4.27.15

Wow, I just barely remembered I hadn't written my email to everyone yet. And, I am about out of time. This week has been great! I got a new companion, he is from Spanish Fork Ut and his name is Elder Oxborrow. He is a stud, and we are working hard. Planning on seeing lots of miracles this transfer. 

The first day we were out knocking doors when we knocked on this one door. A man answers, he opens the door, and as soon as he sees us he says "Oh! Hello, my name is Gary.".... What? People don't answer their door like that when they see two missionaries standing outside. I was rather taken back. So I asked if he had ever met with missionaries before thinking that he must know some other missionaries some how. He said no. Said he had never talked to missionaries before. Well I was fresh out of ideas. He asked if we had a minute to sit down and talk. That caught me a little off guard too. So we did, we talked to him for the next hour, his wife and two daughters were in and out of some of it. It was pretty awesome. He isn't really interesting in investigating the church, but he is curios because he has always admired what Mormon missionaries do. We will be meeting with him again tonight. I am excited!

Miracles are still happening because the gospel is true.

It's pretty great!

Elder Dane Olsen

4.20.15

Hello! Things are heating up down here, and the rainy season is starting. Both of which makes biking great fun! This week is transfers so tomorrow morning we'll be dropping Elder Conrad off at the air port to head off to India, pretty crazy, and then I'll get my new companion sometime later that day. The transfers are always exciting!

Over the past month or so I believe that I have mentioned that we had a pretty good number of new people we were working with. Well most of them we are still trying to work with, though several of them are getting harder to meet with. It is getting to the point that they need to start keeping commitments or we need to give them some time. It is also the time for me to make sure that I am doing all I can to help them in the making and keeping of those commitments. 

So another one of my favorite talks from conference is The Sabbath is a Delight. What a great talk! I love it. One of the big reasons is because it is so easy to forget how important the Sabbath really is. I mean out here it feels a lot like every other day. Still doing the same thing. That is no excuse though. It is the Lords day, and the Lord's day while one is doing the Lord's work should be all the more special so that is something I am seeking to do better. I encourage all of you to read from conference. It is so incredible to me that we have a living prophet today who speaks to all of God's children here on earth, along with the 12 apostles. It is so Important to heed the counsel we are given because if we don't accept and apply what we already have we won't be able to grow and prepare to receive more. God only gives us what we can take, because he really does know what is best for each and everyone of us. He knows each and everyone of us, and loves us all. That is incredible.

Godspeed!

Elder Dane Olsen

4.13.15

Life is great! Things are warming up and we are starting to get rain again. Woot! Haha So Saturday night we got a good rain storm and we just so happened to be at a less actives members house when it started. We waited for a while to see if it would stop, it didn't. So it got to about time for us to head out still poring. (And the member had other things going and didn't have a way to transport our bikes.) So we headed out. It wasn't as hard of a storm as they do get here in Florida, but it was pretty good. With in the first 30 feet I took off my glasses so I could see and then for the next 2 miles we were riding through water and rain, the water was always at least 3 inches deep and at times was an easy full foot deep. It was so good to play in the puddles again! Haha So much water everywhere, it just didn't drain off the sidewalks. When we got back to the apartment we were both covered in sand because of our bike tires throwing sand up at us. I decided that the best thing to do to get all of the sand off was to just hop in the shower fully clothed, bag and all. It got the sand off and down the drain.  It was great! Haha

So my companion right now Elder Conrad is here in the mission because he is waiting for his visa so he can go to India (the mission he was called to). And he got it this last week! So exciting, he is going to have quite the adventure out there! He'll leave next week with the regular transfer. Pretty cool, he's a good missionary. He'll be missed here. 

The missionary work is great! We're working hard seeing miracles, and we are really hoping to see some, really all, of the people we are working with start progressing. Though it has been neat to notice how people change even after only meeting with us a few times. They already have the spirit that much more in their lives and it starts making a difference. Speaking of which we had an awesome lesson yesterday in Elders quorum. We were talking about the amazing thing that repentance is. This was one of my favorite quotes from the lesson manual "Can human hearts be changed? Why, of course! It happens every day in the great missionary work of the Church. It is one of the most wide spread of Christ's modern miracles. If it hasn't happened to you--it should." It is so true! Change really is such a miracle. It is only by and through Christ that we can have this great change wrought in us. For that matter it is only by and through Christ that any change happens. I am so grateful for the gift of the Atonement. The gift that makes change possible. The change that makes progress possible. It is amazing!

Have a blessed day!

Elder Dane Olsen

4/6/15

So, to start things off, I loved conference. And I am happy to say this marks the second conference in a row that I haven't fallen asleep at some point in! Haha Each session seems so much shorter then what they used to be. I blinked and then it was all done and over with. It was so great! 

