Weekly Letter

Hola familia!

Como Estai? Esta semana fue mi primera semana con mi nuevo compañero de Honduras. El es muy Bakán y tranquilo. Esta semana ha aprendiendo mucho español. Yo tenía un dolor de mi cabeza toda la semena. Mi compañero sabe un poco ingles entonces yo puedo enseñarle ingles mientras me enseña español. 

OK enough Spanish. I have a headache just thinking about it. This week has definitely been different. I went from being able to ask what something was in English to trying to ask what something meant in Spanish. I´ve had a solid head ache this whole week. I´m excited to be able to work with Elder Andrade. He is awesome. He knows a little English so I can talk to him a little in English but pretty much Spanish 24/7 now. I´ve learned so much it´s insane. It´s really funny because my new comp likes to clean and my last comp made fun of me for being the same way. So now our house is spotless. It´s really nice. He knows a little English but when he talks in English his voice goes really high. it is really funny. It is definitely different having a Latin comp. 

This week was a little difficult because I had to lead the Sector and our citas kept falling through. When I was with Elder Teske, when we planned and I gave my opinion he wouldn´t ever listen. So basically he planned. Now I´m having to plan and it is a little difficult to know who to visit at what time. 

I did have three people this week ask me if I was Chileno so that made me happy. I don't know why they asked I thought it was really funny. We had some little kids ask us what country we were from and I said France and my companion said Africa. We started acting like we spoke a different language and they totally believed us. it was hilarious. This little fat kid that looked like nacho off of Nacho libre with green sunglasses on thought we were dead serious. It was really funny. This week we bought the biggest sandia I had ever seen. (watermelon) they are huge down here. 

We have an hermano in our ward that calls me kuiko because he thinks I´m rich because I bought a $60 dollar bike from Lider. He always says ¨Hola elder Kuiko¨ 

To answer your question. Yes I gained about 15 pounds the last week in the mtc and the first week in Chile. Now I´m back down to where I was when I left home but any muscle I have is turning straight to fat. I´m not quite sure what to do because exercises aren´t working. I need Peck's work out. 

I sent an email to Mckay telling him about stuff about the MTC and Mission prep. I told him not to really buy any supplies before because you can buy most of the stuff in the MTC. You get all the language supplies in the MTC and you can get your names put on them for free.

Well not much has happened. I´ll write more next week. I love you all! Miss you! tell Ainsley I got her email and she should be getting a letter here pretty soon. Tell Ethan I´m sending stuff today or maybe next week. 

Con amor,

Elder Torgersen

Hello Fam!

How is everyone? Sounds like its been a party at the house. I´m glad it finally snowed up there. It´s about time. Since January is almost over. Sounds like a lot was going on this last week.

I just about cried seeing the pictures of Mckay. I cant believe he finally got his call. Mexico City!! He´s going to die. I´m super excited for him.

That totally sounds like Ethan. Putting J Dawg stuff on everything. Where did he go Riding? Your emails are almost as bad as mine and you aren´t learning a new language. They are super confusing and freaking random. 

To tell you the truth this last week... Sucked. Citas kept falling, We were outside in the heat all day everyday. And all of our investigators were having the same stupid problem. They all needed to get divorced and wait to get married. It is so ridiculous. I hate how long they have to wait. I´m afraid they are going to lose interest. Raul and Raquel are golden though. They go to church every Sunday and give us really good references.

My talk went well. Everyone kept telling me,¨You learned Spanish.¨ really I just had Elder Teske translate it. Surprisingly I did a lot of it though. 

