ELDER OLSEN IS HOME !
I thought I would just write a little bit and tell everyone what a great example he has been to all of us. He has become a true disciple of Christ it is so great to see my brother and the change that the Atonement has brought into his life. we need to follow his example and use that gift daily. As I look back I have slowly fallen away from not sharing the gospel and thinking that I don't need to be as bold as I was on my mission but oh how I have let the devil deceive me we need to share the gospel it is our duty. My prayer we will all recommit to sharing the gospel. I tell you all that I have never been more in tune with the spirit and felt more life the Lord Jesus Christ then when I was sharing the gospel.
Steve Olsen
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
27 Sept 2010
Hey everyone
Well yesterday was an amazing day! I was able to baptize Diane, it was seriously one of the best baptisms of my mission. Diane is a really special lady. Her 2 daughters came Denique and Shanell, and she also brought 2 of her friends to the baptism. It was a really spiritual baptism. Denique and Shanell will be baptized soon as well. Diane is going to be such a big help to the ward here, I really think that she will be the Relief Society president soon. ha ha . . It was the perfect last Sunday of my mission yesterday, I feel really lucky and blessed to have had such an amazing mission. I have been thinking about that allot lately and I really feel like I didn't deserve any of the amazing experiences that i have had. I have been so blessed with so many amazing people that i have been able to help come into the church and be baptized. This last week I was able to go to the temple in Manhattan, that was really cool. President and Sister Nelson came as well and it was really nice to be able to talk with President. Well i have really loved my mission, believe me when i say that i really don't deserve any of the blessings and miracles that i have seen and been a part of on my mission. They have all been tender mercies of the Lord. I am not perfect, and i make many mistakes every day, but i guess the most important thing that i have learned from my mission is that about the Atonement of Christ. That even though i make mistakes, i can be forgiven. I cant accomplish anything on my own, especially when doing the lords work, but through the atonement i can do anything that the Lord needs me too. There have been so many times on my mission that I will walk out of a lesson with someone that was just incredible, there was a great out pouring of the spirit and i truly felt like I was an instrument for God, And the first thing that i always think is why me? I make so many mistakes and am so in perfect, but yet God will still use me as an instrument. I know that it is only because of the Atonement of Christ. I love all of you and i am so grateful for all of your prayers and support, i have really felt their power through out my mission. I love this gospel and i love Jesus Christ and i hope that i can serve him the rest of my life faithfully. The church is true and the God of Israel leads our lives, if we will let him.
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Michael Olsen
Well yesterday was an amazing day! I was able to baptize Diane, it was seriously one of the best baptisms of my mission. Diane is a really special lady. Her 2 daughters came Denique and Shanell, and she also brought 2 of her friends to the baptism. It was a really spiritual baptism. Denique and Shanell will be baptized soon as well. Diane is going to be such a big help to the ward here, I really think that she will be the Relief Society president soon. ha ha . . It was the perfect last Sunday of my mission yesterday, I feel really lucky and blessed to have had such an amazing mission. I have been thinking about that allot lately and I really feel like I didn't deserve any of the amazing experiences that i have had. I have been so blessed with so many amazing people that i have been able to help come into the church and be baptized. This last week I was able to go to the temple in Manhattan, that was really cool. President and Sister Nelson came as well and it was really nice to be able to talk with President. Well i have really loved my mission, believe me when i say that i really don't deserve any of the blessings and miracles that i have seen and been a part of on my mission. They have all been tender mercies of the Lord. I am not perfect, and i make many mistakes every day, but i guess the most important thing that i have learned from my mission is that about the Atonement of Christ. That even though i make mistakes, i can be forgiven. I cant accomplish anything on my own, especially when doing the lords work, but through the atonement i can do anything that the Lord needs me too. There have been so many times on my mission that I will walk out of a lesson with someone that was just incredible, there was a great out pouring of the spirit and i truly felt like I was an instrument for God, And the first thing that i always think is why me? I make so many mistakes and am so in perfect, but yet God will still use me as an instrument. I know that it is only because of the Atonement of Christ. I love all of you and i am so grateful for all of your prayers and support, i have really felt their power through out my mission. I love this gospel and i love Jesus Christ and i hope that i can serve him the rest of my life faithfully. The church is true and the God of Israel leads our lives, if we will let him.
