Here's a little bio on my future mission president and his wife. Apparently was in the church news and was forwarded onto us by President Talbot:
Laurle Z. and Dirk O. Jergensen
Dirk Orme Jergensen, 59, and Laurie Zwick Jergensen, six children, Lake Poway Ward, Poway California Stake. Brother Jergensen serves as a temple ordinance worker and a Church Service Missionary for LDS Social Services and is a former counselor in a stake presidency, bishop, ward Young Men president, gospel doctrine teacher and missionary in the New Mexico-Arizona Mission. Founder/general manager, Omnicare of San Diego. Born in Rexburg, Idaho, to Orme M. and Ludeen Waldram Jergensen.
Sister Jergensen serves as a temple ordinance worker and a Church Service Missionary for LDS Social Services and is a former stake Relief Society president, counselor in stake Young Women and Primary presidencies, ward Young Women president and counselor, ward Primary president, counselor in a ward Relief Society presidency and ward Primary teacher. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to William Evert Zwick Jr. and Audrey McDonough Zwick.
So my comp just got some pictures from home that he's showing me. They mean something to him....
Anyway, I'm starting to see how people run out of things to say in their emails home. The work here is going great. Elder Heyborne and I are on the same page about how the work needs to go and that helps a ton. We may not have the highest numbers, but there's a lot of necessary work to be done that doesn't necessarily equate into huge numbers right away.
We had zone conference this week, which was awesome. The problem arose, however, while we were in zone conference. Some more stinkin snow decided to weasel its way into our weather and added up to a bunch of snow on the roads by the time we were headed home. This was my first time driving in a snowstorm for that long, so that was fun. It's only about forty-five minutes or so to the Des Moines Stake Center (usually) so it's not TOO far. It's not Yankton or Muscatine, that's for sure.
An elder in our district has been having some serious health problems and may go home. I hope this isn't the case, but it looks like it might be. We'll find out today. I'm thinking, thought, that if he does go home I may end up in another threesome companionship.
Cris is still on for baptism this coming saturday! She's really stoked for it. And our other progressing investigator is recognizing its truthfulness, and is wanting to start family home evenings with her kids and wants them there for the lessons, which is awesome. It was my first time teaching someone how to have family home evenings.
I think that's it. Snow's still coming. Usually it melts not long after coming down, only sticking around for awhile, but in this case it just won't leave. Snowblowers (I never really knew what that was until I got here. They're like lawnmowers for your snow! I always imagined them looking like leafblowers....) are having a hard time throwing the snow over the mounds that are already there. Sooo, that's fun. Woo.
Oh, and a little thing I've forgotten to tell you for a long time, when I went to Nauvoo in my first area, we had the privilege of having the Temple President speak to our small group. I know, random and a small tidbit, but still cool.
As I told Dad, but figured I might as well stick it in writing where Mom and Cari and whoever else you show the FPEO section to can see easily: President Talbot said in my interview with him that he really trusts me, and even if the numbers aren't high, he knows I'm doing what needs to be done here. He trusts me that I know what needs to be done here. He thanked me for the missionary I am and everything. I didn't know how to react to being bombarded by so many compliments.... That was a pretty humbling situation.
I love you all
Elder Gates
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Blessings of Blessings
Hello!
So I now have a new companion, Elder Heyborne from Vermont (we're keeping them Utahns out of here). He's a way cool guy and we get along very well. He's one transfer younger than me, so we've got some very young blood here in Knoxville. And before you start getting all excited for me being senior, let me just point out that it is, in my opinion, a simple numbers game: when you have groups of 10 or more missionaries coming out, and most groups before me are all just 3 or so or else all zone leaders, it kind of evens out where younger missionaries end up having to go senior and train. Elder Knapp, who came out with me, is training right now, and went senior a transfer before me. So, yeah, it just works out where I would be senior. Maybe there's more to it, but that's just how I see it. Either way, being senior includes more responsibility. I think it's just hit me how callings, even in the mission, should neither be desired nor saught after. Yeah, I'm good keeping this as my highest rank for a long time. But, with that whole numbers game, I'll probably be called to more stuff, unless I completely mess up.
