September 24, 2012

Hello from El Salvador!

 How is everyone doing? We had a great week here and I can`t believe it`s already p day again. The weeks fly by so fast it seems like, not complaining at all about that haha. But this week was our temple trip, I`m not sure if I told you about that last week. But we had a mission wide trip to the temple with our investigators. Many saw it for the first time and it couldn`t have been a better day. Everything was so organized. We left our church at 9 and got to the temple at about 10 and then President and Sister Glazier spoke to everyone and welcomed them and gave short talks about the temple and what we do there. Then they split up into small groups and learned a little bit more specifically about the church. We had lessons about the Plan of Salvation, how families can be eternal, mock baptisms, and everything else you can think of. It was awesome, and right when we were walkin by the front door of the temple, a bride and groom walked out and started taking wedding pictures!! I couldn`t believe the timing, everything just seemed to work perfectly that day. And I think in total we had 650 investigators come to the temple, we only brought about six of our investigators, the other six or so had to work...I was pretty mad about that.

 But our investigators our progressing really awesome! Julio made it all last week without drinking! So he is goin on his tenth day today! Words can`t describe how happy I am for him and the things he is doing. He is noticing how everything is going better in his life and is really getting desires to change. The other good news for him is we rescheduled our lunch that we were supposed to have for next Tuesday! I`m pretty dang excited for a barbeque haha. Mario and his dad are doing great too. We actually set a date for both of them for the 13 of October so we will see how that goes and hope and pray they don`t have any challenges that keep them from the waters of baptism. And this Saturday coming up we have a baptism too. It seems like we don`t have a lot going on until I sit down and write about it and I`m like holy crap we are doin work! haha its great. But yeah I think in total we have 5 investigators with dates in October so hopefully that all works out before changes on the 24 of October. That`s when I think Elder Hammond will be leaving and I`ll be staying, I`m freakin out about that day. Pretty much because I still can`t speak that great, pretty limited to just the Gospel and then I still don`t always understand what they are saying to me. But progress from the first day here is definitely significantly higher ha. Elder Hammond isn`t really big on language study cause he already knows it, and he doesn`t take a lot of extra time to explain stuff to me anymore. So that is a little frustrating but I will learn. Actually one of the zone leaders in our house, Elder LeSeur, helps me out a ton. He is a sweet kid. Reminds me almost exactly of Ian so that is pretty sweet to have an awesome friend like that already.

This week I read 2 Nephi 4. And it talks about pleading with the Lord for deliverance and strength to withstand from sin. And it really just made me think that maybe we don`t or I don`t pray hard enough to our Heavenly Father. If you think about prayer and the power it has, it`s amazing. We pray to our Heavenly Father and He hears us and answers our prayers. If I really understood that I think I would make sure I was a lot more prepared to pray every time to Him. To ask Him for things and to thank Him for all of the blessings that I have in my life. I realized this week how extremely lucky I have been to grow up in the Gospel, even though I don`t feel like I know very much, I do. People hear don`t understand or don`t have the knowledge of the basic things that we do. And I really take that comfort for granted. We are so blessed to have this Gospel in our lives and to know what our purpose is and to have deeper and more meaningful goals than the average person, like being with our families forever. I know this church is true and our Heavenly Father is always there to help us in this life so that we can return to Him and be like Him.

 

Glad to see you guys are still gettin out and around with the camper. I missed that so much these last almost 4 months (next Sunday but who`s really keepin track). And you got to go golfing too, I`m sure it was a lot better than our little course we had set up on our table haha. And Brandi is still kickin butt on the cross country team, but is getting a little burnt out ha. I know how that is just remember it`s always harder in the moment, things will be better tomorrow. Remember that. And she`s got her big first dance coming up that`ll be fun too! Hopefully you guys still have a little bit of time every day to enjoy being together. And Grandma is doing better! That is good to know and a relief. I can`t believe Ciera is engaged!!! Holy Crap! haha that was a shock. He is probably a pretty cool good guy though so I`m sure she is doing fine. Anything else at home changing? Fires are still going, and Grandma Beverly said Palisades is way low so hopefully you have a good winter with lots of snow, and skiing. Ha I`m really gonna miss snowboarding this year.

