March 25, 2013

Yummy mangos!!!

 

 



Woah... I´m going to be 20 years old tomorrow, I don´t know how this last year has gone by so fast. A lot of things have happened to me in this past year and I´m so thankful for the changes that I can see in myslef. First off thank you everyone for the happy birthday emails, those made me pretty dag gum happy and even though I didn´t get my package I got a present of seeing you guys on a beach in California. So basically we are in the same place! Ha I hope the beach there is a little more tranquilo than it is here, we are starting semana santa, holy week, and everyone and there dog heads to the beach so this week will be crazy. Hopefully even though it is gonna be crazy we will see more success than we saw this week. It was another low week, for numbers anyways. But I think I learned a lot. 

 

We had some bad luck this week though. Our two most positive families dropped us. One family decided Jehovah Witness is the way to go and the other family just doesn´t want us to come back for a couple weeks...So needless to say, once again we don´t have many investigators to visit so that means a lot of walking every day. Usually we can find people to talk to in the street but these last few weeks no one will give us the time of day so that´s a little disappointing. But we did have some success with some less actives. Our church attendance was 63 this last Sunday, the highest I´ve seen here in El Puerto. One less active family lives about 45 minutes from the church and they walk the whole way because they live very humbly. It was awesome to see them there though. It brightened my week quite a bit. 

 

Friday was a little bit of a tough day for us. Every Friday we have a weekly planning session where we plan our goals and everything for the upcoming week. To finish the planning session we do what is called a companionship inventory where we talk about the strengths of our companionship and set goals on how we can improve and be more unified. Every time we do it I ask my comp if there is anything I can do that will help improve our relationship or anything that I do that bugs him, stuff like that. Well this week he tried to tell me I needed to be more kind to him and show more charity, and well then lets say I gave him a piece of my mind as well .... so we had a pretty rough start on Friday morning.    Pretty much Friday in the morning was pretty bad.  On Friday everything fell threw except for our Family Night we had in the church. We´re trying to get the branch more unified so we played a bunch of games and gave a small message and then had refreshments, there was about 35 people there so that was awesome. 

 

 

This week we also did a fast on Saturday as a district, it´s pretty hard to fast here cause it´s about 105 degrees or so plus humidity during the day and a cool 84 to 90 degrees at night, but anyways like five minutes after starting the fast we walked by a water stand with what I thought were two models giving out free water. Freakin temptations haha!!!   It was hard but we made ´er through and were able to complete our fast. Well that´s pretty much all I got this week, hopefully my birthday brings us some luck or blessings cause we need em. I hope all you guys at home have an awesome Spring Break and enjoy Sea World, Universal Studios, and Disneyland. I´ll be thinking about ya and praying like always. Love you all so much!!

 

Elder Jorgensen

1 Nephi 18:16 March 18, 2013

Hammock Time!!

 

 

Bananas that don't taste the same.



What`s Up everybody! I had a way better week this week than last week so hopefully I`ll have some more stuff to put on this email ha. Let`s see first off me and my comp are doing lots better now. I had to convince him that the mission is supposed to be fun. This work is the Lord`s work, and we are bringing eternal happiness to these people so it only makes sense that we are able to have fun in the mission. I told that to him on Tuesday and every day has been getting better and better. Saturday was probably our best day just cause we were able to keep a positive attitude all day with jokes and stuff like that. I definitely need to be able to be me as a missionary and not some robot but things are going much better.

A little info about our investigators and the branch real quick. We are teaching complete families right now, first time in my mission that I`ve been able to say that and it feels good haha. The only problem with all of our investigators is attending church. Because my area is on the beach it is a tourist area meaning guess who has to work every Sunday in restaurants, hotels, cleaning and police and all those jobs. So that part is going to be kind of difficult for us with all of our investigators but we`re not losing faith in them. Our most positive family this week we just found out that the wife is a Jehova Witness but less active but they are occasionally listening to JH missionaries so that  sucks ha. They are really solid, but they are having a hard time praying about the Book of Mormon. Our other families are pretty new and hard to find so that is another obstacle but just read the scripture reference and it explains how I`m feeling.

 

This week I had two awesome meetings. Wednesday we had our trainers meeting with President and Thursday we had our Zone Meeting. In the trainers meeting..wow it was awesome, I left there with a completely different outlook on my mission. Just erasing fear with faith. Thursday as always zone meetings get me pumped too. It was pretty much an extension of the trainers meeting erasing fear with faith and enjoying my time being a missionary having fun! Then on Thursday I had divisions with another missionary Elder De Leon from the Dominican Republic, it was a pretty fun day with him too. His Spanish is so much clearer than my comp`s so I loved that part ha I didn`t have to ask him to repeat everything he said. On Friday we had a cool experience too. We were just walkin from Angela`s house to another lesson and a silver van drove by and layed on the horn. I thought it was maybe some white members visiting one of the beaches but about three minutes later we hear someone yell ELDERS!! we turned around and it was President Glazier and his family! His son and family are visiting him for spring break. So we took a quick picture with them and they gave us a juice and some m&ms. I chugged the juice but gave the m&ms to some kids, made their day haha.

 

Oh we also had our house inspection this week. So our District Leader came over on Saturday and somehow we passed ha. He was like wow I`m really suprised at how clean this house is way to go guys. I know it`s not clean at all and I didn`t believe him at all when he said it...so I gave him some candy to help us out there too haha I think it worked. This week was better with lessons too but just a little bit. We didn`t break 20. I feel pretty good if we get 20-25 lessons especially in this area cause it`s freakin huge haha. But anyways. Sounds like everything else is going kinda slow at home. And windy. Still no wind and no change in temperature here. Just freakin hot and humid all day all night. I can`t remember what a cloud looks like anymore haha jk. I still miss the snow though...long time till i see it again dang it. But thank you all for your prayers last week and all your help. I am doing much better now. I love you all so much and hope everyone is doing great and is taking time to read their scriptures everyday. Scriptures are the key to true happiness, just take the time to let them change you. I know this church is true and I love you all so much!!!

