Thursday, August 21, 2014

August 18, 2014 ~ Week 56

Hey everyone! 

It's been another awesome week here in Wilkes-Barre! Transfer calls came on Friday and Elder Pintor is leaving! So I will have my new companion tomorrow. Don't know who it is yet so we will see! This past week has been super fast but super long at the same time. We found some new people that are really promising, and I'm so excited to teach them. One thing that I've been reflecting on this week is my mistakes. Sometimes I get into the mindset that all mistakes can be avoided. We can just choose to not mistakes ever. We can be perfect. I can just try harder and I won't make mistakes. This is a lie!!! Man oh man, do you learn from mistakes. Of course we should do our best to live righteously and keep all the commandments, but we simply won't be able to learn all the lessons we need to learn in this life if we never make any mistakes. I think back on my life, especially on my senior year of high school, probably one of the most mistake-ridden periods of my life, and I can see how the mistakes I made have taught me the lessons I needed to learn to be the man I am today. It sucks to make mistakes. But Christ made it possible that we don't need to suffer unnecessarily for our mistakes. We still feel grief and shame for our mistakes, but only enough to help us to change. Then, after we have repented, we are made clean, and our past mistakes are just that...in the past. It's beautiful! Knowing this has helped me have more courage to face the world, and the problems I have. I don't need anyone to blame when I fail, and I don't need to be afraid of failure, because any mistakes that I make, while I'm full heartedly doing my best of course, will only help me to learn. It's the greatest! I know that Christ lives, and I know that repentance isn't the backup plan, but it is the plan of salvation.  


{Here is a slightly edited journal entry!}

August 13th
Today has been pretty awesome! So this morning Elder Dopp and Hanshew came to our apartment for conference call because they left their phone at the Adams'. We then took them up to the Adams' to grab their phone. Then we went up to Sister Schwemmer's home, and the road was blocked!!! So we rescheduled and went home... Waste of miles... We did stop by and see the Anderson's who just moved in. Crazy story... They moved into a less active members old house. We tried to find it, and blamo! There was the Anderson's house! So that was cool. We are excited to be able to see them though once they get unpacked and everything. Then we went on over to the C's and talked them into letting us mow their lawn tomorrow! Exciting stuff! I was a little scared to go see them because on Sunday Sister T said she had called them and invited the grandkids out to church, and apparently they were a little bit standoffish, according to Sister T. All was great however! Then we went and had lunch. Elder Pintor didn't like the bologne though. Oh well. His loss. :) We went to do Facebook. We went to Sis D's to follow up on her giving out a family proc. She told us about her trip to the temple. She was sealed to her deceased husband. Such a neat experience. Then we went and saw Crystal with the B's. It was an awesome experience. Crystal is super prepared. She wasn't taught very well the first time around when she was taught by missionaries a couple years ago. She was being taught, but she moved and lost contact with the elders. We talked to her son on the streets a couple days ago and he told us to go over. She ordered pizza for us, and we all ate, and it was great. Her daughter, Joann, is probably the darn cutest thing I ever did see!!! She reminds me a lot of Carolynn Robinson. But our lesson with Crystal... It started off pretty scatterbrained. We didn't really know where she was so we just planned on teaching her about the Book of Mormon. We went in. She told us all about what she remembered from the first time she met with missionaries. She seemed to understand everything pretty well. Then she got pretty off topic, which happens often with investigators. She kept touching on questions of the soul however, so that's the route we took. We began reading Mosiah 2 with her, when we realized she knew nothing about what the Book of Mormon actually was!!! Besides the fact that Joseph Smith found it. So we had a great lesson on the origins of the Book of Mormon, and then that led us to teaching the whole restoration over again. Which I love teaching, and she needed so badly. One thing I'm super grateful for is all the teaching experience I got in Reading. No one really progressed too well, but I taught the restoration at least 200 times while I was there, if not more. It helped me so much in being a good teacher. Then she told us how much she dislikes her old church, and it was overall a great lesson! I'm so excited for her. She is going to progress so well now that we're actually going to teach her super well. Bro B was absolutely awesome in that lesson too. Members are such a huge help to the missionaries in teaching.

Love you!
~Elder Jorgensen



Elder Jorgensen and Elder Pintor

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