Happy Birthday

Today Elder Torgersen is celebrating his 19th Birthday in the MTC.

Sept. 9th (Survived 1st week at MTC)

Hola Familia

How is everyone doing? Hopefully all is well. I am on my normal schedule now so my P-days will now be on Fridays. It did help with the Dear Elder so thanks for setting that up! It makes it easier to get letters. I also love getting normal mail from everyone especially Ainsley. Be sure to tell her i have all of her notes and signs hung up in my dorm. I love them. That's crazy to hear about Ethan. but that sounds about right with him. How did he do? Also when is Traci doing invitro? I'll have to put her on the prayer roll today. I was glad to hear that you guys were already seeing the blessings of me being out here. It has been tough but it is the best thing i could be doing right now. The schedule is rough and sleep is definitely lacking (We did get to take a nap today that helped out a bit.)

I had my first warm shower on wednesday night. Before i had only had freezing showers. I found one that is a little warmer. before that it sucked to wake up at 6:30 and be cold anyway and have to take a cold shower.

I also received the bag from Brother Rutland. It was nice to get some more garments and some snacks. Thank you very much.

 I also heard that Jake finally asked the big question. I'm missing all of these weddings while I'm gone. I'm kinda bummed.

I bought a couple Book of Mormons the other day. I can get them for like a $1.00. I'm gonna highlight some of my favorite scriptures and write my testimony in the front page. I'm pretty excited about doing that.

We are going to the Temple later this afternoon as a Zone. I'm pretty excited. We have some goofy kids in our zone but ive learned to love them. They might be a little nerdy or a little weird but a lot of them are hilarious. I love them. they are so cool. I have also met a kid that his dad coached us at Timp. His name is Elder Valdez. He lived in Lehi. He's way cool. His companion is a kid from Salt Lake that is amazing at skiing. We promised each other that we were gonna go skiing when we get home. He has a video on the LDS.org website called "within bounds" it was pretty cool. I have met a lot of cool kids that lived somewhat close to us. I also met an Elder Harris and an Elder Giles that both went to school with Kenlynn. You'll have to tell her they are in my zone. They are another two that are really funny. I'm excited to go to the Temple though. Each Sunday we get to do a temple walk and we haven't been able to go in to the temple yet. I think it will be a great spiritual experience. I'm way excited.

This week I had more than 8 minutes to send an email. Last week, for some reason, I was having problems with my account.

We have been teaching our "investigator" and he has been kinda hard on us. We are having to speak Spanish when we haven't even been taught anything yet. We didn't really learn anything till yesterday. I increased my Spanish by like 70% yesterday. We learned some sentences that we will use daily that are really easy to use and conjugate. I was pretty excited about that. We had all been walking around trying to make it look like we knew spanish. I can almost say a full prayer in spanish which is amazing. Its so cool be here one week and already know how to pray.

This week has flown by. The days seem long but the week has flown by. Its crazy. It felt like yesterday was monday. I am running out of time so i'll finish of with this...

Yo se que Jesucristo murio por nuestros pecados. Yo se que la iglesia es verdadero. Yo se que Jesucristo es el salvador. Yo se que Thomas S. Monson es un profeta. Yo se que las familias son eternas. Yo se que dios es amoroso. Estoy agradecido por mi familia y mi llamamiento misional. Estoy agradecido por la Expiacion. Este Testimonio me ayuda a vivir feliz. Yo digo estas cosas en el nombre de Jesucristo, Amen.

Te Amo

Love,

      Elder Torgersen

Sept. 14th Letter (2nd week in MTC)

Dear Family/Mother:

The past few days have been way too good to wait until my next P-day on Friday to tell you my experience the past days.  Friday was our first legit P-day. We woke up and got sack breakfasts. Then we came back to our dorms.  We sat in the hall with our zone and ate breakfast.  We ate and told funny stories. We then didn’t have anything to do until 9:15 so we all decided to go back to bed.  It was awesome to sleep in a little. I had been completely exhausted and needed it bad.  We then went to do laundry. It takes forever to do laundry here.  It’s nice to have clean clothes though. We then had the rest of the day to organize our stuff, buy supplies and eat. 

