Turkey Bowl!

Hey everyone! This last week has had a bit of everything. We've experienced more disappointments with certain people, but others are progressing very well. Last week some members of the branch brought a woman named Sandra and her son Jonathan (19) to church. We have started teaching them and some of the people that live with them as well. Sandra is very solid! She has already received some good answers to her prayers and is excited to be baptized on December 19th! She came to church yesterday as well and brought one of her friends (Felipe) who we taught yesterday as well. I have a feeling there will be some obstacles before December 19th but things are looking great so far!

Other than her, we've kind of been struggling to find lately. We're going to get out there and find a ton of people to teach this next week. Things with the others are kind of at a stand still. We still haven't been able to work out the situation between Ricardo and his girlfriend. Roberto is also not married and his wife lives in Mexico, so he goes to visit her every couple weeks. Both of them will be good to go if we get that stuff taken care of. The Garcia family and Cuen family are pretty much the same. I think we're going to have a great week ahead of us though!

On Friday, we had a Thanksgiving dinner activity as a branch. It was a HUGE success! We had to set up about five extra tables. Luckily, there was enough food. A bunch of Jonathan's friends showed up as well. We told them that we are going to start playing basketball every Tuesday night with whoever wants to come, which they all seemed very excited about.

In addition, we are beginning English classes tomorrow for whoever wants to come. The church has a program set up to meet three times a week for a half hour. We're going to start doing that on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. We're expecting a pretty decent turnout.

We also got a new ward mission leader yesterday! He just barely moved into the branch, and seems very organized and motivated to help us out. It will be a nice change from what we've had in the past. I've only seen the last one at church twice since I got here. We've only talked once. Everything is beginning to come together now so I know we're going to see some good results soon.

Today we had the awesome chance to have a Turkey Bowl! Our zone and another zone got together and played 11 on 11 football for about three hours. My zone ended up losing but it was a lot of fun anyway. We get to play another one with the branch on Thanksgiving morning too!

Well, I've got to get going. I hope you are all doing well! I appreciate the letters I've gotten. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Elder Olsen

P.S. We haven't moved yet but we'll likely be moving when our contract expires at the end of this month.