Peace

Bonjour! 02/17/2014

Not much that is new. The work is still coming along. Elder Kouadio left this past week as he is transferred to Benin, so Elder Haggard has been working with Elder Sahue and I, so that’s been a good time for sure. The assistants also came over and stayed a night with us due to transfers, so we had a nice sleep over with them! We were hoping to baptize one of our Amis Linda this past week, but because of family problems, we had to push that back a bit unfortunately but its fine. Our Amis are all doing really good, and finding people is definitely not a problem in this secteur. We have a new Ami that I’ve been really excited about named Koko, its a older guy that is actually very intelligent and educated, with a family as well, which is rare to find here. We found him from a member named Joel. He’s been a member since 2004 and I swear I’m pretty sure half of the ward is his contacts, he’s incredible. But anyways we just got started with him, and he’s someone who’s explored about every church, from catholic to Jehovah witness, and he’s been frustrated on why they are all so different, and why they aren’t in line with the Bible. It was like the perfect situation, we were able to get him the message of the restoration right away, and left it with him to read. The next lesson he came back having read everything, and was happy as ever. We had a great lesson going over the restoration, and he is right in line to progress a lot. One of the coolest parts was at the end of the lesson when he expressed his appreciation that he had found us, and the message we had given. He’s only been an Ami for like a week and is already bearing his testimony! But he explained to us that in his life he had so many problems, a ton of problems with his kids in college, with his wife, with the work and just about everything. But when he found us that first time everything has seemed very at peace. He compared it to being in a storm, then all of the sudden everything clears up and becomes calm. It reminded me right away of the story of Jesus with his disciples on the boat with the storm, and how Jesus calmed the storm, and that affect that he can have. It was incredible to see how much peace this message, and the spirit has brought to him in just this past week. He’s loved everything about the message, and has studied it a ton already, he’s already becoming one of our Faithfull’s at church these past two Sundays, so I’m really excited to see things go forward with him. No doubt someone very prepared and ready for the gospel.

We’ve also been putting a lot of work in with our inactive's, as this ward is full of them. With some it is pretty easy, but with many it is a challenge. It makes you very thankful for the spirit though in how much it helps you deal with the different situations. You see so many different reasons, and situations as to why they are inactive, and having no experience with any of these, it can seem very difficult to have any idea how to help them or what to do. But I can see as well that the spirit will take over and help you, if you let it. That is one of the biggest things I’ve seen, and as it says in Preach my Gospel, you are supposed to listen to the person, rather than thinking of your response, and if you do, the spirit will let you know what to do. That is no doubt very true, and we had a really cool experience with that this last week with a young man in the ward that hasn’t been to church in months. It turned in to a really great lesson on repentance and how it brings hope and can heal us. Inactive's are very important, as you think that if this one-person falls away from the church, think of the generations following that will miss out on these blessings if this person doesn’t come back. The spirit is incredible and it reminded me a lot of our last zone conference and a lesson we got. It talked about the story of Nephi we all know and him getting the plates. And in chapter 4 where he talks about how we went forth not knowing in advance what he should do. As the story goes on you see the way was completely prepared for him, and the spirit continued to guide. In Lemuel's side of the story, you see they had the same situation, but when he went forth, nothing was prepared, and he had hardly any if any guidance from the spirit, and failed. It’s incredible how important the spirit is in the work. Things are all well here though, and the work is coming along great!

That was one of the talks that we studied by Bednar (Oct 2012 Conference) and I loved it, it was awesome. That is very true though, and its good to have a testimony but its really just the beginning. The conversion comes as we put the testimony into action. Elder Vinson is actually coming back next week for another little conference, so we have even more talks to study so that will be good!

Thanks for the letter and for all of the support as well! I love and miss you all a ton!

Elder Oliverson