Yankton #9

Hey Everyone! I think I've fallen in love with South Dakota this week. Everyone here eats tons of corn and everyone says y'know all the time, and people love Jesus Christ with their whole hearts and it's all just awesome. I don't have tons of time today so I'll just give some highlights.

4 of our really loud neighbors showed up to our door asking us to baptize their two year old... We weren't sure what to do, and they were all talking at the same time and in different languages and it was just crazy, but hopefully we can keep building a relationship with them and start teaching them!

We ate amazing steaks with a pastor! He was super nice and respectful of our church and we had a good civil conversation about the differences between our religions and why we believe what we believe. We even gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd read from it!

We're teaching someone named Luke who was supposed to be baptized this coming Saturday, but was super stressed about everything and unsure. But we talked to him on Saturday and he told us that he has an amazing opportunity to see his family for the first time in years and is leaving saturday, and he wanted to move his baptismal date earlier so he can receive his blessings! All of his fear and stress was gone, and instead he is so excited. He was telling us about how he's been baptized into two different churches before, but this is the last time! And we were able to watch some of conference with him! It was amazing because as soon as he started watching, all of the talks seemed to be directed right to him and to his concerns. Every one of them. God works in mysterious ways and blesses us. 

I absolutely loved conference, especially Elder Anderson's and President Nelson's talks. Elder Andersen talked about how we need to have Christ at the center of our lives and President Nelson talked about letting God prevail in our lives. If we do these two things, God will give us so many blessings and we will be able to become like him one day, through Jesus Christ! If you haven't listened to conference I invite you to and if you did, I invite you to change what the spirit prompts you to in your life. I definitely felt the need to be more Christlike and more humble in my actions. God will help us to do these things. Have a great week!

-Elder Olsen