Besides that, there's not much to report on. Really. It's kind of been a normal few days around here. Last week Elder Havice was all drugged up, so we didn't get out much before transfers. He was on 800 milligrams of ibuprofen 3 times a day to help with some foot problem and apparently it got him pretty messed up. So I spent half of last week sitting around the apartment. If you want a sure way to feel depressed on a mission, sit around and do nothing.
Yesterday we gave a blessing to both of our progressing investigators. One had fallen down pretty hard and the other was just plain old sick. The second one was the same investigator who had had a sick child we had blessed. It was pretty cool to get the chance to bless both of them, and afterwards she was crying and said it was cool. She wants us to come over this week when her children are there, which is a first, so it would be really cool if they started investigating as well. Our Branch President gave the one to our other investigator, the one that has a baptismal date, and that was good, too. She slipped this past week and smoked a cigarette her friend had offered her and drank some coffee. I contribute it wholly to us not visiting her more this past week.
It just keeps snowing here. I'm ready for spring.
Elder Gates
So I now have a new companion, Elder Heyborne from Vermont (we're keeping them Utahns out of here). He's a way cool guy and we get along very well. He's one transfer younger than me, so we've got some very young blood here in Knoxville. And before you start getting all excited for me being senior, let me just point out that it is, in my opinion, a simple numbers game: when you have groups of 10 or more missionaries coming out, and most groups before me are all just 3 or so or else all zone leaders, it kind of evens out where younger missionaries end up having to go senior and train. Elder Knapp, who came out with me, is training right now, and went senior a transfer before me. So, yeah, it just works out where I would be senior. Maybe there's more to it, but that's just how I see it. Either way, being senior includes more responsibility. I think it's just hit me how callings, even in the mission, should neither be desired nor saught after. Yeah, I'm good keeping this as my highest rank for a long time. But, with that whole numbers game, I'll probably be called to more stuff, unless I completely mess up.
Besides that, there's not much to report on. Really. It's kind of been a normal few days around here. Last week Elder Havice was all drugged up, so we didn't get out much before transfers. He was on 800 milligrams of ibuprofen 3 times a day to help with some foot problem and apparently it got him pretty messed up. So I spent half of last week sitting around the apartment. If you want a sure way to feel depressed on a mission, sit around and do nothing.
Yesterday we gave a blessing to both of our progressing investigators. One had fallen down pretty hard and the other was just plain old sick. The second one was the same investigator who had had a sick child we had blessed. It was pretty cool to get the chance to bless both of them, and afterwards she was crying and said it was cool. She wants us to come over this week when her children are there, which is a first, so it would be really cool if they started investigating as well. Our Branch President gave the one to our other investigator, the one that has a baptismal date, and that was good, too. She slipped this past week and smoked a cigarette her friend had offered her and drank some coffee. I contribute it wholly to us not visiting her more this past week.
It just keeps snowing here. I'm ready for spring.
Elder Gates
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Google Doesn't Do A Subject Space??
That's my subject.
Anyway.
Nope, I'm not getting transferred! Congrats to Elder Sodenkamp, though, at getting Zone Leader! I'm getting bumped up to Senior Companion. Which, if nothing else, means I get to drive!! That's the big thing. It will probably be to an elder that will just be one transfer younger than me. So...we'll definitely be relying upon the Spirit to guid this area! So, as any normal transfer P-Day would be, we get to do all sorts of running around and crap.
But this is an amazing area right now! We just saw the baptism of Jacob on Saturday!! He's a great kid and will go far. He really has gone through a lot just to get to this point and be baptized and seeing it finally happen for him was amazing. I nearly cried. He truly was glowing. And then on sunday we had the best fast and testimony meeting of my life, when he and Brother Rayburn stood up and bore their testimonies. Nearly cried again. Got pretty teary-eyed. The spirit was so strong and being able to feel the strength behind their testimonies, even though they were simple, was amazing.
