Happy Fall 'Yall

 

  

At the State Fair

Howdy,

That's awesome attendance for the open house of the Phoenix Temple! (One week to go and over 100,000 visitors with a record 12,000 on last Saturday) I got to go to the sealing of Brother and Sister Gates in our ward on Saturday. Bro gates was re-activated in the church a little over a year ago and now is the Elders' Quorum President and Sister Gates was baptized in Edmond while I was back in Guthrie. They got married about a week ago and now they were sealed. It was so sweet to be able to attend it. There were about 20 missionaries there because of how many had worked with both of them.

The work here is good. I love my companion and we are working well together. We set four baptism dates this past week with Scott (21 year old man who really reminds me of Eric Taylor), Cesar (15 year old with Hispanic parents but is searching for a church with his older brother, Angel), John and Henry Stoneroad (two Native American brothers about 55 and 57 years old). John, Henry, Paige, Derrick and Carmen all came to church yesterday.

We bike a lot here but it's all good. I know that God called me to a biking area for a reason and if I don't bike around every day then I kind of feel like a failure for that day ha.

 

Here are a few excerpts from an article published in the Deseret News last week about our mission:

A day in the life of Mormon missionaries in Norman, Oklahoma
A few weeks ago, thanks to the kindness and flexibility of President Stewart Walkenhorst, I was blessed to replicate the experience in the Oklahoma Oklahoma City Mission. Though much is the same from mission-to-mission and missionary-to-missionary, no two missions are quite the same....

What impressions did I leave in return? Once again, the similarities between the work in diverse places drown out any differences. The spirit of truth is fluent in all languages and recognizes all accents.
Truly the bar has been raised, and the elders and sisters in the Oklahoma Oklahoma City mission are not just clearing it, they're flying over it.
And in the case of these four missionaries, they're flying on bikes.
Written by: Jason Wright

 

Some parts from letters in September from Elder Olson:

It's been stormy and rainy here the past several days. Elder Buhler is getting transferred to Mustang and my new missionary will be here from the MTC on Wednesday. I also get to see Elder Debenham again! I'm excited to see him again. Have you seen the Meet the Mormons movie yet? If not, you definitely should. We got to see it before it came out in theatres. It is amazing. Va'a Nuimatalolo is the son of the Navy football coach, he was in my family at EFY! He is in the movie talking about his Dad. It was crazy seeing him haha.

Here is a quote from the last Mission President, "There is no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone." So get out of your comfort zone if you want to grow! Thankfully I don't have too hard of a time talking to strangers about anything, that is a blessing. I have seen missionaries who are shy and reserved and it looks painful for them to talk to random people. I wish I could just make it easy for them. But if that is their weakness, the Lord will help them grow and I'm positive he'd do a better job at it than me.

Our teaching is going well. We are constantly trying to find more people to teach. We are also trying to figure out how to progress from us doing the work without the ward, to working with the ward's help, to us helping the ward do missionary work. That is the vision. Each Ward/ Branch doing all their own missionary work: Finding, fellowshipping, feed, FHE, fasting, prayer and scripture studying. Elder Foster of the 2nd quorum of the 70 told us that on our own, as a mission, we could get 30 baptisms in a month. With the help of the ward, we could get about 100 in a month. And with the Ward performing their own responsibilities and doing what the Prophet has commanded them to with just out help, we could achieve about 300 baptisms per month. So how do we move to the next category?

I love serving the Lord on my mission. I love the people of Oklahoma. I know this is where the Lord needed me to be.

Love

Elder Olson