December 24, 2012

Hey everyone so it`s Christmas Eve so my email probably isn`t gonna be very long since I`m skyping you tomorrow!! Heck Yeah!!!!!! So yeah just a quick email that I had a pretty normal week and not many new investigators. I`m starting to find the problem for our ward and maybe like all the wards here. Missionaries have been baptizing for just numbers for a long long time so now there are a lot of members but nobody is really converted so we are also working on that and making sure our future converts really are converts and not just baptismal dates. But I`m doing great down here, this week we found the owner of Biggest, a restaurant chain down here that`s like BK. So yeah actually they weren`t there but his wife is an inactive member so we`re gonna go see if we can`t reactivate her and baptize one of the most powerful families in El Salvador ha so that should be fun. But other than that I`ll talk to you tomorrow! Love you all and have a Merry Merry Christmas!! And remember who we are remembering this Christmas Season and why He is so important to every single one of us. We owe Him all that we have. You`re all in my prayers and have fun!!

 

Love,

Elder Jorgensen

December 17, 2012

first and last pictures are a vacation house, it has four pools, two of those are the other pics, they are on the beach! the tide was high in these pics but when its low it`s a sand beach so pretty nice stuff here!

 

What`s up family and friends?! Hope everyone is doing great and as excited for Christmas as I am. Next Tuesday we will be skyping so Monday I might be emailing you a little more information like exact time or whatever but I`m not exactly positive because we get to go to the temple on Christmas Eve! Didn`t know it was open on Christmas Eve but whatever we`re going haha. But I`m pretty sure it will be sometime around ten, that`s what I`m shooting for anyways. But anyways I`ll give you the low down on this week.

 

First off me and Elder Scurr are becoming great friends and I don`t remember if I told ya but he is from Arizona and lives pretty close to Elder LeSueur so there is a good chance of me visting all these guys here in about 17 months or so haha. But this week me and him worked really hard to try to find people because this is kinda a tough area. We are in a branch and I guess the attendance at church is usually in the sixties but these two Sundays I`ve been here we have had low attendance, 42 yesterday so not good. From everything I`ve found out, it just sounds like the people are pretty proud and they can`t seem to figure out how to become a ward family. So our goals are to help the leaders of this branch take responsibility for things.

 

We had a good week though trying to find less actives and getting them to church but everyone just seems to make excuses or they are kinda hipocritical so that makes it kinda tough and annoying. Everyone just says primero Dios and Si Dios permite I really don't like those phrases haha

This week we found a few new investigators and I have some pics of one family, just wait til you see this place, it is awesome haha. but we will see how they do. We have one family and they have been reading and everything and they believe it and stuff which is great, but they don`t know it to be true. So we are working hard for them to gain their own testimonies so they can be true converts to this Gospel.

 

This week we also had our zone conference, and wow! If Nate is like our zone leaders it would be awesome to work with him. These two missionaries are so powerful and I actually am going on divisions with one tomorrow so I`m excited for that. The zone leaders receive instructions basically from the Mission President every month and then they teach us and tell us what the plans are to change this mission. I`m starting to find out more and more that this mission did not used to be good... I`ll go more into that on Christmas.

 

But anyways I`m doing great down here in the new hoootttttt area. But it`s awesome I`m excited to be here. And the videos and pictures were sweet ha. Just a little reminder you guys can send pictures in emails and letters too ha I love seeing pictures of everyone at home so...yep haha. The Christmas party sounded fun for you guys, my bowling skills I obtained in college are probably gone by now, but I am getting better at soccer so that`s cool. But hope everyone at home enjoys their last week of school and work before Christmas Break! Everyone who has finals this week...I feel bad for ya haha but good luck! And family I will be SEEING you on Christmas!!!

 

Love,

Elder Jorgensen

New Area December 10, 2012

Hello from El Salvador!

 

So this last week we had transfers, I was pretty sad to leave my first area but I knew it was time to move on and keep learning. So Wednesday we got to changes meeting and I have been moved to El Puerto de la Libertad, port of liberty. Remember how I said El Salvador had one of the top beaches in the world? Yeah no big deal, but that is my area now haha freakin legit! It`s so sweet here, reminds me exactly of our cruise so at the same time that is kinda hard cause I just want to hang out but there is a lot of work to do here. The area is HUGE I can ride a bus for an hour and a half and still be in my area. All we have is a branch here and not a whole lot of members. We only had 56 people at church on Sunday at that was just because two gringo families came to church (we're doing FHE with them tonight haha) but yeah plenty of work here to do.