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Michael Olsen
Friday, September 10, 2010
30 Aug 2010
Well it was a good week. This morning was cool we ran down to Coney Island beach! it took us a while but it felt good. We are going to do it every P-Day the rest of the transfer. Diane came to church again yesterday but her daughters did not, we are meeting with them tonight and hopefully we will be able to baptize all of them soon. Diane is doing great! she reads from the book of mormon every day and is really gaining a strong testimony, and the best part is that she is not even focused on baptism. She has her eyes on the temple! that is where she wants to go! So i am stoked, she is a great lady, mom and dad you will definitely meet her when you come here. We had a cool guy named marlen come yesterday too towards the end of church. He is from trinidad and is the fiance of a less active that we have been doing service for every week. Just helping her clean out her garage and stuff like that. Well he came with her for a little bit and this week we are going to start teaching him. I have a good feeling about him for this month. He is Rastafarian, so the beliefs are a little different but he is open to the lessons. We have another lady named ann marie that looks good too, but she is really struggling letting jesus in her life. she has had a really rough childhood with abuse and stuff and doesn't want to let those feelings go. But she is really nice and knows that she needs to change, she is just scared. She has a 18 year old son that is pretty ghetto and a 4 year old daughter named Tori who is really cute. Yesterday she could not come to church because it was Tori's birthday and she had to take her to the prison to visit her father. But she should be coming next week, she has accepted to be baptized but she needs to make a lot of changes. We have 2 months left of this "year of miracles" that we started last november. We set a goal to baptize 800 people about double of what we have averaged the last 5 to 6 years. Well to be completely honest our misssion has not changed that much. and we are basically doing the same thing that we were doing a year ago. We have about 400 baptisms left. Our district set a goal for September to have 8 baptisms. I think that we could really do it, we have 6 people in our district. So pray for our goal! I love you guys and hope you have a great week.
Love Elder Olsen
Love Elder Olsen
Monday, August 30, 2010
30 Aug 2010
Well it was a good week. This morning was cool we ran down to Coney Island beach! it took us a while but it felt good. We are going to do it every P-Day the rest of the transfer. Diane came to church again yesterday but her daughters did not, we are meeting with them tonight and hopefully we will be able to baptize all of them soon. Diane is doing great! she reads from the book of mormon every day and is really gaining a strong testimony, and the best part is that she is not even focused on baptism. She has her eyes on the temple! that is where she wants to go! So i am stoked, she is a great lady, mom and dad you will definitely meet her when you come here. We had a cool guy named marlen come yesterday too towards the end of church. He is from trinidad and is the fiance of a less active that we have been doing service for every week. Just helping her clean out her garage and stuff like that. Well he came with her for a little bit and this week we are going to start teaching him. I have a good feeling about him for this month. He is Rastafarian, so the beliefs are a little different but he is open to the lessons. We have another lady named ann marie that looks good too, but she is really struggling letting jesus in her life. she has had a really rough childhood with abuse and stuff and doesn't want to let those feelings go. But she is really nice and knows that she needs to change, she is just scared. She has a 18 year old son that is pretty ghetto and a 4 year old daughter named Tori who is really cute. Yesterday she could not come to church because it was Tori's birthday and she had to take her to the prison to visit her father. But she should be coming next week, she has accepted to be baptized but she needs to make a lot of changes. We have 2 months left of this "year of miracles" that we started last november. We set a goal to baptize 800 people about double of what we have averaged the last 5 to 6 years. Well to be completely honest our misssion has not changed that much. and we are basically doing the same thing that we were doing a year ago. We have about 400 baptisms left. Our district set a goal for September to have 8 baptisms. I think that we could really do it, we have 6 people in our district. So pray for our goal! I love you guys and hope you have a great week.
Love Elder Olse
Love Elder Olse
Monday, August 23, 2010
23 Aug 2010
HI
We had an okay week. Diane came to church and loved it, she will be baptized in the next 4 weeks and hopefully we can get her 2 daughters as well. Bro. Moliere got confirmed yesterday and will get the priesthood next week, he is progressing well. Pray for us. Sounds like tyler is doing great! i am really proud of the missionary that he has become. I hope that this week we will be able to find a lot more people to commit this week. we have a few good people that we found this last week that accepted to be baptized but didn't come to church yesterday. So hopefully we can get them to church this week. I love you and hope you all have a good week.
