Muchas Personas y Muchos Chiles en Nogada

We received the following email on August 26.

I´ve been trying hard to keep these interesting and I hope it´s working but unfortunately whether or not you think they´re exciting you can´t unsubscribe.

So this week was probably one of the busiest weeks of my life. We now have 18 people we´re teaching. For those of you who don´t know that much about this, that´s a ton. We teach about three people a day, starting at about 5 because that´s when everyone is available. They´re all super interested and ask questions for about 2 hours each. Our area is gigantic so it takes about 30-40 minutes to get to the next appointment. At the end of the day we go to bed promptly at 10:30. No, that doesn´t add up. I´m pretty sure this is one of the most receptive areas in the world and we might be leading the entire mission right now. It´s great, but it´s really exhausting. We also don´t find any of our investigators on our own. The members of our ward are incredible and we get like 3-4 references every week. I wish I had the time and space to tell you guys about every investigator cause they´re all super awesome people, but then my email would be way longer than this.

What´s really awesome about all of this is that it´s really easy to see how drastically the gospel can change people´s lives. Every single one of the 18 people has something they´re struggling with, and they´re all completely different. Some struggle with drugs, poverty, a recent divorce, heartbreak, death of a loved one, or they´re just confused as to where to go next in their life. Some of them struggle with all of that. But then they get really invested in the gospel, and a lot of them will read the entire Book of Mormon without even being asked to, and their lives completely change. It´s really incredible how through Jesus Christ, we really can overcome every challenge in our life. Sometimes things seem impossible for us, but Christ already overcame every one of our challenges individually, and he can help us get through it.

In addition to all the investigators we had this week, we also had a ton of chiles en nogada. I think I talked about that a little bit last week, but basically its a deep fried chile filled with a ton of fruit, nuts and meat, and covered in this sauce called nogada. And then the put pomegranite seeds on top. I think it´s like some kinda really rich person thing to eat down here but for some reason we´ve been fed it like every day this week and we don´t know why. A bunch of the other missionaries still have´t had it. It´s really good, and has more flavors than I´ve ever tasted in food in my life, but my stomach doesn´t like it too much. After experiencing the parasite though, I don´t think I´ve ever been more grateful to vomit. Also Mexican food is a lot more than just tacos. Everyone who said the street tacos give you stomach problems lied, I´ve found that those are some of the best things my stomach can handle. And the spiciness isn´t bad either, I´ve had a few habaneros and they aren´t really that bad. The real challenge is the "heavy food." Still trying to figure out exactly what that means but my stomach doesn´t like it.

Anyways, I really love it here and my stomach is adjusting. I hope you guys are all doing fantastic and I´d love to hear some updates on your lives. Sorry if I don´t have time to respond to all of them but I promise I read them all.

Elder Olivier

Foto - Jesus signing his baptism forms, sorry it´s kinda blurry

Trying to be like Jesus

We received the following email on August 19.

A lot of you guys probably thought this was gonna be a super spiritual email cause of the title but we´re actually just teaching a guy named Jesus. Elder Cifuentes thinks it´s really funny that Jesus isn´t a common name in English so he makes a bunch of jokes about it. That might be a little culturally insensitive and possibly sacreligious too but it´s also pretty funny. Also he kinda has the pass in both categories.

So we taught our messiah twice this week, once on Wednesday and once yesterday, and he is seriously one of the most incredible people i have ever met. We first met this guy about a month ago and he was struggling a ton with a bunch of stuff in his life. He got introduced to the church through a friend and he started reading the Book of Mormon on his phone and started coming to church every week. When we started teaching him we found out that he was almost done with the Book of Mormon, he read it for an hour every day, and had a crazy strong testimony. He talks to us for about 2 hours every time we listen to him cause he won´t let us leave cause he´s too excited to learn about everything and tell us everything he´s been reading about. Now he´s one of the happiest people I´ve ever met. I´ve never seen someone go from absolute rock bottom to that happy in that short of a time. It´s really incredible how much the gospel of Jesus Christ can turn people´s lives around.

A ton of stuff has happened this week but I can´t really fit it all in a reasonably sized email, so I´ll try to summarize the best I can. The family of 5 we´re teaching is progressing really well but we´re still waiting for the dad to sign off on the baptism so we don´t know exactly when that´ll be. But hopefully it´ll be soon, we´re not super worried about them. We found a bunch of new people to teach, if that´s even possible. So now we have like 10 people that are progressing that we barely have any time to teach so we might have to start calling some ward missionaries or something soon.