A little ironic but I think I´ve been exposed to more on my mission than I ever have been. Profanity, pornography, Smoke, Drugs, Alcohol, etc. Never thought it would ever happen especially on my mission, but I´m pretty sure Elder Teske and I drank alcohol this last week. We went over to an investigators house and we found out he was moving into the other elders sector. He was having to move stuff from his house into a truck. We started to help and he asked us if there were stuff we couldn´t eat or drink as members of the church. We told him the 5 things-Tea, coffee, drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. After awhile he brought us drinks. Mine smelt really funny and the first sip was a little funky but my comp kept drinking it. I took a couple more sips and decided not to drink anymore. While we were moving stuff out I went into the kitchen and smelt the bottle of soda they had given us and it wreaked of alcohol. I´m not 100 % sure we drank straight up alcohol but we think it was in the cup when they poured the soda in. We felt horrible for the rest of the day. I can tell you now I´m going to watch what I eat and drink for now on. The smell haunts me every time I take a drink of anything.

This last week me met a guy from Switzerland that had moved to Chile 18 years ago. His accent was wicked. I could hardly understand him. It was really cool. ha I couldn´t really tell what language he was speaking. 

I never thought I would buy a fanny pack... But it happened. I bought a fanny pack. It was the perfect size for my scriptures and it is a little easier and less sweaty to carry around. I got a bag just like a couple other elders in the district but mine cost $15 cheaper than theirs. It isn´t quite a fanny pack but it has a shoulder strap and kinda looks like one. Fanny packs are really popular down here. It´s awesome. Everyone has them. They are kinda handy.

I had a mini cambio with an Elder this last week. Elder Scott. He is from Ogden, Utah. He broke his leg really bad here in Chile and had to go home for two cambios. He had just gotten back. We were teaching a lesson outside and a plane flew by. He asked me, ¨how far away do you think that plane is?¨ I said,¨I dunno maybe a mile.¨ And he replied with,¨Nope it´s 20 months away from you buddy.¨ He thought he was pretty funny. I got my first Greeny joke. 

I´ve never been so happy in my life. The Elder from El Salvador is going 5 cities away from me. Last Tuesday I almost punched him. Every Tuesday we have District class. We take a bus to a city called Parral and meet as a district and then as a zone. Our alarm was still set for 8:30 because of P-day so we woke up at 8:00 wondering why the alarm didn´t go off. We woke up, got dressed, and ran to the bus. I had grabbed a couple snacks to eat for breakfast on the way. During our district class while my comp was doing a practice with the other Elders, the Elder from El Salvador walked over. Opened my bag. took a bag of chips and walked back to his seat and started eating them. I was ticked. Then next thing I know he takes one of my pens and starts using it. Elder Teske basically had to hold me back from completely killing this kid. I´ve definitely had to learn some patience because before the mission I would have dropped him. He ended up losing my pen (one of the nice ones I got from Grandpa). The whole district is ready to kill this kid because he is such a baby. He has been calling a girl in our ward and talking to her for over 30 minutes almost every night, and the other day Elder Scott told me they spent 5 hours over at a members house just chilling. Then he borrowed a bike from a member and ended up getting a flat from a nail. The member came to get the bike and he completely lied to them. I guess he has lied about a lot of stuff and Elder Scott has called him out on it and then he freaks out because Elder Scott is listening in on his conversations. The kid basically does what he wants. It makes me mad because none of the leaders will do anything about it. I almost cried when I found out he was leaving. 

Hopefully this next cambio will go better. I found out my Papi is going to a little town in the campo. Sounds like my English is only going to get worse. I´m super excited. I will be comps with an Elder Andrade from Honduras. He was Elder Scott's comp when he broke his leg. I talked to Scott about him and he said he was really cool. SO hopefully he´s not like the other Elder. We swear we had the only two Latinos that don´t like sports in our district. So i´m hoping he does. 

We found out this week that in the city we are in there have been a group of people that kidnap kids from 5 to 10 years old, Kill them, take out the organs, sell the organs, stuff the body with sawdust and leave the bodies in a field with about $600 for the funeral. It makes me sick that someone would do this. I honestly haven´t missed seeing TV or any of the news. It freaks me out that this has been happening close to where we live. It is so messed up that some one would be that messed up. 

