Hello everyone!

We´ve had 7 baptisms in the past 2 weeks! The first was of Ana and Amanda in my previous area with Elder Abdom. I found out I would be transferred and I didn´t want to leave without baptizing them; so, we had the baptism Monday night before the transfer. We found them a week and a half before. The bishop gave us a list of addresses to visit and see if members still lived there. We ended up finding Marcos, an inactive member of 10 years. We reactivated him in a week and baptized his two girls! The mom went to the baptism even though she had a baby 4 days before! It was a very special baptism. Marcos still needs to legally marry his wife before his wife can be baptized. The family was very prepared to receive us and the gospel.

Last Sunday, in my new area, Elder Benites and I baptized Matheus, a 14 year old kid, and then yesterday we baptized his dad and sister. They love the church and are very excited that they found the truth. We also baptized his sister’s friend, Nataly. Nataly is a daughter of a less active. The day after we left the Book of Mormon, we went back and she had already read 10 chapters starting from the beginning! Matheus’ sister is 9 and her friend is 10.

Also we baptized Vitoria who is 14. We found her because we were lost and asked her for directions! It turned out that she already knew a few of the girls in the church and therefore fit in perfectly! At first Vitoria’s mom wasn´t going to let her be baptized, so we talked to her about how the baptism will change her life for the better and then she let her.

I´ve always thought that us missionaries are the ones who prepare the people to receive the gospel. But now, after lots of time here, I´m realizing that it´s God who prepares the people. Our job is only to find the people who are prepared. Thanks for all the love and support!

Love,

Elder Olsen

Hey! Sorry, I didn´t get a chance to email last week, I only had a little time to use the computer. We went to the center of the city to a famous street where they have tons of venders. We took the metro to get there. It´s actually in the São Paulo West mission so we had to ask permission from the Assistants of the President. The name of the street is 25 de Março (March 25th). Lots of the streets here are named after the days and months of the year, not sure exactly why. Probably because there are so many streets, the names run out quickly haha. But everything there is super cheap, veeeery cheep especially for me haha. $200 turns into almost 800 reais which is a TON. There is a shopping center there that we entered and I felt like I was in Hong Kong again haha. Everyone was chinese and speaking chinese and selling cheap chinese products haha.

We are working nonstop but the work is tough. We have a few investigators right now but only a few close to baptism. We had baptismal dates set for two girls yesterday, but they fell through. They are scared to commit to a new life and keep all the commandments. This is the biggest problem here. There are tons of people we talk to everyday that want to be baptized, buuut…….. sometime in the future when they decide it´s time to stop sinning. People are scared to commit. We try to help them understand that life is so much better when keeping the commandments of God but it´s hard for them to understand.

The mission has really helped me grow to appreciate my testimony of the Church. Every time we are rejected by another person, I become more and more grateful for my testimony. It makes me treasure the things I know to be true, things that other people can´t seem comprehend. It truly is a gift from God to have a testimony of the true Church and know the things I know. Lots of times I think to myself about others: “If you knew the things I know, you would want to be baptized into The Church this very moment”

Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Olsen

This week was a big change! On Tuesday, I was transferred to another town with Elder Abdom. He is from Brazil and is a very hard worker; we work great together! We both opened the area, which means we both had no idea about anything when we arrived here. We had to learn everything ourselves.

The new area is a lot different than Tatuí. I´m in the capital region now, which means there´s a lot more people and everything is more rushed. Our area has lots of “favela”, which is like a maze of humble houses all stacked super close to each other. Elder Abdom and I are super excited because it is a very good area to find people to be baptized.

On Tuesday, the President challenged everyone to baptize at least one person this weekend. Even though we new nothing about our area and had no investigators, we took up the challenge. It took one day to find our baptism for the weekend. On Thursday night we found a 15 year old boy named Lucas who was just waiting for the baptism invite. On Friday we returned to teach him everything. (To baptize here, a person has to visit at least two sacrament meetings. Being that we had stake conference on Saturday and Sunday, President said that each session counted as a sacrament meeting). On Saturday we returned to bring him to Stake Conference. But when we got to his house, he wasn´t there!! He was playing soccer, what every kid in Brazil does on Saturday.

We ran all over the neighborhood looking for him at all the soccer fields. We didn´t find him, and conference was about to start. Then we found out that there was one more soccer field in one of the schools. We ran to the school to look for him. When we entered the school we found him immediately! We all got on the bus and went to conference. Elder Rais, of the Quorum of the 70, was presiding. Lucas definitely felt the spirit at the conference, he even said he wanted to fast before his baptism to make sure he was doing the right thing.  After conference, we arranged his baptismal interview.

On Sunday morning we picked him up and all went to Conference together. After an amazing conference, Lucas was baptized!! He was super excited. Elder Abdom and I have a goal to baptize every week of this transfer. I am learning the importance of Faith in finding people to baptize. Heavenly Father is always preparing people; we just have to be diligent in finding them.

Have a Great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Olsen

I met a teenage boy a couple of weeks ago. I saw him sitting by himself on the street corner, so I walked up to him and started talking. He is a little autistic and thinks more like a younger child. He is very sweet and loves learning about everything we teach him.  He came back to church for the second time yesterday.

It was fast and testimony meeting and I asked him to go up and bare his testimony, but he said he was too shy. I kept nudging him to go up, but he was too shy. Then I offered to go up with him and help him. He finally agreed. When he got to the microphone, he didn´t even turn to me for help, he just started talking all by himself! He bore an awesome testimony of Jesus Christ and the Church.

Our area is huge, there are tons of people out there. We are always changing neighborhoods. Here, there are kids they call “Funkeiros” which are the people who listen to funk music. But not the funk we think of like jazz,  haha!

My companion, Elder C. speaks a little English and I´ve been practicing speaking Spanish with him. It´s pretty easy for me to speak Spanish now that I know Portuguese!

Love,

Elder Olsen

P.S. the Coca-Cola here is way better than in the States! Here they use real cane sugar instead of artificial sugar like they do in the States. People loooooove Coca here!!