Hey Everyone.Well we had a great week! Alex got baptized on Saturday! it was really cool. We did it on the beach again, but this time we did it in a different location than Luddy's baptism. There was allot less waves. Elder Casacardi baptized him. Luddy gave a talk on baptism and that was really good, its really special when you have the opportunity to see people that you baptized talk and bare their testimony. We have Jorge who is getting baptized this next Sunday, he is doing really awesome! We are really being blessed with so many miracles. If you remember Debby and Margaret (i talked about them a few e mails ago) Debby is the one that was really sick, she has 2 kids boy and girl 14 and 15. Margaret is her mother. Well we finished a meeting a few nights ago and i was on exchanges with a Zone Leader in zone 7, and i had a new missionary with me. He came into the mission last Monday and got out into his first area which was Jamaica, and totally freaked out. He was having panic attacks and depression and all kind of problems. So he was staying with us for 3 days until he was going home, which was Saturday. And we had planned to stop by and visit Debby and Margaret earlier in the day, but because allot of stuff came up we didn't have time. We had tried to contact her a few times in the last week but hadn't had any luck. Well we got into the van and i really felt like we needed to go right than. So we drove over there (in our super cool mini-van ha ha) and knocked on the door. Margaret answered the door and just started to cry. She told us that Debby had passed away... We shared with her parts of the plan of salvation, it was really spiritual and helped me realize how blessed we are to have the knowledge of God's plan. It is a really weird feeling that she died, I was just visiting with her last week. But it was really neat that i was able to give her a blessing before she died. I really felt when i was giving her the blessing the love that God had for her and how strong of a lady that she really was. She had endured so many trials in life. I have no doubt that she will be in a happy place and will accept the Gospel on the other side. Now i just hope that we will be able to baptize her mom and her 2 kids. So please pray for them. Janine called me last night and told me that she doesn't want to meet with us anymore :( It was really sad for me... I'm not sure why this always happens but i'm sure that there is something that i am supposed to learn from this happening over and over again on my mission. I really do try to love all of those that i teach, and i think that i do. But for some reason through out my mission there have been a few people that i have taught that i felt different about. It was a stronger love, and i have really desired their salvation and acceptance of the gospel. And every single person that i have taught that i have felt that connection to have not gotten baptized and have stopped investigating. (Ebony Downy and her family, Miranda, a few others and now Janine and her family) I dont know i suppose Heavenly Father is trying to toughen up my heart. Or help me to learn to love people that way and than when they let you down not getting discouraged or down. It just occured to me that these experiences have really helped me understand the Atonement of Jesus Christ allot better. He was perfect, he had a perfect love for everyone! And we let him down all the time, I let him down all the time. I guess this is giving me a taste of what he must feel everytime that i or anyone does something wrong. Elder Holland said in a talk (Missionary work and the Atonement) Why would we ever expect it to be easy, when it was never easy for him! When we take the name of Christ upon ourselves and do his work, we need to expect to feel at least a fraction of what he felt.
That is not quoted exactly, but it basically says that, you can find a version of the talk on lds . org. but the original was given at the mtc and you cant get that copy anywhere. I got a copy from my mission president that he got somewhere. Well I love being a missionary. And i love doing this work. Next week Steven Allen is coming to visit our mission, he is going to come teaching with us for an entire evening. I am really nervous, so please pray for me. If i mess up on something they are probably going to use me as a bad example in the next version of PMG haha. I love you all have a great week!
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Michael Melvin Olsen
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