"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