Book of Mormon

Bonjour!! 01/13/2014

First off thanks a ton for the info on the new Mission President because we had no idea at all!! That’ll be awesome! I’ll miss President Weed a ton when he leaves, but it will be cool having the native French Speaker coming as well, that will be fun! This past week has been pretty good! It was nice getting back into being able to working without the distractions. Beyonce is still coming along well, and should be getting baptized soon!! The only problem is Beyonce isn’t her legal name... so when we do the baptism I won’t get to say Beyonce. It will still be cool though! Ha-ha, English class went really well too. We didn’t want to waste much time so we told the members we wouldn’t continue it if they didn’t bring their friends, sure enough they brought a ton so we ended up getting a ton of new contacts so that’s been nice as well! We also had a Zone meeting this past week so that was fun as well! I’m really looking forward to the visit from Elder Clayton and Elder Vinson in a few weeks, and they’ll be interviewing a few missionaries in each country, so that would be cool as well. The work is going well in our secteur though, we have a partial member family we’ve been teaching, and will be baptizing the rest in a few weeks, as they want to go to the Temple on the next trip to get sealed, so that will be fun! We also have a few other Amis that are coming along really well and will be getting baptized in two weeks also. It’s been cool with Beyonce, as I’ve seen that these past weeks as she’s started to really progress again, she’s actually been reading in the Book of Mormon each day, and its pretty obvious to me, is its mainly due to her reading in the Book of Mormon. No doubt that book can solve any problems. I really liked the talk by Elder Packer this last conference about when he was having problems in his Stake, and he asked a Seventy what he could do, and all he said was tell them to just open the scriptures and start to read. Really that’s all we have to do to help us have more peace in our lives, and it gets even better when we do all we can to apply the things we read in our lives. But the week went pretty well! We had a wedding we got invited to on Friday, so we went there with the Zone leaders and it was pretty fun as well.

This Sunday was good like usual also! I always love the time where you find out while they are announcing the talks in sacrament that you’ll be talking, and you’re one of the only two speakers that will be talking.... It actually went really well though! Ha-ha no doubt if you put in the spiritual preparation each day, it pays off in times of need. But I chose to speak on Obedience, but more on Perfect Obedience, and talked a lot about how there is the camp of the Lord and the camp of Satan, and the commandments are there to help us rest protected in the camp of Satan, unfortunately we sometimes try to push the line, with the small things that we don’t see as important, and that’s when we lose the spirit, and Satan can take bigger hold on us. But if we strive for perfect obedience, we can always have the protection of the Lord. It made me remember a lot too a day when me and Desvergez were walking back from the cyber, he had seen some pictures friends had sent him from back home, and we were talking a little about how yes, they’re in the world and they might seem to be having fun, but really, at that time we were the happiest we’ve ever been in our lives, and you could really feel it. That was our biggest realization that happiness really does come in obedience. Ha-ha it took us a little time, but we finally got it! Things are going well though, and the work is going along! We’ve had a lot of inactive work which has gone well also... you really see that many of these people have no desire to come back after having been chastised and put down,and you also see that in simply loving them and serving them, and trying to look forward with them, they really can come along. So the work is going really well! Also this past week has been great as I got Bryant’s package, which had the iPod shuffle was packed with conference talks, so It’s been the BEST having those! Also with the workout bands. The only problem is I’m too weak now to get them to stretch at all so I’m not sure what to do. Ha-ha, but yeah and today we got to go to the beach so that was nice as usual! I also found out that one of our Amis back in Kegue is getting baptized this week, so I was happy for that as well!

But yeah the ward is awesome here, I love the members.

I love and miss you all a ton! Thanks for everything!

Elder Oliverson