Awesome Week #2!

Hola todos! We've had another incredible week here in the Sonora Branch, maybe the most successful week of my mission so far! We set records for lessons taught in a day and in a week, but most importantly, we are seeing tons of progress with our investigators! I don't even know where to start but this week has been filled with miracles!

First off, Juan is progressing incredibly fast! We had some of the most incredible lessons with him this last week. We usually end up spending at least an hour with him every night and he doesn't want us to leave. On Monday, we had planned something to teach him but then we felt prompted to teach him the word of wisdom. He is now 32 but he has been an alcoholic since he was 7. He was addicted to alcohol, coffee, and cigarettes. He had tried to quit many times before but he always fell back into his bad habits. We had an incredible lesson with him and he got really excited. To make a long story short, we dumped out all of his beer, crumpled up his cigarettes, and flushed his coffee down the toilet. Then we all knelt down and he committed to his Heavenly Father that he would never touch them again. He stopped them all cold turkey and his been clean for a week! Tell me that's not the power of God! We have seen an incredible transformation come over him since.

On Wednesday, he became a missionary. We had been really struggling with Raymond (who also has some word of wisdom problems) so we decided to take Juan with us to share his experience (they live in the same apartment complex). We then had another incredible experience. Juan took charge and basically taught the lesson! At this time we had known him for less than a week. For about 20 minutes he told Raymond the blessings he had seen and gave him encouragement! Then we all knelt down with Raymond and he offered a very heartfelt prayer, committing to keep the word of wisdom as well! We were all so filled with the spirit afterwards. Juan practically skipped back to his house because he was so happy!

That same night we had another sweet lesson with Frank (Julia's 14-year-old son). He has had a lot of negative peer pressure and he's kind of stubborn and very sensitive. He really wants to know if it's true though. We went back and shared the first vision with him, and then knelt down to pray. When we finished the prayer he didn't move. He stayed kneeling down for about 10 minutes and he was sobbing the whole time. The spirit was so strong! He now has a baptismal date for April 3rd!

Things are going pretty well with the other families we are teaching, the Valenzuelas and the Lopez. They are both still kind of at a standstill but they are making progress slowly but surely. We have awesome lessons planned with both of them tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

I also got to go on exchanges with Elder Muniz (my trainer) this week so that was pretty cool. He is my zone leader now and we had a lot of fun. He also said that my Spanish has gotten a lot better so I was pretty happy about that. All six of the companions that I have had so far (including the MTC) are very close to me. Three of them are in my district and the other three are in the district that I just left. It's been really cool to get to work around all of them still! Just another tender mercy I guess.

I could go on and on about the other awesome experiences we had this last week but this is getting pretty long so I'll wrap up. I hope you all are doing amazing! Thanks for all of your support!

Elder Olsen