Una familia nueva, un hijo, y unos primos lejanos

We received the following email from Elder Olivier on December 9.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for being really bad at emailing every week. I think it's been like more than a month now but some people told me they missed these so I guess I'm writing again haha. If you think these are annoying at this point then im sorry but I'm not sure if there's a whole lot you can do.

So I got transferred two weeks ago to a different area and I'm training a new kid straight out of the CCM. My kid is from Tampico, Mexico and we're pretty different people but we're getting along.

My new area is super cool. Im out in the middle of the desert and it's really hot every day. In our first week here our water pump broke so we couldn't shower for two days. That was fun. There's not a ton of members in this area, we only have a branch of about 40 active members and a ton of inactives. We've been working really hard to get people back to church though and we're working to turn the branch into a ward.

Another cool thing about this area is that everyone thinks I'm a Mexican. I've met at least 10 people now that looked both me and my companion up and down and went, "so you're both mexican?" So I was really confused the first time that happened and responded something like, "bro, I'm white and blond, I'm definitely not Mexican." But then the guy responded with "oh but your last name is Mexican so I thought you must be Mexican too." So then I was really confused and asked him why he thought my last name is mexican cause I always thought it was French. And then he's like "well there's tons of Oliviers that live here in Ajalpan, one of them lives right down the street."

I was pretty pumped to find that out, I've never met someone with my last name before outside of family so me and my comp ran over there to meet the guy. He was kinda mean and didn't wanna talk to us at all but it's ok it was still really cool.

The people here are super cool though. We met this guy whose son just got baptized and is the only member of the church in the family. The guy was talking to us for a super long time about his whole life story with a ton of challenges and about how his grandma helped him find God. Since then he's had a strong testimony but has never had a real church until his son found the gospel. So we've been talking to him and the missionaries in the area before talked to him too. Last week we asked him if he would like to be baptized. He said "I'll be baptized but under one condition, that after im baptized you come back and help me bring the gospel to more people that need it."

Super spiritual experience and you could really feel it right then that this guy was truly converted.

That's pretty much it for the update though. Today for pday we're going up to Tehuacan to do some city things like eat pizza cause we've been missing the city.

Love you all! And hope you're doing great!
Elder Olivier

Fotos:
1. Me holding a chicken
2. Me being a horrible example for my kid and district by letting my kid hold a gun
3. Some cool mountains that we can see from our roof
4. A cool graffiti painting we found in our area
5. The missionaries and the primary kids after we helped them with the primary program yesterday.

 

 

Photos

We didn't receive an email on December 2, but were able to speak with Zach and found a few random photos from the recent transfer.

Transfers!

We received the following email on November 25.

Hey everyone,

That's pretty scary about the infection thing mom but it's good you're alright.

Also that surprise birthday looked pretty cool and also that's crazy Josh is taking his girlfriend home for Christmas haha. I'm definitely pretty bummed I'm missing that haha.

This next transfer is about to be one of the hardest of my life cause president I'm pretty sure president is trying to kill me haha. Right when I got to the training meeting on Saturday he saw new walk into the mission home and was like oh Elder Olivier I need to talk to you and pulled me into his office to call me not only to whitewash train but to be a new district leader as well. I've never been more tempted in my life to deny a calling but I said yes. Then when I was walking out he closed the door again and was like oh and just between you and me the missionaries in your district are pretty interesting so good luck.

So yeah I'm kinda stressed but trying to stay calm haha. I also got transferred to Ignacio Mejia which is way out in the Goma in the middle of nowhere so as Elder DeMaso put it if I absolutely screw this up no one's really gonna notice which is pretty cool.

Anyways I hope you guys are doing well and I'll definitely be praying for you but it might be nice to also get some prayers in return haha.

Love,

Zach

 Arboledas Zone

Arboledas District

Trainers and Companions

Aquí Linchamos

We received the following email on November 11.

Que tal vatos,
So I realized I haven´t written in a few weeks so I thought I should write everyone just in case someone thought I got lynched or something down here. It´s been a pretty cool few weeks though which is cool.