But I`m still doing good, not too many bugs in the house to answer your question. Only a couple cockroaches, the bad thing is ants...freaking everywhere!!!!!!!! But we are doing good. We got up at six today and did P 90X so that was good. I dommed every body but no big deal haha. It was good to actually get up at six and do something, usually my comp sets his alarm for about 5:30 and hits snooze every five minutes until 6:30 so I REALLY enjoy that everyday ha. I dono what else I would want in a package besides food haha that`s really all I need and I know food doesn`t send that good...maybe a couple more ties I guess? But thank you for everything, thoughts and prayers, I love you all!

 

Que Dios le bendiga!

Elder Jorgensen

September 17, 2012

Hello from El Salvador!

 

How is everyone doing? We had another hot, great, hot, fast, and hot week down here in El Salvador. I honestly walk down our road to go out for the day and my shirt is just soaked, and then we get into people's houses and it's mostly just tin roofs so it gets even hotter in the houses. But I wouldn't have it any other way, I love this work. I will never be able to repay my Heavenly Father for the blessings I receive and the knowledge that I learn from the scriptures and other experiences I have every day.

 This week we had a huge week planned. Our goals were 42 lessons total planned so that includes investigators with and without members present and less actives. Friday and Saturday were our biggest days, and our hardest and most discouraging. Saturday was Independence Day for Salvador and everyone forgot to mention to us that is the worst days to proselyte and find people. And all of the celebrations brought the worst in one of our investigators again. We had a two o'clock lunch planned with Julio on Saturday, it was gonna be a huge barbeque with burgers, hot dogs, chicken and whatever else he had. But we showed up and he wouldn´t answer so we waited a while and went back, still nothing but we found his wife and she told us he was drunk and probably just didn't wanna talk to us. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met but he just can't seem to get over this. He needs to have as much faith in himself as we do. But those two days we had 19 lessons planned and only taught 8 lessons, and we never miss lessons...never. So that was pretty discouraging, somehow we were still able to meet the numbers of excellence for the week though. Our other investigators are doing great though. By the end of this week we should have 5 investigators with a baptismal date within the next month so hopefully that all works out too. But Mario and his dad (the kid we found bus preaching) they are both way receptive and turns out the dad is a member of the RLDS church or something but not active at all, and he just said that he "likes everything here better and it feels more right" so that was awesome news!   But they love learning about the church and hopefully they're gaining a testimony of these things as well. So overall our investigators are doing really good!

This week we had stake conference too, and it was sweet! We got to hear from the Stake President and some of his counselors and then our Mission President and his wife! So the talks were great and I understood almost everything so that was also a plus haha. A lot of the talks were about persevering to the end, I can't remember how to spell that, and being a true convert to the church. Those are probably my two favorite topics besides missionary work ha. But they were great and just made me realize the importance of always progressing in the church. And actually our zone conference which was two weeks ago was about those same topics so I'm kinda thinkin there was somethin in there that I need to learn so I'm trying my best to do that.

 I don't really have any good stories from this week, we found a huge frog yesterday, like huge twice the size of my fist ha. Some cockroaches in the house..Oh this week we had great water pressure for like four days. The water was just gushing out at a blistering 10 drops a minute so that was nice. And last night we had a golf tournament (El Salvador Open with sponsors from Missionary Mall, CTR clothing, Paper mate, Agua Cristal, Pop tarts, and Kodak haha. We played with a paper football and on a par five course. I shot a 91 so one over par ha I'll send some pictures of that. But other than that not a whole lot happening.

I love you all and pray for you always, remember to be thankful for everything you have in your lives. Learn to love the scriptures if you haven't already.

 

¡Que Dios le bendiga!

 Love,

 Elder Jorgensen

September 10, 2012

¡Que Onda!

