Pics from Kyle.

Sorry -- these pics came in a seperate email from his letter. Enjoy :)

Me at a better NC sign

Morgan who is getting baptized on Wednesday

Elder Brimhall pushing the car to save miles

Elder Brimhall fell asleep praying

Happy Valentines Day!!! Sort of almost!!!

Happy Valentines Day!!! Sort of almost!!!

Well i actually have some exciting things to write about this week. First off i want to tell you what i'm going to be doing for Valentines day tomorrow. Well we were invited to dinner by Bell and Trina. These ladies are "big for a reason", I'm quoting Bell. But they were asking us what we wanted for dinner. So we told them that we wanted Coon. So we are actually gonna have Raccoon for Valentines day. I'm really excited.

Now let me tell you about dinner yesterday! So we were at the Hudackos, and Mr. Hudacko isn't a member, but he is an excellent cook! So for Thanksgiving when i come back i'm gonna cook the turkey. Except i'm gonna fry it! You'll never want a roasted turkey again after this. So I'll tell you how it was made. First you cover the turkey with Cajun seasoning, then you inject it with butter! No joke, you get this big syringe and inject it with butter in several places. He put 16 oz. into it, and when you cut the turkey melted butter is coming out of it! But before you cut it you fry it in a turkey fryer. But make sure you do it outside because several housed burn down around thanksgiving because people try to fry the turkey inside. Then we had twice baked potatoes. You bake the potatoe, and then you open it mash the potatoes then put it in the oven for about five minutes. Then we had the best salad ever! First you take a pound of bacon (you can already tell its great), cook all the bacon, eat the bacon and stuff. Then you pour the bacon grease over the salad. Needless to say i ate waaaay too much and i don't regret it at all.

Now for some more exciting news. BAPTISM! This wednsday at 8 pm we are baptizing a 12 year old boy named Morgan. It was great, his grandma and mom are members. But they haven't been to church in 28 years. About a month ago they decided they wanted to get back into church. Now Morgan came to church and he told us that he wanted to pass the sacrament. So we taught him, he got interviewed, and Elder Brimhall is baptizing him! Also Morgans little sister Sissy is getting baptized on the same day, but she is 8 and since her mom is a member it doesn't count as a convert baptism. But I'm still really excited that she's getting baptized!

So if every companionship in the zone reaches their baptismal goal this month, then everyone in the zone will get to go to the temple! Our goal for this month is 2. We have Morgan and we were so close with Sissy, but then at the last minute we were told she wouldn't count as a convert baptism. So now we just got to work really hard to get another one.

We have another excellent man on date for the 25. So please pray for John. A little over a week ago John had ordered a Book of Mormon. So we delivered and then we saw him again this past Saturday. In that one week time span John read from the beginning all the way to Mormon Chapter 3!!! Needless to say i was extremely excited! Also he doesn't have any law of chastity issues or word of wisdom problems so everything is good so far. He came to church yesterday and we think that he really enjoyed it, he doesn't talk much but really likes to listen. But then here is the best news. Yesterday evening we get a text from John, what did that text say you might ask? It said, How does someone become a member of the church?...... We answered very quickly. We haven't met his wife yet, but he told us that she was interested, and after we gave him the Book of Mormon, his brother in law ordered one. I love being a missionary.

Payton is doing wonderful. She's quit all of her word of wisdom problems, she reads every day, she comes to church. I have never seen the gospel change someone so much. You can feel how she is just a different person, she so much happier now. Her vocabulary isn't quite as colorful as it used to be. Even her boyfriend and her other friends are happy to see us when we come over. Which is strange because they didn't like us at all when we first met. The only problem is, is that she's living with her boyfriend! They either got to move out or get married and then Payton can get baptized. So it may take a good bit before that happens.
We had a whole bunch of people scheduled to come to church yesterday. We had rides set up and everyone was really solid to come. We had 10 people ready to go. 10!!! How many came? 2. Satan is just too good at his job! He really bugs me sometimes.

We are teaching the Kellett family right now and it's great! Because as we were teaching them Mr. Kellett said, "God works in mysterious way, we moved down here a month ago and then you show up. And none of my children have been baptized and they need to be." I nearly passed out because he has four children that could be baptized and I thought that everyone in the south had been baptized at least three or four times. So please, please, please, please, pray for the Kellett family, because that is a family of six. And that's really good.

By the way did you get my memory card with a 1000 pictures on it?

