Hey Family!

Well... Twas a crazy week here in Tigard. In a good way, for the most part. To start off with, just a random side note, so Dillon Jonah Cody and I came up with a quick test our senior year to check how chill a girl is. A very simple thing. From our observations, girls who have seen the movie cool runnings

are generally 10x cooler than those that haven't. It's a real life example of small and simple things bringing to pass great works. This week, I decided to put it through the trial of faith, and ask a sister in my district if she has seen Cool Runnings. And, hallelujah, she hasn't seen it!!! Don't take that the wrong way, I'm not looking to date any of the sisters I'm serving around, my heart is locked and I am focused, but, it was just nice to put it to the test, my comp and I had a good little laugh.

ALSO, just so everybody knows, I haven't sworn since before I went through the Temple the first time. Which, after what just barely happened to me, is an accomplishment! Freaking we were playing soccer and an Elder in my district did a dirty little little cheap shot and slide tackled me. Boy my left ankle is HUGE.

freak that hurt. I was on the ground for like 5 minutes, however, to my credit, I did not swear in English nor Spanish!

And we are about to go play frisbee golf, my ankle is gonna have my game off but that's ok.

On Wednesday/Thursday we did an exchange, I went with Elder Smith to Beaverton #2. It's been a year since we did an exchange, I was with him when the snow storm hit last year. It was a bomb exchange, their area is brand new so we just did some finding and taught some good lessons.  Later that night we made a fire in their apts fire place and cooked up some smores... It was good to just chillax a little bit.

Thursday was a freaking rough, trunky day! It started at like 6, we went by Ester and Ferzulis, and they were watching Divergent, and as we walked in it was right in the middle of an intense make out scene... Engman and I just looked at each other, and back at the tv, and at each other, both of us were just thinking freaking heck...

And then, like every apt we went to for the rest of the night, people were playing video games or something. It's not so much the video games that I miss, but the just being able to chill and not have to worry about what I'm doing every second for the night... anyways... glad we made it through that little stretch.

Freaking last night I was legitimately afraid that I was going to get kissed by a man.... We were knocking on the door for an appt, and a guy was walking by us, so I said hi and asked how he was doing. He said good, how are you? When I told him I was good, he got super confrontational and was asking "are you sure?! how do you know?!" and then I don't remember what I said, but he told us to go up the stairs and talk to him, so we did. He was a little drunk, that should have been our first hint, anyways the interesting part came when I asked if he believed that God loved him enough to call a prophet to guide him today. He said "yeah, I believe that God loves me. For example, if we were at war, and someone were to shoot you, and I were to take the bullet for you (at this point he had his arms on either side of me and was pinning me against a wall,

trying to shield me from danger. my only thought was if he tries to kiss me, I'm going to freaking lose it)... anyways, thankfully, he didn't kiss me. We talked for like an hour and then he had to go in and tell his mom what he had been doing (40 years old and still lives with his mommy.... hrm). Then he wanted us to meet his mother, who is Buhdist, and he pulls us inside, and to introduce us, he grabbed my arm and said, "Mom, look at this kid! He's @#$%^& beautiful, and I'm not even gay!" What a weird, strange experience.

I don't have much else to say... our district is still on fire, last week we picked up like 37 news as a district... that puts us at close to 90 as a district in 3 weeks... last month our zone found 103 and killed everyone else. So if you are looking for things to keep in your prayers, BBB needs to know where her husband lives so that she can get divorced and baptized, and she also needs to not work on LLLL's baptism....

Any other questions? I love you guys!

Oh and ps dad thanks for sending your conversion story, I used the part where you talked about how you didn't really get a confirmation it was right until after all was said and done, and I used that when I was teaching on the exchange, talking about how sometimes God makes us wait a little.

Anyways... thought you'd wanna know!

And actually this took so long to send because as I was saying earlier about spraining my ankle... the mission nurse wanted me to go to the urgent care center to get it checked out because I really could barely walk on it, its swollen as freak, and anyways... so just made it back from that, and nothing is broken, but pretty much everything is torn, and it will be a 6-8 weeks in the boot... pictures to come... the pic of my foot was taken like around 430 any questions hit me up with them and I'll get back to you.

Hey family!

Well, last week was pretty good here in Tigard. We set 3 baptismal dates, all with members of HHHH's family. The best one was her son, VVVV's. Yesterday was his 10th birthday, and no one else in his family could come to church, so we got him a ride and he came all by himself. Later  that day we passed by to wish him a happy birthday, and we started talking about baptism, he said it was something he wants to do. HHHH was right there and she said she was fine with it. HHHH is also super solid. We can show her like a 3 minute mormon message and she gives us a 5 minute explanation about it. Every time Elder Engman and I teach her, we always say she should teach us. So what's impeding her from baptism currently is that she wants to get divorced. She doesn't need to according to the rules, but it's something she really wants to do and when she told us about it, both Elder Engman and I felt like it was something she needs to do. She can't do it though because she needs to know her husband's current address, which she doesn't  know because they aren't in communication and he won't give it to her... so that is our current dilemma here in Tigard... however, my district is getting work done.