We also have a new baptismal date! It's a lady named Cris. She actually has had a date before, but now seems right on track for it. She has given up her Tobacco, alcohol, coffee, tea, everything. Even chocolate because it causes her to do the other stuff! Pretty crazy. It's been a lot of fun carrying that stuff around and flushing it down the toilet. I'll try to include some of my favorite pictures from flushing it all. It's good to destroy the stuff and have them see it destroyed so they know it's gone for good. Still, never thought the first time I'd walk around all day with tobacco in my backpack or have open alcohol in my home would be when I came on my mission. But Yeah, her baptismal date is set for the 27th, and more baptismal dates are on the way soon, I'm sure! We've got some great investigators. One is a woman I think I've mentioned before who investigated the church about ten years ago. She called us up this past week to ask us to pray for her child who was sick and I, not willing to pass up the opportunity, asked if we could give her child a blessing. She agreed after I explained it and we got the opportunity to bless her! It was way cool. She's progressing a lot. She wanted to come to church this past sunday but was really sick.... She's reading and praying still, which is great, and she's just...better. You can see the change in people when they start reading the Book of Mormon. It's nearly palpable. I LOVE it.
It's been snowing more. Yay. This is an especially bad winter for here. Woo. It's not as cold as Rexburg was, but with the humidity it's made worse and the fact that here I cannot just go inside all day or just go outside when I absolutely have to. But yeah, more snow means an even higher amount of junk to trudge through and even more runoff in the spring. There will be massive flooding this spring, I know it. Does anybody remember the massive flooding that happened here in Cedar Rapids a couple years ago? It caused equivolant, if not more, damage, money-wise, than Katrina. But it didn't hit the news as much. Hmmm....
Anyway, that's it really for this week's update!
-Elder Gates
Anyway.
Nope, I'm not getting transferred! Congrats to Elder Sodenkamp, though, at getting Zone Leader! I'm getting bumped up to Senior Companion. Which, if nothing else, means I get to drive!! That's the big thing. It will probably be to an elder that will just be one transfer younger than me. So...we'll definitely be relying upon the Spirit to guid this area! So, as any normal transfer P-Day would be, we get to do all sorts of running around and crap.
But this is an amazing area right now! We just saw the baptism of Jacob on Saturday!! He's a great kid and will go far. He really has gone through a lot just to get to this point and be baptized and seeing it finally happen for him was amazing. I nearly cried. He truly was glowing. And then on sunday we had the best fast and testimony meeting of my life, when he and Brother Rayburn stood up and bore their testimonies. Nearly cried again. Got pretty teary-eyed. The spirit was so strong and being able to feel the strength behind their testimonies, even though they were simple, was amazing.
We also have a new baptismal date! It's a lady named Cris. She actually has had a date before, but now seems right on track for it. She has given up her Tobacco, alcohol, coffee, tea, everything. Even chocolate because it causes her to do the other stuff! Pretty crazy. It's been a lot of fun carrying that stuff around and flushing it down the toilet. I'll try to include some of my favorite pictures from flushing it all. It's good to destroy the stuff and have them see it destroyed so they know it's gone for good. Still, never thought the first time I'd walk around all day with tobacco in my backpack or have open alcohol in my home would be when I came on my mission. But Yeah, her baptismal date is set for the 27th, and more baptismal dates are on the way soon, I'm sure! We've got some great investigators. One is a woman I think I've mentioned before who investigated the church about ten years ago. She called us up this past week to ask us to pray for her child who was sick and I, not willing to pass up the opportunity, asked if we could give her child a blessing. She agreed after I explained it and we got the opportunity to bless her! It was way cool. She's progressing a lot. She wanted to come to church this past sunday but was really sick.... She's reading and praying still, which is great, and she's just...better. You can see the change in people when they start reading the Book of Mormon. It's nearly palpable. I LOVE it.