I don´t think I´ve ever said anything about this on the group email yet cause it´s pretty bad and I didn´t wanna be super negative or anything. But the toilet in our house is absolutely horrible and gets clogged everytime we use it and occasionally overflows. It became pretty infamous in our zone and even in some other parts of the mission as well. The miracle this week is that we finally made it through the bureaucracy of the mission, basically actually convinced the secretary that it was a problem, and they replaced the toilet. So miracles are real, brothers and sisters. That´s been a huge testimony builder for me and through this experience I know that through Jesus Christ we really can overcome all things.

The works been really cool and everything and we have a few people we´re teaching but it´s been pretty hard to get people to actually come to church. There´s been a few unexpected miracles though, like not exactly what we wanted or anything but cool and all. Two weeks ago, we were teaching a family of 3 and it was going super well. At the end of the lesson we asked them to be baptized and the spirit was super strong and the whole family was crying and everything. They said they´d be baptized and then we told them we were super happy for them and began to tell them why that was gonna bless their lives. So yeah super great and everything but then the dad said he had a question. This man tells us their whole family was already baptized 7 years ago in our church and they even had pictures and everything. So he asked us if he could be baptized again. So that was a mixture of super funny and kinda frustrating, but through it we kinda learned that it was actually a huge blessing that we found these guys cause we could get them to come back to church. Not really what we wanted or expected, but that´s just kinda what God does sometimes. In the end we were still doing God´s work so that was cool.

We´ve also had some more Azumiatla adventures. On Saturday the only member family that lives there invited us over for lunch. The problem with that was that Azumiatla is 35 minutes away by bus, kinda expensive, and the only thing we knew about this family was that they lived on "the hill outside the pueblo" and that she works in a tortilleria. So it took about 2 hours to find her but it was actually super cool and one the people we´re teaching helped us find them cause she knows every person in the entire town. We also found out that they´re pretty good friends with each other so that´s another cool miracle.

Day of the Dead also happened but basically if you wanna know what that is just watch Coco cause that movie pretty much nailed it exactly. It was pretty cool though and that might be a tradition I bring home with me. Way better than Halloween in my opinion.

That´s pretty much it though. That was kind of a ton of random thoughts in no particular order and sorry if these are going down in quality haha. Imma try and make them better in the future though and put more thought into it.

I hope you all are doing great,
Elder Olivier

Fotos:

1. Me in Azumiatla walking hasta la goma
2. DeMaso and I in front of the aquí linchamos sign in our area(you can probably guess what that means haha)
3. Us in front of the great cathedral in Puebla
4. Us in front of the Puebla sign overlooking the whole city

dia de los Muertos

We received the following email on November 4.

Hey fam,

Wait so since when were you getting surgery mom? I was eating dinner and watching the Canelo boxing fight with the familia Ocaña and then I got an email from Oma and Opa that said you got surgery and I had no idea and the familia Ocaña thought it was really funny that they told me before you guys did haha.

Day of the Dead was actually super cool but surprisingly really calm like we didnt see too many crazy people on the street but I think that might just have been our area. But yeah the traditions are really cool and we talked a lot about family history this week. It's pretty much exactly the same thing as the movie coco and a bunch of people actually had decorations from that movie so I guess that was super accurate.

DeMaso and I get along super well and we're planning on riding motorcycles all the way to the amazon after the mission but he's been in a dear John process with his girlfriend for the past week or so so he's been a little off and on depressed lately.

Also that's insane that the ravens beat the Patriots. I thought the ravens sucked haha but they must be pretty alright then. What was the score? Also DeMaso's an Eagles fan but idk why cause he's not from philly and he's never been there haha.

Cameron idk if annie got a byu magnet or not haha but that probably means you'll get in lol. What'd you get on your act?

Hope you guys are doing great
Zach


Also here's a picture of Elder DeMaso in front of our unified colony. You can probably guess what that means haha.

¿Que Genial Eh?

We received the following email on October 28.

Que tal vatos,

Sorry for not sending an email last week I know you all missed that a lot and probably cried a little bit. I was kinda busy last monday with the doble dragon again. I think I´ve talked about that before but that´s when you breath fire out of both ends of your body at the same time. So yeah that was fun and I didn´t sleep that much that night. The next day we went to the doctor and he had no idea what was wrong with me cause I´ve already been out here for 4 months now and I´m already adjusted to the food. But whatever it was I´m fine now and everything´s back to normal except for the toilet but that´s always messed up so nothing new there.