 

There are a lot of less actives we can work with and right now we are teaching three investigator families so we`re trying to increase that number. This is a really hard area to baptize in, well that`s what I`ve heard dono if I believe it so we`re gonna work hard to change that rumor. I think there have been 3 baptisms this year and 2 are now inactive so that`s a problem we got too. Oh my new companion is Elder Scurr from Mesa Arizona. He`s got 17 months in the mission so just a little bit of time ha. But he really wants to get the work going here too, he hasn`t had a baptism in awhile, about a year today actually, so he`s ready to find em and dunk em. He`s a good teacher though and actually shares the times in the lesson with me. So I`m actually teaching now, with Elder Hammond and Monares they pretty much taught everything and left me with nothing to say. But he was way impressed with my Spanish so he said to me I hope you`re ready to teach a lot cause I want you to talk more than me. We`ll see how that goes.

 

Also my first week here was like the annual festival for El Puerto so there was fireworks everynight and people going nuts. We were walkin home from dinner one night and a huge group of people started running towards us, it turns out they were running because they were getting chased by a guy with fireworks strapped to his back. And not just like bottle rockets and roman candles, he had those but he also had the freakin big ones and was shooting those at people. We almost got hit a couple times but we made it so thanks for your prayers that day haha. But no it was fun, then there was a big firework show at night, nothing like IF fireworks though.

 

And at the changes meeting I received two packages...And I`ve already opened all my Christmas presents haha thank you so much for them though. And the scriptures were cool, that was a good idea. And the stuff inside was good too, I`ll be enjoying all that for a while. And on Friday we had our Christmas party at the President`s house. They had our zone and one other zone come up and we played games and read a Christmas story and ate imported American steak for lunch!!!!! Holy crap I thought I died when I ate the food.ha it was freakin delicious. We played a bunch of minute to win it games so that was way cool. And it was nice that they tried to help us have a good Christmas.

Other than all that, I don`t got much to say..Keep reading your scriptures everyday and keep praying for me haha. I love you all so much and thank you for your prayers and support always.

 

Love,

Elder Derrick Jorgensen

December 3, 2012

Well what a week I had here in El Salvador. It was a pretty crazy week full of some pretty good stuff. First of all on Tuesday we did service up at a members house. We went up there and he had a huge tree for us to cut down, luckily he had two machetes though so it only took us about three hours haha my hands hurt so bad afterwards. I have some pictures and a video of the tree falling so I`ll send some of those home. This week was also the start of December which means I am now officially over six months done with my mish, craziness. I didn`t do a whole lot for the six months but I did burn the tie, and ate dinner with Douglas` family, we made some pretty bomb pupusas so that was good.

 

There family is still doing way good by the way. In fact we are baptizing Helen, the older sister, this Saturday or Friday. She is a powerful investigator, she always reads and is willing to do anything for this Gospel, such a good example. ..But I am probably not going to be here for her baptism because my comp is going to be training. I don`t know for sure yet but I`m probably gonna be getting changed out which kinda sucks now, I wanted to stay in this ward until after Christmas. But I dono we`ll see what happens. But some other good news is we found William and baptized him this last Saturday!! So that was a really good day too except we did the baptism at like 8 in the morning so not many members were there, kinda felt bad about that. And then after the baptism we did more service at Familia Palacios house, our cocinera. We painted their house and then got a ton of pizza so that was a good time too. Then Saturday night there was some party for a restaurant here and they set off fireworks so we got on top of a roof and watched em...Nothing like Idaho Falls fireworks, they were freakin tiny and no noise.

 

Sorry my email is short again, everyone wants to go play soccer. But sounds like things at home are going good! Maybe a little bit boring but hey that`s ok haha. I`m definitely gonna miss Christmas this year, here all they do is set off fireworks and drink quite a bit so I`m not sure if we`ll be allowed outside yet for Christmas and because I`m getting transfered I`ll have to find out what`s up with the skype thing and all that. I know I need to do better on my emails but I love you all and hope you have a great week and always remember this Gospel and how fortunate we are to have everything we have.

 

Love,

Elder Jorgensen