D&C 20:10-12

10 And thy brother Oliver shall continue in bearing my name before the world, and also to the church. And he shall not suppose that he can say enough in my cause; and lo, I am with him to the end.

11 In me he shall have glory, and not of himself, whether in weakness or in strength, whether in bonds or free;

12 And at all times, and in all places, he shall open his mouth and declare my gospel as with the voice of a trump, both day and night. And I will give unto him strength such as is not known among men.

Monday, September 29, 2014

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Hey ya'll!

I believe yall is the informal 2nd person plural of American English. Unused in most lands, but prevalent in Southern territories. 

So, regarding the title of this email, this week was even rougher than the last. With the sudden change of weather, people have changed. Which was the least of our problems. We just talk to more people, so we can continue finding as many as we used to.

Remember the woman that was going to be kicked out of her house? Well, she got kicked out, and this week was really hard and really stressful for all of us, because the ward was not capable of helping (there are lots of people here that have needed help). The situation was dismal. There was little hope that she would be able to find a roof under which to sleep, and there was increasing amounts of rain, which makes sleeping on the streets even less appealing.

We were at her house-- which she was able to stay in until Sunday-- and she had all her suitcases packed. Today (Monday) she will be leaving. We sat and talked for a while about how the Lord tests us, and how sometimes, he waits until the very last second to rescue us. 

So, we prayed fervently with her that the Lord might deliver her from having to live on the street, and we read the story about Abraham, when they go up to the mountain to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. We talked about how Abraham must have thought, 'What am I to do? This is my only son!' And he thought that until he got to the altar. Pleading, 'Lord, deliver us!' as he tied up his son. Even till he raised the knife. But, he passed the test. The Lord delivered Isaac out of danger, and provided a lamb, that they might offer a sacrifice. 

Abraham had his suitcases packed, and was handing the keys to the Landlord, but he kept the faith. And we see what the end was.

So, how did this conversation end? We prayed, and we humbled ourselves, and we offered all the faith that we had to God. And then, the phone rang.

On the line was an Angel. The rescuing angel that brought the answer to all of our problems. Well, for a week. But, it was a man that offered this poor family a room for a week, which keeps them off the streets one week more.

A week isn't very long, but the Lord only gave the Israelites 1 days worth of Manna, every day.


Seamos humildes.
Dejemos que obre milagros el Señor.


Love you lots.
Not much else happened that is worth writing. Other major miracles occurred this week, but I won't share them today.



Os quiero mucho!
Elder Oliver

Monday, September 22, 2014

Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos

So, I want to start out by saying that this has been one of the strangest weeks of my mission. Lots of weird things have happened. Lots of good and bad things have happened, and we have worked our fannies off.
I'll start at Sunday and work backwards.
So, this Sunday, we weren't able to get any investigators to church. Which was a huge bummer, but my day was made in Sacrament meeting. The bishopric had forgotten to ask somebody to offer the first prayer, so during the welcome, the brother that directed the meeting said '...we'd like to ask Brother _____ to offer the pray for us this morning.' So, after the opening hymn, Brother _____ went up to the stand, and began to talk. 
'I'd like to thank the bishopric this morning for allowing me to offer the prayer, and I hope that all of us can be edified today through my faith'
---At this point, we were all a little bewildered at what was going on, and then---
BAM!! The clincher,
'my prayer today is taken from 3 Nephi.'
And then he recited the The Lord's prayer, as found in 3 Nephi (Slightly different from the one in Matthew 6).

Seriously the weirdest way to start a sacrament meeting. EVER. I almost busted out laughing in the middle of his prayer. Sorry, it was just too much man, too much!
Anyways, after that, we had a spiritually edifying meeting, so I guess his prayer worked! Haha:)
Now for the more chungo part of the week. We had a lot of investigators drop us, and we had to drop a few as well. That was a bummer, however, most of them gave us food, maybe to soften the blow. It was really quite weird. If they gave us food, they dropped us. Needless to say, we were a little worried when we left the apartment on Sunday on the way to church. We had specifically asked Heavenly Father to not let anybody else give us food to drop us, and as we left the building, we found a bag of food (jam and bread). We didn't take it, for fear that God would drop us after that. Oh the life of a missionary.
One of our investigators from Ecuador got robbed. ALL her information got stolen. Her DNI, her Passport, all her cards, her phone, medical cards, everything. She was a little stressed out yesterday.
Remember the Bulgarian girl that got baptized a few weeks ago? Well, she is now homeless. She and her grandma got kicked out of their house, and now all they have are a few suitcases and 300€.  They are a little bit worried.
So we have been working hard on figuring out how to keep them off the streets. Please pray for a miracle.
We got to see a little miracle this week in the lives of one of our investigator families. M told us that if she didn't see a change in the behavior of her son, she didn't want us to come back (...right after giving us some food). So we have been praying a lot, and we had a good talk with the son, who is 12 years old, about loving and honoring his mom and sister, and guess what!!  The next day, M told us that her son had completely changed. That now he is nice, and loving, and respectful.  WOW, that happened fast.
It's just nice to know the Lord is watching out for us:)
Love you lots!
¡Os quiero mucho!
Elder Oliver
ps. Congrats Porter! For finishing your Eagle Scout. I'm glad you didn't procrastinate it as badly as I did!