But yeah my new comp is Elder DeMaso and he´s pretty cool. We get along super well which is nice. Pretty much our entire zone changed as well so now the zone of missionaries that I´m in is majority from the U.S. so that´s kinda weird and I´m not really sure about it but it´s cool. Now when we walk around together with people from our zone people think we´re tourists and try to talk to us in English. I refuse to respond in English to them though and they´re usually pretty confused or disappointed or impressed or something along those lines that I know their language.

The work was a little rough this week and no one really wants to help us with anything but it´s cool and we´re pushing forward.

That´s pretty much it for the week though, sorry if that was kinda lame. Hopefully this week will be more exciting and I hope you´re all doing fantastic.

Elder Olivier

fotos:

1. Me in Azumiatla
2. Elder DeMaso in Azumiatla preaching the gospel to the only people we could find who would listen(jk that´s a joke)

El Rey de San Ramón y Encontrar Azumiatla

We received the following email on October 14.

Que tal muchachos,

This week was a little rated R in some ways so for the first time ever imma filter my email a little bit and not tell you half the stuff that happened.

On the cool stuff that happened we found this really cool part of our area called Azumiatla that I´m pretty sure has never been visited by missionaries ever. So they´ve also never seen white people before. People come up to me and ask a ton of questions and think it´s super cool that my skin is a different color haha. It´s this cool pueblote on the other side of the hills in our area and it´s a super pretty area. It´s really hilly and covered in houses and tiendas and donkeys and horses and people that speak Mayan. So yeah it was pretty much like finding a jungle temple in Minecraft but in real life. Like we knew some people lived over there but dang there´s a ton of people over there. They´re super nice too. Elder Hawkins and Elder Moyano found a family of 18 that wants to listen to us and Cifuentes and I found a ton of little families that are super nice. I also met someone that has lived in Brooklyn, New York so that was kinda cool. I talked to her about New York and her family for like an hour and it was super fun. So yeah I think the people drought is over and now hopefully we can have some more success.

Also cambios came and I´m the only one staying in San Ramón so now I´m the king of the area. Kinda sad that everyone had to go. Elder Hawkins went back home because he finished his mission, Elder Moyano went to Washington D.C. because he got his visa, and Elder Cifuentes got transferred to Atlixco. My new companion´s name is Elder DeMaso and he´s from Sacramento, California and he seems pretty cool. I haven´t met the other two people in my apartment but I probably will pretty soon.

That was pretty much everything not rated R that happened. If anyone wants to know the crazy stuff that happened feel free to ask and I´ll consider telling you haha.

I love you guys!
Elder Olivier

Fotos:
1. Equipo de San Ramón
2. Me in front of a cool chicken in Azumiatla
3. Azumiatla
4. A video of me trying a cricket in Azumiatla (they´re actually not that bad when you get used to them but the video was my first time trying haha)

President Nelson really just announced the second coming

We received the following email on October 7.

For those of you who are also members of the church and watched conference, you've probably heard all the chismes going around about how President Nelson just announced the second coming. I don't really wanna pick a side or anything but President Oaks also said not to read between the lines which a lot of you guys are doing haha. So if Jesus doesn't come in 6 months y'all just overreacted. Sorry in advance to those of you buying property in Missouri. But who knows, maybe that is what he was talking about.

Conference was awesome though and for those of you who didn't watch it you definitely should. If you look up October LDS General Conference 2019 on youtube you should be able to find it. Some of it might not all be online quite yet though, but hopefully soon if not. I really liked Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk a lot.

This is the last week of the transfer(transfers last every six weeks in the mission) and it's pretty much certain that all 3 other missionaries besides me will get transferred to a different area or go home on Monday. I'm kinda sad about that cause they're all pretty cool but I'm happy that I'm probably gonna stay in San Ramón. The people here are super cool. It's been getting increasingly hard to find people to teach but we're still trying.

We went to this place called Africam Safari today which is this huge African Safari that some millionare built a while back so that was pretty cool. We have some pictures but not all of them so maybe I'll send some more next week.

Anyways I hope you all are doing great!

Elder Olivier

Fotos:
1. Me holding a bird that I captured and don't still have
2. The whole zone at the africam safari
3. Me with an Emu
4. Me and Cifuentes on the rock where they filmed The Lion King (animated and live-action)
5. Elder Cifuentes upset because all the Kangaroos we're sleeping and it wasn't their p-day

Tú eres guapísimo

We received the following email on September 30.