We also went to el Centro de Puebla today to do some sightseeing with the zone. I took a bunch of pictures but then my camera got stolen at the end so I lost them all. We still have a ton on our phone though, but we´re waiting on the other people in our zone to send the group pictures.

I was reading in Moroni this week in the Book of Mormon and I really liked the last part when he talks about being perfected in Christ. It´s pretty cool cause this is the same guy that was scared to write the last few chapters in the Book of Mormon because of his imperfections. This same guy´s last words, the words that he risked his life and possibly gave up his life to write, testified that if we come unto Christ we can be perfected in him. It´s pretty cool that we really can overcome all of our weaknesses through Him.

I hope you guys are all doing great!
Elder Olivier


Fotos in no particular order -
A ton of pictures in el centro de Puebla
Me eating Chiles en Nogada (some pretty expensive Pueblan dish that some family just casually fed us)
Pictures of us with Hermana Nielson and Hermana Zumaeta
Us eating at the nicest McDonalds I´ve ever eaten at in my life

Entrevistas y Smartphones!

We received the following email on August 12.

So here´s my one complaint of the city of Puebla and pretty much my entire mission so far:
The roads have a ton of pot holes, which I don´t really mind. But when the roads are covered in natural speed bumps, why would you add more artificial ones? I´d really like to talk to the person who made that decision.

But yeah other than that, it´s been great. Not a lot happened this week because we had a ton of meetings and didn´t have a lot of time to visit the 21353645 people that we´re trying to visit everyday. It´s great that we have so many people to teach and everything but it´s really hard to find the time to teach/find everyone.

It also just got way easier to find everyone though cause we just got smartphones! So now we can finally use google maps and instead of walking around for 3 hours trying to find one person, we only spend one hour completely abusing the power of the smartphones and watching every single video in gosepl library with the people we´re teaching! (including the 20 minute first vision video (Elder Cifuentes was really excited to use the videos but don´t worry the investigator was even more excited and wants to be baptized as soon as possible haha))

But yeah we also had interviews with the president this week, a meeting with all the new missionaries and their trainers, and our weekly district meeting so not really a ton to talk about. All of the people we´re teaching are doing great and most of them have been coming to church and everything so that´s cool. My spanish is pretty off and on, sometimes I´m basically fluent and sometimes I´m the equivalent of a 3 year old but it´s cool.

I hope you all are doing great!
Elder Olivier

Also enjoy three pictures where Elder Cifuentes and I are doing the exact same pose except one with me holding a banana. Also I´m gonna try to get some pictures of the actual city for next week cause it is really cool but we don´t usually have a ton of time.

1. At interviews and getting our smartphones
2. Cifuentes and I with Hermana Nielson and Hermana Zumaeta (the sisters in the area next to us)
3. Cifuentes and I with Ximena, the daughter of one of our recent converts who´s birthday is one away from the best birthday in the world

and another one with all the missionaries in my generation

Of miracles and people on the street

We received the following email on August 5.

As missionaries you don´t really get approached by people that often. You talk to people all the time but you usually have to talk to them first and kinda prove to them that you´re a real person and not just some call marketer in the flesh. When you do get approached, however, you´re in for something interesting. It can be interesting in a few different ways. The first possibility is that it´s just some drunk/high guy on the street being himself. The second is that the person was somehow inspired to talk to you and you´re about to witness a miracle. The third is that your life is now in danger and you should find the nearest escape route as soon as possible.

Don´t worry mom the third one hasn´t happened to me I´ve just heard stories. But anyways yesterday we had an interesting experience, and in a way it touched on all three of those.

We were walking home from church and made it to our apartment complex. We were just about to cross the parking lot to walk into our apartment when someone calls out "Hermanos" really loud. We turn around to see who it is and there´s this guy in sunglasses and covered in tattoos, two liter beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, walking towards us. The first thing he tells us is to not worry because he doesn´t have any guns on him. I probably wouldn´t have thought that if he didn´t say that but it´s cool I guess haha. So yeah he talked to us for a while and then asked us if he could feed us lunch. I was a little hesitant but I´m kinda always hesitant in spanish. Cifuentes was hungry cause we were just fasting and he didn´t seem too worried. So we walked into his apartment. The place was pretty beat up. Bear bottles, broken glass, cigarettes, several different types of drugs (some of which were pretty clearly homemade), and "wives" (yes, wives) were scattered everywhere. He sat us down, had one of the "wives" get us bottles of coke, some tacos, and a bottle of bear for himself. After we were settled, he proceeded to tell us his entire life story which was super sad, all about his rough family life and how he got himself addicted to pretty much everything you can get addicted to. He looked at us each directly and asked if we were happy. We said yes and then he asked us to teach him. We felt inspired to start on the gospel of Jesus Christ. when we got to repentance, he stopped us, asked us what it meant, and told us "That´s what I need."

