Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días! 

Hey what is going on everyone! I hope that everyone had an awesome week and that you are all ready for an awesome week!! 

So first things first, I have an assignment! I was called to be a trainer and they are sending me to open up a new sector! Crazy awesome stuff. They are sending me to a place called Achupallas and I will be training over there. I´m pretty excited! So they have me going to office on wednesday for a trainer meeting and then I will meet my new comp!

We had a ton of fun in this companionship and I hope that I can hang out with Elder Jack after the mission, good man him. We had an experience with some girls this week! Not bragging more of kind of weird. We ended up sitting in a house waiting for the family to be ready for a family home evening and in the end two girls winked at us and we ended up leaving! We did not want to be in that situation...freaky.

Family, friends, anyone else who may be reading this email. I understand that there are many things negative that are happening in the family, or in your lives in general. I understand that people make choices and other people may not agree with those choices. This includes myself. We are not perfect and we have a lot to improve on always, But people, we are adults, or at least able to understand whats going on. My invitation for you all is to be someone better. We can always better ourselves and I hope that this doesnt make this email negative because it isnt meant to be. But please take the invitation.

I love you all and I hope you all have a wonderful week and are all working the hardest that you can!! 

Elder Jorgensen

P.S. the picture that looks like weed in a jar is NOT weed peeps. Its just a bunch of "mate" (tea that isnt against the word of wisdom) that was gifted to me from a member lol

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días! 

Goooood mornnnnniiiinnngg Vietnam! Name that movie. How are you all? I hope you are all working hard and doing the best you can every day! This past week was pretty normal for the life of a missionary. We have a lot of baptismal interviews coming up and so we are always traveling which is kind of nice sometimes just to do something different. We also reactivated a family that has been inactive for almost 7 years! They are a really good family. Then we had a baptism on Saturday and the girl ended up asking for my companion to visit her after his mission...proud of him!

I hope everyone is doing well. I´m going to try something different with the emails and try to read not as many. I think it will help a little bit with time management and I can get a little more done. But keep on sending the emails and I will get back to all of you for sure! Love you all and keep working hard!

I dont have pics this week sorry!

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días a todos! 

This week was pretty long for me to be honest. Nothing bad happened but I think it was more of an obedience thing for us so it was a little longer. We had a really awesome week, and taught a ton of people. We made new goals and games to play when we talk to people in the street which makes finding people to serve and teach a little more fun! Elder Jack is an awesome example to me and continues to help me along the way here. We have made a plan to have a huge desert party after the mission so we are looking forward to that!

The ward here is super hard to work with. No one wants to help the missionaries and it makes our job a little harder. But we will continue to do what we are doing and have fun while doing it! I loved calling yesterday for mothers day and the opportunity to talk to everyone. Brax seems to be doing friggin awesome in school and work, proud of that kid. Kaydon is the funniest kid, he will be 17 this year so look out ladies you got a "unique" guy coming your way! LOL And Colton is doing awesome too which is good. Glad to hear that everyone is getting along and sharing the love.

I got some pictures together for you guys so here ya go! Love you all and have an awesome week!!

Elder Jorgensen

Jackson's Zone Conference

I love that I have access to the Mission Blog where I can actually get pictures of my boy!

He is NOT good at taking, or sending, pictures.

Whoever it is that takes these pictures, even of the back of his cute head... THANK YOU!!!

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días todos! 

I´m so sorry for the late email! It has been a crazy day today. I started the day off with making some calls to the family and then we had our zone activity. We played battle ball and I have some how managed to hurt my back! What a surprise right? But in all seriousness I´m good, I´m just a little sore from all the knocking around.

This week was super crazy. We had a lot of changes in the mission and we have a lot of different responsibilities now. One of them is counting how many hours we are actually outside. That rule is a little much for me but I know it is set there for a reason so I will go along with it. My companion and I are doing really awesome! He is a little frustrated today because he wasnt able to call his family. I dont know why he didnt do it in the morning but all is well.

I dont have my camera with me at the moment but I will for sure send photos next week! And I´m so sorry if I wasnt able to get to all the emails today but I hope everyone is doing well and I will talk to you all soon. Also looking forward to calling mom on sunday! 