While we were writing these emails I felt my first Temblor. Or fist little earthquake. It was awesome. Any other time it has happened I have been asleep. I was pretty excited. 

I also was wondering if you could have Grandpa  Kratchen send me a story of his Conversion story.

Well this next Sunday we should have 2 Baptisms. The reference we got from Raul and Raquel. Lorena and her daughter Anais. I absolutely love this little family. The mom is awesome and the little girl is really funny. I´m super excited. The mom brought her Boyfriend to church and he really liked it. We have taught him and he is pretty excited. I guess we´ll see what happens this next week. 

Well I love you guys. Hope everything is going well. Love you!

Con Amor,

Elder Torgersen

"End of Cambio"

Hello Everyone! 

How is everyone doing? Sounds like this past week was really crazy with work and the wedding. Hopefully it all turned out well. Mom didn´t tell me that Dad went down to work. I didn´t know that. I thought you guys were going down just for the wedding. I heard they were moving but I didn´t know the house needed work on. Did you guys take pictures? You guys need to send me pictures of stuff.  Also I´m glad you guys enjoyed the picture of the dog. I about died laughing when I saw that thing. haha Also my card is working again. So we are good there.

Well this week we had a lot going on. We had to go to a city called Chillan for a Mission Conference. We had about 50 missionaries there. President talked to us about the numbers from 2011. In 2011 we had 1030 baptisms for the Mission of Concepcion. President talked about the next year and the goals we are setting. This next year we are setting the goal for 1200 baptisms. It was all in Spanish but i´m surprised how much I understood. It was great. At the end of the meeting president called me and Elder Teske to the front in front of everybody along with 3 other companionship's. I had no idea what was going on and I honestly first thought ¨Crap, What rule did I break?¨ He read us our numbers from the last week and asked how we got them. We had found 11 news and 8 in church. He asked us how we had so few contacts with 11 news. This last week we really focused on getting to know people before jumping into missionary mode. It was amazing how effective it was. President asked me and I had to explain how we did it but in Spanish. I just told them we changed the way we contacted and started talking about their kids or their car or the flowers in the front yard. It completely changed everything and our numbers. I did after the Conference get another package that had pj´s and ties in it. I really liked the Young and Reckless shirt. A bunch of elders saw it and tried to steal it. The Chileans love my white paisley tie. ha ha it is really funny what they think looks good and what doesn´t. I´m still waiting for the razor though. Did you send that?

Elder Teske had to do a mini cambio to go and do an interview for the other elders. This time, Luckily, I went with Elder Davis. I learned a lot. Mainly because he wouldn´t talk in the lessons. He really forced me to teach the lessons. It was the complete opposite of elder Teske because Teske talks the whole time. I was really surprised at how well I did. We had found and taught 8 new people. One was a guy that works for an automatic gate company and is interested in learning English. We went over to teach him a little English and ended up slipping in a lesson about the Gospel. All of the Chileans either know ¨hello, how are you, or swear words.¨ The guy didn´t know what it meant but he kept saying the F word. We had to tell him it was really bad and to not say it anymore. He has a wife and two daughters. One of the daughters is in love with Justin Beiber and I told her that he´s my cousin. It was really funny. The other daughter is older and a little bit snaky. We kinda have to watch out for her.

Elder Teske was talking to the president of our ward and tried to get a talk for me. The president asked if he was leaving this next cambio and so he said ¨great, you two can give talks together.¨ So Elder Teske and i have talks this next Sunday. I´m a little nervous. 

On Thursday we had service again, But this time was a little more exciting. While we were doing service we found a spider. We being smart missionaries decided to pick it up. ha ha. Then we decided to get pictures with it. I´ll send you guys the results. 

