Numero Dos

Hola Familia!

How is everyone doing? Utah had any snow yet? It´s still blazing hot down here and only getting hotter. It´s throwing me off because I´m not used to not having snow and being with the family. I did although get a third package, it had a feliz navidad sign and the ensigns and everything. I think there is one more but I don´t know whats in it. I´m guessing the ties? How many did you send? Also don´t waste any money, space, and time sending more seasoning packets and Ensigns. We can get those here. It was nice getting the Ensign a little early but i don´t think it was worth the money it costs to send it here. I feel bad every time I look at the price on these packages. I will be able to use skype on Sunday so I´m setting up an account today. I only get to use it for one hour.

Well this week has been a week of ¨trunky¨ thoughts. (bags are already in the trunk/wanting to go home.) Christmas isn´t going to be the same. To tell you the truth it´s going to suck. This week has been a little tough thinking about family, friends, skiing and Christmas. The week has also been a little crazy so I haven´t had much time to sit and think. We had 2 service projects and mission Conference for the outside missions. We helped the older guy in our wood with his fire wood again. This time it was only me and Elder Teske. I ended up going through a whole pile of wood pulling nails. He kept getting mad at me because he wanted me to pull nails the way he did it. Even though I was doing it faster my way. It was really funny. On Saturday we helped a family with Cement. I definitely felt Chilean on Saturday. I mixed Cement by hand in the street, watered the dirt and street, and swept the dirt. They often don´t want to pay for cement mixers and so they do it by hand in the street. They also for some reason spray the dirt and the cement, I understand spraying the dirt to keep down on dust but the cement part, I´m a little confused. They also sweep the dirt. I´ll have to get a picture of them sweeping dirt. It´s really funny. Mixing cement in the street was awesome. It was really hard and really hot outside but I now know why a lot of Chileans have really bad backs.

Mission Conference was with all of the missions from a city called Chillan and north. It was the ¨Outside¨ half of the mission. Any of the missions that are south by Conce are the ¨Inside¨. Both inside and outside have there perks. Inside gets mail and packages every week. We on the other hand don´t. The truck they drove up was chuck full of Christmas packages. We had a huge lunch of really good chicken and potatoes. We had 3 different work shops from President and his wife. It was really cool. We watched a video they made for the mission with pictures from all of our activities and zones. Elder Teske sent in a picture of me with my first Completo without me knowing and they put it in.

President told us about how we need to use the members to help in our lessons. After we baptize our investigators we need help from the members to help be friends. He also said they needed a calling. President told us a story about an older guy the had joined the church. He was paralyzed on the whole left side of his body. President saw him out in the hall during classes and asked what he was doing. The guy had told him that he was in charge of ringing the bell for classes. President told us that if it wasn´t for that simple calling to ring the bell, He wouldn´t be there at church. He told us the importance of getting new members a calling even if it´s as simple as ringing a bell. Conference was almost like a Spiritual recharge.

On Saturday night we had a ward party. It was a complete let down. We invited over 100 people and like 20 showed up. They absolutely love fruit cake down here. It´s so gross. Elder Teske decided to have an eating contest to see who could eat a kilo of Pan de Pascua. Of course no one showed up so we had to be one of the eight to eat it. It was so gross. It was quite a sad Christmas party. Nothing goes as planned down here. It has really bugged me because people don´t plan anything until the day of and nothing goes right. If we talk to an investigator or member and ask why they didn´t come to church or something they usually say, I was tired or I was being lazy. The excuses we get are amazing. We knocked a door and a guy came out and said, ¨Estoy ocupado¨ We asked him why and his excuse was that his sister was in the shower...? He was drinking a beer and watching soccer. It drives all of us missionaries nuts. We all share stories of the excuses we have gotten but so far the sister in the shower was the best.

This Sunday we had a surprise though. We had a taxi Driver that the rest of his family had been baptized tell us he didn´t want to get baptized yet. He kept changing his mind and finally Saturday night we got a call saying he wanted to. Sunday we had our second baptism. It kinda bugs me but our investigators think that since I don´t speak very well that I can´t perform a baptism so they automatically choose Elder Teske to baptize them. It´s still a baptism but it just bugs me that they think i´m not capable of doing it. We went through with the baptism and everything went great. They now have a full family baptized. They are waiting for the little kid named Ricardo to be baptized. He´s still only 7. I love the kid though. He´s hilarious. His dads name is Ricardo so they call him Ricardito. They add the -ito or -ita to every word here. It just means small. During service the guy asked me to hand him the hammer with the -ito on the ending of the word. Its really funny.