Love you all and stay safe this week!

P.S sorry for the short email, we are kind of in a hurry today.

Elder Jorgensen

Just One More

Sweet Elder Jorgensen face-timed with me Monday morning.

Then he called back that afternoon.

He needed to talk to his mom just a little bit more.

He told me that he's really struggling.

He said that he gets frustrated with other missionaries not following the rules, being lazy and not wanting to work.

He told me that he went on a mission for one reason - to serve.

He said that he gets frustrated with members who don't help, missionaries who don't serve and his lack of patience with all of it.

I told him to focus on him and to not allow others' behavior to effect him.

I told him that he cannot control others' agency.

I told him that all he can do is be his best self.

He said that he's homesick almost every day... but not to the point of wanting to come home... just missing things. I told him that's normal!!

Today is Day 143 in the field!

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días! 

How is everyone doing?? I hope all is well with everyone and that you all had an amazing week!

This week was super crazy for all of us here in Chile! We had to move to a different house which is so good. The other houses didnt have water and the one after that didnt have enough room for everyone so we found a house that has 2 bathrooms and fits the 4 of us which is really good.

We had a visit from one of the apostles which was pretty cool! I got to shake his hand and we learned a lot from him. He really is a good man, i guess that is why he is an apostle! I noted down a couple things that I need to do better. I am at a point where I know the things I need to know. I just need to improve those things.

We got a call last night from the APs. One of our zone leaders is going to be in the office as a third AP which is really weird. He has a special assignment that know one knows what it is. We will be getting a new zone leader here tomorrow I think and one of the zone leaders said I would probably be made a leader of some kind because the President has been asking them questions about me and my different abilities. No idea what that means!

I only hope that all of you will have an amazing week and will stay safe. You are always in my prayers and I hope that all of you have recieved my emails. If not let me know and I will try and fix that fast! I love all of you!

Elder Jorgensen

Here is a pic of the guys from the zone when we had our conference.

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días todo! Espero que todos tuvieron una buena semana y van a tener una mejor semana esta semana!

Hey everyone how is it going? This week was pretty good, it was so crazy. The beginning of the week was just pure work and there was never time to rest or even eat because I was so exhausted. My other companion ended his mission and that made me the temp district leader. So I made the calls and did the numbers that kind of stuff. Then when one of our zone leaders transfered to the mission office I became the temp zone leader and that just about killed me because I was doing the district leader stuff and then making calls to all of our zone and the mission office.

I also had to prepare our zone because Elder Anderson of the twelve is going to be coming this week so the whole mission of Vina is heading to Santiago Chile for a day to listen to him. My new companion is Elder Jack, he is just an interesting guy. Don´t get me wrong he is really awesome and really loves the work but he always asks really obvious questions like "do you have the keys" when I´m in the process of locking the door or stuff like that. But its all good.

I´m really excited to work with him and work a little harder in this sector. I confirmed another person yesterday during sacrament meeting and we have a lot of appointments coming up too this week! I hope you all are doing well and continue to send emails! Love you all!

First photo- the other zone leader in one of our adventures.

Second photo- One of the views from our apartment

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Good afternoon or good morning depending on where you guys are at! 

This has been a pretty good week! I can say that I had my first "project" as Uncle Brandon calls them and I can say that it was a success. I put some sense into him and we ended his last week with a baptism! He ended his mission working hard and I`m proud of him for doing what he could to have worked so hard. My new companion is Elder Jack and has been here for a good amount of time. Super excited!

I`m doing pretty good. I`m really bored which is bad because I have nothing to do. i`m staying with the zone leaders right now and we are in a trio because the transfer is on wednesday. I dont have to change my location just my companion which is a little less stressful. I helped make calls yesterday and today to let people know they are being transfered. One elder almost threw up so that was rough. I also finished my 12 weeks so I`m no longer a "nubie"! 

I hope you are all doing well! It is getting a little cold here but we are all hanging in there. Here are some photos of my "ghetto" and of the 700 ties that the zone leaders bought for 60 bucks and that I`ve been sorting for the past 2 days!

Love you all!

Elder Jorgensen 

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días! And if you dont understand the subject line thats okay. Just a question for all the youngens in Utah right now.