Now for my reply,
Sorry i sent the letter to the wrong grandma erdmann. I have the card back home and it said grandma erdmann. Sooo my bad, but i love them both!
I thinks that so awesome that Chris is getting close to going on a mission! I hope he does, it's only two years and it goes by too quick if you ask me. Like I said before, I love being a missionary. Because here's the cool thing about a mission. I was sent to South Carolina by revelation from God. Because, there are people here waiting for me. Because People are People (name that band) and people only click with certain people if that makes sense. For instance Jane Marriott, maybe someone else could have baptized her, but her and I "clicked", and she got baptized. Missionaries get sent to certain places because there are certain souls that that certain missionary can only save. If i wouldn't have come, some people probably wouldn't have heard about the gospel.

I love the valentine cards that Madison made. That's way more creative then i would have done when i was a kid. I just wanted Godzilla valentine cards.
I think that you should let Morgan go competitive, it's about time one of us has talent. Haha i'm kidding we all have talent, she's just the only one that can do gymnastics, I'm not a fan of leotards myself.

I don't think i need anything, except maybe a picture of that super old Book of Mormon. What's the story behind that?
Anyway i think this letter made up for last weeks boring one.
So,
    I love y'all!
                    Elder K. Olsen

Elder Olsen is Tired

Well whats up!

Elder Olsen is tired just to let everyone know, so if my letter today is kind of crazier (than usual) it's cause I'm sleepy. But anyway let me think... Oh Payton came to church yesterday! and Bill did too! So we actually had a really good week. We should be able to baptize Payton really soon here but unfortunately she's living with her boyfriend. So that may delay it a bit. Bill on the other hand is doing great and i can easily see him getting baptized this month.

My mind is broken and i cannot remember anything that we did this week. Let me ask Elder Brimhall....He said we did nothing at all. I wonder where he's picked up his sarcasm? Actually we gave a ton of blessings this week. We gave three on Friday and three on Saturday. But it was cool because Friday was actually the first blessing I've been able to give. Now i have anointed people a thousand times, i have that down great! But i was able to give a baby a blessing who has had a really rough first three weeks of life. Then i was able to bless Payton in the same day. Then the next day i blessed a couple more less active members. I'm going to have to consecrate more oil soon.

I've been sitting here for about ten minutes trying to figure out what i should write. Okay well I'm just gonna write a ton of random stuff so that it looks like a wrote a long letter. Yesterday it was really warm but today it is kind of cold (about 55). Yesterday was the super bowl and I'm kind of bummed that i wasn't able to see all of the commercials. I still don't even know who won actually. So that will show you how secluded i am at the moment. I really got to take this suit to the dry cleaners, it's not as clean as when i first bought it. We were out of milk this morning so my peaches and cream oatmeal wasn't as good as i would have liked. But luckily today is pday and we can go pick up some groceries.

So yesterday was fast Sunday, but somehow we had two dinners at members houses before 5:00. Then after the second dinner Sister Brooks asked us if we wanted some cake to take home. Well what she meant was, do you want a huge piece of cake and strawberries with ice cream with a big cup of whole milk to eat right now before you leave? So of course we ate it and it was delicious, but i was way full before i had that cake.

I really love the scriptures and i love that i get the chance to read them so much. It's amazing that you can find guidance to any situation and answers for every question if we just pray and study the scriptures diligently.

(For our Blue and Gold Banquet this year, we were asked to set up tables and make a display to tell more about the area our Missionaries are serving in, we were also asked to get some recipes that are unique to that area, these are Kyle's suggestions). Alright I'll give you some good food. Boiled Peanuts, fried sticks of butter, fried oreos, fried pepsi (yes it's possible), alligator, chicken bog, possum. Plus anything else you can fry! Something else you could do is put up a thousand different churches, plus the words y'all, skreet, skrawberry, teef, toof, ima, fixin, perty. You could even put all that in a sentence : Ima fixin to see y'all at skrawberry skreet later after ma teef are cleaned at the dentist and em'll look are perty then we can have some tobacca (or tobaccer). You may laugh at that but i'm not really joking actually.

Ummm that's all i got this week. Sorry. Hopefully i can be more exciting to y'all
next monday.

Elder K. Olsen

P.s. Here are some pictures to spice things up a bit.

Elder Olsen and Elder Brimhall at Elder Lane

Okey Dokey Everybody

Okey Dokey everybody!