I had my first dream in spanish a few days ago which was pretty cool. It was kind of a weird dream about how my roommate killed someone and got sent home por asesino and I woke up super confused but then realized that it was in spanish and was pretty stoked. I've heard that means I'm fluent or something but there's still a lot I don't know so I don't know how good of a measurement that really is.

Also for those of you that read Elder Sterner's emails you probably know that if you're a white person living in Mexico you get a lot of people tell you that you're really good looking all the time, which boosts my self esteem maybe a little too much. But yeah so we have this 40 year old neighbor that is really in love with Elder Hawkins and I and talks to us a bunch about it. A few days ago she told us un buen de vainas like "Tú eres guapísimo", "A mi me gusta los americanos", y "Ustedes son tentaciones." So yeah we've been running into her way more often now and now we're scared.

Also I've been getting a few emails from people about how they bible bashed with someone so I guess that's the cool thing to do so here's a story:

There's this guy we met on the street like a month ago and he asked us a few questions about our church and asked to meet with us so that was cool. But then we found his name in our teaching records from the last missionaries in the area and they were like "avoid this guy he's crazy and just wants to fight us." So we confirmed the appointment. Probably not the right choice but it happens. But then the guy kept pushing off the appointment and we kinda gave up on him until we ran into him on the streets two weeks ago. We met with him that night and it was pretty insane. He just started attacking us with a ton of questions trying to prove to us that our church was wrong, and the guy came prepared with verses from the Book of Mormon and stories from church history. So we think this guy was preparing to fight us for that whole month, and we didn't prepare at all. I also probably shouldn't be proud of this, but we completely destroyed him haha. It honestly would've gone on for a lot longer but we cut it short and told him that there were people that actually wanna hear our message and that he was wasting our time.

We've been teaching people too but it's been a little slower later which is sad. Maybe we're paying for our sins when we wasted our time with that guy haha. But hopefully it'll pick up again soon.

Love you guys and hope youre all doing great!
Elder Olivier

Fotos
1. Zone conference with some ties we all handmade (not as good as Laura's though)
2. Most of our district in the ferris wheel in Puebla.
3. The Elders in our district in front of the ferris wheel.

Photos

We received these photos via WhatsApp on September 23.

Thanks for the Ties Laura

We received the following email on September 16.

Elder Wilson your girlfriend is amazing she actually sent us ties haha. Also for anyone who would also like some ties handmade by Laura follow @lauradanielsdesigns on Instagram. Also don't worry Elder Sterner I'll get you your tie once I find out how to get it out to the wilderness of Ignacio Majia.

A lot happened this week but it was a little harder to find and teach people cause of Mexican Independence Day and everyone going out of town or absolutely insane. But we went to a lot of ward parties so that was fun.

President Alcala took everyone who got 5 or more baptisms in one month out to eat at some super fancy Brazilian restaurant and to el Centro again. That was actually a super cool experience cause almost all of the missionaries that went to that had been to one before in their mission multiple times. So it was cool to try and figure out how I can be more like them and be more successful.

Eduardo, one of our recent investigators, got the priesthood yesterday. That was pretty cool.

Today for p-Day we went to some park and did a ton of fun stuff and I got super sun burned for the 99th time. Now the kids are gonna ask me por que estoy rojo again.

Someone asked me why I decided to serve a mission yesterday and that was actually one of the first time someone's asked me that. I told her that I know this church is true and that this gospel has completely changed my life. Sometimes we have challenges in our lives that seem pretty impossible to overcome, and I've had a few of those in my life. The crazy thing is that there really is nothing that you can't overcome through Jesus Christ. You can suffer absolutely everything there is to suffer in life but Christ's atonement is always bigger. Christ has already suffered every single pain, sickness, infirmity, and temptation that we can and ever will suffer. If we let him into our lives we can overcome our challenges, and we can overcome them so much that we can turn our weaknesses into strengths and have joy. That's why I served a mission. Because there are people out there that have those weaknesses that can only overcome them through Christ.