Elder Olsen
We had an okay week. Diane came to church and loved it, she will be baptized in the next 4 weeks and hopefully we can get her 2 daughters as well. Bro. Moliere got confirmed yesterday and will get the priesthood next week, he is progressing well. Pray for us. Sounds like tyler is doing great! i am really proud of the missionary that he has become. I hope that this week we will be able to find a lot more people to commit this week. we have a few good people that we found this last week that accepted to be baptized but didn't come to church yesterday. So hopefully we can get them to church this week. I love you and hope you all have a good week.
Elder Olsen
Saturday, August 21, 2010
16 Aug 2010
We had a great week. Moliere was able to be baptized yesterday by my companion. It was a really good service and almost the entire ward attended the baptism, that might have had something to do with the fact that there was a "linger longer" after with a lot of food. haha but hey they were there. Today is the first day of my last transfer in the mission field! Crazy huh. I really want to work hard this transfer and accomplish allot more than i ever have before. We have allot of good people that we are working with right now, so i am really hoping for allot of baptisms this transfer. Please continue to pray for us allot. Well i love you all!
Elder Olsen
Elder Olsen
9 Aug 2010
Hey Family!
Well we had a great week! we really saw a lot of miracles... aight here is the first one. Moliere is getting baptized this next sunday! We had a lesson with him after church yesterday and he had a few concerns about doctrine that we were able to clear up. And he wants to get baptized this sunday. It is a pretty big miracle, this area has not seen a baptism in over a year and we got blinded in to this area this transfer. So its pretty sweet that we are having a baptism the same transfer. But I'm not satisfied we need to have a lot more next transfer. We have 2 families now that are looking pretty good for next month to get baptized. Here is the other story... We were looking up people who are former investigators, we had planned to look up like 15 people in one day. We had a teaching record from a lady and her 2 daughters from 2007 that has had no contact since than. Basically what the record said was that 2 of her daughters got baptized in Florida and she was threre for the baptisms cause she was visiting them, she came back to new york and came to church 1 time. The missionaries never actually taught her, and they lost contact and never had any updates since than. I'm sure that missionaries have tried to look her up before but have never found her. So we wrote down to stop by her home at 8 o clock. The whole first part of the day all of our plans didn't really go as planned and we were not really able to look up the people at the times that we had planned but for this one we were literally rounding the corner to her house at exactly 8 o clock. Her name is Diane... So we come around the corner and there are a bunch of people outside and they all look at us. One lady started running toward us, she looked really excited too see us, which is really strange around here. So she tells us she is diane. We start talking with her and than another lady comes over, come to find out it is one of her daughters that was baptized in Florida in 2007. She was in the process of moving to Maryland, and she had her car and U-Haul trailer in front of the house, she had literally just pulled up from Texas where she was living 30 minutes before we got there. And than she tells us that her and her husband just got sealed in the temple last week with their 3 kids!!! So basically it was amazing and completely out of our hands, it was meant to happen. it was an answer to many prayers for sure! So Diane is in Maryland right now helping her daughter move and get settled in but we gave her a book of Mormon and her and her daughter are supposed to read it together. and hopefully she will go to church with her daughter in Maryland. she is coming back this week and i think that her and her 2 daughters will be baptized this month! thank you everyone for all of your prayers! Everything is going great! Elder Roderick is really excited to have his first baptism next week, but we need to have allot more! I really want to have like 10 to 15 baptisms next transfer my final one. Please continue to pray for us and our success. I love all of you!