So yeah now we´re teaching him which is cool. Also that family of 4 that was at church last week committed to being baptized which was super cool. They even wanted to fast with us yesterday even though we didn´t ask them to haha. But then on their way to church yesterday they got in a car crash so that was the worst. What the heck Satan. They´re all fine though and they still wanna come haha. They all have super strong testimonies and it´s pretty cool.

It´s really awesome to teach these people cause it really feels like I´m not doing anything but watching them turn their lives around through the gospel is super cool. Some of them are just regular people and some of them come from horrible backgrounds but the result is always the same. There really is nothing that you can´t overcome through Christ and his atonement.

I hope you all are doing great! Also sorry I forgot to take pictures because we´ve been super busy but I´ll definitely have some next week!


Elder Olivier

¡Bienvenidos a San Ramón!

We received the following email on July 29.

Hey everyone!

So I´ve decided that the people and the dogs here are pretty much exactly the same. Most of them are pretty nice, and a lot of them would spend all day with you if you let them. Some of them avoid you at all costs and are pretty afraid of you. Some of them are lying on the streets and you don´t really know if they´re dead or alive. Some of them bark at you immediately and kinda hate you but you don´t know why. Some of them beg you for food. Some of them will spend around 30 minutes with you and will be really good friends with you but then out of nowhere they randomly decide that they hate you and bark at you in a language you don´t understand. But every single one of them uses the sidewalks and looks both ways before crossing the streets.

My companion´s name is Elder Cifuentes and my first area is San Ramón in the Arboledas zone. I had trouble pronouncing that last week because Cifuentes said it with a heavy accent and rolled his r´s lol so I feel pretty stupid now that I´ve seen it written. But other than that the language has been getting better every day. The city is really beautiful but unfortunately I don´t have any pictures of it yet. I´ll try to get some this week. Every three tiendas is a tortilleria or a papeleria so I guess they just really like their tortillas and paper lol. Also there´s a less active member that lives in the apartment below us that feeds us dinner every night and does our laundry. She´s basically our mom but she has a really thick accent from who knows where and I can never understand what she´s saying haha. Her name is Hermana Ocaña and she´s super cool.

Elder Cifuentes is super cool and really focused on the work. We get along pretty well as far as I can tell through the language barrier but it´s getting easier and easier to communicate with him, especially since I´m pretty much only talking to him and people on the street 24/7. Some people randomly speak English though and I only figure that out after I struggle to teach a lesson in spanish and then at the end they tell me, with an american accent, that I´m doing a great job and learning really fast.

Puebla is like a mini Utah in México and I´m pretty sure there´s more members here than they have a mi casa. We run into members on the street all the time. It´s a little hard to find people to teach cause pretty much everyone is already a member or Catholic. We ran into one "Catholic priest" that told us this super long story. I only understood the normal parts so I was just kinda smiling and nodding the whole time and going "Oh sí, sí... en serio??.. sí, sí" Afterwards my companion explained to me in easier spanish that he said he expelled demons on the regular and made a guy levitate. So that was interesting.

Right now we´re teaching a 19 year old kid named Saul and a married (but not really cause that's super common here) woman named Mikaela. They´re both super cool and super interested. We have a few other people that want to be taught that we haven´t started teaching yet just because it´s hard to find people´s houses here because they don´t have addresses. Also our area is huge, I think the biggest city area in the mission. We walk at least 10 miles every day but usually a lot more.

Yesterday at church we had a miracle. A few of the less active members we´ve been visiting came so that was super cool. Also Mikaela came and that was super cool too. We´ve been praying to find more people to teach for a while but haven´t been having a ton of luck. BUT on of the members invited a family of 4 to church and they all came and are super interested! So that was a big miracle. Also then president called and gave us a reference for us to teach on Thursday so that was cool too. Also a kid in the ward needed to be baptized and I had the opportunity to baptize him.

Anyways I hope you guys are doing great with everything!
Elder Olivier


Also most of these pictures are from the CCM but there´s one of the baptism we had.