At around 2:00 we had the chance to go to the Temple. We had gone over earlier than the rest of our zone.  The way the missionaries are looked at the Temple is amazing. It was so cool. You seem almost like a VIP. While we were waiting in the chapel my Branch President, President Shumway leaned forward and started talking to me.  He told me that “you guys are the most prayed for people besides the Propeht.” That made me feel really good.  It was an amazing experience to go to the Temple with our entire zone. When we got into the actual meeting just us missionaries and a couple other people took up the whole right side and four rows on the left. It was insane. Such a cool experience to have so many missionaries in the Temple and that was just our zone.  If that was our zone, with all the missionaries, I can only imagine how much Temple work is done every p-day. It is just wonderful.

I am starting to get used to the Temple now. I’m starting to remember everything. The whole meeting took quite a while with so many people. It was nice to just sit in the Temple and ponder. It was one of my favorite experiences here at the MTC.

Another spiritual experience was today during class. We had watched a devotional of Elder David A Bednar at the MTC. He had talked about missionaries always asking him “how to know if it was the spirit or just them.” He then told us a couple of stories that had happened throughout his life.  His first story was about him while he was on his mission. He was asked to pick up Elder Packer and his wife at the airport in Germany. Before sending them off to the train Elder Bednar had given Elder Packer and his wife 20 German dollars(whatever they are called). He had thought at the time that they could use it for food.  They boarded the train and left. Halfway through the trip they started checking passports. Elder Packer’s passport was fine but they were having trouble with his wife’s passport.  The train attendant was giving them troubles. Elder Packer got the idea to put the money into her passport. The attendant left and came back with the passport. They later found out that they would have been pulled off the train and stuck in Germany.

Another story was that when Elder Bednar was a Stake President he had to go to a meeting 2 hours away at his Stake Center. He was sitting in the chapel 5 minutes before the meeting started. His son had a championship basketball game at 7:00. He looked down to see a father of a kid that was also playing in the game.  He leaned over to his Secretary and  asked if he could take over the meeting. He then walked down and got the father and they left. The father hugged him and thanked him for taking him to the game. They drove to the game and made it 29 minutes before the game started. He and the other father were able to watch their sons play. He had thoughts, wondering if he had made the right choice that night.

Fast forward 6 months…Elder Bednar gets a call at 4:30 in the morning.  It happens to be the father of the kid at the basketball game.  The son had been on the mountain cutting wood. He had been splitting wood with a metal wedge. . He swung hitting the wedge breaking off a shard of metal hitting the son in the chest. He hadn’t noticed it had hit him. While driving home the kid told his dad he didn’t feel good. He passed out and they drove to the hospital. Elder Bednar then hurried over to the hospital to find out that the kid had passed away. The shard had hit is heart causing internal bleeding.  The father of the son grabbed Elder Bednar and told him thanks for letting him leave to watch his son play his last game.

Both of these stories started out with just a small thought from Elder Bednar. He later found out these small thoughts had lead to great spiritual experiences. He explained that the spirit isn’t always a big spiritual feeling. He said that “as long as you are obeying and being good boys the spirit will be able to reach you.” (not exact works but somewhat close!) This made me realize that as long as you are doing what you’re supposed to you can have these types of experiences. He also said that as long as you’re doing good it will most likely be the spirit. It was such an amazing talk showing how small decisions that had started out or small thoughts ended up being big spiritual events. The spirit could be as small as a thought that can lead to something so great.

This weekend has been a very spiritual and testimony building. I also had to say my first prayer in Spanish in Sacrament meeting. Sunday was extremely stressful. We have to write a talk every Sunday for Sacrament meeting. No one knows who will get called until basically right that second.  I was frantically trying to write a talk and translate it into Spanish. We were also being interviewed by the Branch President. On top of that I was trying to remember how to say a prayer in Spanish. It has been a crazy yet spiritual ending to the week.

I’m not sure when you guys will receive this, but they’re moving the mailroom/bookstore/dry cleaners to the new building. I won’t be able to receive dearelder letters until around Thursday or Friday. Which kinds sucks because it’s the week before my birthday. I will be able to receive normal mail, just not dearelders.

Also, what did Mckay’s mom say? I’m kinda curious. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve the right address. I’ve written all my friends but haven’t gotten anything.

I wanna hear how everyone is doing? Have Ethan and Ainsley got my letters? I just got one from Baileigh today.

I love and miss you guys and hope to hear back soon.

Lover, Elder Torgersen (Tortuga) A bunch of  older Elders have started calling me that.