Jose is doing great he has given up drinking tea and the only problem is, he was married before and not divorced. They are now having to get divorced but that could often take up to a year. His paraja/girlfriend was willing to move out so that he could be baptized. So I guess we´ll see what happens.

The other day we were knocking doors and an older lady answered. She let us in and I really thought it was Mckay´s Grandma. It was like a Chilean Grandma Walker. It was hilarious. She looked exactly like her.

I´m going ahead and buying a bike here. My bike has almost killed me twice. I can get a better bike for about $60 at Lider (Chilean Walmart.) I´m gonna be here for awhile anyway and I´ll try to sell it if I leave to the ¨inside¨. I´m also going to use some money to buy some other random stuff I need. I was also wondering if I should get my suits dry cleaned. They haven´t been done since the 4th week in the MTC. I was wondering if I should trust the Dry cleaning and get them done?

Well I love you guys and hope everything is well. Hopefully the Elf on the Shelf will report good things to Santa and maybe Ainsley will get some good presents. Love you guys and miss you tons.

Con Amor y Feliz Navidad,

Elder Torgersen 

Weekly letter

Hola Family,

How is everyone? How is the weather up there? Snow yet? We are starting to get into summer and it has been completely blazing hot here. I´m definitely missing snow. It doesn´t seem like its December. It doesn´t seem like Christmas yet. It´s really weird not having snow, and having it be so hot.

Well, today we just moved houses. There are 2 sectors in Linares and the house we were living in was more on our side and the other elders were complaining about having to ride their bikes to their sector and back everyday. They ended up renting a house in their sector that was worse than the house we were living in now. We found a newer, cheaper and better house a couple weeks ago and today we moved everything in. We were supposed to be having 2 more elders in our house and sector but they said that will happen next Cambio. So this month me and Elder Teske will have a big house to ourselves. It will be really nice not having to deal with other elders sitting in your study room with a bowl of cereal or something making a mess on my stuff. I found the other elders, multiple times, in our study room either making a mess or eating my food/candy.

Well, this week I had my first mix up of words. A family asked me what food i liked here in Chile and I said I liked the Fruit. They asked me what kind of fruit and I told Them ¨durazno, frutilla, and cerveza. What I said was peaches, strawberries and Beer. What i had tried to say was Cherries. The family gave me a weird look and then busted up laughing. I then realized what i had said. It was hilarious.

I´m really starting to love Chile. They have a lot of weird things but they also have a lot of really cool things here. My companion and I ride around with our kickstands down on our bikes because, for some reason, Chileans freak out and yell,¨Su patita!¨ It´s really funny because they act like if you don´t put it up, It´ll catch on something and kill you. I had a truck load of people yell ¨Su patita!¨ Me and Elder Teske always bust up laughing. I guess it´s just one of those things to keep us from going insane. Another thing is, I love having little stores on like every corner. They usually have little glass bottled sodas for like 25 cents at these stores. The people are really nice and always invite us in for juice or a soda even if they don´t want to hear our message. One thing I´ve learned is they love the Simpson´s and pretty much anything American. We have an investigator that loves movies and always asks us what we liked to watch before our mission. He has a really Nice TV/Computer/sound System For a small house In Chile. He plugs his computer into his TV and watches movies a lot. The other day he and his wife were watching Transformers and they saw the white Military Guy and they were like,¨Hey, that looks like Elder Torgersen.¨ I have been called Justin Bieber and now the military guy from Transformers. I don´t think there has been a day without being called Justin Bieber. 

We have 4-5 really good investigators right now. One of them Is Jose. He is the Chilean Cop that acts like a little kid when we come to teach him. He always runs up the stairs and tells us to wait to get his Book of Mormon. We had a Noche De Hogar with them on Sunday night and made Brownies (Chilean style.) He loved it. The wife is a member and her daughter was there and she had a little girl there that absolutely loved me. She was the cutest little girl. They also have a grandma living with them and she´s a tad bit crazy. One time while we were there she pinched my cheeks just like a Grandma does. It was really weird. José is a stud though. He is so excited to get baptized. He will probably be my first baptism. 

Earlier last week I had to go on a Mini Cambio with the Latin companion in our house. The one they had been having trouble with. He drives me nuts in the house so I wasn´t very excited to work with him. It ended up helping my Spanish and wasn´t as bad as I thought it would be. During a lesson somehow He and our Investigator started talking about movies. He started talking about a bunch of horror movies that are Rated R and asked them if they had seen them and was telling them that they needed to because they were awesome. After the lesson I asked what the crap he was doing and  I basically got after him and told him We were here to teach people about Christ AS representatives of him and he´s asking if they´ve seen some stupid Horror movie. The stuff he does sometimes just blows my mind. 