It's been snowing more. Yay. This is an especially bad winter for here. Woo. It's not as cold as Rexburg was, but with the humidity it's made worse and the fact that here I cannot just go inside all day or just go outside when I absolutely have to. But yeah, more snow means an even higher amount of junk to trudge through and even more runoff in the spring. There will be massive flooding this spring, I know it. Does anybody remember the massive flooding that happened here in Cedar Rapids a couple years ago? It caused equivolant, if not more, damage, money-wise, than Katrina. But it didn't hit the news as much. Hmmm....
Anyway, that's it really for this week's update!
-Elder Gates
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
6 Months: I Like It, I Love It, I Want Some More of It
The second part of that title is exactly what our recent convert said about the gospel. I love that man.
This week has been better in weather. But it seemed much worse. We ran out of miles on the car for the month and so we walked most of the week. We spent all day saturday walking. I think the Casey's and Kum and Go got sick of us using them for the restroom or snacks. We just got tired. At one point I just gave up and laid down on Ray's porch (he was not home) to just relax my back. It felt so good, even if it looked awkward.
Jacob is still on for baptism. He's taught us both the restoration and the Plan of Salvation for the most part, with us just asking questions to kickstart his memory. He's even resolving his own concerns and everything. He's a great guy. He's having people fly in for the baptism and has requested Elder Bright, the missionary who left just before I came in, to baptize him, so we had to figure out how to get him down here for this coming saturday. The branch doesn't really even know what to do with two baptisms right in a row, and more dates sure to be set here soon. But they're an amazing branch so they'll do great. They fellowship like CRAZY and it's perfect. One investigator who we're teaching now explained her experience of going there (and this was even ten years ago) a lot like how Glenn Beck explained his first time going to church. But it's the members' responsibility to be the friends to the people, because they'll be around much longer than us missionaries, so it's good they're doing that here. We've even been seeing a major boom in Less Actives coming back to church, which is AWESOME. The boom, I believe, has little too do with us, beyond just the fact that hardworking missionaries in an area do loads for the area anyway. And I'm not claiming to be hardworking myself, that's just what a member told us we were yesterday in PEC. So that's always good. You also know it's a good sign that members like you when they start teasing you (which they do a lot of here).
We had District Meeting here in Knoxville this week so we had it in our branch building. Well, I had gotten letters that morning so I took them with me there to read before and after the meeting. But, I made the mistake of leaving one of them behind. My branch president found it on the pulpit sunday morning and, seeing it was from a girl, found me in the hall where I was greeting people and continued to threaten to have me read it aloud. I tried a few times to grab it from him, but it doesn't really help that he's in the National Guard Reserves, so the only way I would have gotten it back would have been by tackling him and using the unfair tactics I've learned from water polo to get it back. Finally, when he saw I was thoroughly embarassed, he handed it over. TOTALLY seems like something Dad would do. Which is why it's good Dad granted me with the sense of humor to think that was hilarious and not just embarrassing.
We also had exchanges this week and I ended up staying here and going to Pella with our District Leader. We had a whole line of stuff arranged and after the first two appointments fell through I admit, I lost some hope on our second to last one (the last one being jacob, and I knew that couldn't fall through). So when we got carried away talking to some Baptist Missionaries (way cool thing I noticed. They never once bore their testimony on what they were saying. This girl was going to school for three years and knew all sorts of interpretation of scripture but could not just say I know this to be true because I've asked God and received a confirming witness, as we can. The spirit is always so strong with testimony, and people don't know what to do with that. They're always just based on knowledge and suppositions.) and ran into another appointment's timeslot, I just allowed it to. Well, the appointment that we only ended up having about ten minutes for was with this guy who had seemed sort of interested when we first met with him and taught him a first lesson. And in this second appointment, he went on about how he's been to church before because his now deceased wife was LDS and has read 60 pages or so out of the Book of Mormon and considers it scripture and accepted a soft baptismal commitment...yeah, he was way cool. Even tried to reschedule work so he could come to church. Well, I guess we see what happens when I assume.
