Emily, Happy General Conference, 3.28.11

Oh my goodness, can you believe its already time for general
conference again?! I can hardly even wait. ITs going to be so
wonderful. I am super excited to watch it and to know that our whole
family, wherever in the world we are will be doing the exact same
thing at the exact same time. THanks for always making general
conference a priority. Its amazing! We´ve enjoyed being able to invite
all of our investigators to general conference. ITs so fun to tell
them that we have this amazig opportunity to hear the words of a
prophets today. I really hope that they can come adn feel the spirit,
and learn from our inspired prophets. I also hope that I can enjoy
conference in spanish.... we´ll see i guess :)

I just got a whole bunch of dear elders, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I really
do love reading the letters from my cousins on their missions. Its
awesome. Nat, i got your letter, but still haven´t had time to
read.... but I did see that jake thomas is engaged! Crazy! YOu´ll have
to send him my congrats.

Mom, i haven´t gotten the pills yet. But... Elder F. is in my
district and he received his package today from his mom, pills and all
:). SO it should be coming soon, i hope.

Thats crazy you woke up to snow this morning. Its been raining here
for 2-3 days, off and on. I think its a blast. I don´t know why but
walking with an umbrella is super fun for me. ITs like i have this
crazy power. The rain is falling everywhere but where i go, and i can
walk anywhere i want without getting wet. haha its fun, and it makes
me smile. Ok maybe the sun is getting to me. Its also been insanely
hot. But my body is adjusting. Thats so fun that you get to go
camping! I hope its warm enough for you. Elise is going with her kids,
that´ll be a blast!! I´m excited for you! I´d love to see some
pictures!

Well, this week has been good. We had a zone conference on Thursday
with several zones and president and sister calderon. It was good. The
hermanas are always treated very nice here, and during lunch we got to
sit with president and sister calderon and visit with them. They are
really awesome. We were asking them about their call and how it all
was. They told us that one day President Uchtdorf´s secretary called
and asked if they had time to meet with president Uchtdorf, they said
they could probably squeeze him in :). They had a teleconference deal
and it sounded like an amazing experience. President Uchtdorf started
off by telling them that he doesn´t speak or understand spanish - they
replied that they don´t speak or understand english, and then they
moved on. THey said they talked, he called them to be mission
presidents, they accepted, he told them all they needed to do to
prepare and then it was over. During all this time pres Uchtdorf is
speaking english, and the caleron´s are replying in Spanish. President
calderon said that they didn´t understand all the words, but that they
understood the idea, and it was enough. AMAZING. The gift of tongues
is real. When I think about what faith they needed to have i am in
awe, but why not? The Lord has promised the gift of tongues to his
servants, so why shouldn´t they be able to communicate. Something else
i read in the Conference ensign, I´m pretty sure it was a talk from
the priesthood session, and it said that as long as you have the
spirit with you, it is enough, The spirit will touch their hearts.
THey won´t remember the words you used or how you said, they´ll just
remember how they felt. It was really comforting for me to hear that.

My companion was sick this week, Friday and Saturday, entonces, i got
a lot of study time! It was great! haha she is better now, mostly. :)
We have a few investigators that are super important, with baptismal
dates, and we didn´t want to just leave them hanging, so We called two
hnas, one to go with me to an appointment with Yn, and one to
stay with my companion. I was pretty nervous, for a few reasons
actually. First of all to not have my very experienced companion to
fill in when i don´t know what to say, also because Yn doesn´´t
here good, and its hard for my companion to communicate with him, let
alone me in my awful spanish, and he has a tendency to talk really
fast and quietly, which makes it pretty insanely hard for me to
understand. But, I´d just read about having the spirit and it being
sufficient entonces... I prayed, hna O. and i practiced, and I felt
pretty prepared to teach him the BOok of Mormon. Kind of an important
topic. Hna A. came with me. She is a return missionary, the
relief society president of our ward, and our pensionista (cook).
Basically, it went really good. HOw it went was I would say something,
Hna A. would say it in better, clearer spanish, Yn would understand, reply, and Hna Arminda would say it slower and louder so that I could understand., Haha it was pretty funny. But we taught him the book of mormon, I found a scripture that I felt i should share
with him in DyC. When I found it I wasn´t exactly sure what it said,
but knew it was something about receiving answers to prayers, I shared
it. THen when I got home looked it up in English, showed my comanion,
and we both decided it was what he needed. Also, when I was bearing my
testimony of the book of mormon, and of how I knew that his choice to
be baptized was right and going to bless his life, he understood me,
and I spoke. THe spirit is amazing, the gift of tongues is real, and
the Lord is constantly helping me. I am so grateful.


Saturday night my companion decided she was well enough to head out
proselyting for the last three hours, so we planned and prepared for
our lessons and headed out. When we went every single one of our
lessons we had planned fell through. It would of been a failure, but
turns our that we found a bunch of really neat people who we hope are
going to be able to accept the blessings of the gospel in their life.
Maybe we went for just one of those people. No sé, but i felt like we
were out talking to people for a reason, and one of those people
really needed to talk to us.

Yesterday we had a first app with a girl named gn and her mom,
ml. We got there and brought our neighbor, brt with. Turns
out brt and gn are in the same class. Blessing. But as soon
as we sat down ml started arguing a little with her daughter,
calling her a lier because she didn´t tell her about her homework...
and we´ll just say the spirit was definitely not there. As soon as we
found some space to step in we asked if we could begin with a hymn.
haha. Talk about mood change. Its amazing how i felt the spirit leave,
but how quickly it returned when we sang and prayed. We taught them
about how the gospel blesses families and how they can strengthen
their relationship. I talked a little about my relationship with my
mom, and told them that my mom was my best friend. And i meant it. I
am so grateful to you mom, and for all that you do. I know that I can
depend on you for whatever, and that you love me. Thank you so much
for all of your support.

Well, enjoy general conference this weekend! I am excited to hear all
your thoughts and favorite parts. Thanks for all your support. I love
you all, pray for you daily, and am so grateful to have you all as my
family.

Love,

Hna Olsen



PS We are trying to find a way to be in contact with all of our
investigators everyday, and we  don't know how. We need us, or a
member to talk to them... if you have ideas, please send them our way!
Thanks!