Merry Christmas!
Christmas is coming up really quick! A lot quicker then I had anticipated. I can't believe its already that time to be able to call you guys again. This will be the last time I get to talk to you all before I'm home! How crazy is that?! I'm really excited to talk to you guys again. The number you have to call is 6681-557-5719. I think that should be all you have to dial after putting in the calling card number. Also that time you gave me to call is good. Whenever works so I will be planning to talk to you then! I have yet to open all the presents you guys sent. I wanted to wait until Christmas to have something to open on Christmas Day. So I have not yet opened anything. I'm sure I will love everything you guys sent though! Again thank you for the packages you sent!
So being a Zone Leader has been really fun so far! My companion and I are both Zone Leaders, his name is Elder Brown and he is from Michigan. He goes home 6 weeks before I do. The Zone I have to look over is called the Udon Zone. Its in the north east part of Thailand. We have 4 areas that we look over with about 14 missionaries in it. We go on switch offs a lot and yesterday was our first one this Moves and we went to an area called Sakonakhon. It was fun to be able to work with the missionaries there and help out in finding new investigators and teaching. The Sakonakhon area is pretty far out in the middle of nowhere and we had to take a 3 hour bus ride to get there. As Zone Leaders, we don't get our own cars, we just take buses everywhere. Transportation is readily available everywhere you go so there is no need for us to buy our own car. It makes things a lot easier too. We don't have to worry about getting lost on the way. We just jump on a bus that says "Sakonakhon" or wherever we are going and it gets us there! More responsibilities that I have to take on are just going on Switch off often and helping the Mission President teach at Zone Conference. At night we have to call all the District Leaders in our Zone and check up on them and try and help them with any concerns that they might have. We Also have to give an accountability with the Mission President on what's going on in our Zone and what our goals are to make it better.
Well I'm not going to write to much this week because I want to have stuff to talk about when you call in 2 days so I'm just going to end now. I'm really looking forward to being able to hear all your voices again and talk to you! I love you guys and hope your having a Merry Christmas! Talk to you soon!
Steve
P.S. My Preparation Day is being changed to Monday so from now on, you need to send your emails to me before Monday or else I will get them late. Thanks everyone!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Hey!
So Tomorrow we have another Moves Meeting and I'm finally moving out of Bangna after being here for 6 months. I feel like I've been here for a long time and I'm ready to move. Its been a real growing experience here so I'm glad I was able to serve here. Along with moving this week, I got a special calling from the Mission President. Yesterday, President Smith called me and asked if he could change my assignment, he asked if I would be a Zone Leader! I was kind of surprised by this but I said yeah I would be happy too! I think it will be fun to be a Zone Leader. I will get to go around to all the areas in my Zone and go on switch-offs with the missionaries and help in their areas. There is other stuff that I will have to do but that's what I'm most excited about. It will be fun to be able to see the different areas in the mission and serve with a bunch of different missionaries.
Last Saturday we had our Stake Christmas Party at the Stake Center and it really made me miss Christmas! I love the Christmas Season. At our house, Elder Mitchell and I went out and bought Christmas decorations and put them up everywhere. I have a couple Christmas CDs on my ipod that we have been listening to. Unfortunately I don't have to much stuff and we are getting kind of sick of what I got...but we have to keep listening to it because its Christmas! It's the only way we can get our Christmas Season fix because they don't really celebrate it here. At the major malls they do so sometimes we will go eat dinner there just so we can hear Christmas music and see all the decorations. We are very deprived...but its OK. I'll be home next year!
Well this week I don't have to much to write. I'll let you know where I'm moving next week. I love you all and hope you're all loving the Christmas Season. Don't take it for granted because its truly the best time of the year! Talk to you all next week!
Elder Olsen
So Tomorrow we have another Moves Meeting and I'm finally moving out of Bangna after being here for 6 months. I feel like I've been here for a long time and I'm ready to move. Its been a real growing experience here so I'm glad I was able to serve here. Along with moving this week, I got a special calling from the Mission President. Yesterday, President Smith called me and asked if he could change my assignment, he asked if I would be a Zone Leader! I was kind of surprised by this but I said yeah I would be happy too! I think it will be fun to be a Zone Leader. I will get to go around to all the areas in my Zone and go on switch-offs with the missionaries and help in their areas. There is other stuff that I will have to do but that's what I'm most excited about. It will be fun to be able to see the different areas in the mission and serve with a bunch of different missionaries.
Last Saturday we had our Stake Christmas Party at the Stake Center and it really made me miss Christmas! I love the Christmas Season. At our house, Elder Mitchell and I went out and bought Christmas decorations and put them up everywhere. I have a couple Christmas CDs on my ipod that we have been listening to. Unfortunately I don't have to much stuff and we are getting kind of sick of what I got...but we have to keep listening to it because its Christmas! It's the only way we can get our Christmas Season fix because they don't really celebrate it here. At the major malls they do so sometimes we will go eat dinner there just so we can hear Christmas music and see all the decorations. We are very deprived...but its OK. I'll be home next year!
