Week 34 in Mesquite, TX

Before I forget here is my new address: 2821 Franklin drive, Mesquite Texas 75150.

OK this week was great and I love my new companion and I love my new ward and I love my new apartment. First off, yesterday I got to go see the baptism of another investigator. Her name is F and her daughter J got baptized as well. It was so cool. After the Baptism, F bore her testimony and it was soooooo strong. She was crying and the spirit was sooooooo strong there. It is cool because I got to see the whole teaching process with her. I found her and taught her and got to see her be baptized. It was a great experience.

This area is so great. Last transfer they had 3 baptisms in an english ward!  Crazy right. So right now we are in teaching recent converts and finding mode. We do have one solid investigator named M. her husband is a member and she is Catholic. I have had one lesson with her and we taught the Plan of Salvation. She said that it made sense. Then after the lesson we asked her how she thought that she would recieve an answer to her prayers and she believed that it would come from a sign not from a good feeling. So we thought that it would be a while before she said yes. Then the next day we get a 9 page text from her. Usually that means that they are dropping us, but it said that she got her answer. She said that at 4 am she was going home from work and she had parked her car at the 4 story below ground parking lot and as she was comming up she saw a butterfly land on her windshield and ride with her until it reached freedom outside. As it flew away a picture of Jesus popped into her head and there she knew that the church was true. Awesome Right.

So now I am done with the spiritual side of my week. Let me tell you about the funny stuff. First my new apartment has a washer and a dryer so I dont have to spend money at the laundry mat. Also we found a recliner in the dumpster and we cleaned it up and it looks great and feels great in our apartment. My new companion Elder H is so great. We get along really well. On Friday was free Chick fulay or however you spell it. A member made us cow shirts and we got free chick ful ay.

So we did teach a lesson in Spanish last week and here is what happened. We taught the atonement of Jesus using a couple of pennies and some ketchup. We put the dirty pennies in the catchup and they turn clean. One thing I try to do while speaking spanish is try to change my accent to sound better. Here is what I said in spanish. all you spannish speakers will laugh. I said. vamos a poner estos penes en el catchup. los penes representa nosotros y el catchup representa el sangre de cristo. e el sangre de cristo va a limpiar nuestro penes. so in spanish a penny is penny. and i said pene (pen-A) which is penis. So I said in english that the penis is us and we will put the penis in the catchup or the blood of Christ and our penis will be clean. The Hermana there caught me right there and had to correct me. it was soooooooooooo embarrassing.

 

That is sad that Cookie grandpa died. The kids will all miss him at church. 

 

I am exited for Mikaela at camp I hope that she does well. I know that she will have a blast though. Who is all going that I know? 

That is amazing how good Taylor did coming off of a sickness. 

The bible has a lot of cool stuff in it doesn't it. You just have to know how to interpret it. That is why i am soooooooooooo glad that we have a prophet on the earth. If we didn't have him we would be just as confused as the rest of the world. I am also grateful for the Book of Mormon and how plain it is. I have found that all I need to teach is the Book of Mormon. I have stopped carrying the bible around. People know about the bible, but if you want them to learn the message of the bible you need the Book of Mormon to explain it. If someone is not going to except the Book of Mormon and the Spirit that it brings they won't except our message. But once you have that solid foundation with the Book of Mormon, the Bible makes so much more sense. 

I am glad that you are doing well in your class though. love you so much.

 

That was my week so far. I hope that yours was as great as mine.

Love you all.

Baptism

Free Chick-Fil-A night

Week 33 in Farmers Branch, TX

I AM HEADING BACK TO ENGLISH!!!???!!!!

Yes i got transferred to Mesquite. It was at one point a Spanish mission, but it changed to English. I AM NEVER GOING TO LEARN SPANISH. My new companion is named Elder H.

This is what I am leaving here that is new. We finally got furniture in our apartment and a whiteboard. We printed out a map of our area and put that on the wall. We just got a blender. And I am leaving a golden investigator. Her name is F. She is from Honduras and has only been here 4 months. She has accepted everything and she had already been following all of the laws such as tithing, fasting, and sabbath day (not with our church but that changed as soon as we met her.) We met her 2 weeks ago and she is ready to be baptized this Sunday. We had planned for the baptism to be in three Sundays, but we moved it closer because she is that ready. I will be able to go back Sunday for the baptism

The other exiting thing this week is that I got into an argument with a drunk Mexican. We knocked the door and as he came to it and let out a series of colorful words and then said in English "Well if you are going to teach me, I will teach you." I replied back "We are missionaries and you are drunk, I will give you a card and call us when you are sober." He called me a chicken and I said that I am not going to teach a drunk guy because you won't remember anything. He called me a chicken again and I told him that Jesus can help you with this problem, but you have to sober up first. Then we left with him calling us chicken. He didn't even accept my card. Oh well.  Hopefully my spirit touched him enough to change. 