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Olsen
Well we had a great week! we really saw a lot of miracles... aight here is the first one. Moliere is getting baptized this next sunday! We had a lesson with him after church yesterday and he had a few concerns about doctrine that we were able to clear up. And he wants to get baptized this sunday. It is a pretty big miracle, this area has not seen a baptism in over a year and we got blinded in to this area this transfer. So its pretty sweet that we are having a baptism the same transfer. But I'm not satisfied we need to have a lot more next transfer. We have 2 families now that are looking pretty good for next month to get baptized. Here is the other story... We were looking up people who are former investigators, we had planned to look up like 15 people in one day. We had a teaching record from a lady and her 2 daughters from 2007 that has had no contact since than. Basically what the record said was that 2 of her daughters got baptized in Florida and she was threre for the baptisms cause she was visiting them, she came back to new york and came to church 1 time. The missionaries never actually taught her, and they lost contact and never had any updates since than. I'm sure that missionaries have tried to look her up before but have never found her. So we wrote down to stop by her home at 8 o clock. The whole first part of the day all of our plans didn't really go as planned and we were not really able to look up the people at the times that we had planned but for this one we were literally rounding the corner to her house at exactly 8 o clock. Her name is Diane... So we come around the corner and there are a bunch of people outside and they all look at us. One lady started running toward us, she looked really excited too see us, which is really strange around here. So she tells us she is diane. We start talking with her and than another lady comes over, come to find out it is one of her daughters that was baptized in Florida in 2007. She was in the process of moving to Maryland, and she had her car and U-Haul trailer in front of the house, she had literally just pulled up from Texas where she was living 30 minutes before we got there. And than she tells us that her and her husband just got sealed in the temple last week with their 3 kids!!! So basically it was amazing and completely out of our hands, it was meant to happen. it was an answer to many prayers for sure! So Diane is in Maryland right now helping her daughter move and get settled in but we gave her a book of Mormon and her and her daughter are supposed to read it together. and hopefully she will go to church with her daughter in Maryland. she is coming back this week and i think that her and her 2 daughters will be baptized this month! thank you everyone for all of your prayers! Everything is going great! Elder Roderick is really excited to have his first baptism next week, but we need to have allot more! I really want to have like 10 to 15 baptisms next transfer my final one. Please continue to pray for us and our success. I love all of you!
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Olsen
26 July 2010
Hey-
well i had a great week! it was good that we found allot of new investigators, we had a huge miracle happen yesterday. A man just showed up to church. A missionary talked to him on the bus about 2 months ago and gave him the address for the church and he just decided to come. After church we were talking with him and invited him to be baptized and he accepted. We have some really good potentials that we are trying to work with. It has been hard getting blinded into an area and getting a good teaching pool started. We have been doing some serious organizing! That is definitely one thing that i have become a little OCD about on my mission is organization. We are working on the ward list right now, there are over 550 people on the ward list and only 70 or 80 "active".... So there are obviously a ton of people who have moved or who do not want contact from the church. So we are going through all of the old ward lists that we can find from old missionaries and copying all of their notes onto one list. That way we dont waste allot of time looking people up who dont live there. We are also trying to identify all of the part member families. This month is all ready over, August is right around the corner. We really need to baptize allot of people in August. So please pray that people especially families will be placed in our path that are ready to be baptized. Everything is going great I am loving it here. I love you all
Hurrah For Israel
Elder Olsen
well i had a great week! it was good that we found allot of new investigators, we had a huge miracle happen yesterday. A man just showed up to church. A missionary talked to him on the bus about 2 months ago and gave him the address for the church and he just decided to come. After church we were talking with him and invited him to be baptized and he accepted. We have some really good potentials that we are trying to work with. It has been hard getting blinded into an area and getting a good teaching pool started. We have been doing some serious organizing! That is definitely one thing that i have become a little OCD about on my mission is organization. We are working on the ward list right now, there are over 550 people on the ward list and only 70 or 80 "active".... So there are obviously a ton of people who have moved or who do not want contact from the church. So we are going through all of the old ward lists that we can find from old missionaries and copying all of their notes onto one list. That way we dont waste allot of time looking people up who dont live there. We are also trying to identify all of the part member families. This month is all ready over, August is right around the corner. We really need to baptize allot of people in August. So please pray that people especially families will be placed in our path that are ready to be baptized. Everything is going great I am loving it here. I love you all
Hurrah For Israel
Elder Olsen
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
19 July 2010
Hey family!
