I met an apostle!

Hey everyone!

 

Did i mention that i met an apostle a couple days ago? Cause i totally did, actually i was even able to shake his hand. Wasn't that just the coolest thing in the world! Well i know you had told me to take a lot of notes buuuut... A while ago i saw a video by Elder Bednar and he talked about having notes representing the small plates instead of the large plates. Or instead of taking just quotes from what was said i should write down spiritual impressions from the Holy Ghost. Well as it turns out that was one of the first things which he spoke about. So yes i took lots of notes, but i didn't take any quotes from Elder Bednar. Just spiritual impressions. But that's exactly what he wanted to teach us. He didn't want us to think that all of our questions can only be answered by the prophets or apostles. He wanted us to know that all of our answers have and will come from the Holy Ghost. Because He is the true teacher and always will be.

Elder Bednar also gave a missionary a challenge which i have also taken. What he asked the missionary to do was to take a copy of the Book of Mormon and then read through it only searching for one thing such as charity, or faith, or even trees. Then when you search through the entire book (he also added that there are to be no keyword searches but you have to read through from front to back) you take out all of the main points of the topic which you discovered and write a summary of that topic on one side of one piece of paper. He said if you went to his home you would find a bookcase of all of his copies of the book of mormon with the summary in the front of each one. Then he said his kids asked if they could read them. Which he replied, "If i so much as see you touch those books i will disown you." Then they asked about what about after he dies. Which he replied, "I will burn them before that ever happens." Haha i know that sounds drastic, but he did say that the best things we learn are "caught not taught."

He also said that the best thing that a recent convert could ever say to you is, "Elder --- Thank you so much for bringing us the gospel, we love, now never come back. Others need this gospel and we already have it, we know where the church is and if we need help we'll ask the members. Again we love you, now never come back."

Now i know all the quotes i'm giving you make him sound super serious like he is always portrayed. But he's actually a really funny guy.

I learned a lot and it was the best three hours with an apostle i've ever had.

 

An update on Holly! So yesterday she got her temple recommend and will be going to do baptisms for the dead soon. She's planning to go on a mission 100% and since she hasn't been assigned a visiting teaching route she's taken it upon herself to go visiting teaching anyways and to go out with the senior missionaries to see less actives.... So yeah, she's doing just fine.

 

So yesterday was fun! I got to do something awesome! For the third hour of church the second counselor came up to Elder Cahoon and I and asked us to help out in nursery. I was so excited! So yeah i got to play with a whole bunch of little kids for an hour!

 

Also i believe Halloween was this last week but I'm not 100% sure. But anyways I'll tell y'all what i did anyways. I'm not sure if i told you that in my last area a member gave me a free acoustic guitar. Well all last p-day and the three hours we were locked in apartment for Halloween i was playing guitar. Elder Wilkinson has a Christmas guitar book and Elder Cahoon knows a lot of chords. So i learned a ton of new chords and surprisingly i remembered a lot as well. And now I'm really good at playing God rest ye merry gentlemen and some other Christmas songs.

 

Speaking of Christmas, now that you've given me the responsibility of thinking about what i would like for Christmas i'll make sure that i take it very seriously and will try not to exceed the amount of $1000.

 

Let me think of a scripture rather quickly... let me actually get out my handy dandy Book of Mormon!

Alma 33:14 which poses a question. "Now behold my brethren, I would ask if ye have read the scriptures? If ye have, how can ye disbelieve on the Son of God?"

So what i want to point out is that by reading the scriptures we gain a hope and an assurance in Christ. Those things cause us to act, because if we truly have assurance in Christ we will want to do the things which he commands us. Well if we do what he commands we will recieve a witness or an evidence that our hope was in the right place which then strengthens our faith. Which when our faith is strengthened it causes us to act which gives us more evidence and so on and so forth. This is the cycle of faith and the only way it works is if we act. Another scripture which explains a lot of what i said is Hebrews 11:1 (look at the jst).

 

Anyways obviously the church is true

And I love all of you!

Elder K. Olsen