I´m glad that Dad still calls my name when he needs help for something. Maybe you guys will start to realize how much you relied on me to stuff. I´m surprised you guys figured out the boat. Also I ´m glad Ainsley is praying that I speak the RIGHT Language. For a time there I thought I was speaking Japanese. I`m glad IMO speaking the right language now. This Sunday I realized the Chilean ward was a lot like New Harmony. There´s a lot of old people and only four young men. 2 Priests and 2 Deacons. We had a kid that is my age get called as the Young Men's President. He is currently working on mission papers. I talked to him on Sunday and he said he had to go get his mission physical. He wasn´t too excited ha ha.

I´m not sure about Skype yet. I don´t know what time or even where right now. I´ll let you guys know next week. I finally got 2 packages though. You said you sent 4? I got the 2 Christmas packages. Did you send the package of ties? It would be nice to have a better bike. The only thing I´m worried about is trying to get it from cambio to cambio. Our new house does have a stove so stuff like cake mixes and brownie mixes would be awesome. I feel bad for how much it costs to send stuff down here but some of this stuff I kinda need.  I´ve been too scared to spend any of my money. I guess I need to get over that since both Mom and Dad keep asking why I haven´t used any of it. I might use some later today for a New pillow and a few cleaning supplies. The pillow I have is a piece. It has lost most of the cotton. The president said there isn´t really a rule against spending my own money. Most of the stuff is reimbursable. Cleaning supplies will be so any of the money I have spent from my own account is being reimbursed. If you could get me some DVD´s and an Ipod it would be great. Also the razor I said. The Remington R5150. I don´t want to buy one down here and then not be able to use it anywhere else like home. Does Ethan or Dad have anything they want for Christmas. At this point a package won’t show up until after but I wanna get something for them. Any ideas?

Well I love you guys and hope everything is well. I pray for you guys daily. I miss you all!

Con Amor, 

Elder Torgersen

¨Despues de todo que Jesús hizo para nosotros, El dar el máximo es el mínimo que podemos hacer.¨

Weekly Letter

Hello family!

How is everyone doing this week? Sounds like the wedding was fun. My companion and I laughed pretty hard at the picture of Santa at the temple. How was the rest of the wedding? Anymore pictures? The picture of Mom and Michael didn´t work.

Well, this week has been a little rough. Tuesday afternoon during studies, we got a call from a lady in the ward. She asked us if we could go down to the Hospital to give a blessing. We hurried to finish getting ready and got our bags, prayed and left the house. My bike that i had been riding has broke multiple times this week and has slowed us down. The pedal on my bike broke off and Elder Teske had to basically drag me a couple miles to the Hospital. We gotten there not really knowing what was going on. We found where we were supposed to go and ran up 5 flights of stairs. We later met the Grandma and mom of a 1 year old baby. The baby had a disease of some sort that had gotten into her blood. We found out that the mom had the same problem with a little girl about 2 years ago and had passed away. It was then happening to the second child. We went in to give the blessing, but were 5 minutes too late. They had problems with the baby and no one could go in to the room. The last time we heard it wasn´t getting better. It was really rough. The mom was in tears the whole time we were there.

The problems in our house with the other two elders hasn´t gotten better at all. The Elder from El Salvador has been doing anything he can to bug his companion. I really look up to his companion because he is so patient. I wouldn´t have the patience he has had. Just with living with this kid has made me want to punch him so bad. The Elder from El Salvador had been talking bad about his companion to members and investigators, he takes his companions stuff and uses it without asking, and he won´t help in planning or participate in companion study. The kid is just straight up prideful. He won´t listen to any of his leaders and president is ready to send him home because this is the second time he has done this. It´s driving me nuts because everyday my companion has to go and settle a stupid fight between them. It´s distracting us from our work and none of their investigators are progressing. It also takes away from our study time. The end of the cambio is the 12 so we´ve all held off on punching this kid because its only another week. I really look up to his companion though, his patience is amazing. He never raises his voice and is always calm.

My patience has definitely been tried this week. Almost everyday there has been a problem with something. I swear I have the crappiest bike in all of Chile. The thing has broken almost everyday. Its been tough to focus on the work and not all the crap the is happening. It seems like we´ve had more negative things than positive. 

