New area in ward becomes available

Hey Family! 

So a busy week this week, recently the police pacified a really big area in our ward, so we can now enter there without any problems. We are teaching a lot there, but it is a long ways to walk from our house. We are also having some success with Janaina, she fasted last Tuesday to stop smoking, she still is, but is getting a lot better. We also got a less active to church this week, Pedro. We are going to work a lot with his wife now who isn´t a member. Helping people to get rid of addictions really depends a lot of the person. If they have family members or member friends willing to help, this makes a huge difference, helping them to make specific goals, and accompanying them every step of the way. They usually need daily contact. And as we said, there is no replacement for fasting and prayer. As for reactivation, I love it when you can help someone have the real change of heart. Lots of times the biggest things are helping them to read and pray, while at the same time feel the love of the members. Some of the leaders in the ward really get excited for missionary work.

It is so weird to think of the changes that you say are happening there. Before the mission, I think I was generally not a huge fan of big change. Now I am learning a lot that you have to just enjoy where your at and what your doing at the moment. You can´t hang onto the past, as Dad has always taught, you have to live in the moment. 

That is cool to hear about the new stake president. I feel the same way, that it makes a huge difference. You really have to show true charity and love for the people for them to trust in you. 

Well I hope you and dad have a good time at deer creek. I was rereading some family history this week, man there are so many places I want to get to know now. haha. 

Anyways tell everyone hi for me, yet again. haha. Transfers are next week so let´s see what happens. I am excited though and hope to do a lot of good these next weeks. Love you all so much!! Love, Elder Ottosen

Raising the goals

Hey Family!

Man it scares me how fast time flies. haha. So it was a really good week this week. We were able to receive a lot of new training from president. He took all of our old mission goals and raised them, a lot, but gave us lots of motivation to reach them. Also we received a lot of training on how to better work with the members, and how to gain their trust. To achieve these new goals we are going to need a lot of their help. For this reason we had some meetings with the bishop and the ward mission leader. The church attendance has been around 85ish. We have a goal to raise it to 110 at the minimum by the end of September. I feel like the leaders are excited and ready to work. We had some really spiritual lessons this week as well, and had some good progress with some of the investigators reading and going to church. A good amount of less actives have promised to go to church this next week.  Janaína is probably our investigator progressing the most, but we are working with her to stop smoking to be baptized this week of the next. We are also constantly finding new families to work with, the big thing is just finding enough time to visit them all, because almost all of them are only available at night, and we received a new rule, that we can´t do divisions with members now. We are planning some activities that should start happening soon to get the members more excited, as a lot of the members are unexcited and depressed because of some difficulties in the ward. Overall I hope that I can stay here in the ward to help the bishop reactivate and baptize everyone possible to go way farther than just 110 people. 

I was thinking the other day how grateful I am to have learned so much on the mission. Things maybe I knew, but didn´t have a strong testimony before the misson, how much responsibility really is on just us. Excuses, even when valid, never help. We need to have faith, the right attitude, and work 100 percent to have miracles happen. 

So no my comp has never been to machu pichu. He lives in a mining city at over 10,000 ft above sea level, with lots of snow. Well fam, I think that is about it for this week. Hope everyone stays safe and is excited for school! Love you all so much!

A timely visit

Hey Fam!!

Sorry if this week is a bit short! So it was a pretty good week! We found a bunch of families that we are working with. Unfortunately they didn´t show up at church, but we are working on that. Yesterday we had an expericence pretty cool. We got a referral some time ago, and we finally found her home yesterday. Her name is Gloria, turns out that today she is going to the hospital because she has something that might be cancer in her stomach. She was really depressed lately, and said that she woke up yesterday and knew that someone would come visit her. She cleaned the house even though she didn´t know who would come. Then we showed up and she said that all her feelings of depression and sadness went away after our message. I was really touched by the story to see how much God really knows every one of us and listens to our pleas. Rafael is also going all right, our difficulty with him is that he is super busy, and almost never home. But we aren´t stopping yet. 

This week as you know the pope was in Rio. It amazes me how many people turned catholic over the week. Haha we saw tons of people with their world journey shirts and stuff, luckly it didn´t interfere a lot with the work. 

My comp is going really well. He is liking the mission a lot now. He speaks Portuguese well, and I can kinda understand Spanish, not too well though. I have for sure learned that my worst subject is learning languages. haha. 

Well fam! I am happy to be in Brazil, and hope that I can do my best for the rest of my time hear! I am really excited to see what happens over the next 2 months. Send a hug to everyone there and i love you all so much!!!

Love, Elder Ottosen

Visiting the statue of Christ!

Hey Fam!

So this has been the strangest mission week for me. Tuesday was McIntire´s last working day so we said goodbye to some people. Then I went with him Wednesday to the office and we did some office work until night, where we ate dinner at President´s house with his wife. Then Thursday we got up early and visited the Christ Statue, and then after that visited some other families, and then he went to the airport to fly out that night. I met up with my new comp Elder Asto from Peru. He was working in another ward in our district, so they took him out to work with me, and made his comp a trio with the ZL´s. He is really chill, has about 1.5 months in Rio. I´ll try and learn some Spanish from him, haha. We visited some really good families this week and are trying to get them to church next week. One visit was cool, the Dad of the family had just suffered a small stroke, and was recovering from paralysis in the side of his face. A protestant preacher arrived during the visit and did his prayer and everything, and then left. After that we taught about the priesthood authority and gave him a health blessing. I don´t know if he did, but I could feel such a big difference between the two. Not that the preacher had bad intentions, but that he lacked the priesthood. How happy I am to have the priesthood again on the earth. Besides that it was a good, but short week. We are really excited to see what this next week brings though. 

Love you!!

Elder Ottosen

Change of plans

Hey Fam!

So sorry for not emailing yesterday, we had training all day long, and I just got time right now. It was District leader training with the president. He focused a ton on the doctrine of Christ, which is so important to always focus on. Literally the only way we will return to live with God is following Christ´s gospel.  So this week has been a bit crazy. Turns out my comp went home while he was in the MTC so I am not training anymore. My comp is Elder McIntire from California, close to LA. He has two years on the mission. In fact he was supposed to go home last week, but he is waiting one week for his twin brother who is serving a mission in Recife Brazil, so they can go home together. So I am going to stay with Elder McIntire until Thursday, and then we aren´t really too sure. President is trying to get a short-term missionary to work with me, but as of right now we really don´t know what is happening. I will probably be in the office until they can get me a new comp, so a few days. So that is that, pretty interesting. haha. But for the week we had together, we managed to do a good amount of work. We found some good families we are going to work with, and are making some progress with our other investigators. The guy who showed up at church unfortunately couldn´t be baptized because he had a college test on Sunday, so we are trying to get him this week, but it will depend if I am here or not. So real quick I want to tell you about our first visit with Rafael. It turns out that one day he was walking down the street, and stepped on an old friendship card. He got really interested in the Book of Mormon, so he searched on the website, then talked to some one on the website and then showed up at church! Pretty sweet. Also I did a cool baptismal interview the other week. This guy about 40 who was super excited to get baptized, and had only known the church for 2 weeks. I asked if he had anything to say, and he said that he wanted to say he was sad, because he didn´t find this church sooner; that this church filled out the empty part in his soul, and he was so happy to have found so many brothers at church. This was all because one of his coworkers decided to start talking to him about the church at work. Really cool. So besides that we had some other cool things happening with the ward getting excited and working, but we will see what happens with the rest of this week and everything.

Well anyways I don´t have too much time, but I hope everyone is doing well. Love you all so much! 

Love, Elder Ottosen