Things are going well here. Just working hard as always. This is the last monday Prep-Day of the transfer, so I'll talk to you in a week and a half!
Elder Gates
This week has been better in weather. But it seemed much worse. We ran out of miles on the car for the month and so we walked most of the week. We spent all day saturday walking. I think the Casey's and Kum and Go got sick of us using them for the restroom or snacks. We just got tired. At one point I just gave up and laid down on Ray's porch (he was not home) to just relax my back. It felt so good, even if it looked awkward.
Jacob is still on for baptism. He's taught us both the restoration and the Plan of Salvation for the most part, with us just asking questions to kickstart his memory. He's even resolving his own concerns and everything. He's a great guy. He's having people fly in for the baptism and has requested Elder Bright, the missionary who left just before I came in, to baptize him, so we had to figure out how to get him down here for this coming saturday. The branch doesn't really even know what to do with two baptisms right in a row, and more dates sure to be set here soon. But they're an amazing branch so they'll do great. They fellowship like CRAZY and it's perfect. One investigator who we're teaching now explained her experience of going there (and this was even ten years ago) a lot like how Glenn Beck explained his first time going to church. But it's the members' responsibility to be the friends to the people, because they'll be around much longer than us missionaries, so it's good they're doing that here. We've even been seeing a major boom in Less Actives coming back to church, which is AWESOME. The boom, I believe, has little too do with us, beyond just the fact that hardworking missionaries in an area do loads for the area anyway. And I'm not claiming to be hardworking myself, that's just what a member told us we were yesterday in PEC. So that's always good. You also know it's a good sign that members like you when they start teasing you (which they do a lot of here).
We had District Meeting here in Knoxville this week so we had it in our branch building. Well, I had gotten letters that morning so I took them with me there to read before and after the meeting. But, I made the mistake of leaving one of them behind. My branch president found it on the pulpit sunday morning and, seeing it was from a girl, found me in the hall where I was greeting people and continued to threaten to have me read it aloud. I tried a few times to grab it from him, but it doesn't really help that he's in the National Guard Reserves, so the only way I would have gotten it back would have been by tackling him and using the unfair tactics I've learned from water polo to get it back. Finally, when he saw I was thoroughly embarassed, he handed it over. TOTALLY seems like something Dad would do. Which is why it's good Dad granted me with the sense of humor to think that was hilarious and not just embarrassing.
We also had exchanges this week and I ended up staying here and going to Pella with our District Leader. We had a whole line of stuff arranged and after the first two appointments fell through I admit, I lost some hope on our second to last one (the last one being jacob, and I knew that couldn't fall through). So when we got carried away talking to some Baptist Missionaries (way cool thing I noticed. They never once bore their testimony on what they were saying. This girl was going to school for three years and knew all sorts of interpretation of scripture but could not just say I know this to be true because I've asked God and received a confirming witness, as we can. The spirit is always so strong with testimony, and people don't know what to do with that. They're always just based on knowledge and suppositions.) and ran into another appointment's timeslot, I just allowed it to. Well, the appointment that we only ended up having about ten minutes for was with this guy who had seemed sort of interested when we first met with him and taught him a first lesson. And in this second appointment, he went on about how he's been to church before because his now deceased wife was LDS and has read 60 pages or so out of the Book of Mormon and considers it scripture and accepted a soft baptismal commitment...yeah, he was way cool. Even tried to reschedule work so he could come to church. Well, I guess we see what happens when I assume.
Things are going well here. Just working hard as always. This is the last monday Prep-Day of the transfer, so I'll talk to you in a week and a half!
Elder Gates
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