Well this was one of the most rewarding weeks of my mission. So i don't know if you all remember Craig Lento? I baptized him about a year ago in South Shore Long Island, when i was serving with Elder Alder. Craig is 26 years old, He got his mission call to serve in the Las Vegas mission about a month ago. He will go into the MTC on August 4th i think. Well this week on Thursday I got to go to the Manhattan Temple with him, he asked me to be his escort. For him to receive his endowment. It was really special! He liked it allot and we got to talk with one of the counselors in the temple presidency. It seriously was one of the crowning moments of my mission. Craig is a completely different person now i cant believe it. Maybe Justin and him will be in the mtc at the same time? It is pretty cool to see a man that you baptize on your mission go on a mission before you finish your mission, it doesn't happen very often. Well the work is going... We are trying to find a family to teach and baptize. I love you all and i love the Lord Jesus Christ
Hurrah For Israel
Elder Olsen
Well this was one of the most rewarding weeks of my mission. So i don't know if you all remember Craig Lento? I baptized him about a year ago in South Shore Long Island, when i was serving with Elder Alder. Craig is 26 years old, He got his mission call to serve in the Las Vegas mission about a month ago. He will go into the MTC on August 4th i think. Well this week on Thursday I got to go to the Manhattan Temple with him, he asked me to be his escort. For him to receive his endowment. It was really special! He liked it allot and we got to talk with one of the counselors in the temple presidency. It seriously was one of the crowning moments of my mission. Craig is a completely different person now i cant believe it. Maybe Justin and him will be in the mtc at the same time? It is pretty cool to see a man that you baptize on your mission go on a mission before you finish your mission, it doesn't happen very often. Well the work is going... We are trying to find a family to teach and baptize. I love you all and i love the Lord Jesus Christ
Hurrah For Israel
Elder Olsen
Monday, June 14, 2010
14 June 2010
Hey everyone!
Well it was a great week! We had the baptism of Jorge Garcia on Wednesday night. I will send you pictures later cause i left the camera in the car. Margaret(the 77 year old lady) came to church and loved it. She called me a few hours after church just to thank me. It was really cool... She is doing well and should be getting baptized 2 weeks from now. Yury Cruz gave a talk yesterday that was really great, We baptized her my first transfer here. The talk was amazing, I was really blown away. She is leaving for Colombia tomorrow morning :( Her time here is up and she is going back to be with her family. We went to say goodbye to her this morning and she gave me a Colombian futbol jersey. She is going to go back and convert her entire family... We had a cool miracle happen yesterday, A man Daniel showed up at church. The sister missionaries fearlessed him on the train a few days ago. He used to investigate the church when he was like 15 years old. Well he was like an hour and a half late, So it was in the middle of Gospel Principles class, I took him in there. After the class was over I was talking with him and asking him why he came to the church and some soul searching questions. Well in about 1 minute i had him commited for baptism in 2 weeks. So on the 27th he is going to be baptized. It was really funny cause the next class was priesthood and when we stood up to intruduce him i told everyone that he was preparing to be baptized on the 27th. He was really happy and smiling, But everyone else was shocked. Especially the missionaries. . . Afterwards some of them came and talked to me asking how i was able to do it when i had just barely met him and we had never taught him a lesson. haha I said well i just bore my testimony and asked him to be baptized and he said yes. Its easy sometimes missionaries are just so scared of inviting people to be baptized, no one can ever be baptized if we dont ask them too. We had Steven B Allen visiting our mission from Monday to Thursday morning. He is the managing director or the missionary department over the whole church. Basically he is the man when it comes to missionary work. Monday afternoon we had a meeting with him discussing the mission and the culture and than he and Brother MItchell (He is in charge of training at the MTC, as well as training new mission presidents) They gave us a lesson on asking inspired questions... IT was increddible! really i think that i learned more in the 3 days that they were here than i have my entire mission. Than that night Brother Allen went out teaching with Elder Cascardi and I. Brother Allen said that he wanted us to throw our lesson plan out and just go into the lesson and do what they had just taught us to do, Ask inspired questions and than teach whatever the spirit guides you too. So first i will give you a little description of what an inspired question is.
