August 6, 2012



Hola Familia,
Well this week was once again awesome but I must first say that I am so happy that the vacation turned out so well and that you all had so much fun. I wish I could say the same about having to wear a jacket but alas I cannot, the heat here is pretty awful but I love Florida so it makes up for it. I was so glad to hear that you guys got to see and do so many cool things. Thank you mom for being a master planner. I have to take lessons from you so that someday my vacations will be just as good. I also seriously appreciate the PICTURES... ha-ha Also mom I still haven’t found the card and everything else is good for right now.
So Jelly Belly Factory eh? It’s funny because we have been having such a great time lately getting the Jelly Belly bags and laughing as someone gets an awful flavor. Usually I get roasted popcorn of death. It must be the ginger fingers that bring it out. haha And how cool that you guys got to see all those cool things about Pixar. I love that kinda stuff and I hope you guys will tell me more about it when I get home. Kinda weird that that is probably the last vacation without me. TIME, it moves far too fast. Also might I say that you guys all look awesome in those pictures--like models or something sheesh. Sorry I don’t have much time today but I thought I would tell you guys a little about our week and such. We don’t know if we are moving but most likely one of us is leaving. I kinda and seriously hope that I stay but if not I am good with that too. This week was pretty cool due to the fact that we saw a ton of people and got a lot of work done. A lot of it was less actives but it was cool to see some of them in church. We had probably 50-60 and that’s great for this area. The members here are so cool and you can really feel some love when you talk to them. They all seem to like us and they get freaked out when we tell them that transfers are coming and even when we don’t too. haha We just have some seriously good things going on. However at the same time we had veronica the lady with 11 kids leave to Bradenton and then Samuel just kinda disappeared. We call him every day and he won’t answer. We think he is headed back to Puerto Rico to go and be with his family. Its terribly sad but right now that’s probably best for him. This week we also had a switch and I went up to be in Apollo Beach with the English Elder Roberts. It was a lot of fun but I was once again reminded of why my like for white people is diminishing. They are just so mean and out here in the south redneck kind of trashy and just nasty mean. I mean they just reject everything and have no qualms with just being completely rude and offensive. Like at least Hispanics will acknowledge you and say sorry I am not interested. It’s just a different world. We had a sweet lesson with this guy named Victor and we actually soft committed him to baptism but we are not sure if he will ever real commit. Then yesterday one of the members in our ward gave an awesome lesson and explained very clearly to our investigator why baptism was necessary and then bore his testimony. Well needless to say he asked us to come over on Tuesday and we plan to set his date there. We also went mountain biking again and it was again exhilarating. We are just doing great and because we have a lot going on time just flies and now there is another transfer over and done with. 6 weeks that is almost a whole quarter of school! Yea it really kinda puts it in perspective. Like 9 transfers left--or less not sure. Well I love you guys and I am sorry this is so short and not very informative but I hope you know that I love you and miss you all very much. I hope you finish the summer well and that many adventures are had.
LOVE ELDER OLIVER

