February 16, 2015 ~ Week 82

Why hello,

I have had a pretty great week this week. We have had a lot of great opportunities to learn and serve. But the highlight of the week was Brother Hall getting baptized! He has been working for a long time to get to this point, and we were super excited for him. He'd been taught for a long time, and wasn't really progressing.   He has had baptismal date after baptismal date just come and go, but in the last month we really tried to teach him straight from the scriptures. That's what it took to finally help him get it. Since then he has done awesome, and
I'm super excited to see him go to the temple and get sealed. His wife has been a member for a few years, and he actually was taught before she was. So he has been waiting for a while for this. 

Other highlights of the week, since getting the sister's area, we now have 256 new formers and potentials we can go see. The field is white and all ready to harvest. We have set up appointments with like 3 or 4 people, and plus one of our investigators, Ray, gave us a referral that we have an appointment set up with for Saturday, and we received an HQ referral on top of that. We've got so many things going for us right now. We are going to baptize all of Newark at this rate. On that note, we also have a baptism scheduled for next week.  Her name is Ernesta. Then another one that'll probably be in the first couple weeks of March. We also get to go to the temple again with a family we reactivated that is going to get sealed. So as far as the outward results of missionary work go, we are doing fantastic. As far as the inward results of missionary work, we are doing even better.  I had the chance to go on exchange with Elder Eves, one of our zone leaders, and it was an enlightening experience. I learned a lot on that day.  We also found a fun friend out in the parking lot.  

Meet Lorenzo.  Lorenzo also loves Jesus Christ.
{Note Elder J's family hanging on the wall behind him. }

Elder Payne is doing great. He is so full of energy, and has such a desire to improve. They say Goldens come out with this golden fire... It's true. He's amazing. Lately I've been studying a lot about why people don't accept the gospel, and what makes someone hard hearted, and why people choose to be prideful. It's a fascinating subject that goes a lot deeper than I would have ever guessed. One particular scripture that helped me understand this quite a bit was John 3: particularly 19-21. I love being here and I love being a missionary! Have a great week!

~Elder Jorgensen

February 9, 2015 ~Week 81

Hello everyone! 
It's a cloudy overcast day here in Delaware.   The current temperature is 32 degrees Fahrenheit with a low of 28 and a high of 34. It ain't even bad! Really though, it's been pretty warm the past few days. Which is good because my companion is from Nevada. His name is Elder Payne and he has been out in the field 5 days now.
He's practically a veteran.   On Tuesday we had transfer meetings and on the slide show we always do, my name popped up, and a picture of a smiley face..... A Golden! So then Tuesday night me, Elder Roberts and Elder Saltzgiver were all together... One last trial before I got to train right? 

So we showed up to the "Get Your Golden Meeting" on Wednesday morning,  got our "Goldens," had a get to know you game, had some training, set up their iPads, and off we went! The first thing we did when we got home was do some role plays and then we went out tracting. It was awesome!! Elder Payne did so good.  Being with him, especially right after being with Elder Engelman is so weird. This is the first time I've ever had a companion who has been so young. It's weird to think that when I came out on my mission, 5 lifetimes ago, I was probably a lot like him. I can see how much I've learned and grown in the past year and a half more now than ever. Now we just gotta get Elder Payne learning and growing too! It's the best! 

I've realized that the biggest thing I've learned so far on my mission is the need for communication, and honesty. I feel like there would be absolutely no problems in the world if people just communicated and we're honest with themselves, and those around them. There really wouldn't be any hate, or hurt feelings, or anything like that if people just let each other know what they were feeling, and what they were doing. I know that communication is good. 

Brother Hall is being baptized on Saturday so that is super exciting! We've got the whole program planned, and it's going to be awesome! Oh, also, they took the sisters out of our ward, and now we have dinner appointments almost every single day... Before we had only like 2 or 3 appointments. Awesome stuff is happening, and we are working super hard! Talk to you later!

~Elder Jorgensen

Elder Jorgensen and his Golden...Elder Payne

Elder Jorgensen and Elder Jones from Mission Office

Elder Jorgensen and Elder Engleman {and the rest of his district??}

February 2, 2015 ~Week 80

Hey guys! 
So I don't have a lot of time today, I just dropped Elder Engelman off at the mission office so that he can go home... It's been fun to be his companion. I'm going to miss him a whole lot. He's definitely been one of my favorites. 

This last week has been pretty slow with Elder Engelman going to the temple, and other stuff
like that. So on Sunday I talked to president at the church, he just so happened to be there, and he asked me to train. So that'll be fun. I'll have a brand new missionary starting tomorrow... A weird thought
is this: Elder Engelman will be on the plane home at the same time that my new one is on the plane to the mission... Odd right?   I'm excited to train though, I was starting to get scared of being old and infertile and never having any "mission children" because when you train you call it giving birth, and he will be my son. But yeah!  But another thought is this... My sisters are currently going home tomorrow. That's weird. Also my trainer goes home tomorrow too. Crazy stuff!
We have an appointment we need to go into right now.  Again,  I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond or write any other emails this week.  See Ya on the flip side!