Elder Jorgensen

March 11, 2013

Hope everyone is doing good and loving life! We had kinda a rough week down here with only 13 lessons in total this week. I think that this week was my lowest number wise of my mission so far. I know that numbers don´t matter though. The Lord knows how much effort I´m putting into this work and it is up to other people to use their agency to listen to the message of the Restoration. I´m still keeping positive though. Trying to get to be better friends with my companion because it gets a little rough at times, really we are just not into the same things and then add the difference in culture and language and it makes for some silent boring times. But we´re changing that, well I´m trying to anyways haha.

Probably one of the neatest things that happened to me this week was in a lesson with an investigator who we had to drop.. But in the lesson he said to me that I listen with my heart and humbly teach and listen. That was a big boost of confidence and motivation that I definitely needed this week. With everything falling through, that little sentence let me know how I´m doing as a missionary and a person. On Wednesday we had a Priesthood meeting in the chapel to try to make some plans to get this branch going and to get people more excited about the work. I would call the meeting semi successful because we had about four other people there. This is definitely a tough area, all the more reason to work extra hard though. I really don´t know what to put in this email though ha. I didn´t think I´d have troubles sending long emails home every week to you guys but today I honestly can´t think of many good things to put in this email. I´m so sorry I´ll try to be better next week. But I love you so much and I know this Gospel is true, live this Gospel and let the Lord change you!

 

To answer your questions quickly, district meetings are every Thursday but this Thursday will be a zone meeting. zone meetings are with more missionaries and are way better than district meetings, they only happen once a month though. the mission will be split the end of June.  We don't know who will go where yet but our president will be the president of the El Salvador West Mission.  It's exciting but not at the same time, because I really like President Glazier he is a great leader and example to me. I will definitely buy souvenirs before I leave too. Sorry I don't  have much else to say.

 

Love,

Elder Jorgensen

March 4, 2013

I can´t believe how fast this week went by for us down here, it feels like just yesterday I was emailing you guys. But we had a good week full of work and not so full of great numbers. The mission isn´t about numbers though, the Lord knows how hard we are working and if we are doing our best. Last week started out super fast for us. Our P days...kinda not much fun. ha ha we send our email from the stake center every P day and our stake center is about an hour and fifteen minutes or so from our area. So about two and a half hours every P day I´m stuck on a stupid bus. Then we had to do a bunch of new stuff for my comp cause he is new so he doesn´t have much to eat in the house so that basically took up the rest of our p day. Then Tuesday we had our stud member help us out, Hermano Lopez, we visited a ton of less actives and walked for forever but it was a great morning. Then after that we had to study for like four hours so only taught a couple lessons after that nothing too spectacular. Then Wednesday we had to go to the capital for immigration stuff for my comp cause he is new. So that took about four hours of the day as well, but there I did get to see a bunch of missionaries I haven´t seen in awhile. I saw Elder Reynolds, friend from the MTC in Guatemala, and Elder Scurr again! It was sweet to see those guys there.

 

The rest of Wednesday was spent at Angela´s house preparing a few more things for her baptism and then going to members´ houses trying to invite them to come to the baptism. Inviting members to the baptism of Angela was basically our back up plan if anything fell through, a lot fell through this week so we ended up visiting mostly members. On Thursday though we did find a new investigator family, they are married and have two kids a one year old and a three year old so that was awesome. And they are super positive, but they weren´t home when we passed by their house to pick them up for church yesterday. Friday just ended up being a lot of walking for us though, didn´t have much luck finding people or getting into houses.

 

But finally Saturday saved my week haha. We got to the church at 7:30 and filled up the font and then waited for a bit to go pick up Angela. Once we got back to the church we waited...and waited....and waited some more, finally at about ten we got started with the service. There weren´t too many members there, so I felt kind of bad for Angela, she needs the support of the members. I got to baptize her though and I´m pretty sure she was smiling while she was underwater. It was a way neat experience to help her realize the blessings of the Gospel. I am sure she will stay active, she does have a lot of friends her age in the branch down here and on Sunday she got her Temple Recommend to go do baptisms. So she is way excited to go later this month and visit the Temple! That made my week a lot better and helped me feel like I accomplished even more than I actually did haha.

 

Other than that though, Sunday was a slow day in church. I thought it was gonna be the second Sunday in a row of not having all three classes because there was no water, but we were blessed with a miracle because we got water halfway through testimony meeting. We only had 39 people in church on Sunday, it was a little frustrating for me because I worked harder this week than I have in my mission so far I´m pretty sure, and I didn´t see many fantastic results. There was the baptism though!

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday night we got to eat dinner with the family that gave us turtle eggs, and this time they gave us some other weird thing to eat. Basically it´s sushi of El Salvador...I don´t see it ever getting outside of El Salvador because well it wasn't good. haha. I don´t know how to describe it, but it definitely has the texture of rubber and tastes like I dono just imagine fish guts haha. That was basically my week though and now i gotta go I love you all so much. And thank you for your prayers and your letters I´m still getting. KEEP SENDING LETTERS!! I love hearing from everyone. You are all in my prayers and I hope you have a great week!

 

Love,

Elder Jorgensen