I'm just gonna get right into today. We had four investigators at church yesterday! Can I hear a what what? But anyway Bell came again and I hope she is having a good time. We were able to answer all of her questions from last Sunday and she still wants to keep coming to find out for herself if this is true or not. But I had to go with the Ward Mission Leader to pick her up and we got to church right as they were saying the sacrament prayer so we were in the hall way. So the young man comes out with the bread, gives it to me, gives it to the ward mission leader, and then bee lines past Bell! I was able to talk to Bishop after and Bishop will let the young men know not to completely ignore the investigators. Nothing against the young man of course, he was just nervous and didn't know what to do. But I'll probably be answering some questions about that next time we see Bell. Trina wasn't able to come because she had to take care of her baby. But side note: The Bullocks (who are ward missionaries) helped Bell and Trina last week and found out that Trina's baby has been sleeping in a cardboard box. So the amazing Bullocks went out of their way and got a crib! I got to be there when they dropped it off and the spirit was so strong. You should have seen how happy everyone was!

Randy didn't come to church and we're actually going to back off of him for a while because he told us he wants to go to his church and wants us to go with him. So now we're at a stand still with him until he makes an actual effort on his side, we can only help him so far. Then we had a man named Bill come to church who we actually haven't been able to teach yet. But he was a referral from a member and he came to church! He really enjoyed it and said that he would come back next week and that we would set up some sort of appointment for the upcoming week.

Then we had a man named Jeff who, while knocking doors, invited us into his house and told us that he was really good friends with the missionaries in Oklahoma. He told us that he didn't want to be taught, but we invited him to church because that's what we do. Well when we were done with that neighborhood we were walking back to the bikes and he drove up and asked us what time church started. Well that's a good sign. So guess what? Lo and behold he walked into church 20 minutes early! I'll be honest I wasn't expecting it. We went by later that day to give him a Book of Mormon and he told us that he would see us next week. But here is a cool fact, he told us that he can't go an hour without craving a cigarette, but he went through three hours of church and didn't even think about it! He also asked us if we did baptisms in our church...YES! He's never been baptized before, so I have to say we have a great batch of people rolling in.

I think I already told you about Payton, but anyway she's been reading every day. Didn't come to church but we'll work on that. But guess what her profession is? Hair stylist! So guess what i'm doing today? Hair cut! Guess how much? 5 bucks! I could cut my own hair and stuff but thats a really good price for a professional one.

I always forget everything that was done in the past week because I always get so excited about telling y'all about church. Here's something exciting! We got 22 lessons this past week! We are just teaching machines lately and we're working like crazy and I know that we're going to baptize in february and march.

I got that little book of mormon and it is perfect! I bought that little Bible at the dollar store and now i can just fit them in my suit pocket.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYLEE!MAN IT IS SO AWESOME THAT ALL OF MY LITTLE SISTERS ARE GROWING UP! I think it's sweet that she's on the east coast with me too. I hope you had a great birthday kylee and that you partied tell you couldn't party no more!

I have to say waiting to hear about dads talk and mikaylas patriarchal blessing is gonna kill me. I don't know if i can wait for a letter! But i will because thats what i have to do. haha I'm glad that his talk went great though, I'm always willing to give my two cents. It's nice because i get a specific topic to study.

Speaking of studying the last three days i read the book of Acts through Hebrews and i want to give a special shout out to Paul. It's really humbling when i think of myself not being able to drive and having to ride my bike. When he was beaten and imprisoned and re beaten and tons of other stuff until he was eventually killed. Yeah, I'll ride my bike with a smile on my face :)

Love,Elder K. Olsen

P.S. Read Acts 28:3-6 and tell me that's not awesome

Zip-i-dee-doo-dah!

 

So yesterday was Martin Luther King day as i'm sure you already know. But because of that holliday there weren't any computers available to us. But here's that fancy letter y'all have been waitin for!

First off:

 

Sunday was awesome!!! We had BEll and Trina and Randy come to church and they all had a great time! Then after church the Bishops daughter was baptized, so all our investigators were able to stay for that and it was awesome even though church was five hours long. For me it was seven hours long because i had some meetings in the morning. I do need to work on not stressing out when we have investigators at church though. I'm just constantly wondering, are they having a good time, how are they with the ward members, are they understanding everything? So as you can imagine i was really out of energy when it was all done.

I feel bad for the sunday school teacher though. Because he was teaching and at some point he mentioned that God wasn't a spirit but had a body of flesh and bones. Well Bell cut him off and said "wait, God isn't a spirit?" He kind of froze and then looked at us and said "your investigator has some questions" It was pretty funny, and obviously i need to explain that a little better.

 

Anyway Sunday was great and now thats all that i can really think about. The rest of my week doesn't really matter because i actually had some investigators at church. The ward loved it too, because they were all talking to us, and complimenting us on the good work, and they were getting all excited. Oh and the dinner calendar for this month is completely full. We're gettin fed good! I'm so glad that the holidays are over and everything is back to normal again. Dont get me wrong holidays on missions are great. But i could do without them.