So yeah I hope you all are doing great with everything!
Elder Olivier

Fotos
1. Us riding some bikes for p-Day
2. All the elders of San Ramón in some boats for p-Day
3. Elder Cifuentes and I with some other missionaries en el centro
4. El centro
5. A kinda blurry picture of me eating some cool Brazilian meat
6. The 4 elders of San Ramón after Eduardo got the priesthood

Also I forgot to mention that me and Elder Cifuentes are wearing the ties from Laura in the last picture.

 

 

Cinco Bautismos y Misioneros Nuevos

We received the following email on September 9:

Hola amigos,

I had a really crazy discovery this week. In Spanish there are some people that are named Maria Juana, which I thought was a super funny and kinda unfortunate name. But the translation of that name to English is Mary Jane, so now that slang makes sense to me. You´re welcome for anyone who didn´t know that and for those of you who did know that, yeah I´m kinda slow sometimes.

This week was pretty awesome. We baptized a family of 4 and another 9 year old and it was super cool. The family is great. We found them the first week I got here cause someone invited the entire family to church after Eduardo went to FSY, a church camp that they have here. They had a few challenges and some of them were really hard. They took notes during all of our lessons and every sunday in church. And they read the scriptures and studied them. That´s how they overcame their problems. A week before the baptism, the mom told us that she didn´t care about their problems and they were´t gonna stop her. She wanted to be baptized with her kids. Now they´re some of the strongest members in our ward.

Planning baptisms is kinda stressful though. Especially when the important paperwork is in a different language and everyone has 99 names and there´s 5 people. If you notice in the picture I forgot my white tie but its all good. But yeah it was super cool and a super spiritual experience. The gospel really can completely change your life.

Also we got two new elders in our apartment and in our area this week. So now we have 4 elders in our apartment. That can be fun sometimes but also a little distracting too which makes things a little harder. Elder Hawkins is from Utah and will finish his mission in 5 weeks. Elder Moyano is from Brazil, Ecuador, Western Africa, Mexico City, and Arizona, and is trilingual in spanish, portuguese, and english. He just got here in the mission and came from Arizona. He´s actually waiting on his visa to go to the Washington D.C. North mission, which is confusing but also pretty cool. Apparently that mission includes a lot of Maryland now as well as Virginia so some of you guys might be able to meet him.

I hope you all are doing great!
Elder Olivier

Photos: One of all the baptisms this week, one of the family we baptized, and one of some of the missionaries eating tacos.

Baptism!

We received the following email on September 2.

So first off, if you haven´t read the Book of Mormon, read it. If you´ve read it, read it again. If you´ve read it a million times and marked every verse, written in every margin, and cross-referenced every reference to Christ to every other evidence of him on the planet, read it again. Read it starting with the title page, introduction, and witnesses and ending with the last page of Moroni. If you don't have a copy, email me and I'll get one to you. I've only been out in the field for about a month, but I've already seen so many people completely change their lives just from reading the Book of Mormon. It's also the only real way to know whether or not this church is true. And it is true. I bear witness of that. It will drastically improve your life.

Also the members of our ward continue to be amazing and help us find people and teach people and be literally best friends with our investigators. Sometimes I wonder why we even need to be here cause the members already do so much on their own. They're actually some of the nicest, most loving people I've ever met. I realized that it's probably because the church here combines two of the most loving cultures on the planet. So yeah it's pretty cool.

Also we're going to have 5 baptisms on Saturday! We're actually baptizing a family and they're super awesome and have a ton of faith. They come to church with notebooks and scripture marking tools and take a ton of notes. They're super cool too and some of our best friends. They also take notes during our lessons which is super awesome and kinda scary.

A few days ago we found out that we're getting two more elders in our apartment and area which is super cool cause we have a ton of work here and now they can help us with it. They're actually coming in about 10 minutes so I can let you know how it goes next week haha. Also today someone at the mall asked me if I was interested in taking English classes and she was super embarassed when I told her I already know English. Not sure why she asked the only white blonde kid in Mexico, but I'll take it as a compliment I guess haha.

Anyways we don't have a ton of time so I hope you're all doing great!
Elder Olivier

Fotos:
1. El bautismo de Jesus
2. Eating some super good street tacos and cemitas
3. A cemita, basically a taco but with a hamburger bun instead of a tortilla, native to Puebla and super rico
4. Some fruta de nepal, cactus fruit