So my district is 6 companionships, one of which is a senior couple. My branch is my area, a set of sisters, and the senior couple, we cover the Tualatin and Lake Oswego Stakes. And then the other half of the district is the beaverton group (different than the ward I was serving in). There are 3 companionships in that group, one of which is the zone leaders, and the other is a brand new area that just got made 2 weeks ago. So my district is my area, the sister's area, the senior couple, the zone leaders, and 2 other companionships of Elders. It is the biggest district in the mission by 2 companionships, which I think I said already, but, anyways, we are DOING WORK!!! In the first 2 weeks of the transfer, as a district, and not counting the senior couple's numbers, we have found 58 new investigators. That is more than most English zones of 10 companionships find in a month.

Everyone is working hard and I love it. I'm glad I'm in Tigard, I feel like I haven't actually liked an area that I was in since I served in Nike.

Other random sidenote, we are still giving a crazy amount of blessings here. Last week we gave 7 blessings in 2 days, probably the hardest one was to a 14 year old in the branch who was hit by a car going 45 mph when he ran across the freeway. Miraculously, externally there wasn't a lot of damage. He had bleeding in is brain has been recovering quickly. The other one was to Elder White, the Elder in the senior couple, he had a blood clot in his lung but he is doing better too.

Elder Engman comes from a decent sized family, he is number 3 of 4.

Ok Mom I will send you another email about housing later... I love you guys, I hope Wes gets feeling better! Maybe during his time of illness he could take time to remember his long lost brother!!

My new companion is Elder Engman, he just came from Milwaukie, and he was trained by Elder Warenski, he has also been companions with Elder Goff and Elder Soriano. We served around each other for the first 9ish months of my mission, he goes home one transfer before me. We are gonna get work DONE!!!

As for High adventure, heck yeah dad I want in on that. I hope everyone is feeling well... I can't really think of much else to update you on, but if I do I'll let you know! And you don't need to worry too much about how I am doing emotionally, we went to the Temple today as part of our Pday and that helped out a ton.

Pics coming soon!

Ps Both Dad and mom thank you for those emails you sent last week, they helped a ton!!!

Love,

Elder Travis David Jorgensen!

Mother freaking heck it was a long, stressful week here in Tigard.

I'm just gonna break it down for you day by day... here it comes.

So things started to get a little hectic on Tuesday when, as I was pulling in to a parking space, the lady next to me didn't see me behind her and proceeded to back into me.

All is well, no one got hurt, the driver's door has a pretty good dent in it and the lady is also trying to blame me for what happened... but really the most stressful part about that was all the freaking paperwork.

Legitimately, after it happened, we did paperwork all Tuesday and Wednesday, we didn't have any time to work, which kind of made me mad. As far as insurance and whatnot, I really don't know, I just know I did the paperwork and I haven't heard anything about it since... so if you have any questions, the mission office is the place to ask.

So that was like the warm-up...Editors' note suffice to say that the missionaries in Travis' zone have had a stressful couple of weeks. Our prayers are with them.

I don't know if I explained that very well, but by yesterday at about noon I was drained and feeling pretty down on... life. I read Jacob 3 for studies yesterday morning and what stuck out to me was not worrying about yourself, but worrying about other people, which is mentioned in my Patriarchal Blessing... but still, by around noon yesterday, I was feeling pretty freaking drained and not knowing how I'm gonna get through however much longer this lasts... My zone leaders still don't know how serious things are, and the rest of my district knows something is up, but not how bad... Pretty much the water is already pretty warm and about the only thing that can happen is that it will heat up even more. I decided I needed a blessing from someone who has no clue about anything that is going on, so I asked one for my good friends in English Elder Christensen. Holy freaking cow, that was the best blessing I have had on my mission and probably in several years. (Elder Christensen was one of the ones who helped me move Michael in Milwaukie.) He told me I have been called upon to do several hard things during my mission, but "perhaps the most taxing is that of... being a friend." Holy freaking cow, I have not cried in close to 3 years now, but when he said that, I came very close to tearing up. He went on to say that right now I just need to focus on being my brother's keeper,

or something like that, and he didn't make it sound like things were gonna get any easier, but he did make it sound like I'd be able to handle it. 

As an interesting side-note, due to all of the accumulated stress, we went on a 12 mile run Saturday morning:) We woke up at 530 and went running for an hour and a half, it was freaking the bomb.

Ok well.... yeah:) Love you guys! Thanks for your prayers and support!! Any counsel and wisdom, at anytime you feel inspired to between this week and next, is always appreciated, the stuff you guys told me last week was right on point, although mom I did have a little laugh to myself when you called me mature:) Dad, you asked how I've seen myself change, and I think I'm still the same in a lot of respects. I've dealt with a lot of hard crap, but I think that I will forever be that kid who is making jokes at inappropriate times and just having everyone roll their eyes asking themselves, "will this kid ever grow up??:)

I freaking miss my long hair a lot too... I just feel like it's more me.

Mom you will be fantastic in your calling, good ole K-15 will have the best looking ward bulletin on this side of the Mississippi!

