(She did it to me again. Annamarie sent me photographs of 12 hand-written pages for me to transcribe to the computer. At long last, here you go)
Okidoke. First
thing I want to say to you all is I miss country music.
Second thing I want to say is I woke up today feeling
just GREAT. Do you know that the mission
is the most gratifying thing I have ever done?!
I just love it. Also I was
just so giddy, waking up and thinking about John’s pancake breakfast that he’s
going to be eating in the shape of the whopping age of 15! Woooop Wooooop!!!!! Aw. How exciting.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHNNY PHI!=)
I also woke up to pitter patter pot rain drops on my
window pane and that’s just the greatest sound you could wake up to. I LOVE IT!
It’s been quite some time that I’ve woken up to calm rain, without wind,
without ice-freeze bullets, without shards of snowflake demons, just simple
pitter patter pot raindrops. We’ll see how long that lasts.
This week, I mean WOW, thinking about just the weather
this past week, I realized how lotting much has happened just in THIS
WEEK! So it gently snowed on Monday.
Tuesday was insane snow and wind storm.
Wednesday was an oddly warm, insulated winter wonderland and I didn’t
need to wear 5 pairs of tights! Just
one. So I also decided to wear my “Olive
Oil” silly shoes that I haven’t worn since Valdivia. That was fun =). Thursday the wind came back from his 1 day
vacation, and in quite a jiffy at his 130 km velocity!! . . I don’t know how
fast that is in mph, and I haven’t tried doing algebra for it either. The last
time I did algebra was when I was making brownies from English measuring
instructions with Latin-American measuring system. =) But all that is beside
the point. The point is the wind was
crazy fast. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were actually quite swell. A good 10
degree sunny, clear days.
OH! Did I tell
you that the sun starts coming up around 9 now?! And it’s leaving after 7.
Yeah, what a delight. The days are elongating even more every day. I love it.
So now that you got a page worth of the week’s
weather, I’d like to tell you about the week’s experiences. . .but if I did
that this notebook would run out of paper, and this pen would run out of ink.
So, I’d like to tell you about Monica. I
don’t think I’ve mentioned her before.
She was baptized a little over a year ago but has been inactive for
nearly that entire time. She has two
young kids that are very poorly behaved and she is embarrassed to take them to
church. She has an elder daughter who
was baptized the same time as her, who has 17 years. Her daughter is more active. She goes to seminary every day and goes to
church almost every week. Her dad
(Monica’s husband) is not very supportive in their decision to be members and
isn’t very tolerant with us if we are there when he is. But we usually visit in
the mornings. Well, we are very involved with Monica and her family and I have
really come to love her immensely in these past 3 months that I have known
her. She always receives us in her home
with such joy to have us, even though she used to be embarrassed of the humble
circumstances they live in. This week we saw her in the street walking her 5
year old home from school and she told us to come visit the next day. When we showed up, her husband came out and
said, “Things are ugly,” and told us we could try to come back otro day.
We passed by two more times and she didn’t come
out. On Friday we passed by again and
after a few “A-los” she opened the door.
Her face was the saddest I’ve ever seen.
I gave her a big long hug, and she just cried and cried. When we sat down she told us that due to the
actions of her husband (involved with drugs or something) and the “inadequate
means of provisions” the child-care took away her 5 and 6 year old
children. And it was without warning or
anything. And very sad the way it happened. Oh it is just so sad. She is
allowed to see them twice a week and when she went her little boy had two
swollen eyes from the other children he’s with bullying him.
They can’t come back until her husband isn’t living in
the house and the house has better walls to have bedrooms or something. And she just has almost no strength to figure
it all out. She was thrown into an even
more humble circumstance and wow, it just doesn’t seem to make sense. I understand now what it means to mourn with
those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort. We asked her
about her baptism, which made her start talking about the 2 missionary sisters
that began her teaching. She began
smiling and laughing as she was telling us about her experiences with
them. I could tell she really loved
them. As she was talking to us she kept
saying, “Oh I just need strength. I need
strength to endure this.”
As I was searching for ways or words that could
comfort her, I decided to turn to a scripture in Doctrine and Covenants. I opened up my book to the scripture and
there was a letter sitting right there for Monica from those exact
missionaries she had been talking about.
(I had had this letter for two weeks, and had forgotten where I had put
it.) I picked up the note almost in unbelief of the mysteriousness of the ways
of God and said, “They wrote you a letter.”
The joy that notably changed her countenance for me
was mission-changing. Just to see the influence that two missionaries have for
a convert touched my heart in a different way.