Well this week I don't have to much to write. I'll let you know where I'm moving next week. I love you all and hope you're all loving the Christmas Season. Don't take it for granted because its truly the best time of the year! Talk to you all next week!
Elder Olsen
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Hey,
We had a great week this week and Sunday we ended it all with an amazing baptism! Pop was baptized by my Greenie companion!! He was able to have the same experience that I had when I was a greenie. At first we were planning on having a member baptize him because it's always better to have a member do it but a problem had occurred the day before the baptism. As we were teaching Pop, we used a member to help teach that had just moved down here to Bangna about a month ago. He didn't know anyone so we introduced him to Pop to try and start a friendship and as we taught, they became friends! We saw it help both of them come to church and come to activities because they knew they had a friend there. At the end when we asked Pop who he wanted to baptize him, he said Mike! (that's the member's name that helped) We gave Mike a call to ask him if he would do it and he was more then happy to! Everything was all good to go until Saturday night...As we were at the church, cleaning the font, the Bishop came and asked us if we could talk to him for a little bit. We said of coarse and we stepped into his office. He went over the baptism to make sure everything was good to go and then he told us that Mike wasn't able to baptize Pop. I said OK and didn't ask to much about it because I just figured he might have worthiness issues but then the Bishop said, because he's not a member here and our Ward doesn't have his membership records, he would have to interview him, call the Branch President at his home Branch and have to do a lot of stuff before he was going to be able to baptize him and there just wasn't enough time to do everything. He asked if we could just go ahead and be the ones to do the baptism instead. We tried to work around it but we just didn't have enough time so we agreed to do it. Now I have personally baptized 3 people already on my mission and I don't feel to big of a need to be the one to baptize anybody else but my companion, Elder Mitchell, just got into the country about a month ago and has never baptized someone. I remember when I was a Greenie. My trainer got me to baptize one of our investigators in my first area and I thought it was really cool to be able to do it in my first area so I figured I'd give my Greenie that same experience. So I asked him if he would feel OK doing it and he said yeah! I told him the baptismal pray that he had to memorize in Thai and he went at it, working on memorizing it! Throughout all of church the next day, he said he just went over it in his head, making sure he had it down. I remember when I was getting ready for my first baptism. I studied that pray for about a week before I felt ready to give it and Elder Mitchell only have 1 day! When the time came to give the baptism, he said the prayer like a pro and made no mistakes! I was pretty impressed. Our investigator was so excited to be baptized and didn't really mind that Mike wasn't able to baptize him. He was just grateful to finally be baptized!
Also these other pictures are from yesterday when we went to some waterfalls and a floating market just outside of Bangkok. It was way fun and way pretty so I thought I would share some of the pictures with you guys!
I love you guys and I hope you are having an awesome holiday season!!
Love,
Elder Stephen Olsen
(Sorry, no pictures came with this e-mail, Lori)
We had a great week this week and Sunday we ended it all with an amazing baptism! Pop was baptized by my Greenie companion!! He was able to have the same experience that I had when I was a greenie. At first we were planning on having a member baptize him because it's always better to have a member do it but a problem had occurred the day before the baptism. As we were teaching Pop, we used a member to help teach that had just moved down here to Bangna about a month ago. He didn't know anyone so we introduced him to Pop to try and start a friendship and as we taught, they became friends! We saw it help both of them come to church and come to activities because they knew they had a friend there. At the end when we asked Pop who he wanted to baptize him, he said Mike! (that's the member's name that helped) We gave Mike a call to ask him if he would do it and he was more then happy to! Everything was all good to go until Saturday night...As we were at the church, cleaning the font, the Bishop came and asked us if we could talk to him for a little bit. We said of coarse and we stepped into his office. He went over the baptism to make sure everything was good to go and then he told us that Mike wasn't able to baptize Pop. I said OK and didn't ask to much about it because I just figured he might have worthiness issues but then the Bishop said, because he's not a member here and our Ward doesn't have his membership records, he would have to interview him, call the Branch President at his home Branch and have to do a lot of stuff before he was going to be able to baptize him and there just wasn't enough time to do everything. He asked if we could just go ahead and be the ones to do the baptism instead. We tried to work around it but we just didn't have enough time so we agreed to do it. Now I have personally baptized 3 people already on my mission and I don't feel to big of a need to be the one to baptize anybody else but my companion, Elder Mitchell, just got into the country about a month ago and has never baptized someone. I remember when I was a Greenie. My trainer got me to baptize one of our investigators in my first area and I thought it was really cool to be able to do it in my first area so I figured I'd give my Greenie that same experience. So I asked him if he would feel OK doing it and he said yeah! I told him the baptismal pray that he had to memorize in Thai and he went at it, working on memorizing it! Throughout all of church the next day, he said he just went over it in his head, making sure he had it down. I remember when I was getting ready for my first baptism. I studied that pray for about a week before I felt ready to give it and Elder Mitchell only have 1 day! When the time came to give the baptism, he said the prayer like a pro and made no mistakes! I was pretty impressed. Our investigator was so excited to be baptized and didn't really mind that Mike wasn't able to baptize him. He was just grateful to finally be baptized!