Well we found out that Raul and Raquell have to wait 10 months because Chilean laws are stupid. A lot of our investigators have some stupid problem with divorce or marriage. It makes me so mad because then they have to wait a freaking long amount of time to get baptized. Victor is also not progressing so we have kind of decided to stop teaching him. We are just going to see what happens with him. We have found a lot of news so hopefully we have some good ones. Raul and Raquell gave us a money reference. It is a family that has a ten year old girl that loves primary. We are hoping to baptize them next week. We think that next Monday Elder Teske and the elder from El Salvador are leaving to another sector. 

Well not much more. Today was pretty busy. Love you guys. Miss you all.

Con Amor,

Elder Torgersen

January 9th letter

Hola

¿Como Estai? How is everyone doing? This week was quite crazy. We had lots of stuff going on. so here goes...

First, Raul and Raquell.... Got their divorce. They are planning on getting married as soon as possible. We are hoping nothing goes wrong and can get baptized this week or the next. 

On Tuesday, at district class I received a couple letters and a package from Grandma Torgersen. She sent me licorice, gum and a Christmas card. So tell her thanks a lot. The licorice is great. I also got a couple Dear Elders. I was pretty excited about those. I got one from Zach Hulsey, CC Almeida, and a Christmas card from the Lairds. I was pretty excited on Tuesday. 

Last Monday I bought Ethan a Christmas present. and  I also bought two ties. I got two really nice ties for about $8. It´s crazy how cheap stuff is here. I might need to buy a couple more White short sleeve Shirts I run out by the end of the week and it´s too hot to wear long sleeve. I can get them for pretty cheap. 

Also I need you guys to check my account. My credit card wasn´t working. 

While doing contacts this week I found my second phone in the street. We ended up calling one of the numbers on the phone to find out that a little girl had lost it and was really worried. They family was really happy to see us when we brought it to them.

We had an investigator tell me the other day,¨me gusta su manera de ser.¨ She liked the way I am. I didn´t understand it but elder teske started busted up laughing. This week has been the week of snaky investigators. We had two girls and a boyfriend that we were teaching this past week. The girl ended up dumping the boyfriend who was from Brazil. They had planned on getting married in Feb. She called us on Saturday night to tell us she needed some counsel from God. She asked if she could come over and we told her that the phone was fine. They ended up coming to church the next day but were basically snaking it up.

On Thursday we did service again at hermano Alberto´s house. Elder Teske found a White potato looking thing. He went to take a bite out of it and I told him not to. He still did it and after about 5 seconds of it being in his mouth he ran to the bathroom. He wasn´t very smart this week. He ended up burning his tongue and it felt numb for the next couple of days. He also was trying to fix our fan and broke the plug on it. So now we have no fan in the house and its been freaking hot. The stuff he has been doing this week have kinda bugged me. I have definitely had to pray for patience this week.

We had a really good investigator ¨Die¨ this week. They were a couple and the wife wasn´t ever really into it but the husband was. They called and canceled a lesson and told us they didn´t want to learn anymore. We knew it was because of the wife. She was always grumpy when we went over and she was pregnant. 

Raul and Raquell got us a great Ref. It was a mom and her two daughters. She is awesome. Raul and Raquell are so awesome they aren´t even members yet and they are better than more than half of the members. 

Last week we finally finished Visa and ID cards. About time since it has taken two months.  

I got an email from Nicole last week. I asked her about the comment she made at Ainsleys baptism. Sounded like she was pretty serious. You guys need to give her crap about that hah. 

We were supposed to have a couple mini cambios this week but of course the Elder from El Salvador was ¨sick¨. Anytime a Chilean is sick they take them to the hospital and give them basically an all purpose shot. They gave him a shot and he claimed he couldn´t remember anything. The Zone leaders made him go to Conce to get some tests done and i guess he had a reaction to the shot. Every week me and Teske are having to settle something with him and his companion. It is getting to be ridiculous. He told his companion last night that he was the devil and they weren´t having any success because he was so disobedient. This was coming from the elder that fakes being sick every week and sleeps in until almost 10:30 everyday. Every one is really getting sick of him and the crap that he does because its not only affecting their work it´s affecting the whole districts work.

