hope you enjoy your stay and vacation and that you really find time to relax and do some fun things. I love you guys so much and can’t wait to be there for probably the next one!!!! hahaha
As for this week I have some cool little things to share with you. So that family I talked about in the last letter is even more interesting! There are six of them that listen participate and ask good questions. They are from Mexico and actually studied with the Jehovah Witnesses for two years. (JW are really big over here but they try to avoid Mormons so there aren’t many in Arizona) So they were asking all sorts of questions and the mom already had a friend who tried to anti her but she completely rejected it and said she wanted to hear it from our mouths. hahhaha Also--we had contacted this guy on the street once named Pablo and he told us we could come over. So we have been calling him for a while and he is always very nice but says he is working. Well he happened to be one of the guys who live in that house!! Yea how crazy right? So they are doing good. It might be hard to get them to church because the mom and dad work on Sunday but they have 3 daughters and a brother who do not. It’s the Hernandez family by the way. We are excited to start with them. We also finally saw Flavio again and he is way positive and introduced us to his wife who he had said is very very Catholic and wanted nothing to do with us. He made great friends with Omar and then Omar helped him find work and a bike!! Yea Omar is on fire. We had an awesome lesson on faith and they asked us to come back. Also we caught up with Manny with President Summerhays and he is doing well. He is preparing to get married quickly so he can get baptized. He already knows and is ready for baptism he just has to get married. (It’s a weird financial thing) But something cool I wanted to share were two revelations I had recently. I had been praying for help with my investigators and some less actives when these two examples came to me. I have really been trying to write down revelations because the more care we give to what the Lord gives us the more He gives us. So these investigators have some addictions and its stopping them from progressing. Well I was asking for help to be able to say something that would make the difference and this is what came. We are like little infants learning to walk. After much time in the arms of our parents we find enough strength to stand on our own and soon to move. But those first times when we start moving we fall a lot. As we have seen in countless home videos usually whoever is trying to walk is super happy to be moving and then gets frustrated every time they fall and they cry and lay down and try to give up. Just like we do. We feel excited and are happy-- filled with joy at our accomplishments,and then we fall and feel disappointment with ourselves and many times get tired of trying, We get those "what’s the point" feelings as we kinda rub our faces in the carpet. Well just like in those videos usually the loving father and mother just smile and encourage, with such understanding, picking the little infant back up and setting it in position to begin to move again. Allowing the second chance and then the third and then however many it takes till they just start walking. In that very same way our Father in Heaven works with us. His love and patience is infinite. He will wait for us. We are his children. He knows our potential and He knows we can do it. When we fall His love becomes larger picking us up and putting us back at the starting position. Waiting for that day when we will finally begin to walk. Some times it takes longer to learn but we will learn as we allow Him to embrace us and we accept His encouragement knowing that He has faith in us. When we were able to share that with our less active He began to cry and I knew that that revelation had been specifically for him. I am so grateful that my Heavenly Father sees fit to use us as missionaries in bringing His sheep back. Second--leaving addictions and habits are like leaving water without a towel. We feel so cold at first and begin to shiver and shake as the winds blow upon the water droplets on our body. We want to return to the warmth we had in the water. But as we begin to dry we realize that it is better out of the water and that soon the water actually ends up being irritatingly cold and our desire ceases to be returning. I have never seen how powerful addictions can get until my mission. We will shake and shiver as the effects of what we got accustomed to wears off. We will want to return as the cold winds nip us even to the bone. I then realized that there is another heat source which we can look to while out of the water. That being Jesus Christ. As we embrace the Savior we feel the heat of His love and not only that but He also takes upon Himself the water that was on our body, helping us to recover more quickly. He truly atoned for our sins and was and is willing to bare our burdens if we will embrace Him and His atonement. I know and have witnessed the love of the Savior so many times on my mission. His forgiveness is unconditional. He has and will continue to lighten our loads and bring us to the peace, happiness and light of the gospel. I know He lives. I have never felt more than I do now that He is my older brother. I have prayed to Him so personally and have seen His hand in many things. I am still prescription 10 and sometimes those eggs are right in front of my face but I have seen and noticed His tender mercies. I have and do feel His love as I testify each and every chance I get. This is His work and I get to be a beautiful part of it. These stories are also tied into a one liner my president always says here in the mission that I actually had engraved in my heart before I even got to the field. "Repentance is a Beautiful thing." I encourage you all to never postpone any repentance that may need to be done. To do it now and with as much humility as you can muster. The Lord will not punish but you will feel His love and mercy as you come to realize how much you really do need Him. He is everything! I love you guys and hope you are growing spiritually each day. I cannot wait for the adventures ahead!
LOVE ELDER OLIVER
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