Here is a selfie of me and some pictures of the cool members in my area. This is the R. Family and this is their dog Susuki. And this is M A. He is the one that baptized F. He works at a supplement factory and makes work out power that is illegal to sell in the US. It is sold in Australia. He gave me a bottle of pre-workout power for free. Don't worry this is the legal stuff, i think.

Oh and i don't know if i have showed this to you yet, but I make planner covers for my planners. Here is mine right now. One more cool thing is that while we were tracting my companion found a 50 dollar bill on the ground and I traded the iPod that elder W left for the 50. With it I bought a better mp3 player, because the one that i had won't let me put music on it. It is just a cheep MP3 but it is smaller than the CD player. 

 One last thing: I have been getting a lot of emails asking me about the weather. I will respond with this. The fires of hell are nothing compared to this. Just kidding. But seriously it is hot here. I have not sweated this much ever in my life. It is a good thing Hispanics are nice and offer you water when they reject you. But I am going to English. So I hope that my area is a car. 

Love you all and have a great week.

Jesse and M.A.

Planner cover

Jesse and Susuki

R. Family

Selfie

Week 32 in Farmer's Branch, TX

This week was kind of like the rest. I did go on exchanges this week, twice. Once with Elder N in my old area and the other was with the zone leaders. I went English and we knocked mansions over in Coppel.  There I noticed that I am only about 10 miles from the Dallas Fort Worth airport from my apartment. So close, but so far away- right. Well over in Coppel one of the members there fed us and it was taco salad. I haven't have had any problems with Mexican food yet until this. I think it is because it is American Mexican food. Anyway on one of the doors we were knocking I accidentally let out a fart.  We were about to leave when the door answered and a lady answered. We told her who we were and asked her if she would be willing. We could tell that the smell didn't hit her at first but as soon as she could smell she backed away. and i felt so embarrassed.

On a more spiritual note we did have an investigator and her family at church yesterday. We had to find them a ride to get there, but she was so exited to be there. A lot of people went and said hi and I know that she will be baptized. I am looking for a second baptism. 

So one bad thing that happened was my good watch broke. The one you gave me. I woke up and the face was cracked and the crack is getting bigger and bigger. Can I repair it?   It is still working but the glass is cracked.

Well I hope that your weeks went good.

Week 31 in Farmers Branch, TX

This week was full of more exciting door knocking. We were able to find two really great families. The first one was English. She was really receptive and really wanted to learn more. We had to hand her off to the English Elders. The next we found yesterday. She believes that God answers prayers and she told us a story about her 14 year old son got an answer to his prayer and she knows that God can answer prayers. It was pretty amazing. We are going back tomorrow.

Oh I forgot to tell you a funny story, this last week we came back to our bikes to go home and as we got there I noticed that my companions seat was missing. They stole the seat and the bar. It was funny. They didn't touch my bike at all.
Our President says he hasn't heard anything about us getting I pads but we don't know if our new president knows anything about the I-Pads. I am hoping that we are able to get them.

We went to a training meeting this last week and president D.  dunked a basketball!!!!!!!! on film. He showed us highlights of his BYU career. This was the first time he has mentioned basketball his whole three years. He has tried to avoid the basketball questions. The only reason he said that he showed us this was because in one of his many slam dunks our new mission president did a behind the back pass to President D and D dunked. It was an awesome film. He also showed us part of his talk that he gave in priesthood secession in the 80's. He showed us President Hinckley telling the crowd that he was a fantastic basketball player. After there was a song, and in the song one of the verses ended with amen, but it wasn't the last verse. President got up and started up the stairs and stopped half way, not knowing what to do. Then I think it was Ted R Callister told him to sit on his lap until the song ended and he got to shake hands with others from the 12. 