 I can`t believe my first six weeks in El Salvador are already over. Looking back I`ve changed so much already and I`m so excited to see what the Lord has planned for me for the rest of the mish! Most likely after the next six weeks I will be training..so I`m already nervous about that haha. This week was a great week though! It started off way good on Tuesday when I got TWO PACKAGES from you guys! Everything in them was awesome and nothing had been opened or touched or anything so that was awesome! And I`ve eaten everything except the potatoes I gotta save those bad boys for a special occasion haha. But then I also got letters from Grandma and another letter so this week was great to hear from people! Thank you all so much!

We had another good week though. I had a couple of tough moments with the language I just need to stop getting mad at myself and remember to have patience and trust in the Lord always but it is definitely getting better than when I first got here. This week we had some good lessons though very powerful lessons with all of our investigators except Julio. He had a very tough week and has drank I think four nights last week so not very successful and he didn`t come to church either. So hopefully this new week we will be able to start fresh and ready to re commit him to live the way he needs to in order to get baptized. But our other two investigators are progressing very good! Fautima and Jocelin, I gave about half of those crystal light things or whatever to her because she likes coffee so I made her promise with me to stop if I gave her some of those things. So far so good. Both of their baptismal dates are for the 29th of this month! So keep them in your prayers. And we also found one more kid while we were bus preaching, a nineteen year old kid. He seems very receptive and asked if he could come to church with us during our first lesson! We were like well heck yeah you can! And he brought his dad to church too! We dono about his dad but he is very interested and receptive. And after our first lesson we asked him to say the closing prayer and usually people pray kinda weird here or not at all, well not him! His prayer was so heartfelt. And he asked Heavenly Father to make these things known to him if they are true. I know he will get baptized as long as he makes and keeps commitments, which will just depend on if he reads from the Book of Mormon. Which reminds me I finished Primero Nefí just yesterday! So that was pretty cool too.

Other than those couple little things I really don`t have much to tell ya this week. Oh one day me and Elder Leseur made pancakes, he is one of the zone leaders that lives with us, very funny kid. Anyways we made about ten pancakes in just under an hour and fifteen minutes so that was fantastic! haha Our little portable stove doesnt get very hot but they were dang good. Oh we added up our numbers from the first six weeks and we did 1001 LPE`s or street contacts! So that was pretty cool. Elder Hammond said him and one of his companions made a goal to do 1000 in twelve weeks and they only got like 700 and somethin which isn`t bad but we just did really good. So we have set the bar high for ourselves. Hopefully we can keep the work up!  Sorry I dont have a whole lot to write about but thank you for everything all your prayers and support.

 

I love you all! Que Dios le bendiga!

 

Elder Jorgensen

September 3, 2012

¡¿Que yonda mi familia?!

 

I can´t believe its already been three months. It seems like it´s been a long time since I was home but at the same time it really doesn´t. But holy crap we did so much stuff this week, like always haha. I have a hard time believing there are missionaries that work harder than us... but I know there are some and that is the kind of missionary I want to be! Well, I think the biggest question you guys have is the language and food ha so I´ll try to answer both. The members of the ward said they can see a difference and that I have improved a lot, I don´t know if they are being nice or really mean it. If I had a latino companion I know my Spanish would be a lot better but I love Elder Hammond he is a stud and a hard worker. President has used examples of things Elder Hammond has done in meetings with other missionaries and stake presidents and crazy stuff like that, so I don´t mind kinda sittin back and just learning from him. But my understanding of the language is pickin up slowly so there ya go. Alrighty food, first off I hate goin grocery shopping when Im starving cause I feel like I could eat everything in the store haha. But the food is...alright haha our cocinera makes a lot of the same stuff and it´s cooked in just pure fatty grease so it actually might be possible for me to gain weight finally but it´s at the wrong time cause I dont work out hard ha. But anyways last Saturday so like two days ago we got chicken wings bought from a store!! So freakin good! I had 26 and three bananas and then we had some fanta orange soda it was awesome. But other than that the members feed us debéis en cuando, every once in a while, and usually it is pretty decent. Rice is always common and beans but its really good.