On Saturday night we had another barbecue with a part member family. The dad isn´t a member and we went over to teach him. They grilled lamb on a grill. It was really good. The meat was really fatty and tough but the flavor was awesome. All he did was sprinkle salt on it. It was awesome.

Well not much else has happened this week. I love you guys and miss you tons.

Con Amor 

Elder Torgersen

Happy New Year

Hola!

How is everyone? Sounds like everyone´s Christmas and New Years went well. Sounds like the party was pretty fun. 

For New years we went over to Jose´s house. He is the guy in the picture of me holding the little girl. They are an awesome family. He is willing to move out of the house to get baptized. We had dinner with him and they had a huge barbecue for us. I felt like it was a Chilean Tucanos because I´d finish a piece of meat and next thing I new there was another piece in its place. They cooked a ton. We had Steak, grilled chicken, ribs, potato salad, green beans, and bread. Jose and his paraja Angelica had their son and daughter over. Each are married and have two little girls. One of them was the little girl in the picture i sent. The other little girl is a little older and is really shy. We were supposed to be home at 11 and got stuck at his house til 11:30. We got him talking about being a carabiñero and he just kept going on. He told us that after our mission if we come to Chile again we can come and stay with his family. If you guys come to pick me up in two years we are definitely visiting him. He basically told us ¨Mi casa es Su casa.¨ He Is SO AWESOME! He told us he was going to buy us a Christmas present but didn´t get to Santiago. He is going to get his 3 Carabiñero suits and have us all put them on and get a picture dressed up as Chilean cops. He is also going to get us Carabiñero pins to wear on our suit coats. He said he also has another surprise so we´ll find out about that by the end of January. 

One of our next door neighbors who is a part member family invited us over for once and a lesson with the dad who isn´t a member. They always drink a hot drink, coffee, hot chocolate,Pero etc. and eat bread with ham and cheese or something like it every night. They have a daughter that has a kid that is about 5 years old. When we were all making our drinks they brought out the pot with boiling water in it. They poured some in the kids cup and he didn´t know it was boiling and took a huge gulp from his straw. he screamed, Spit it out, and started crying and screaming. It had burnt his mouth and all the way down his throat. Before we could do anything the sister took off for the car to go buy medicine. I am always the one that gets the idea to give a blessing so of course i asked if they wanted us to give him a blessing. We gave him a blessing and by the time we were done he was pretty much asleep. We checked with them a couple days later and they said he was fine like nothing happened. I was so glad because the dad isn´t a member and he witnessed all of this. He told his wife he promised he would go to church everyday this next year so I guess we´ll see what happens.

Well... I was really getting used to Chile and the food and everything until I found this.... 

...I had laid down on my bed to read before bed, looked up and this little friend was about 4 feet above my bed on our slanted ceiling. We ended up catching it in a jar and have been feeding other bugs we catch in the house.haha It is so nasty.

This last Sunday we had 75 people at church. 5 minutes before sacrament meeting we had 20. It is so depressing. People were up until about 5 in the morning on New years. No one was at church.

 

 That´s cool Ethan will be transferring. Just make sure he chooses the right friends over there. Tell him to stay away from the funny green leaf and any needles. He doesn´t need any steroids. 

We haven´t heard anything about the new Strength for Youth. I´m glad they changed the modest clothing thing. That is about to make me throw up down here. We saw a lady that i swear was around when the dinosaurs were that was wearing short shorts and basically nothing up top. She was wrinkly, old and saggy. I just about threw up. Even some of the members are a little edgy. Most of the people I see wearing such little clothes... Really shouldn´t be... because usually they aren´t good looking at all. It is really a problem down here.

Well i´m going to try and write some more emails but that's about it. We are waiting for tomorrow to see if Raul and Raquell´s divorce goes through. Pray for them. We really need their divorce. Well i love you guys and miss you all.

Con Amor,

Elder Torgersen