Monday, May 17, 2010

Hey everyone! This last week has been pretty good. We found some new solid people to teach. Things are starting to pick back up in this area little by little. One of the people that we found this week is named Elba. She is almost 70 years old and lives alone and she's a great lady. She already has a strong testimony of the Savior and does community service multiple times a week. We've had some awesome lessons with her so far! We also found out that her son is a member back in Utah. She came to church yesterday and had a great experience. Sometimes as missionaries you find someone new to teach. Sometimes you find a baptism. Elba has a baptismal date for June 12th and she's going to make it!

Also in church yesterday, Juan got the priesthood! It's such an awesome experience to see the people you teach progress after baptism. We also found some other really cool people this week. One guys name is Alberto and then we found an awesome family of 6! There's not a whole lot to say about them yet but I'll keep you posted. Unfortunately, we don't have church next week. I've never really seen that before but due to the dedication of the Gila Valley Temple, all church services are canceled on Sunday. We're going to the dedication instead, but the people we're teaching can't go so it's kind of tough.

I know these e-mails are getting more and more boring. This transfer has been a little bit tough so I've kind of lost a desire to write more. I'm going to start writing down the interesting things that happen throughout the week so you guys don't fall asleep reading this. I'll just leave you all with my testimony.

I've been thinking a lot this week about faith. Faith, faith, faith. It seems like we're always talking about it. It's a fairly easy subject to discuss on the surface but it goes a lot deeper. There is a reason faith is the first principle of the gospel. If we have faith, everything else falls into place. If not, then we can't progress until we develop faith. Almost everybody we talk to says they have faith, but faith is a lot more than just a belief. Faith is a principle of action! Like the scripture in James 2 says: "Faith without works is dead." If we truly have faith we're going to show it, not by what we say but by what we DO. A favorite example of faith that we share in the church is 1 Nephi 3:7, when Nephi was commanded to return to Jerusalem to get the plates. "I will go and do" is a great attitude to have, but i don't think that's really the part where Nephi showed his faith. He showed his faith when he WENT and DID. Faith begins with a desire. We have to want to believe or want to see a miracle. Then we show our faith by doing our part and TRUSTING that the Lord will do his. It's so hard to have actually have that trust sometimes because we're human and we want to see things with our eyes. I know that prayers of faith our answered, even though we can't see our Heavenly Father. I've seen it many times throughout my life and my mission. If we had the faith of a mustard seed, we could move mountains!

Elder Olsen

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