 

The rest of this month we're going to have to bike ALOT. Because we only get 1050 miles in the car every month. We're at about 850. So i'm not to excited about that. But on the positive side it will force us to get rides from members so that we can use them in our missionary work.

 

It's still pretty warm down here in SC. It's probably in the low 70s right now. But people are saying that it will get cold here soon....

 

I haven't broken his ukelele yet. I got pretty close this morning though. I ended up going in the back room shutting the door and turning the fan on high while i read my scriptures. But usually i'm okay with the ukelele. This morning i was just thinking about a million things at once and it was starting to get to me, the ukelele wasn't helping. But i read my scriptures and prayed and everything is better now. It's so relieving that i'm able to take all of my problems to Heavenly Father and just be like "here ya go, take control." That doesn't mean i just sit back in my chair and relax, but i at least know that everything is going to be okay.

 

This last week was my best week "number wise" in my entire mission. We taught 19 lessons, and talked to near 100 people, plus we got 4 investigators at church. So we can still improve, and the goal of our district is to scare other missionaries so they don't want to be transferred here because we are going to set the bar so high. We're not competing against any other missionaries... but we're still gonna work for being the best.

 

I got the pictures and the camera card which i'm really excited to have more memory now. Unfortunately i wasn't able to see the videos on my camera. But i looked at all the pictures and i was really impressed that you wrote on the back of every single one. That one of the gingerbread guy made me laugh.

 

But guess what?

I love y'all!

 

Elder K. Olsen

 

ps. picture 1 below is (from left to right) Elder Nelson, Elder Law, Elder Cramer, Me, Elder Olsen

picture 2 is my awesome new beanie that was made for me (snowbird colors)

 

Hey Howdy Hey!

Hey howdy hey!

It's been great the past few days... ridiculously hot, but great. We hit 75 degrees yesterday so we didn't have to wear our suit jackets! Hallelujah!

But i think i wrote y'all last tuesday so i'm trying to remember everything thats been done since then. On thursday night we got picked up by the myrtle beach elders so that we could drive to sumter, because on friday we had a leadership training meeting in columbia. So we stayed the night in sumter. I wish i had taken a picture but i slept in a tempermental recliner that just didn't want to stay reclined. Then i took a dinner chair and put a pillow on it because i was to long for the recliner. I can't say it was my best night of sleep ever, but it definitely wasn't my worst. The really funny part though is that everyone got mad at me because of my snoring. So far something i've been able to accomplish with every companion :).

But the leadership meeting was awesome! It got Elder Brimhall and i super pumped to get to work, the meeting was perfect for us because it showed us exactly what we needed to fix so that we could be more effective. The only downfall to the meeting was that it lasted from 7:45-6:30. So with the drive home and stopping by for dinner we got back home at 9:00. So that ate our entire day up. Something really cool though! So in missionary lingo Elder Brimhall is my son, and elder cramer is my dad, and so on and so forth. Well at the meeting we had five generations there! I took a picture which i meant to send today but i forgot my camera. But five generations still living in a mission is almost unheard of, and the chances of us being in the same meeting is even slimmer. Because only district leaders, zone leaders, trainers, and trainees went to it. So that was extremely exciting.

Church was alright yesterday. Although we got kind of stiff armed by all of our investigators. We had 4 planning to come to church and none of them actually came. But on the bright side there are these two less active members who haven't been to church in 28 years who came! Last week we got a text asking if we would come over, so of course we did. So it's a grandma, her daughter, and then her two grandkids. Well her grandkids havent been baptized and Sis. Newman (grandma) decided it was time to come back to church. So basically we have two guaranteed baptisms! Actually i just realized we could baptize them this month! The older grandkid is 12 so he would actually be a deacon as well.

I want to ask if everyone would pray for Jane. She's been going through a lot of job issues, health issues, family issues, financial issues, pretty much everything at the moment. Well i promised her that if she continued to pray, read the scriptures, and come back to church (she hasn't been for weeks now) that everything would get better. We blessed her home and her this morning, and now i just need many prayers that nothing will get in her way getting to church. I know that if she comes to church that everything else will be taken care of.

So that is a great scripture to go by mom. Actually the entire book of timothy is probably good to go by. Elder Brimhall absolutely love the book of Timothy. He quotes 2 Timothy 4:7 a lot, it's his favorite.

Funny story, so we had exchanges with the Tabor City elders. Well one elder up there has a ukelele and elder brimhall fell in love with it. So on the way home from tabor city we stopped at a pawn shop and he got one.... well i can't get him to stop playing it now. He's actually really good for never playing before, but i still might throw it out the window on the highway. But he's also been memorizing a scripture mastery every day which is really cool. Me on the other hand have had some amazing studies.