Also these other pictures are from yesterday when we went to some waterfalls and a floating market just outside of Bangkok. It was way fun and way pretty so I thought I would share some of the pictures with you guys!
I love you guys and I hope you are having an awesome holiday season!!
Love,
Elder Stephen Olsen
(Sorry, no pictures came with this e-mail, Lori)
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Hey,
So you know how people always say that your mission is a roller coaster of emotion? I have seen that to be true this week. Our investigator ติ๊ก (Tig), the guy that has been a completely golden investigator for us here in Bangna, met with us the other day and told us he has finished reading the Book of Mormon! He has been learning for only 5 months and has read the whole book in that short of time! We then talked about him being baptized here on the 13th of December and he was all ready to go he said. He said he was excited for it! We were way excited for it! He was finally going to be baptized after the last 2 months of going over his concerns and trying to fix them. On Monday, he was scheduled to be interviewed but that morning we got a phone call from him. I answered the phone and he didn't sound too happy. It sounded like he had bad news and he did...he said he wasn't ready to be interviewed today and he wasn't ready to be baptism. I thought shoot...I thought we had fixed all of his concerns. So we canceled the interview and yesterday we met with him to try and see what the deal was and it didn't end well. He just said that he was happy to have been able to come here and learn with us and he will never forget the things that we taught him. He is going to keep praying and coming to church and living the commandments but he just doesn't want to be baptized. He just truly doesn't see the importance of it and he thinks if he is baptized he will no longer be free to do what he wants. He is more worried about having fun...It was way hard to hear this from him because I have seen him come so far and he was so close to being baptized. He helped give me hope for progression in an area that had nothing going for it when I first got here. Its going to be weird to not teach him anymore. Yesterday was a hard day having to think about that.
Having that lesson with Tig yesterday was definitely the trough of the missionary roller coaster. Luckily when your on a roller coaster, when you go down, you also come up. I didn't have to think about Tig for to long because ป๊อป (Pop), another one of our investigators is going to be baptized this Sunday and we had to go and prepare for his baptism right after we taught Tig! He had his interview on Monday and he was totally prepared for it! He passed with flying colors. The Zone Leader that interviewed him said he had never interview someone that had such a strong testimony and a great understanding of the gospel. He will be an amazing member! He is way excited to be baptized.
So this week has kind of been bitter sweet. Hopefully the sweetness will overpower the bitterness by the end of the week.
Elder Olsen
So you know how people always say that your mission is a roller coaster of emotion? I have seen that to be true this week. Our investigator ติ๊ก (Tig), the guy that has been a completely golden investigator for us here in Bangna, met with us the other day and told us he has finished reading the Book of Mormon! He has been learning for only 5 months and has read the whole book in that short of time! We then talked about him being baptized here on the 13th of December and he was all ready to go he said. He said he was excited for it! We were way excited for it! He was finally going to be baptized after the last 2 months of going over his concerns and trying to fix them. On Monday, he was scheduled to be interviewed but that morning we got a phone call from him. I answered the phone and he didn't sound too happy. It sounded like he had bad news and he did...he said he wasn't ready to be interviewed today and he wasn't ready to be baptism. I thought shoot...I thought we had fixed all of his concerns. So we canceled the interview and yesterday we met with him to try and see what the deal was and it didn't end well. He just said that he was happy to have been able to come here and learn with us and he will never forget the things that we taught him. He is going to keep praying and coming to church and living the commandments but he just doesn't want to be baptized. He just truly doesn't see the importance of it and he thinks if he is baptized he will no longer be free to do what he wants. He is more worried about having fun...It was way hard to hear this from him because I have seen him come so far and he was so close to being baptized. He helped give me hope for progression in an area that had nothing going for it when I first got here. Its going to be weird to not teach him anymore. Yesterday was a hard day having to think about that.
Having that lesson with Tig yesterday was definitely the trough of the missionary roller coaster. Luckily when your on a roller coaster, when you go down, you also come up. I didn't have to think about Tig for to long because ป๊อป (Pop), another one of our investigators is going to be baptized this Sunday and we had to go and prepare for his baptism right after we taught Tig! He had his interview on Monday and he was totally prepared for it! He passed with flying colors. The Zone Leader that interviewed him said he had never interview someone that had such a strong testimony and a great understanding of the gospel. He will be an amazing member! He is way excited to be baptized.
So this week has kind of been bitter sweet. Hopefully the sweetness will overpower the bitterness by the end of the week.
Elder Olsen
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