This week has been a little better. The highlight was obviously general conference! What a crazy conference, they were not messing around when they all gave their talks. There was something different about this time around I dont know what but it was different. I watched every other session in spanish to help improve a little bit of my vocab. I ended up just being super stressed out in the end but its all good.

My companion is doing a lot better this week. I snapped at him and ranted for a while and it kind of shut him up and he started to work! Its a miracle! We dont have a working shower right now so we have to wash out of a bowl which is just sooo fun you guys have no idea. We are hoping to change our house here in about a week. 

That´s about all I have not a whole lot to talk about this week. Here are a couple pictures of most of my study sessions!

Love you all and have a safe and wonderful week!

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

P.S. My missionary sucks at taking pictures!!!!

Buenas tardes mi familia y amigos. Espero que ustedes tuvieron una buena semana!

Holy cow, another week gone by, super fast. I´m killing the game out here. We continue to have a little bit of a struggle of people to teach but all in all we aren´t doing half bad! We are shooting for another baptism this week and we have a couple of other people we are teaching as well that I believe will be ready here soon. 

We also had our Stake conference yesterday. Super awesome that I can understand a good chunk of spanish now and my head doesn´t want to explode all the time. That´s progress and I´m grateful for that. It was both a quick and a slow week. We didn´t have much progress in the finding of people to teach. Almost nothing. We averaged about 3 people per day. A little rough but we set goals for this week and Elder Rubio is ready to work.

I hope you are all doing well and that you are all hanging in there. Every day of our lives is a challenge and can be hard but remember that you are loved and there are those who are watching over us to help us with anything that we may need. Thank you all for your love and support and I look forward to the end of this week to hear from our prophet! Love you all and have an amazing week!

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenas tardes! Espero que todo esta bien!

This week was definitely a hard one boys and girls. My patience was tested to the max, I´ve never been more frustrated to be completely honest. This week has been the week of arguments and fights with the companion. The first major thing that happened was he ate all the food, and I mean all the food. Everything down to the last grain of rice we had. And we couldn´t buy anything because it was the weekend and it is a rule that we can´t buy food or things like that. So we had to eat the crackers in our emergency kit for dinner because we had nothing. yay

The second thing that was a lot bigger than the first thing was my companion decided that he doesn´t want to work. And I know this because he told me straight to my face that he doesn´t want to. He doesn´t have the motivation and refuses to work. So because of that I had a quick emergency exchange with the zone leaders because they know I want to work and they can´t switch my companion because he only has 3 weeks left. The awesome thing that happened because of that was the people that I taught in the other sector asked me to baptize one of them! So on saturday I baptized Ruth! (in the picture below).

So needless to say this has been a hard week. But I took this opportunity to learn a lesson. I don´t have a whole lot of patience and that is okay. There are resources that I can go to to calm down or change my thoughts if they are negative. I´m actually extremely grateful for this challenge because I learned more than I could have learned in a lifetime. And as of right now, I´m a little bit better. Steps people, steps.

Thank you for all that you do for me and for your thoughts and prayers! Continue to send emails and questions if you have any!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

¡Buenos días! Espero que sus semanas fue super bien! 

This week has been a little bit better as you all know my companion broke his ear drum last week and the result of that was he is not able to hear 100 percent right now but the good news is that he will be able to have a full recovery and hear out of that ear again. 

I am doing just so awesome. We invited 2 families for baptism this last week. One said yes and the other said they will have to think about it. That is totally okay too because the father has a serious drinking problem. I just hope that I can share my spirit and my experiences with them to help them find the correct path to follow. I have also learned that no matter how hard I try I can not have all the patience in the world with my companion. He just eats all the food we have as long as he has time to do so. So the result is that I just try to keep him busy when we have down time. But he is getting better for sure.

I hope that everyone is doing well and staying warm in that cold weather. It´s starting to get a little colder during the nights here but we are staying safe and working as hard as we can for sure! Thank you for all the support from you guys and I hope you all have a great week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos Días familia y amigos!

This week has been one for the books I´ll tell ya. Every day seems to be a new adventure and I continue to learn new and important things every day. I hope all is well with everyone in Utah or those that are in your missions!

