May 28, 2018

Dear Friends and Coaches, 

I will be returning home from serving an LDS mission in Lima, Peru the first week of June. In honor of this event a homecoming will be held for me in my home ward during the worship services where I will talk about the experiences that I have had and the things that I have learned while in the service of our God. You are all invited to attend. The details are below:

Date: Sunday, 10th of June

Time: 9:00AM in my old home ward & 1:00PM in my new ward (lasts about 70 minutes)

Where:  The chapel is the same for both times: 1550 E 1900 N, North Logan 84341

--

Elder Mortenson

April 30 Letter

So it was a good week! I'm training a new elder named Elder Pardo from Santiago, Chile. He is pretty cool. He is really excited about the work and wants to get out and do it so that is a pretty notable change from my last two companions. We are doing like 100-150 contacts together daily so that is dope. 

This week we had a baptism! Abraham, the Venezuelan dude that works in the gym that we go to and is the employee of the member who owns it, got baptized. He was super ready this week so we bumped his date up and it was pretty sick. Hamilton, the member, baptized him and it was cool! 

Hamilton also gave us a reference this week of a lady that goes to the gym as well and that will probably be getting divorced here soon... anyway, she accepted a baptismal date for the 12th and came to church so that's nice. She has been super prepared by the hand of the Lord. 

It was super cool this week, Elder Farnsworth, the elder that I shared a room with in Manchay and that is from my group, is my new zone leader and we did exchanges so that he could interview Abraham. But the best part of it was that he was the elder that replaced me in La Molina Vieja and they invited him to a baptism on Saturday morning so I got to go with him. Hahhaha it was great to go back and see all of the "homies" from that ward. In that ward there are a ton of MTC teachers as well, so I made sure to let them know that buckwheat (Brock) is gonna be there in July and to look for him hahha. 

That is about it for this week. Honestly, I am too lazy to write you guys tons of details because I'm going to be calling soon, anyway. But Tuesday is Elder Call´s birthday, he is in our room and today we are gonna go hit up this sick buffet that we went to my first Christmas here in the mission. We are going with Elder Fagg, Elder Morris and Elder Farnsworth and his comp because they are all in the zone now too so that should be fun. Anyway peace.

--

Elder Mortenson

April 16th Letter

        

A good week I guess.  On Wednesday we had a multi-zone conference which was good. I got to see all the "homies" there.

Friday we went to the gym and my comp afterwards couldn't even move from his bed. The problem that he has with his ankle has been affecting his back and on Friday he kinda threw it out. So he and Elder Lopez went to the doctor on Friday while I stayed with Elder Vazquez and went and taught some lessons and then the zone leaders came to do Virginia´s interview, so that went well. We met a dude that has double citizenship here and in the states and fought in Vietnam. He told us how he couldn't find peace in this world because of all of the people he had killed...pretty sad. 

But ya, so Virginia got baptized! I officially baptized someone from Arequipa before Brock ever did hahaha!  It was a full day event: We had to go and fill the font, but because she is like 70 years old we couldn't just throw the cold water in, so we had to take a little heater thing to boil water on, and every 5 minutes we would dump boiling water into the font while it was filling up so at least it would be lukewarm. It took us like 2 1/2 hours to fill it up that way. But then I got to baptize her and I think we did a good job. The water wasn't ice-cold like it normally is! She was super hyped for her baptism and it turned out great. 

But because of my companion´s back problem, he has been given 5 days of rest by the doctor, which sucks. It's literally the last week of his mission. So we spent Saturday, after the baptism in the room and yesterday too. It's so boring. But on the bright side I got to read from the scriptures a lot. I started the Doctrine and Covenants and I'm already in section 30 now. 

So today we might go to Grau so my companion can go buy clothes and whatnot before heading home. That will be cool. Grau is the place where I went like my first transfer where all of the stuff are name-brand knock-offs, so that will be cool. I might pick some stuff up as well. But everything is going well! Thanks for the package with the Mio, I am so stoked to drink something besides water. 

