Emily, 3.22.11 Buenos Dias

OH familia! I love you so much. It is so good to hear from you. I
canp´t even tell you how wonderful it is to get your letters. I am so
grateful for all of you and your support and prayers. Thank you thank
you thank you. I feel so so so lucky to have a family like you! You
are amazing. ´

Things here are good. So far missionary work is exhausting! I´´m
pretty sure i´m asleep before my head hits the pillow each night. Oh!
I got some of the dear elders last week! Thanks so much! I enjoyed
your letters about work mom and peter. I read those and the next day I
read 2 nefi 5 - this chapter has natalies scripture in it. We lived
after the manner of happiness... what i enjoyed is all of it that they
had to do before. It talks about work, hard work, not being lazy. It
was a cool chapter to read with the thoughts of work still in my head.
Its crazy amazing how the gospel applies to everything. Its cool mom
that your studying about work, while i am on a mission. I have never
worked to hard in my entire life. Hopefully i´ll learn a little about
work too.

I am experiencing miracles everyday and the Lord is strengthening me so
much! One miracle was Y. He and his aunt came up to us last week
in church and he said he wanted to be taught the gospel. We of course
said we could probably handle that and set up an appointment. We
called him the morning before to make sure he´d be there and we had to
reschedule. I began to wonder if he was serious, but our next
appointment - Thursday was awesome. He doesn´t hear very good, so you
can imagine what its like for me to try and communicate in my sorry
excuse for Spanish and him trying to understand. His cousin comes with
him to translate, shes a member. Anyhow. We taught him a bout
receiving answers to prayers. We also had another member, A, who
is his same age, 19, come with us. A just received his mission
call to La paz bolivia. A gave a powerful testimony of receiving
answers and told his experience of having a dream about his call a
receiving an answer. After Y said he had prayed about the church
(in my head I´m thinking, wait, isn´t this our first lesson?) and had
also received an answer in his dream that the church is true. My
companion asked him straight out if he believed that this was the true
church of God, and he said... yes! We all sat there in slightly
stunned silence. To brake the silence I threw out a hardy "me too!".
My companion challenged him to baptism and he said yes! His date was
for this Saturday. We met with him last Saturday to teach him
everything he needed before his interview and he told us his parents
were having a hard time accepting his decision. They just don´t want
him to jump into things i guess. He said he really wanted to be
baptized and was going to be, but maybe we could wait a little. His
new date is for Nat´s birthday! But, our ZL thought that was a little
much, so did I actually, so we´re going to try to move it up to the 9.
In this lesson HE asked US if we could fast for his parents that they
might come to an understanding of his decision and accept it. He is
super full of faith, and a huge example to me. The Lord really does
prepare people to receive the gospel. amazing.

Another miracle was Saturday. We make goals each week, and daily goals
to meet our weekly goals. Since coming here my companion and I have
yet to meet our goals for a day, and definitely not for the whole week.
Saturday morning as companionship I prayed that we´d be able to reach
our goals for the day. They were pretty high because we were trying to
make up for days that we had missed. Guess what?! We met or exceeded
ALL of our goals! Heavenly Father really is in this work, and he can
help us to accomplish it.

The other day my Hna Ortiz and I were in an area looking for a menos
active and we could not find the house anywhere. We had asked around
in several tiendas and no one knew. We were walking down the street
when this women came running after us yelling hnas hnas! We turned
around. She is a menos active and has a desire to come to church.
awesome! Like my companion put it, maybe we weren't looking for the
other one, maybe maria needed to find us. She is awesome, lived in
Utah for awhile, and knows some English! Hooray!

The food here is good. We have a pensionista, someone who cooks lunch
for us everyday. She is a member, served a mission and the relief
society president in the ward. Basically i eat rice and some form of
meat everyday for lunch. She always gives us vegetables and i eat
them! I eat yogurt and cereal and banana for breakfast... and
generally we don´t eat dinner. Huge bummer. I try to take an apple and
crackers to eat while were out and about. The only thing that I
especially haven´t liked is papaya juice. Everyone here loves it! but
hna maxwell y yo nicknamed it feet juice. It is SO GROSS!

I think its time to go. I love you all. Thanks so much for everything.
With the Lord, I am doing good. }

Hna Olsen

Dad! How can missionaries work in a ward better, your opinion? What
can we do to work with ward leaders. How many are in our ward?