Week 7 ish?
Here are some pics and some verbiage after Elder Jorgensen's first week in the Oregon Portland mission.  Feel free to write to him at the mission home address, posted somewhere on this blog!
Thanks y'all!.

Jorgensens

Alright what to update you all on... I haven't really done much teaching yet. Last week we had a Zone meeting, a greenie meeting, and tons of other stuff that made it hard to get a lesson. Not to mention that we are white-washing, because our area has only been open for one transfer, we don't have a lot to work with. Actually I'm not sure that we have one solid contact... so this week it's going to be all about the tracting. And even that is gonna be hard because our area is huge, and it's almost all white people. It's kinda sad, Elder Cooper and I went driving around on Sunday to look for new areas to tract, and we had a scale of "whiteness" that the area was:) The richer it was, the whiter it was:) It's pretty great... Whatever I am excited to do some work!!

The name of our Spanish Zone is Los Guerreros de Dios... translated.... the Warriors of God. Pretty awesome, no? All the English zones have boring names like where they are located, but Spanish is too cool for the rest of that! Speaking of which, I almost think that serving a foreign speaking language in the States is in some aspects harder than serving foreign would be. In a foreign country, at least there is a pretty good chance that you can talk to everyone you see. Portland is pretty white... and if we get an English contact, we technically aren't even supposed to teach them the first lesson, but turn them over immediately... So it's making things interesting.

The Ward loves us and takes care of us pretty good. It has only been a ward for like... I don't think longer than 6 months, and membership is pretty low, there are only about 100 who come for Church. And because membership is so low, the area is huge, so in one ward there are 6 Elders... and they feed all of us copious amounts of food each night. Actually on Friday they had this party called "La Noche de Internacional"... International night pretty much. Because most of the members of the ward are from different parts of the world, so they showed off like their Guatamalian or Chilean decorations and all brought a ton of food, and then there was like a huge talent show. It was the best ward party I have ever been too. We as Elders got to sing a hymn for them in Spanish, except we were screaming and dancing around and dressed up weird.

Today for P-Day we went into Portland!! It is way crazier and bigger than Boise. 

We checked out the Library, which is huge, got some food, 

went to Voodoo Doughnuts,

and walked along the river. It was pretty fun. We got a lot of weird looks though because there were 6 of us, and we were in Proselyting attire... but it was good times.

Since I left home I have been rained on practically every day except 4... those were my first 4 days in the field. But now the rain is starting to come in. It is a weird kind of rain though, different from Mexico and the rain storms that happen in Idaho... a lot of the time it is like a gentle mist that you don't even notice is happening until you look down and you are soaked.... good fun.

I have been sleeping really well since I got back to the States. I'm talking REALLY well. I think one of the reasons is that compared to Mexico, Beaverton is silent. I'm almost sleeping as well as Mom, I lay down and usually 5-10 minutes later, I am out. I love it:) I am also studying better than in the MTC because it's only Elder Cooper in the apartment so I can focus. We study for 4 hours every day... Personal study, Comp study, Language study, and for the first 12 weeks I get a training study... Good fun.

I love you guys and miss you a lot, Wes, keep running hard!!!!

Elder Jorgensen