As she was laughing the joyful tears, she said, “This is the strength I
needed.”
We invited her to go to church on Sunday so she could
receive more and she said, “Well! I
don’t have my kids now, so I guess I don’t have an excuse anymore. Right?”
And she laughed and said, “Yes, I need to go to church.”
We asked if we could sing a hymn and she chose “I’ll
go where you want me to go.”
Yesterday she came to church! To see the support of the ward was very
special for me. Heavenly Father is so
perfect. Family, this church is
true. The Lord knows how to take care of
his sheep. And I love being part of this
humbling work.
On the way home, I asked Monica how she’s been doing.
She said, “I’m going, hermana.” And she
told me she went to the Ferria (like flea market/swap meet kind of thing) and
took everything she could sell, so that she could have enough money to travel
this week to see her kids in the child center place. She told me about some of her observation
there that a few people are pretty well-off, but there were a few people that
you could tell have almost nothing.
Then she told me that a lady asked her how much her
pot was. Monica told her it was $1,000
(the equivalent of about $2 USA). So the
lady looked through all her pockets and realized she didn’t have enough and
began to walk away, but Monica asked her what she had and she said $100
(equivalent of 25 cents). And Monica
gave it to her for 25 cents!
That is her only pot that she had. And she practically gave it away for free
because she said that she couldn’t not do it after seeing how excited that
lady, who perhaps was in more need than her, was to receive that pot.
I love Monica.
I truly treasure her. I can’t
believe how submissive and patient she is to God’s will. I know Heavenly Father has a great deal in
store for her and her family for her diligence and faith she has shown
Him. I feel privileged to have been
edified by her example.
This week we also set a date with Javiera for the 19th
of September. Before we set the date,
she had sat next to me on the couch, while my comp was in the bathroom, and
gave me a big hug and said, “You’ll be here when I get baptized, right?” And I said “Ojala!” which means sort of “I
sure hope so.”
It was really hard for her when Hna. Parkinson left
and she doesn’t want me to go either. I
have been worried if she had been wanting to get baptized just because her
“international friends” invited her to, or if she really had a desire to do so.
So I asked her “Why do you want to be baptized?” And she said very sincerely something really
sweet. “Because when I’m sitting in the
church, I feel complete and very special to my Heavenly Father.”
Yesterday we showed her the baptismal font and it was
a very special experience for us all.
I really, really love Javiera.
And I guess that’s all I’ll share for now on this
paper email.
I just want all of you to know that I love being a
missionary. I stand all amazed at the
life-changing experiences I somehow can experience each day. They really happen every day. My life is changing and I am learning so
much.
My advice to my little brothers: serve a mission. And thank Heavenly Father for the immense
incomprehensible blessing you have to be able to serve. To know already that you can! Thank your Heavenly Father for Mom and Dad
and our grandparents.
Be thankful.
The mission is so great! My companion is a doll. Haha.
She sure is talkative. Sometimes
it’s just fun to imagine myself in some mission movie, walking all about doing
mission stuff and she still goes at it!
Haha. Up the stairs, down the stairs, across the bridge, while waiting
for someone to answer the door, going to the bathroom. TODO! Haha.
It’s fun. All the while I’m
saying, “Mmhmm.” “Oh!” “Really?”
Haha. But I think my favorite thing of all of this is realizing that I
was basically just as talkative before the mission. I’ve fallen asleep a few times in bed while
she’s been talking. I feel bad because I
didn’t realize until the next morning when she starts to continue the story in
a part I don’t remember. Haha.
And, well, it’s helped me realize something that I
hadn’t noticed until now. I’m not as
talkative anymore! Like I’m half as
talkative as I was before and Wow! I
mean how cool!
I bet you guys don’t believe it because of the
absurdity of the length of my letters, but it’s true! Haha.
Okay another thing I just thought about: One night we were walking down the street and
I realized that the man who was walking towards us was the old bishop from our
ward that Hna. Maready hadn’t met yet.
So when he reached us, I pretended he was any good old stranger and
began talking to him about the church.
And he played along! And asked, “Oh!
Aren’t you guys the Jehovah Witnesses?” And I said, “YES!” And we just talked and talked and my
companion was very confused and a little worried. Haha and then after about a good 3 minutes
she stepped back a bit and then I said “Oh, and what is your name?” and he
said, “Obispo Bravo,” who I had talked to her about before. And we all laughed.
It was so fun!
I love mission pranks of spontaneity!
Poor Hna. Maready.
Okay. That’s
all for now folks! I LOVE YOU!
Sending my love,
Hermana Olson
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