~Elder Jorgensen

January 26, 2015 ~ Week 79

Hi people,

This week has been super good.  We got to go to the Washington DC temple on Saturday and that was super fun.  Someone Elder Engleman baptized was going so I got to tag along with them. Going to the temple after not being there for a year and a half was such a cool experience. I was so excited to get in there when we were outside the temple waiting to go in. It was killing me because I just wanted to go in.  When we got in the temple, I  just felt so peaceful and so at home. It was amazing. Once we went into the temple we did baptisms and I baptized Elder Engelman for the dead and it was really funny because he's like 6'5".  While we were in the temple I received answers to lots of prayers, a couple different ones, but it was so powerful and so specific and direct like I've never felt before. I can't wait until I can go again. If I could, I'd just spend all day every day there. I'm so jealous of the temple workers. I'll be one someday! 

Elder Engelman goes home next week... So that's weird. We were supposed to have this crazy big huge storm today and all our cars got grounded, but it only snowed like half an inch. Delaware is the most boring place ever. Even catastrophic life threatening blizzards that supposedly ravage the entire east coast barely even affect us. Oh well. Things are going great with me! Love you!

~Elder Jorgensen

Washington DC Temple

January 19, 2015 ~ Week 78

Hello good people!

This has been an awesome week. We had zone conference which was super good. A certain companionship in my district, on the way to zone conference, which was in Dover Delaware, put in the address wrong, and didn't realize it until they were 20 minutes away from Broomall PA.  They were like an hour and a half late... It was so funny. We gave them so much crap. But zone conference was soooooo awesome, I walked away from it and had such a huge desire to be so much better at planning, and at setting goals and all that fun stuff.

So then we had all sorts of other adventures. We have an investigator named Ed, who we set with a date for February. He's doing super awesome. He has read the Book of Mormon in a week. He's working on it again, and he's doing so well. I went on exchange with Elder Morris, one of our zone leaders, and we had a lot of fun. We taught a ton of lessons on exchange. So on Sunday's we have been recruited into the ward choir. I really enjoy it. We are singing next week in sacrament meeting a super cool song. It's "Oh My Father," but to the tune of "Come Thou Fount." It's amazing and really such a beautiful song. It rained like an inch yesterday, and it was crazy. It rained so much. I love this gospel, and love being here! Have a great week! Love you.

~Elder Jorgensen

January 12, 2015 ~ Week 77

I got a reply to my email today but Elder Jorgensen did not have time to send a Blog Post this week.  I am sure there is a REALLY good reason.  :)  Stayed tuned for next week's post.

January 5, 2015 ~ Week 76

Dear everyone,

Happy New year! This past week for me has been super great. For the most part it's been full of learning experiences. New Year's Eve wasn't too eventful for us, to the point where it came and went, and I didn't even realize it. I guess that's the nature of missionary work sometimes though. 

So first off, I absolutely love my companion. He's the greatest, but ever since he got here, I've felt like something was wrong. Everything I did started to suffer, and I felt like I just sucked at everything. We would come out of lessons, and I would feel like I hadn't done anything to contribute to the lesson. My mind would go completely blank mid sentence, and I was really, really frustrated. 

Thursday we had a super good zone training, and afterwards I went on exchange with Elder Pollmann, in Bayview. I'll tell you... That was a learning experience. Elder Pollmann has been on his mission for 3 1/2 transfers now, and he's an awesome missionary, but he hasn't been out for very long. Throughout the exchange I just kind of took charge of everything, and was trying my best to work with him, and work together, but I was able to take charge of things. We went to visit one investigator at a member's house, and the member's non-member son, and daughter in law were sitting on the couch as we went in. As missionaries do, I invited them to take part in our lesson. They accepted, and when we asked them if they had ever been taught by missionaries before, they said that they had never been invited to before. So it was awesome. We went on to teach the investigator, with them sitting in and taking part. Then at the end when we set up a return appointment, Jessie, the member's son, thanked me and said that if it wasn't for me he wouldn't have ever sat in. Now the purpose of this isn't to say "hey look at how awesome I am," but it is to illustrate a growing experience I have had. 

At that moment I realized the reason I was so frustrated, and had sucked so bad at everything. It was because I didn't believe in myself. I was trying so hard to be just like Elder Engelman, and trying so hard to make sure I did things just like he did, that I wasn't doing things the way I did. Of course I suck at being Elder Engelman... because I'm not Elder Engelman. But I realized, I do make a pretty good me. From that time on, I came back and talked to him about it, and decided I was going to be me. I feel good about my ability to follow the spirit, and teach effectively again. I'm confident in myself, but more so, I've gained a better appreciation of my Heavenly Father. He knows my true potential, and he has a plan laid out for me so that I can achieve my potential. He loves me so much. Now it's my job to continue to help everyone know how much He loves them too! I'll tell ya, it is the greatest job in the world. I hope everyone has a great week! Love you all!

-Elder Jorgensen