Basically when you are talking to some one and you want to ask an inspired question you really have to focus and be in tune with the spirit. And you just wait.... You dont say anything until the spirit tells you exactly what to say. And than when the revelation does come you ask the question and listen to their response, than you dont ask another question or give a response until the revelation comes. So you just sit there and wait for it. It is really neat to completely rely on the spirit. Well Its not like i have never done this before or that this was completely foreign to me. But the way that they taught it and completely focusing on it was a big eye opener for me. And how much more i could be saying exactly what I need to be saying at exactly the right moment. So we went out teaching and we went to margaret and than to Jorge. Both of the lessons went really well. Brother Allen really liked margaret. He was really funny, we of course were talking to everyone on the streets as we were walking to and from our appointments. He thought it was so cool that there were so many people out on the streets. The next day we had a meeting at the mission home to prepare for our leaders meeting the following day. They did another training for us and showed us allot of the new training tools that they will be thorough out the world in this next month. They are changing allot of things in the way that missions run. we are only going to have zone conference once every quarter as well as interviews. There is just allot of stuff changing to make it possible for the mission presidents to be out with the missionaries teaching more and doing more hands on training. They also showed us allot of the new pmg dvds that are coming out in a few weeks. The leaders meeting the next day was really good, really like the best training i have ever recieved. I think that it really helped out our mission. They focused allot on baptism and our purpose as missionaries and the doctrine of Christ. We had 2 zone conferences the following 2 days. One in long island and the other here in queens. They were pretty good. We have 2 other zone conferences this week, one in brooklyn and the other in queens. As well as we start transfer planning, so it is going to be a long week but it will be good. I dont know if i am going to stay here or not yet but i will probably find out today or in the next few days. I dont care either way. I like serving here and working with president but it would be nice to be out all the time baptizing people and not having to worry about allot of other mission drama all the time. Seriously this mission is like One Tree Hill all over again. haha well i love you all and i hope that you have a great week! The church is true, what else matters...
Hurrah For Israel!!!!!!!!!
Elder Olsen
Well it was a great week! We had the baptism of Jorge Garcia on Wednesday night. I will send you pictures later cause i left the camera in the car. Margaret(the 77 year old lady) came to church and loved it. She called me a few hours after church just to thank me. It was really cool... She is doing well and should be getting baptized 2 weeks from now. Yury Cruz gave a talk yesterday that was really great, We baptized her my first transfer here. The talk was amazing, I was really blown away. She is leaving for Colombia tomorrow morning :( Her time here is up and she is going back to be with her family. We went to say goodbye to her this morning and she gave me a Colombian futbol jersey. She is going to go back and convert her entire family... We had a cool miracle happen yesterday, A man Daniel showed up at church. The sister missionaries fearlessed him on the train a few days ago. He used to investigate the church when he was like 15 years old. Well he was like an hour and a half late, So it was in the middle of Gospel Principles class, I took him in there. After the class was over I was talking with him and asking him why he came to the church and some soul searching questions. Well in about 1 minute i had him commited for baptism in 2 weeks. So on the 27th he is going to be baptized. It was really funny cause the next class was priesthood and when we stood up to intruduce him i told everyone that he was preparing to be baptized on the 27th. He was really happy and smiling, But everyone else was shocked. Especially the missionaries. . . Afterwards some of them came and talked to me asking how i was able to do it when i had just barely met him and we had never taught him a lesson. haha I said well i just bore my testimony and asked him to be baptized and he said yes. Its easy sometimes missionaries are just so scared of inviting people to be baptized, no one can ever be baptized if we dont ask them too. We had Steven B Allen visiting our mission from Monday to Thursday morning. He is the managing director or the missionary department over the whole church. Basically he is the man when it comes to missionary work. Monday afternoon we had a meeting with him discussing the mission and the culture and than he and Brother MItchell (He is in charge of training at the MTC, as well as training new mission presidents) They gave us a lesson on asking inspired questions... IT was increddible! really i think that i learned more in the 3 days that they were here than i have my entire mission. Than that night Brother Allen went out teaching with Elder Cascardi and I. Brother Allen said that he wanted us to throw our lesson plan out and just go into the lesson and do what they had just taught us to do, Ask inspired questions and than teach whatever the spirit guides you too. So first i will give you a little description of what an inspired question is.
