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.