9/15/2014

First of all, I apologize for my emails lately. They really have not been very focused, nor have I been able to stay on topic, or string together more than 2 coherent
I can't promise that this week's is going to be any better.
This week, we taught a bunch of investigators, ate a ton of food, and traveled a lot. The average life of a missionary. We also cried repentance, and invited everybody to come unto Christ.
This week, we begin a new transfer! We are going to baptize. We are going to work harder than ever. We are going to make God proud. This week, we are going to find the elect. Those that in this moment, their hearts have been softened, and are receptive to the promptings of the holy Ghost.
Luckily, nobody got transfered out from our district, except Elder D- he will be going to my old Area in Almería.-  He served a looong time in the office. Poor guy....
To answer your questions, yes I drive a lot. I have mastered driving stick. I follow both Spanish traffic laws: Don't cause accidents, don't drink and drive.  They don't really have any other rules here that I know of.
As many of you know, tomorrow is my brother's birthday. Porter is turning 18! Holy cow. So, there are a couple of interesting things that I have noted in him since I left. He has really grown up. I hear so many things from my family and friends, and they all tell me how awesome he is. And then I think, wow. My brother, is really awesome.  I look up to him a lot. And not just because he finally got taller than me. He has helped me become who I am. I know I was always ''the example'', because I am the older brother, but I have always admired him. He can draw. He can play the guitar. He can sing. He's a superhero in my eyes. I really admire his ability to forgive. When we would argue or fight, he would always be the first to forgive and forget. He taught me a lot about that.  I wish I could be with him all the time, because there are so many things my lil' bro teaches me.
Not only these things, but he is my best friend (to my other brothers and sister, you are my best friends too. I love you just as much!!). When he is your friend, he is always there for you. When he serves a mission, thousands will come unto Christ because of the Christ-like love that eminates from him. He will be the best missionary in the world.

Anyways. We have set a couple of baptismal dates this week! Woohoo! So excited!! For October 11. Pray for A, M, A, and M. They will be a valuable tool in the hands of the Lord to bring about his righteous will here in Marbella.

Love you lots!!
Os quiero mucho!
Elder Oliver

Monday, September 8, 2014

Developing Talents

Hey Family and friends! How's everything going this fine week?

This week went rather slowly. We have been working really hard in finding, teaching and preparing people for baptism, but for some reason, the people this week really didn't want to cooperate. We had all sorts of appointments fall through on us, and of the 15 investigators that commited to come to church, we had 3. Which is still good here in the Málaga mission, but we were really hoping to hit astronomical numbers. However, this week, we almost have an appointment scheduled for every hour of proselyting time. Pray that we can find all these people!

As a mission, we are really working hard on finding and setting baptismal dates. The more people with baptismal dates will result in more people getting baptized! (Duh)   When you set a goal, you are usually think about it more, and you try to do the things that help you to prepare for whatever goal it is you have. As people think of the covenant of baptism, they pray, they read, they go to church. When they do all that, they feel the spirit of truth, and they get baptized!! Whoohoo.

We have had good success with setting baptismal dates this week. We have 2 set for the 27th of September. A mother and her daughter. I realized this week, that we teach a lot of families. Elder V and I teach 1 individual, and 7 families! Do you know how many of these are golden? A lot. This place is the promised land for missionay work. We're going to have a ward here soon, I know it! 

Elder V and I get along super well. We are hoping to have a second transfer together here in Marbella, we both are sure that we are staying together, but you never know! Last transfer came as a surprise to both of us.

