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.
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