So the first thing is we have been in and out of the hospital this week. My companion has broken his ear drum in his right ear as well has had an infection in his throat. Needless to say he is in a lot of pain. I was able to give him a blessing the other day which I think helped but he is just always in a bitter mood because of his health.

I am doing okay. This week has been a little rough for me and that´s totally okay. Sometimes we have weeks that just don´t go the way we want them too. That´s something that I have learned on my mission for sure. Patience is a big thing here, whether it be waiting in lines or trying to understand and speak the language. The spanish here is hard, it´s fast, and sometime they don´t pronounce their letters. And at the same time I´m trying to learn a little of French and Portugese to try to talk to everyone here. My tongue is all kinds of mixed up.

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe and warm. It is blazing hot down here and I can´t wait for the day that it changes to colder weather. I love you all tons, thank you to mom, Kay, and X for the package! It´s awesome! And thank you all for your support and love. I feel your prayers each and every day. Continue to send emails and I will try my best to answer all of them!

I will be calling Mom and the boys next week around 7ish as well.

And sorry for no pictures, I forgot my little transfer thingy.

Con mucho amor,

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos días mi familia y amigos! Yo espero que todos tienen un buen dia! 

So yeah this week has been pretty awesome. Really fast for us to be honest. We had interviews with the mission president this past week and he said in all his time in the mission he hasn't seen someone progress faster than I have. I hope that is true because I think my spanish is kind of crappy right now to be honest. He also hinted at a leadership position in the future so I will be working to improve myself.

I finished the Book of Mormon again. I honestly don't remember if I said that in the last email but I thought I would just drop it in there. This week was also the week that the fleas would come out to play. Friggin little satans running around chewing on my body. Literally covered in bites right now, so that hasn't been fun.

We have about 3 families we are preparing for baptism right now. The father of one of these families bore his testimony yesterday during sacrament meeting and it was really rather beautiful to be honest. He doesn't have a strong christian background but he continues to strengthen his faith every day. We are both doing really well here in Calera and we will be together until the end of his mission in 6 more weeks!

I hope that you are all doing well and continue to work your hardest every day.

Con mucho amor, 

Elder Jorgensen

And sorry I don't have any pictures for this week!

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos dias!

I´m so sorry for the late email I had to send a couple of things to the president of the mission.

I am so so good, we had a really good week even though the numbers didn´t show it. We have two baptisimal interviews coming up and a couple of lessons with some who just barely got baptized so that´s pretty cool.

I haven´t wanted to kill my companion as much this week. He hasn´t touched the peanut butter so that´s a plus. We had to have a talk because he wasn´t talking with me at all and I eventually snapped at him and now he won´t stop talking to me! Karma I guess. We had a couple of families that we taught that have kids. Turns out seeing people with blonde hair is like going to a resort so the kids are always crawling around playing with my hair.

I also learned that I love the food here but it royally destroys my stomach right after so I´ve learned to pace myself and to not agree to more food if offered! I´ve been having a blast down here for sure. We continue to see miracles and families become happier every day! I love you all and I hope you are doing well.

I apologize if I´m not able to respond to all of your emails. I tend to get almost 40 emails every week so I try my best!

Love you all!

Elder Jorgensen

Missionary Moment - Chile Vina Del Mar Mission

Buenos dias mi familia! Yo espera ustedes son buenos! 

This week has been so awesome and so crazy of course. Every week seems to be that way. We confirmed 3 people last week into the church, I was super nervous because it needed to be done in spanish obviously and I had a total of 5 days in Chile but it ended up turning out alright. Church down here is way different, the music is different and they don´t really follow the teaching plans.

I´ve been super good, we have had a lot of people to teach and a ton of contacts. Some days are good some are bad. On our good days we are averaging 30 or so contacts and the bad average like 7. So definitely a test of my patience. My companion drove me crazy last week, he ate all the friggin peanut butter! Not a smart move on his part, I live for that stuff.

Not much happened this week. I taught a lesson yesterday in church and we keep ourselves busy always. I hope you are all doing well and that you are staying safe up there in that cold weather! Suckers! Oh and go check out our blog! vamosvina.blogspot.com and keep sending emails!

Love you all tons, con mucho amor