That reminds me! Well dad you may have already given your talk but i've been meaning to send you my notes for a bit now. I don't have my notes with me so i'm just going to go off the top of my head here.It's amazing that you were assigned that topic because actually Elder Pieper way back when he was here actually talked about that exact concept. Except he talked about doctrine, principle, and application. Because when you think about it doctrines and principles never change. But the application does, and thats what can confuse people. For example the word of wisdom is and has always has been an eternal principle. The doctrine is obedience (at least in my perspective). But now look at the different applications over time. Adam and Eve couldn't partake of the fruit or they would surely die, when you think about it that's the word of wisdom. The word of wisdom entails what to eat and what not to eat. Tobacco and illegal drugs weren't a problem in the garden of eden so of course heavenly father wouldn't have told them not to eat it. But now that those things are available the application of the word of wisdom or the policy of the word of wisdom has changed. I'm sure that you could find that with any doctrine or principle that we have.

Something else about doctrine, principle, and policy is that they do have differences of course. But they are much more effective when you put them together. I have found that i can find any answer i need if i ask three questions. How? (which will explain the policy) What? (which will explain the principle) and Why? (which explains the doctrine).

EX. HOW is the sacrament performed? By blessing the bread and water then having deacons pass to the congregation. Today we bless water, in the new testament wine was used. The policy has changed.
What is the sacrament? It's the ordinance saying that we will renew our covenants and take upon His name upon us and keep all of His commandments, and in return we will have His spirit to be with us.
Why do we perform the sacrament? So that we can have His spirit to be with us. So that we can repent.

Now these are just some of my thoughts on the subject and you can use them as you wish. Also i had a question, that book that you have dad, about Joseph Smith. It's blue and called "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith" I have permission to read that book as long as i only read it on p-days. Would it be possible to get a copy of that?

I love y'all!

Elder K. Olsen

I'm Back.

So it's tuesday and not monday if you haven't noticed yet... and this keyboard is really weird so i'm having some difficulties.

Anyway the library was closed yesterday so we werent able to actually e-mail, but here i am!

It's been pretty good since last week, i can't complain.

Except church was rather rough. Our average is about 150 people at church every week. On christmas we hit 175 and this last sunday we had maybe 70. None of which were investigators. But i feel that everything will start working again now that the holidays are over.

We haven't been able to see daryl since last i talked about him which is kind of concerning me because we got to get that kid baptized. So i'm pretty sure we are going to go and see him today. Bell and trina are doing great, but unfortunately Bell has some sort of deadly virus that may keep her from church this sunday, and more down the road. So pray that she can get better and that she can still get baptized this month.

We have a few new people Dale and his son cody and his daughter hannah. They are all on date for baptism for the 28! It was great because we just taught them on there doorstep and then put them on date. We'll have to go see them very soon.

Then there is Sydney and her son who just moved from virginia and had all the lessons taught to them and want to be baptized. We are going to have dinner with them on saturday. So there's a couple more baptisms that should happen.

Byron is still great and understands everything we're teaching but unfortunately we are having trouble getting him to church. I'm concerned that that may hold him back.

So there's many people that we are working with right now and over the next few weeks we'll see what happens. But we are going to work as hard as we possibly can.

So i'm excited to hear that i have more than one memory card on the way. I have the new camera now and i went kind of crazy for a bit, i'm cooling down now. But i still probably already have about 4-5 gigs full of stuff. It goes by pretty quick.

The picture of madison you sent me was really stretched out but i still think that it's the coolest picture ever! I'm so proud, (sniff) give me a second i'm starting to tear up. But seriously that is really awesome. (I had included a picture of Madison in my email to Kyle  -- it was her birthday and she got an Xbox 360. The picture was Madison with her Xbox, drinking a can of Pepsi. I think she wants to be just like her big bro!)

Don't worry about my sarcastic wit mom. For better or worse i'll probably have that trait for most of my life!

But yeah, that's me, that's my life.

Oh and it's rather cold right now, two days ago it was in the 70's now it's in the 50's brrrr! Remember i got the humidity factor.

I'm right with you mom, i'll try to write more hand written letters!

Elder K. Olsen

John 14:15 (my favorite)

P.S.

No frog giggin yet. (When we talked to Kyle on Christmas we asked him what there was to do around there. Someone at the house he was out suggested they go 'frog giggin')  I don't think we'll be able to unfortunately, it's where you go to the swamp at midnight with a shotgun when all of the frogs are out and about.... I guess i'll just have to do that when i visit in the future.

This picture is just cool...