July 30, 2012



Hola Querido Familia!
Well it has been a great and awesome week here in Apollo and I must inform you that it is about the same as Wauchula. The people here are awesome and they all speak Spanish so it just gets better and better. However I love the people of Wauchula so much and miss them dearly. But this area is great and we are having tons of fun. I also am so glad to be informed on your whereabouts and that they include California. How awesome it must be to go to the beach and play and have tons of fun. I love vacations! haha Send me pics please! especially of Clay and Sadie and Cassie and Chelsey and the little girls in gymnastics. if you want you could just put them on the hard drive! We missionaries just love pics and everyone in the ward likes to look at my little booklet thing I take around. Quick lightning questions answered round. I have now had like 3 to 4 dinners a week and we get fed lunch a few times too. I am now at 190 lbs. Spanish is awesome and I love learning it. Scott was known here in the mission for being a super good missionary but a killer of animals/ best Spanish speaker. I gave a 3 year old child a haircut the other day and didn’t realize the lady wanted me to like do layers and edge his head and such so when I tried he ended up looking like he was wearing a helmet and like he had a receding hair line. Shrimp has been on the menu lately. The kind where you have to pull off the head and deshell it. We went mtn biking and it is awesome. I now have seen many a gator. We are starting something in the mission called the Saviors peace and blessing and it should be a superb tool. Ft Lauderdale mission like 3x in baptisms. I got to teach a family with 11 kids under 12 years old the plan of salvation with the father who somehow escaped being deported. We were interrupted by some other missionaries from another church during our lesson with them. I am almost at 14 months and time is going too quickly. Did Grammy and Grampy get my letter? Tell them all that I do love them and miss them. We met a Mexican who thinks Obama will make us speak Chinese and hates him for it. We are working with Samuel our recent convert who has such a testimony that he would not deny the church when his uncle told him to or he would throw him out of his house. So he walked the streets with his things until he somehow got a hold of someone because not to mention his uncle mixed up all his numbers (he is in the mafia) so when he tried to call us he was calling someone else. Now he lives in a factory and is borrowing his boss’s car but has no one and nothing but his clothes and work for the moment. Yet he was there at church with his white shirt and tie and took the lesson on charity to mean that he should give more and be more charitable even when many who could help him are not. I was astounded when no one even offered him a room in their house or anything. We were the first to offer him our beds and shower because he has to shower with a factory hose. Keep in mind this is a man who just had open heart surgery and had to leave his life of wealth in Puerto Rico to come here for the medical reasons. He is use to making around 150,000 a year or more because he was a body guard and is ripped out of his mind. This is the guy that reminds me of dad by the way. Yet spirit still alight he goes on and trusts in God. I have never seen so unshakeable a testimony in my life. He just barely got baptized like 4 weeks ago! Now he has already been rejected for his beliefs and thrown into the streets with nothing but his phone which was messed up and clothes. I can’t tell you how great a feeling I get when I realize the Lord gave me the opportunity to be a part of his conversion. I am spiritually edified just standing by him. He actually apologized for not being able to do splitz with us this last Saturday. I LOVE THE MISSION! hahaha I am getting used to sweating all the time again. It is in the straight 90s all this week. I am reading in Mosiah and love it. D&C is full of things I never knew. God’s power is Honor. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I have come to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God in a much more powerful way this week. I feel a desire to be better and strive diligently to do it every day. My heart is full of love for those who do not love me and I have learned that to be strong can sometimes be a very lonely thing. I hope you guys are making sure to put on the armor of God everyday because I have been watching the cheesy seminary video of it every day during lunch. and I don’t want any of you shot by the wiley darts of the adversary. All this and much more to come hahaha
I love you guys and hope the best for you on the vacation. Try to do anything the missionaries are doing. It will help them out so much.
LOVE ELDER OLIVER