Elder Clayton's talk about seeking the light of Christ is one of my favorites, though there were so many good ones. It reminded me of a line from the Mormon Message called "Hope of God's Light" where the man narrating it talking about his own story says something like "Light rarely comes to those that sit in darkness waiting for something to happen. There has to be an act of faith." That act of faith to leave the dark and seek the light. Seek Christ and his truth/light. I also loved how he pointed out that we may not always see the light. We still know the general direction, but we often won't be able to see the light. Those times when we don't see the light is so easy to get distracted and disoriented. We forget what our purpose is. We forget what our goal is. We forget that we are here on earth to seek Christ and all of His truth. When we are seeking Christ, we follow him, which is exactly what he told us to do. I am just so excited to get a hold of the talks again when they come out. I love conference, I love receiving that gift from the servants of God, and I love growing and getting that greater light. 

A funny story for you. So between the Saturday Afternoon session and the Priesthood session we went and got something to eat and then we stopped past the gas station to fill up. We ended up being right across from this girl who was in a bit of distress. One of the other Elders asked her what was wrong, and we found out that she had locked her keys in her car and then she had $50 stolen out of her wallet. Well there wasn't much we could do about the stolen money, but we did start to help her in breaking in to her car, we found some things to pry the top of the door open and she already had a hanger. I almost got it a few times it was really close and I kept trying, while I was doing that one of the other missionaries was calling some of the missionaries that had members that lived close. We had some members come and try to help us, one of them took over and tried doing the same thing I was, he had about the same experience I had, neither of us quite got it. The other member that came out decided he would call AAA and have them help (he also said he would pay for it because the girl already said she didn't have anything to pay anyone). So AAA came out and did the same thing we were, he just had the right tools to do it. :( I was really hoping to be successful. But it was all good we got it unlocked and then the AAA guy didn't charge anything even though the member wasn't supposed to use their AAA membership to help anyone else. She went on her way and we headed back to the Priesthood session and got there an hour late. It was good fun and brought back good memories. :) Though I am really excited to see the rest of the Priesthood session once it comes out. 

That's about it for this week, the work is great, and it is speeding up. We are working on getting the investigators that we already have progressing and some of them are really close.

Happy Easter!

Elder Dane Olsen

AND THEN...
another email

First picture here I caught a duck... haha We had just had an appointment fall through and Elder Conrad was making a call sitting on a park bench next to a lake. There were these ducks near us, and they came a little toward us to see if we would feed them. Well I didn't have anything, but I threw some wood chips and that worked good enough. They came over and I got one of them about 2 feet away from me and then jumped him. It made me happy. 

Then next one is this sweet truck we found, pretty awesome.

The next one is a picture of all these ties that a member gave us that she bought from a thrift store. And she has bought us more since then. I have about 80 ties right now and that is only because I keep the good ones and the ones that are the right kind of ugly. 

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This is a picture of my current district.

 and this is a picture of all of our ugly ties.

 and another of the sweet truck. (The truck claims to be the worlds largest street legal truck)

And a picture of our bikes locked to a poll that is falling over haha

3.30.15

Hey hey!

Things are going great! This week was pretty awesome! Elder Conrad and I have been working hard to get our area going a bit more and we got several new investigators this week. It was so awesome. It is good to feel like we are doing better and continuing to improve.

One of the coolest things that happened is when we went looking for a former investigator. Her name is M. The thing that got us looking for her is that we got a referral in her apartment complex and thought we might as well see who else might be in there that missionaries had talked to before. M was one of the ones that was in there so while we were in there looking for the referral we knocked on her door. She wasn't surprised to see us, though she did ask how we found her. We told her that we were just looking through our records and thought we should stop by. It turns out that she was having a very, very bad day. She told us that she couldn't meet right then but that she could later in the week and she wanted to pick up from where she left off. (Which where she left off was she had a baptismal date and was almost there.) So cool! She knew that we were sent to her by the spirit that we found her when we were supposed to. Just after that we were walking around the complex when we talked to this other guy, L. L is a really awesome fella in his 60s. He told us that he has read a good share of the Book of Mormon and that his sister who has passed away was a member. It also turns out that he is one of Mattie's good friends and has been doing his best to help her out spiritually in her hard times. So crazy, we could have talked to anyone in there, but no. We talked to people who needed us and were prepared to receive us. I am supper excited to keep meeting with each of them and seeing how they progress in the gospel. 

Conference is almost here! I am so very excited! I just can't wait. It is so neat that we get to hear all new messages from the Lord's seers and revelators. It is just amazing! And it is even on Easter Sunday! Doesn't get much better then that. Conference is so great! Speaking of which I have been thinking about what the word Conference really means. (I have found I really enjoy defining words, it helps me understand so much better.) So, the word conference. Really it is Confer-ence. So what does confer mean? Confer - Grant or Bestow Pretty simple. To confer is to give someone something, bestow it upon them. Ok what does -ence mean? Ence is a suffix that denotes an action or a result. So Conference, the act of bestowing something on someone. In this case, spiritual knowledge and strength on all who watch it. Basically I am really pumped to have this opportunity to be given greater spiritual knowledge and strength. I mean, who doesn't like to grow?

Go Grow, go to Conference.

Elder Dane Olsen

Also one more thing, the church has put out another new video, Because He Lives, look it up it is awesome. It is also a great way to share the happy message that He does live! Happy Easter!