1-18-2010 Carta de Elder Olson

Life has been really great, over here in Bowen.
I have been learning a lot because my companion is helping me become prepared to do everything well, on my own (Giving me a lot of responsabilities). I have a great desire to learn as much as I can from him before he goes, Elder Armstrong has helped me a lot. We are working hard sharing the gospel.
Lately, I have been very blessed. As I find someone on the street, I can look in their eyes boldy, and share with them what we have to offer (I can now see that I want to help, sincerly). I know that this message can better lives, I have a sincere desire to share this gospel. I have a testimony from living the gospel, I see the blessing that I get for living the gospel and sharing it. I pray that the people will recognize me as a servant of the lord.
I sometimes find myself wrestling with my trials, but I am doing great here in bowen, I am finding inner peace. I feel great about myself because I know this is the best thing I could be doing right now. We have been working a lot, from our labors, we can already see the fruit. We have had great experiences working with the people here in Bowen. A lady (Ramona bustos), that has a lot of children, came to church, and it was a spiritual experience, she enjoyed it, and she is a progressing invesigator. We have an investigator that can´t walk but he is growing a testimony from hearing us and reading the book of mormon. His name is Carlos Hector.
It´s been a great week, I hope for the best for all of you this week

Love, Elder Olson

Carte de ELder Olson 1-11-10

I had a great week, me and Elder Armstrong are doing well. I hope my letter with the pictures arrived to all of you (my last letter), our area in Bowen consists of a huge bolivian family, they are amazing people. They help us with everything, feed us, clean our clothes, and for the first time ever I ate dinner with a member family (Ussually we eat alone, something small) Never we ate dinner in my other areas haha. This area in bowen opened up like 3 months ago, so the people here had no church until recently. It´s so awesome to be here in bowen.
We had an awesome activity, they came to the church (since we live in the church and have the key we had to participate) and they were giving out presents to little kids and invited non members so that we could get references, and that they could have a good experience from that activivty. The activity was the wise man celebration. They are called reyes magos I believe. And so we got references and ate cake, it was pretty cool.
Me and Elder Armstrong are working with and teaching the family bustos, we had a appointment planned with them the day we did the activity, and luckily the president of 2 areas (Bowen, and Alvear) Came down to the activity and came with us to teach the family bustos with us (that part wasn´t planned, and he offered when we mentioned that we had an appointment). We taught really well with the help of the branch president, it was interesting to have a member help us out, he served a mission so he knew a lot. Romana (The mother of the family bustos) has doubts of the book of mormon, so we shared 1 NE: 13 which talks about the precious and important things will be taken out of the bible, therefore we needed the book of mormon to fully restore the gospel and the "precious and important things". She is progressing!
We helped replace a roof for a service project, a little dangerous because some of us had to go on the roof!! but we survived. Remember everyone, there is no greater joy than laboring for others!!!!!

Take care!

Elder Olson

Carta de Elder Olson 1-4-10

We had an awesome week with the holidays. The members treat us as if we were their family. I have some pictures in this e-mail. Right now I am in a area called bowen, and the majority of the members are from bolivia, and they are super awesome. We spent new years with them, we had to leave at 12 a.m. We ate reall good.
So now I am with Elder Armstrong, he is a really great Elder. He is a little older (28 years old). We get along very well. I am blessed to have a good companion, we are working together very nicely. We are working with a big family (familia bustos), the Mom is really interested in the gospel. We have been also teaching a few others, and it´s a great oppurtunity to share, we have been blessed with success here in bowen.
The catholic church complained about us opening the mouth by their church, and complained on the radio, before they kicked out missionaries that were invited by a member of the church (previous missionaries in this area). They don´t like us at all.
Bowen is really great, something crazy happened this week, a bunch of drunks on bikes came and circled us haha. And they were calling us yankees and saying that they kill our kind. It was awesome, they were so drunk. We knew they couldn´t do anything to us, they eventually left us, it´s something to laugh about later.
We ran into an american family that don´t speak spanish, and they got in a complicated mess. They have been betrayed by a family member that won´t let them recieve their containers from america (It was signed under a relatives name) which has all their stuff. So they are stuck here trying to fix it, and they are trying to do it in court. Super sad, they are awesome, they are reading the book of mormon, we teach them in english haha.
Well everything is going smoothly here, Take care everyone.. I hope you can see the pictures I sent.