a hard week

hola famila y amigos,

this computer does not have a shift key, so please excuse my poor capitilization.

following, in grey, is part of my letter to president, it saves time so i dont have to write things twice

This week was hard. But very rewarding. At least I learned a lot. A lot about patience and perserverance. We lost some investigators this week. I called to set up some appointments and I talked to the husband of one of our investigators and he said he never wants to see mormons in his house again. I talked to her to see if we could meet her outside the house, he said she was allowed to do that, but she doesn´t seem interested anymore. Not that I really blame her.

  he was pretty rude. it hurt to talk to someone that dislikes you that much. he told me that we could meet her outside but we were not welcome in his house.

We had another really good lesson that was a first lesson. We taught the Restoration and it went really well. She had doubts, but that is normal. She also told us that she ALWAYS rejects people that try to contact her, but she didn´t reject us, and she didn´t know why. She was really excited to come to church, but a few days later, when we called to confirm our next appointment, she said she couldn´t because she was too busy. I called a few days later to see if she had more time, and she asked us not to call anymore-she wasn´t interested.
i don´t know what happened here.  i guess it is just not her time.  i know God is just and has a perfect plan for her, but it just hurts, because after one 40 minute lesson with her, i felt so much love for her.  i felt so much joy in knowing that we could be eternal friends and be together in the presence of our heavenly father together. now i don´t know if this will ever happen. i hope that it will later on in her life, but i may not ever know of it, which is hard.  it makes me sad.

So I got a blessing, which really helped. I love that the Lord can communicate to us in this way. It talked a lot about my goals and plans are not always His desires. I need to align my will to His. It made me feel a lot better, and I am trying to just keep going. We in the last 2 weeks of the transfer are going to start working a lot more with less actives and active ward members to ask for references. I know that this will be more effective and I am excited to try missionary work in a new way.

I had a crazy dream a few nights ago. It was the beginning of week 6 or the end of week 5 and I was emergency transfered to go open an area in the south. It was super random. I think I had the dream because in my year as a missionary I have never been in the same area for a full 2 transfers, nor have I ever had the same companion for a full 2 transfers. This includes Utah, and Spain. The longest I have had with either is 11 weeks. If I make it through this whole transfer I will have had a full 12 weeks in Barrio 8.
i hope i dont get emergency transfered anytime soon.  i had another crazy dream the same night.  this one is just weird and probably a result of lack of sleep, stress, and heat exhaustion, this country is beyond hot.  it was a movie trailer, and i was a dog. in this dream i didn´t like the human family i lived with so the whole plot of the movie was how i pretended i was dead but i felt bad because the family loved me so i would come and eat the food or do something so i was like a dog pretending to be dead and being a phantom in the house of this family.  where this came from, i have no idea. but i think i woke up thinking, why can´t i have an awesome dream about the atonement, like Hna. Bitter.

Training goes well. I think one of the hardest parts is when the work is hard, when people fail us, or don´t want to meet us anymore. Like this week, it was a bit hard. If I was junior companion I might have started to cry or demonstrated a bit more, my dissapointment. But as a trainer, I don´t want to be like that in front of my trainee. I feel like I have to be strong, even when I want to be weak. Hna. O´keeffe is doing well, she has improved a lot over these past 4 weeks.

after i got off the phone with the lady that no longer was interested, and this happened the day after the guy told me we were not welcome in his home, i seriously just wanted to start crying.  had i been junior companion, or with someone a little bit older in the mission, i probably would have.  but i couldn´t in front of my hija.  i feel like i always have to be strong, and i cant show disappointment, because i want to give her a good impression, that bad things happen but we keep going and miracles happen.  and i know they will, i just dont know when. 

so i keep going. i just got to do the best i can. i was struggling that day wishing there was someone that i could talk to to dump my problems on.  i wasn´t going to do that to my hija, and so i was feeling kind of alone.  like i had nobody to talk to. i went into our bedroom, this all happened during mediodia or 2 hour break, and  i really wanted one of the other hermanas to talk to me, but they didnt come.  so i felt alone.  but i never was alone.  and i soon realized that i had someone to talk too.  i quickly got on my knees and began to pray, and cry and pour out my heart to the one that hears me perfectly.  after that i felt better and was able to keep going.  i KNOW God always listens and hears us.  we can TALK to Him about anything.

to end on a happy note, a VERY VERY VERY happy note- i got an email from Armando and Denis, my recent converts in guatemala.  they are doing SO well. she is YW president and he is Elders quorum president.  they have been members for about 7 months.  they are amazing. they are amazed that i have a yaer in the mission, and love me very much.  they said i always have a home in guatemala, because we are family. i will probably smile all day thinking about that email.

i forgot my camera cord, so no pictures, SORRY.

con amor,

hermana olsen