There's not really a whole bunch to report on this week. XXXX the lady we freaking helped move my first few weeks here, is progressing way well, her son went to Church yesterday, and hopefully we should be able to hit her with a fetcha (date) this week.

Oh, well I guess I did get to meet an Apostle this week. Is that a big deal? You'll never guess which one... yep, you got it, Elder Ballard!

He came and spoke to us on Friday and it was a memorable experience. He even took pics with each of our zones, so that should be coming to you guys sometime soon! I think the most memorable part was when he asked us if we have been to Gethsemane in our minds

... that was a thought provoker. So anyways I got to shake his hand and feel his spirit... It was a good meeting, really we just talked about missionary work the whole time, which is good, but our mission has been hitting that hard lately so it was kind of like beating a dead horse, only the Apostle was the one dishing the beating so it was more bearable.

I also had an interesting experience on Thursday... so one of the English Elders I am serving around I served around in Milwaukie for 4 and a half months... he gets a lot of migraines and depression so several times we've done mini exchanges with them so his comp can go out and work... that happened again this week, only he wasn't depressed nor did he have a migraine, he was struggling personally and needed someone to talk to, so he called me. It ended up being like a 2 hour long talk, and I don't remember much of what I said, but I know the Spirit was there guiding me to say it,

and by the end of the night he was feeling better. It was kind of like a sneak peek into what being a Bishop would be like, where people come and just lay their problems on you, and I decided it'll be ok with me if I'm never a Bishop.... anyways... I don't know, it was just a spiritual and personal experience that made me think, and I felt the Spirit super strongly for the rest of the night.

Alright, well I love yall, have a good week!

Elder Travis Jorgensen!

Hey guys!! Happy new year!!! weird weird weird...

so the biggest freaking news of all is that WARENSKI IS FREAKING ENGAGED!!!!!

HE IS PROBABLY GONNA BE MARRIED BEFORE I GET HOME!!!!! WHAT THE $%@^#%$#%#^@!!!!!!!!!  He straight proposed to his fiance on New Year's eve, and supposedly they are gonna get married on freaking May 9th!!!! That has thrown me for a loop, a hard loop. I must have said "wow. freaking warenski is getting married" at least 50 times. sometimes, to quote cooper, all that can be said is "what the hey" And freaking Coop goes home in like 3 months. just wow. my mind has been blown.

wow.

 I have to give a training and practice at zone meeting tomorrow,

Sorry this took so long to send... I just got busy today. And Warenski is engaged.... freaking freaking freak.  Mann is well, the area is well, this last week was just kinda slow which I'll be honest it was nice because not everything was happening at a million miles an hour. I gotta go, but I love you guys!! have a good week!

Oh... And in other news.. HAIRCUT!!!

                                                                          Peeps!!

I have come to a conclusion about something... and that conclusion is that this area is the most stressful area of my mission as far as just crazy things happening all the freakin time! 

Example number 1.... guess what I did last night? Freaking was at the hospital from 10 pm until 7 am... yes, you read that right. One of the recent converts in the area has a diabetic foot ulcer that is infected, and it has been making her progressively more and more sick. Yesterday, we went to take the Sacrament to her, (she stayed home because of her foot,) so we freaking walk in, and she is walking around her apt, with her oozing foot wound, BAREFOOT!!!! there was blood EVERYWHERE!!!!! she said she had a fever of 102, and a whole bunch of other stuff... So we told her that she freaking needs to see a doctor, and she said she would go later because her husband works the graveyard shift and she had to take him to work at 10. We didn't want her to be alone in the ER all night, because we were a little worried that she might lose her foot, so we went and hung out with her. I guess I can check that one off the bucket list of things that I never thought would happen on my mission. I also decided that it'd be ok with me if I never have to go to an emergency room ever again... they're not as fun as I remember.

The other sad part about yesterday is Ester, the lady we helped moved my first week here and this week. We stopped by her to teach her, hopefully the Restoration, but when we walked in, we could tell she was stressed. It turns out that she got that apartment by a miracle (she had like no money so we aren't quite sure what deal was made or what...) Anyways, as a result of getting the apt without having much money to pay for it, by next month she owes 2 months rent or something, and one of her friends stole her credit card and spent all the money she had saved up, and at her job currently, she works like 20 hrs a week, minimum wage. So both of those situations were hard because I couldn't do anything in either one of them...

On the upside... I didn't get out of bed until like 1 in the afternoon today....:D :D :D that felt SO FREAKIN GOOD!!!!! 

The other upside to this is that my comp and I are pretty good friends. I'm glad we're comps because when things just get freaking stressful we handle it pretty well, there is always a joke to be had or something to lift us up in one form or another.

Ok rereading this I realize I sound like a whiney little girl... I really am doing well, that's just like the major update so I figured I'd fill you guys in on la vida loca.

Randomly, Dad are you saving all the pics I send you guys? I just gotta make sure because... I take my pics seriously.

Alright fam I think that's all, I love ya, I hope you have a good new year! Can you believe it's almost 2015?? Aka... THE YEAR I COME HOME!!!!

Love, Elder Travis David Jorgensen