June 18, 2012

Hola Familia Mia,

Well like always I truly loved the letters and the messages this week. All of them seemed so positive and happy and exciting. I love to hear that from you guys! Congratulations on performing music camp so well little girls! I always loved watching you guys dance and sing.  As for me, things are going awesome here! I seriously am having such a great time here in Apollo Beach. We had a couple miracles this week and we just started a couple more sweet things so I will just get started. Lightning responses, Carlee this week I was able to have the delicacy known as Chicharrones. In other words pig skin. but this was not deep fried nor very delicate. Actually it is straight up soft chewy pig skin with all the fat in the world still attached to it, and I happened to be Mr Lucky that night and scored the box with the most in it. I was able to eat about 7 tacos worth of these things and I had barely dented the pile. (as a mexican you just use tortillas as your fork and spoon and knife, so you tear out a chunk of tortilla and use it to grab a chunk of meat and beans and rice so just a hint when I get back home dont judge me for manners! hahaha) so 7 tacos means 7 tortillas broken into chunks with a big ol pig skin drippin with grease and juices in the middle. Not the worst but definitley not the best. As for the pizza mom yes we finished it well and got wings for afterwards. That puts me into another thing, I am gaining weight and size again. due to the very broad intelligence of Elder Shields when it comes to workouts and supplements and such.  He is now leading me in a full on charge for 200 if not 225. We just got to start going to a gym due to the English Elders who allow us to be their "buddies" so we can get in. Its part of what they payed for. Today I did 215 on decline bench by 5 with 4 negatives! oh yea. I am beat let me tell ya. Also my comp from the mtc that went home is coming back out this next transfer and we hope to train him. So a tripleship in a house of about 20 by 20? Should be fun. Now as for spiritual things or those things that actually matter. We are having a baptism this Saturday! His name is Samuel Lopez and he is from Puerto Rico and he is about as buff and thick as dad and wears the same type of clothes and everything. He is however a little younger. The funny thing is is that we met him last Sunday and committed him to baptism after one lesson. He said yes and then bought a whole sunday getup and he does everything we tell him to. Just fell right into our hands from out of nowhere! So we are super pumped about him! Oh to go along with the whole size thing, the members here are really starting to love us and because they love us they ask us to come over and eat all the time now! Last night we had HUGE turkey legs and Mac and Cheese and mole and a bunch of other stuff! Great for the protein intake eh? hahaha But the cool thing is that the family we ate with is less active and owns a store and now they like us so we have a family night with them this week and everytime we come she lets us take anything we want from the store. pretty cool stuff. As for that other baptismal date, it hasn't been set because apparently the girl is going through a nervous breakdown and never is home now. So we hope she took her chill pills this week hahaha. No we really love her its just hard. We did a ton of service and we got to hang out with all the members as we painted a whole house in one day. Then afterwards two of the hermanos took us out to eat at a chinese restaurant which was super good. So we have been doing pretty good and we are only getting better. Even english classes are going very well. we have two returning people and one brought his two kids last time. We kinda hope to baptize him and his family. So we are doing great and I love being here!  So keep it swell and write back all the adventures. I love you guys because you are the best family!

Love, ELDER OLIVER 

June 11, 2012

Hola familia!
Well this week was yet again another great one with many adventures and some great growing experiences. But first I thought I would deal with some business.  I have been using a little card money because some of the companions I have had as of late don’t know how to use money and their families are not so well off so I try to help them out a little here and there and I have bought myself a couple things. I had to buy new running/sport shoes because my others were destroyed and luckily at a Ross I found some sweet Nikes that were 100 but I got them for 35. Like these are like top of the line running shoes! So the Lord definitely provided. Then I had to kinda restock when I got here because they really had nothing so I bought some soap and a couple necessities and I got Elder Shields a birthday gift because no one has ever really celebrated his birthday. So I got him a little something.
Also I had to pay to go to a walk-in clinic so that was like another 25 bucks because I had an infection on my face for the first 2 weeks I was here and all the doctor told me was it was Herpes and that I needed Bwister hoff (Chinese doctor) ((blister off is what he meant to say)) he wouldn’t even give me anything! Blister off is pretty much neosporin. At least it wasn’t staff or impetigo again though but it did make getting to know everyone fun as little kids said things like "I think there is a bug in your skin" or "what’s that big red thing on your face" or even the members "what happened to your face?" hahaha its all been pretty humbling and I have grown much hahaha. Also I don’t mean to be so demanding but I might need a new frame for the glasses if possible. I will send my hard-drive in soon so you guys can go through it and see all the other pictures I have. I will try to send it sometime this week because that has all the good stuff on it. Thanks for everything you guys do to keep me up. I truly appreciate it.
As for you guys it sounds like the fun begins. Awesome to hear that music camp is still going on and that you little girls get to do it. Enjoy every minute of it! Also Clay live up efy to as much as you can! In dads words it’s a microburst of wonder in every way. Use it wisely and don’t pass a minute because of fear! Cassie great to hear you have an awesome job.
As for this week. We actually ended up have really low numbers. We had a funeral and a viewing all Monday night and half of Tuesday so that cut into our time and then we had a special training in Tampa so all of Thursday was gone but that meant weekly planning on Friday so there goes most of Friday and then we had a couple of service opportunities. I got to ride the minny horse once again! hahahaha We did pretty good though and we even had a very less active but once very positive member show back up at church and he really participated and even helped fellowship a new guy that just showed up at church and asked us to teach him. He’s pretty cool and I think he just really wants to get baptized. He’s like a Puerto Rican guido, ripped an slicked back black hair with an Italian face. haha so the Lord is providing pretty well for us. Not to mention we had a serious talk with an investigator who we were going to drop but then she told us she wants to get baptized. SO yea things are looking up and we are excited to start going to town. Also luckily for us today we get to go to a restaurant owned by a member and eat a 28 inch 16 pound pizza for free because he wants to see if we can do it. Oh yea he is straight Italian so it should be delicious! I will tell you next week how it goes. Hhahaha We have a lot and the Lord is definitely watching over us. I love this work and Yes I love my companion Elder Sields we are like best friends, and there is only good things to come. I Love you and miss you all so much and hope the best for you this week!
LOVE,  ELDER OLIVER