 

Anyways on to this week. We had a baptism!!! I´m sorry I left my camera at the house this morning cause it was kinda crazy but I'll get the pictures to ya next week. It was Raul though, and this kid is a stud. He already went out tracting with us once before he was baptized I think I told ya that already though. But it was awesome to see him get there and I bet within a couple weeks he will be passing the sacrament he is so good. This week we had changes again and I ended up bein the senior companion for the day, and my companion was the district leader so I was like crap I hope everything goes good today, don´t wanna screw up in front of him haha. So of course every lesson but one fell through...so rough. But it was alright we ended up doin a ton of LPE´s and I did my first bus preaching, and it really wasn´t scary or anything but bus preaching isn´t very successful. Still I got to learn a ton that day, being a senior companion in charge of planning and leading the lessons, knowing the area and how to get everywhere was kinda hard, and just trying to be in control of everything is a lot of pressure haha. I have even more respect for trainers now and every senior companion actually. Other than that crazy day we didn´t have much...we had a multi zone meeting on Tuesday so that was sweet got to learn a ton and see Elder Puaka again the Tongan from the MTC that I sent you a picture of ha he has lost a ton of weight. But anyways other than that not a whole lot of excitement.

 

We didn´t find any new investigators this week so that was a little disappointing, but even more was Hermano Julio. It wasn´t his best week. He drank twice. But yesterday we set a baptism date for him on October 20, he has a lot to do before then but if he is serious about this he will be able to get everything done and worked out so he can make it. It was so hard though we were over one night and he was upstairs in bed, they are one of the most well to do people in our ward, and so we were talking with his wife and daughter who is 7 I think and we asked her to say the prayer. It was one of the most innocent prayers I have ever heard, I started crying in the middle of it because she prayed for her "dad to have less money so he couldn´t buy bad things anymore," holy cow...If only he could realize how much influence and how much this could mean to his family to be able to live together forever as an Eternal Family. He is a great guy and very nice he just needs to get over this addiction. Other than that not a whole lot of much to report on with other investigators cause we don´t have many, just two one is the sister of Raul and the other is an 18 girl named Jocelin and was a reference from a member and they both look pretty promising so that´s awesome. I just really want to find a family! I didn´t think it would be this hard to find a family with our message ha. Missions down here are just as hard as everywhere else I think cause people are not very willing to change their beliefs. If they could just see more of the big picture..But this week we had another church attendance of over a hundred, if all the menos activos we visited woulda showed up we coulda had over 120 but we had 104. And this week we contacted 237 people in the streets, standard of excellence for our mission is 140 so yeah we're workin hard haha.

 

But sounds like stuff is goin good at home. Brandi is lovin cross country so thats awesome. And Hillcrest is doin good work in football, I miss playin football so much haha it´s crazy I wish I coulda done better in my season. And work is just normal work so that's too bad haha. Hopefully that rain did help with all the fires cause there are a ton of them! You guys need rain like we get here every night, usually it pours for about an hour or so and then just kinda rains the rest of the night but usually we get an inch or two i would say almost every night, a lot of nights we are sprinting home just absolutely soaked..I´m way faster than my comp and he still brags about how fast he was haha anyways...But yeah hot in the day pouring at night. Oh I got a letter from Nate today and obviously he never got my letter that I sent a month ago cause it said I haven't heard from you in a while I hope you're doin great. So I'm gonna write him again soon so if you wanna write him and explain what happened cause i feel bad haha. Still havent gotten any packages yet but my comp says i should get them sometime soon so I'm hopin by next week maybe? Anyways that's all I got for now ha I love you all and hope you're all doing great actually I know you're all doing great! Just remember when we are doing the things the Lord wants us to do he is bound to bless us. So keep up all the good stuff you´re doin and keep sending the prayers and I'll just keep receiving them hahaha I love you all and remember you always!

  

Love,

Elder Jorgensen