I am glad that you had fun at the youth conference. McKay sent me an email telling me all about the call. It is so awesome. I will be able to talk Spanish to all of my friends. I heard that there are just mostly Cubans over there in Florida. I wonder what Cuban food taste like. Here is a mix of Mexicans Hondurans and El Salvadorians. 

There will be a big meeting in 2 weeks where we will meet the New President. 

I probably won't go to the temple in a while. I have been 5 times since I have been in Texas. The president wants us to go every 6 months, but I have been lucky because of my companions having recent converts going.

Well I hope that you all had a great week. Talk to you later.

Week 30 in Farmers Branch, TX

This week the lord is teaching me patience. We have been doing a lot of tracting. We started knocking on a different apartment complex that we thought might have some potential. It is right in the middle of mini Mexico and it has over 300 apartments in it and no one would answer their door. We think that it might have been hit too many times by the Jehovah's Witnesses. After knocking almost all of it with no one answering the doors we decided to re-knock the place. This time we hit it later in the day when people are returning from work.  We could tell that they were just ignoring us. We knocked one door and this little kid answers the door and as he was opening we could hear the mom yelling no no no no no. She came sprinting to the door. We did our door contact and you can tell that she was just saying stuff to get us off of her porch. The conversation went like this. E:elder H:lady at door. E:can we share a message with you? H:other day. E:what day can we come back. H:I work a lot. E:what time do you get off of work. H:late E: like at what time? H:6 E:can we come by tomorrow at 6? H:no I'm busy. E:how about the next day at 6? H: yes.     and then after all this we never see her again. it kind of sounds bad, but I miss the English work when they would tell us if they are interested or not when we ask. No one here wants to tell you no.

On a different note,  F. and C. D.were confirmed this last Sunday. They are so awesome.  

I got the package and the cookies were still really good. They were nice and soft. 

We have district meetings once a month and that is with like 6 or 8 other missionaries in your area and we have a zone meeting every month with the missionaries in the zone which is about 20 to 24 other missionaries and then we have big conferences with about 60 missionaries every month.

So jealous that you got to Meet President Taylor and Elder Schroeppels parents. 

The hike sounded like fun. Taylor said that she hated it, but it sounded like a lot of fun. Did you find another ski to complete the pair? 

My ear is fine. I just used some Hydrogen peroxide and it sound better.. 

Well I hope this letter was long enough for you guys. 

Have a great week.

Week 29 in Farmers Branch, Texas

Jesse has been so excited for this baptism.  This is his 1st time that someone he helped teach has made it to baptism.  I know that this wonderful mom and son had to make incredible sacrifices to be baptized.  I gave Jesse a hard time about his lame letter writing :)  He doesn't realize that that all the uneventful details are interesting to us here at home.   I do appreciate the fact that we at least hear from him each week! 

BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I had my first baptism. Elder S***** baptized C****** and a member baptized F****. It was soooooo cool. There was also an 8 year old that got baptized too. Everything went perfectly and I got to see my old companion and it was just a great experience. 

One last piece of business, I have been getting some complaints about my letters being too short. I would formally like to apologize for this. I am sorry that I can't have a more exiting week . Not all my weeks can be a tree climbing, baptizing, bible bashing adventure. But I assure you that I hereby promise that if and when an exiting or amazing event happens to come my way, that I will write every last detail about it to you. I hope you accept this apology and I sincerely hope that you all will have a most exiting week filled with much excitement.

                                                                                  Love,

                                                                                         Elder Jorgensen

Week 28 in Farmers Branch, Texas

I am a lame mom who skipped posting last week :) I had told Jesse about one of Taylor's track practices where the did a work out call the Indian Run.

Not very much to report on this week. The one major thing that is going to happen is the Baptism of some of the  D****** Family. I am so exited. They will be baptized next Sunday. It is my first Baptism and I just cant wait for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now other than that it just has been the same stuff, knocking doors and contacting. 

Wow all of my friends are leaving for their missions. It is soo cool to see that. It is soo awesome that Mikaela lettered. It would have so funny to see those kids doing the Indian Run. I'm glad that your Gospel Doctrine class went well. The Old Testament is really interesting isn't it. I really like the Old Testament thought calendar you gave me for my birthday. It has some pretty cool scriptures. Everything is going good here. My this transfer will be a bit harder.

I'm glad you are liking the warm weather up there.

Well have fun planting your garden. 

I hope that you all had a very fun week.  And i love you all.