This week we did exchanges with the ZL's, and I went up to Alcázar de San Juan. Which is nowhere near my area. (1 hour car to Málaga, 2 hour train ride @250km/h, 2 hour drive. Let's say, that I was a half an hour drive from Madrid.) But the Zone of Castilla la Mancha needs our district, otherwise, it would be tiny. (Five companionships) I got to work with Elder G, and he helped me to learn all sorts of stuff, and really focus my desire. I always learn from other missionaries. Sometimes, I feel like everybody else knows a heck of a lot more than I do, no matter how little time they have in the field (Elder G has 1 transfer more than me).

We had interviews with President Deere this week, and we had a great conversation, and I feel like I will be able to make better decisions now, regarding my future of studies and work. 

Today as a dristrict, we went to Málaga to go see a hands on music museum. It was sweet! It wasn't very big, but there were plenty of cool things to do. We found a hose that when you speak in one end, you can hear the echo about 2 seconds later (it's a really long hose), but if you blow in one end, air comes out the other side immediately. Crazy physics. We also found a room with a violin, cello, piano and guitar, that were hands on. The problem was, there was too much hands on, and not enough care. I found the violin, strings in every direction, bow without rosin. There wasn't even a bridge!! That broke my heart... So, do you know what I did? I searched the room for all the missing parts, got some rosin from the reception desk, sat down on the floor, and fixed it up. 

And then after that, I jammed.

After a few minutes of jamming, we had a little crowd there watching us, with a bunch of little kids, who surely wanted to try out the violin. So, I stopped playing and called the kids over, and taught a bunch of them, one by one to play the violin. One little boy held the violin, and I played out on the finger board a song. Elder H, another elder in my district was playing some Coldplay, Viva la Vida. He, the little boy, and I were jamming out, and all the moms were watching us, maybe crying, or cheering, I don't know, I didn't see them. But I realized, that teaching music is one of my passions, and I would never get tired of it. Ever.

I taught the lesson in gospel principles this week, about developing talents. What did I do? I brought my violin, and talked about how if we have a talent, we shouldn't ljust bury it and wait until judgement day. I played a little bit, and bore my testimony through music, because even in English, I'm kind of clumsy with words.

I'm still a little too proud of myself, but that was everybody's favorite class in a very long time.   :)

Love you all lots.

So, we had a good week, and I have played my violin a lot.
We did lots of missionary work, and the Lord has reached out his hand and is practically throwing amazing people into our lives.


Os quiero mucho,
Elder Oliver

Thursday, September 4, 2014

(We received this email late in the morning, with the email title:  Long email.)

Haha, just kidding, I don't really have any time at all today, but suffice it to say, that our Smoke alarm and CO detectors work, and we are working really hard here. This week I am going on splits with the Zone Leaders up in Castilla la Mancha, so we'll see how that goes. 

I may be able to come to the Locutorio late tonight right before we go to bed and fill you in on some details of this last week.


Love you all, a lot!
Elder Oliver

Sorry for such a short email, I didn't have a lot of time to begin with, and I spent most of it emailing people from old areas that I haven't heard from in a long time

(Then later in the day we received this:)

So, going along the lines of the special training with president, I will fill you in briefly in an experience that we had just a moment ago.
So, we got back from Fuengirola today, got dressed, and headed out to work. We had appointments scheduled for the entire evening today, and we were expecting to be pretty busy up till the end of proselyting time. We popped on over to the first family, and nobody answered. We passed by the next family, and nothing. We quickly went through all of our backup plans, and guess what! Nothing. So, as we were heading away from the last family that didn't answer their door, we got a phone call from a senior missionary working in the office.
''Hi Sister C. This is Elder Oliver, how may I help you?''
''Hey, Elder Oliver, do you have a bit of extra time?''
   ---I look at my agenda with all of our appointments crossed out.
''Actually, yeah! We have plenty of time! What's up?''


And it turns out that one of the senior couple Elders (Coombs) had gotten sick, and he was staying at a hospital here in Marbella. So, we stopped by the hospital and had a great little while chatting with him and his wife. They are from AZ too! And they know people that I know!
Anyways, we got to know them really well, and as we left, Sister Coombs was crying. They were so grateful for the visit, and we really felt good afterwards. We knew that had those families not fallen through with their appointments, Elder and Sister Coombs would have spent the entire night in the hospital alone.
We really can see the hand of the Lord in all things. He sometimes works in not so mysterious ways.

Anyways, I love you all! I hope Cooper and Brodie have had a great birthday, and that you will all have missionary experiences this next week!


Os quiero mucho!
Elder Oliver