June 5, 2012

Slumber Party -- Missionary style

Hola Familia,
Well Well Well I always knew my family was made of steel eh? hahaha Congratulations on conquering that which is known as the trek. What a feat and it sounds like you came out of it with more than just aches and pains. How awesome it is to struggle and grow not only physically but also spiritually and mentally. I am just so glad to hear it was so good!   Also sounds like we have some soon to be Broadway dancers huh? I can’t wait to get to see them when I get home. Trust me I believe you when you say they are the best! Well In all honesty this may not be another great letter because I am with about 12 other elders in a library and we are all going to play some sports and have tons of fun this pday but I don’t think they write as much as I do or read as many letters as I do hahaha! Let me tell you it is so great to be back into the midst of many an elder. I was kinda losing it there in Wauchula because we are away from everyone but now I have got 12 new guys who are tons of fun and happy to be around me. I really couldn’t ask for more. This morning we cooked about 4 dozen eggs 6 pds of sausage and 2 packs of bacon soo now we are content and juiced up for a great day hahahaahaha. Being an elder is awesome. To answer a few quick questions yes this is suppose to be a strong season for hurricanes because the heat is different and they are predicting at least one if not two as far as I can tell. ON the upside our shack of a house is located in the red zone or the most likely to be destroyed if a hurricane came. hahaha so we may have a couple of adventures coming our way. Also the Chicken turned out great! We marinated it for 24 hours and then we stuffed it with onions and ham and such and then we tossed it in tin foil and cooked it in a fire. Turned out great except for it stank of fecie. It tasted great it was just an overwhelming aroma. We think elder shields stabbed the fecal bag. hahaha yea but don’t worry we had cleaned it well and we are fine after like 4 days of eating it. As for the area things are going great. I think there is a ton of potential for this area we just are trying to figure it out and pinpoint where we need to strike. For ex we hold a sports night every week and this week there were more investigators than members there at the church playing ball. Not to mention we had a guy come to
English class and then another guy just called us but the one who actually came said he was interested in our message. So we will see how all this goes. Also my Spanish is coming back like lightning! Muscle memory or something haha because it is really getting pretty good not to be prideful or anything. Just self measurement and there is always room for improvement. Also this week we got 5 member presents which hasn’t been done in this area in a long time and we ended the week with 16 lessons. Before it was like 12 or 13 so we are on our way up and things are going great. However we did just have a man in the branch die this week. His name was Alfonzo (fonsi) and everyone loved him a lot. I met him once and I already loved him. He was very funny and just had a light about him that made you really happy hence why he got the nickname fonsi, just a goof who although his health was terrible was full of life and never complained not once. So when we heard he died we were kinda down and worried about how his less active family would take it. (They just had their grandfather die like 2 months ago also) Well All we can do is be there to support them and try to cheer them up and hope the best for them. There is just a lot going on and we are really trying our hardest to do it all. You have got to tell walker that his call is awesome! He will come back speaking BEAUTIFUL Spanish and correctly.
As for you guys might I say that these letters for some reason really kinda touched me spiritually. I just kept getting those chills as I read each and every one. It was just like a tingle of excitement and the best hope for you guys. Yes we are all getting older but I can’t wait to become like every Mexican family out here and have like 40 kids each! Hahahaha I know the lord is taking care of you guys and I am just very glad I don’t really have to worry about it. That is something that hurts many missionaries out here as they try to serve but keep getting freaky letters from back home. Some of which they have shown me that truly made me grow up and see life for what it really is.  They are all the greatest of people but they each come from such hard backgrounds. Just trust me when I say we have it easy. Anyways I love you guys and I am so happy to always hear from you. It makes the wonderful day of pday that much better and helps the week go by with a lot less worry. Sorry I also don’t have much time but I will write back next week hopefully a little bit longer of a letter.
LOVE,  ELDER OLIVER