This week was full of crazy things. We were walking to a cita and we saw a huge puff of smoke coming from behind a house. I turned to my companion and said,¨wow it looks like a house is on fire.¨ We went to the house where we had the lesson and the field behind the houses had caught fire. The smoke was getting so bad that all of the fire alarms on the houses were going off. We had to help the lady we were teaching get all of her little girls inside the house and close the windows and doors. The smoke was so thick that we could hardly breathe and it looked like we were crying. After we talked to a member that lived next door and she said it happens every year. I got pictures so i´ll upload them. We didn´t have time to go home and shower so we had to go to our next lesson. We went to the church and a member walked by and asked why we smelled like smoke. He thought we were smoking it was so strong. 

This week we did our first legit service project. My Companion and I and the other two elders helped an older guy with random things around his house. He had a bunch of firewood that needed to be cut by hand with a tiny hand saw, chopped and then stacked. He gave the Latino Elder in our house the job of taking out nails of the wood. You could definitely tell who had worked before the mission. I took out like 15-20 nails in the time the kid had one. The guy had me use a pick and a shovel to loosen up dirt and move it by buckets. He needed about 5 inches of dirt taken out. He told me what to do and then left to help the others. about 10 minutes later he came back and I was done. He told me he didn´t think i´d be able to finish that quick. It was really funny. The tools we were using were all hand made and awkward. He then had me chopping fire wood. The head of the ax I swear was going to come off. It was a lot of fun. He told us he wanted us back this next week.

We had a cita fall and we were forced to do contacts at the worst time of the day, 9:30 at night. Elder Teske contacted a house and the lady said No and slammed the door. After he said, ¨I don´t know what happened, I buttered that contact up and it was pretty much perfect.¨ I jokingly told him it was because he was being prideful. He laughed, told me to shut up, and then said,¨Okay Mr. Humble go contact this next house.¨ I walked up and knocked the door. A lady answered and I did My contact and she said,¨Oh elders come on in.¨(but in Spanish) We later found out she was a less active but her husband wasn´t a member. He was a big tough policeman. By the end of the lesson he was in tears telling us he was going to church with us the next day. The wife asked me if I had had any baptisms. I told her i had only been here a month. She told her husband he could be my first baptism. He came to church with us and read the chapter we told him to read. He wants to get baptized as soon as possible.

Our other investigators are doing great. We should have 4 baptisms in December. Raul and Raquell are excited to get baptized. We just talked to the parents of a girl that is 17. She was really nervous about us talking to her parents. We met with them and they invited us to ¨once¨ It is like their small dinner for the night. We drank a pero kind of drink and ate bread with a sausage. The parents loved us and we taught them and just talked for about an hour and a half. She should be getting baptized within the next two weeks.

For the most part the food has been really good down here. They have guys driving around in cars or horse buggies selling fruits and veggies. We have bought peaches, cherries, strawberries, and bananas. The fruit is so good. I have strawberries with every breakfast and then munch on cherries throughout the day. We had a mini cambio one of the days the other two elders were in a fight. I had lunch at one of their members houses. The lady gave us two huge plates of food. I almost finished all of it, but then she brought out dessert. she had made jello with cookies thrown into it. The cookies were all soggy and gross. We were trying to force it down when one of our bikes outside fell down. The elder and the lady ran out to look and see if it had hit any of her plants. While they were doing that I took 4 huge spoonfuls of jello and scooped it into his bowl. He came back and ate it all without noticing. After lunch i started busting up laughing and had to finally tell him. He laughed pretty hard. I guess karma had to get back at me because we stopped to get his bike fixed and the guy brought us out Mote con Huesillo. It was so gross. It was like dried peaches and a wheat that looked like corn in a watery juice. It was nasty.

I was trying to fix my razor and found out from the owners manual that it can only be charged with 120V. I guess that's what we get for $20. The next razor up from the one i have has an automatic adapter in the charger that changes the voltage. If you can and it´s not too much trouble see if you can get the Remington R5150. I think i´m going to send this razor home when I send presents. Tell Ethan he can use it. I don´t know how much of a trouble it is to send stuff but if you could send that along with the DVD´s and CD´s it would be great. I think i´m also going to use some of my money to buy Scripture covers. A guy down here makes custom leather covers for about $50. I can choose pictures and he somehow puts them into the leather and makes custom cases. Speaking of scriptures can someone try and find a good way to highlight scriptures with colors. I´ve been trying to find a good way but cant. Also Only give My email to family and really good friends. I can´t email everyone in an hour. Tell everyone that Dear Elder still works and I get mail every Tuesday. I haven´t seen the packages. I´m sure i´ll get them. We only get packages and some mail once in awhile. 

Well I've got to go. Hopefully this letter was better. I love you all and miss you

Con amor, 

Elder Torgersen

P.S. Here´s a couple pictures from the fire and a picture of a school. A lot of the schools are on strike down here. I guess it´s all a mess.

First Baptism