Basically when you are talking to some one and you want to ask an inspired question you really have to focus and be in tune with the spirit. And you just wait.... You dont say anything until the spirit tells you exactly what to say. And than when the revelation does come you ask the question and listen to their response, than you dont ask another question or give a response until the revelation comes. So you just sit there and wait for it. It is really neat to completely rely on the spirit. Well Its not like i have never done this before or that this was completely foreign to me. But the way that they taught it and completely focusing on it was a big eye opener for me. And how much more i could be saying exactly what I need to be saying at exactly the right moment. So we went out teaching and we went to margaret and than to Jorge. Both of the lessons went really well. Brother Allen really liked margaret. He was really funny, we of course were talking to everyone on the streets as we were walking to and from our appointments. He thought it was so cool that there were so many people out on the streets. The next day we had a meeting at the mission home to prepare for our leaders meeting the following day. They did another training for us and showed us allot of the new training tools that they will be thorough out the world in this next month. They are changing allot of things in the way that missions run. we are only going to have zone conference once every quarter as well as interviews. There is just allot of stuff changing to make it possible for the mission presidents to be out with the missionaries teaching more and doing more hands on training. They also showed us allot of the new pmg dvds that are coming out in a few weeks. The leaders meeting the next day was really good, really like the best training i have ever recieved. I think that it really helped out our mission. They focused allot on baptism and our purpose as missionaries and the doctrine of Christ. We had 2 zone conferences the following 2 days. One in long island and the other here in queens. They were pretty good. We have 2 other zone conferences this week, one in brooklyn and the other in queens. As well as we start transfer planning, so it is going to be a long week but it will be good. I dont know if i am going to stay here or not yet but i will probably find out today or in the next few days. I dont care either way. I like serving here and working with president but it would be nice to be out all the time baptizing people and not having to worry about allot of other mission drama all the time. Seriously this mission is like One Tree Hill all over again. haha well i love you all and i hope that you have a great week! The church is true, what else matters...
Hurrah For Israel!!!!!!!!!
Elder Olsen
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
9 June 2010
I guess that i am getting old in the mission. No one e mails me more than 2 sentences anymore :( haha nah its okay. Welp i had a great week, we have Jorge getting baptized this wednesday. Today in about 15 minutes Brother Allen from the missionary department will be here and we will start our meetings. Its going to be a crazy week, 2 zone conferences, a zone leader council, and 3 full days with brother allen here with a ton of meetings. Alex got confirmed yesterday, it was great! he is really cool. I love you all have a good week
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Olsen
Hurrah For Israel!!
Elder Olsen
Friday, June 4, 2010
This is one out of order because of my broken arm 17 May 2010
Hello Family!
Here are some pictures for you... The beach baptism was really cool. It was actually really hard to baptize her, the waves were huge! and the wind was blowing really hard. But its a good thing I'm a pro at baptizing ha ha. . We did the baptism in Long Beach, there is a member in the Long Beach area that owns a house on a private beach. so it was really nice, there was no one on the beach and no trash. We had planned on staring the baptism at 5:30 so we left the church here in Rego Park at 4:30. . . But because of traffic it took like an hour and a half to get there. I hate NY traffic. But i am getting pretty used to it, now that i have been in a car for almost a year. and my parallel parking skills just keep getting better and better. I think that i could enter into some kind of competition or something, I think i could take the whole thing. haha but really i am pretty good. And right now i am driving a mini van if i haven't all ready told you. I know that i have probably said it many times in My life that i hate mini vans... But let me tell ya.. I never have these things a fair shot. They are actually pretty sweet! ha i never thought i would be saying that. Ours is the Dodge Caravan, it has the "stow and go" seating. So basically if we need to transport anything we can in just a minute or two make all of our seats disappear under the floor and we have a large open space in the back of the van. Or as we call it our "living room" cause we spend allot of eating our lunch in the "living room" But anyways i have gotten allot of good practice parking this mini van into some pretty tight parking spots here in the heart of queens. Well enough about mini vans huh. Jorge committed to be baptized the 29th of this month. So we are really excited for him. He is really good. He will be the first person that i baptize that doesn't speak a lick of English. ha so pretty much Elder Cascardi and the members do all of the teaching and I bare my testimony. But i am trying to pick up on the Spanish. It is just hard with no extra time. We also have Alex whom is Luddy's friend committed for the 30th of this month. But we are still trying to get him to go to church in a different ward out in Long Island cause that is where he lives. We had quite a crazy week. and this week is not looking any less nuts, We were able to