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

May 21, 2012

Hola Querido Familia,
Let it be known that I have just finished one of the most successful and life changing weeks of my life and that if I am to explain any of it I cant talk so much about you guys even though I really want to! We are just getting back from Port Charlotte where we spent our last pday as a zone and district together and now we are sharing the computers so I really am going to try and fit everything in real quick like. First off I am soooo excited for all the things going on in your lives! These truly are the best of times and will help to make the everlasting memories we dream about haha. I am just super proud of all of you and my heart feels relief to know that everything is going so well and that you guys are pulling through everything. I love you and miss you very very much and I hope the best for you in everything you do this following final week!
As for me, Yes I am getting transferred. I am now going to Apollo Beach which is like the second best area in the mission and it is all Spanish speaking! Not to mention I am going to be with like one of the coolest elders in the mission! Elder Shields. haha Pretty exciting and let me tell you one of the saddest thing I have ever come to hear. I kinda knew I was going and everyone kinda knew it too so this week was full of a ton of final moments that have seriously changed my life! It was one of those times where the Lord tells you how grateful He is for you and how proud He is of the person you are becoming. I seriously was just so worried that I hadn' t done everything right and that maybe I should have been different when all of a sudden the Lord took the time to tell me otherwise. I dont think I have ever felt so much love and compassion as I have in these last couple days! To start we did some splitz this week with our boys Leo and Esteban who (for as strong in the church as they are) are having questions about things and it was one of those moments where I knew I was in the right place at the right time because they had the same questions I remember having when I was their age. It was just such a testimony to me as I answered their questions and was able to comfort them. Not to mention on our splitz they have been a little down because they haven't been seeing success already and for some reason they kinda were like why do we even do this. So of course the Lord provided two lessons one with each of them in the which the Spirit was felt very strongly and they saw the change in people taking place and it ignited the fire once more. I was just so happy to have had the opportunity to show them what missionary work is really all about. Not to mention when two boys who are 18 and 16 start to cry and tell you they are gonna miss you it really makes you feel like you did good. Then we set some time aside to go and see as many people as possible and it was just so weird because sometimes you just never realize how much of an effect you have on people until you tell them you are leaving. I had Cruz in secrecy buy me an "I love Jesus Ring" (not to strong of a member yet) even when he has absolutely no money and nothing but he went out and found me something that I can and will keep forever. Then Abuela (mama Juarez) knitted me a red and blue beanie and gave me a box of really good chocolates and I had quite a few people make me promise I would come back and that they would provide me and my parents with a place to live. One guy even told me he would take us up to Disney World and a couple other places. So lots of love was felt and I can not believe how hard it will be to leave this area. I now have come to know that I do know how to love and that the Lord is changing me. Finally for the finale I got to give a talk on the Book of Mormon as my last testimony here in this area. Well people afterwards were calling me cry baby but telling me it was great and trust me they are just as big of cry babies as I am! hahaha I just love this area and I am going to miss it so much. I took a ton of pictures so I could show you guys everyone but I might lack a little. haha I LOVE YOU and miss you all but I have to go! I hope you guys are all having as great of a time as I am and I keep you all in my prayers every day.

LOVE ELDER OLIVER