finish up our transfer planning with president about 30 minutes ago(that took up the entire morning) And everything looks pretty good for next transfer. We have Elder Michael Ringwood coming to visit our mission this week(of the Seventy) He spoke in Conference 2 conferences ago. So this Wednesday we have a Zone Leader Council that he is going to come too that we need to prepare for, And than on Thursday and Friday we have Zone Conference with the entire mission that we also need to get allot of stuff ready for, and than both Thursday and Friday night Elder Ringwood is going to do a fireside for the wards and branches, 1 of them will be in Long Island and another one here in Queens. So yeah it will be quite a crazy week. We are really being blessed, we have hardly any time to proselyte but the time that we do use the Lord is making it really effective. I feel like right now for the first time in my mission that we are only teaching people that i feel confident are ready to be baptized this month. It is really cool. Well i love you all and i pray for you everyday. Please pray for a woman named Deborah, last week we were coming out of a pizza shop and i saw this old lady and i could tell that she was looking at us so i waved to her and said hi! she walked over and asked if we could pray for her daughter who is very sick. We got talking to her and eventually led to us just walking over to her house right than to give her a priesthool blessing. We walked into this ladies home and her daughter was lying on the bed, I dont know that i have actually seen anyone closer to death than this woman. She is only in her 30's and she has 2 kids a boy and a girl 15 and 14 years old. The 14 year old daughter was there. We shared a message
Here are some pictures for you... The beach baptism was really cool. It was actually really hard to baptize her, the waves were huge! and the wind was blowing really hard. But its a good thing I'm a pro at baptizing ha ha. . We did the baptism in Long Beach, there is a member in the Long Beach area that owns a house on a private beach. so it was really nice, there was no one on the beach and no trash. We had planned on staring the baptism at 5:30 so we left the church here in Rego Park at 4:30. . . But because of traffic it took like an hour and a half to get there. I hate NY traffic. But i am getting pretty used to it, now that i have been in a car for almost a year. and my parallel parking skills just keep getting better and better. I think that i could enter into some kind of competition or something, I think i could take the whole thing. haha but really i am pretty good. And right now i am driving a mini van if i haven't all ready told you. I know that i have probably said it many times in My life that i hate mini vans... But let me tell ya.. I never have these things a fair shot. They are actually pretty sweet! ha i never thought i would be saying that. Ours is the Dodge Caravan, it has the "stow and go" seating. So basically if we need to transport anything we can in just a minute or two make all of our seats disappear under the floor and we have a large open space in the back of the van. Or as we call it our "living room" cause we spend allot of eating our lunch in the "living room" But anyways i have gotten allot of good practice parking this mini van into some pretty tight parking spots here in the heart of queens. Well enough about mini vans huh. Jorge committed to be baptized the 29th of this month. So we are really excited for him. He is really good. He will be the first person that i baptize that doesn't speak a lick of English. ha so pretty much Elder Cascardi and the members do all of the teaching and I bare my testimony. But i am trying to pick up on the Spanish. It is just hard with no extra time. We also have Alex whom is Luddy's friend committed for the 30th of this month. But we are still trying to get him to go to church in a different ward out in Long Island cause that is where he lives. We had quite a crazy week. and this week is not looking any less nuts, We were able to finish up our transfer planning with president about 30 minutes ago(that took up the entire morning) And everything looks pretty good for next transfer. We have Elder Michael Ringwood coming to visit our mission this week(of the Seventy) He spoke in Conference 2 conferences ago. So this Wednesday we have a Zone Leader Council that he is going to come too that we need to prepare for, And than on Thursday and Friday we have Zone Conference with the entire mission that we also need to get allot of stuff ready for, and than both Thursday and Friday night Elder Ringwood is going to do a fireside for the wards and branches, 1 of them will be in Long Island and another one here in Queens. So yeah it will be quite a crazy week. We are really being blessed, we have hardly any time to proselyte but the time that we do use the Lord is making it really effective. I feel like right now for the first time in my mission that we are only teaching people that i feel confident are ready to be baptized this month. It is really cool. Well i love you all and i pray for you everyday. Please pray for a woman named Deborah, last week we were coming out of a pizza shop and i saw this old lady and i could tell that she was looking at us so i waved to her and said hi! she walked over and asked if we could pray for her daughter who is very sick. We got talking to her and eventually led to us just walking over to her house right than to give her a priesthool blessing. We walked into this ladies home and her daughter was lying on the bed, I dont know that i have actually seen anyone closer to death than this woman. She is only in her 30's and she has 2 kids a boy and a girl 15 and 14 years old. The 14 year old daughter was there. We shared a message
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
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