--

Elder Mortenson

Week 88

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/david-a-bednar_strength-lord/

Here is the talk of the week

Last Monday was the farewell of Carlos. He is going to the Chiclayo mission and entered the MTC on Wednesday so that was cool. I had a really interesting experience at his farewell. This kid approached me and asked me if I spoke English and I said yes, and he sat down next to me and started to speak to me in really good English. Anyway, he started to tell me how his mom is Peruvian and was baptized in our ward a long long time ago, but that he was born and raised in Venezuela and had just recently come back. He told me how his goal was to go to Utah and live and work there but that it was hard for him to get his Visa and whatnot. Anyway, after the farewell I asked him if he was a member of the church and he said no and that he didn't find it very interesting and that he had some agnostic beliefs. So I told him about Pascal´s Wager and some other stuff and about Mosiah 2:41 and how if he wanted to go to the states God could help him, but only if he kept the commandments. He ended up feeling the spirit and started crying really hard.  Unfortunately, he is from another ward here in our zone but I'm sure the missionaries will end up teaching and baptizing him now. So that was the highlight of my week. 

On Tuesday we had to leave at like 11AM and go to San Roque to help the sisters look for a new apartment. It really sucked! We literally walked around in their area until like 5:30 just looking for places that said ¨apartment for rent¨ and their area is super rich and we couldn't find anything. But anyway after that when we got back to the room my comps ankle had swollen up a ton because he pulled a bunch of ligaments a long time ago and that's why he has a bike.  He couldn't even walk so we ended up staying in the room all night, which was boring. And we may have to help the sisters move today but we still don't know for sure. 

On Wednesday we did exchanges with the zone leaders again because I had to interview 2 more of their investigators. One of them was super cool. His friend had shared the gospel with him, she is a girl, and they ended up going to the eternal marriage class at the institute and so ya they taught him everything in like a week and a half and he got baptized, so that was cool. 

Friday, I had to do exchanges with Elder Morris from Layton. It was super fun! Both of our companions are finishing and they went to the temple with president and went and ate lunch and everything so we were together all day. It was super fun! His dad is like the vice president of marketing for the company Lifetime that makes a bunch of plastic stuff so it was cool. 

That's about it for this week. It was a little more exciting than the last one. My comp is getting trunkier now that he leaves in like 2 weeks. We should have a baptism on Saturday and then we are working on a couple more for this month. We have so many people that are so close, they just need a little bit more time and they'll get baptized. 

--

Elder Mortenson

--

Elder Mortenson

Week 87

So another good week you could say. We are now on preparation day number 3 in a row so I can't complain, I love general conference. 

The first couple days of the week were normal. Until Wednesday when the assistants wanted to do exchanges with us. Elder David, from Colorado came with me in my area because he just really wanted to go to the gym hahaha. Unfortunately, it was closed on Thursday morning because it was a holiday. But he is going to train to become a Navy Seal and all of that stuff so we went and did a huge workout in the park anyway and had a big long chat about stuff. It was super cool and helpful. Let's just say that the vision that I have and the way that I now think have been changed. 

On Thursday, we had interviews with president and I talked to him a lot about what happened and he also helped me out a lot. I'll put the link to the talk in this email that Elder David shared with me. Its all about the mind and doubts and stuff, super cool. 

Anyway, on Friday we took our money out in the morning and then we had Fiorella´s interview that night. It was literally 10 minutes long because she was already a member, there had just been a problem with her baptismal registry and so she already knew everything. I was gonna have another interview on Friday from the elders in my district but the guy ended up not wanting to because he felt like he hadn't received an answer about the Book of Mormon yet, so we had to go and teach him and see if we could help him out. We will see how it goes. 

On Saturday and Sunday we watched conference. My companion had set a goal to watch it in English, so on Saturday we went to all of the sessions at the stake center to watch them in English and then on Sunday we watched them in Spanish because we had investigators go to our chapel to watch it. It was a super interesting conference. They mainly just talked about the changes that were going to happen in the organization of the priesthood and with the Home Teachers and then just about how everyone sustained the prophet, it was a good conference. I think my favorite talk was given by Lynn G. Robbins where he talked about developing Christ-like attributes and whatnot and how it would take us maybe a thousand or a million tries to get it right. A phrase that I really like was when he said that "success is GROWING from failure to failure with the same amount of enthusiasm." And I think that is super true, it's not just going from one to another but learning from then and progressing. 

I also thought it was interesting that there´s gonna be a temple in Layton now, and also one in India and in Russia, so that is cool. 

Anyway, all is well. This week my companion is going to the temple and having his last lunch with president on Friday so I will be on exchanges that day. On the bright side, I can tell that I am getting in better shape, so that makes me happy. Bye, until next week. 

Link to talk: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/craig-manning_power-words/

--

Elder Mortenson

Week 86

So good week this week I suppose. Haha idk why I even keep emailing you guys because it's the same every week. But anyway some really good things happened this week so that is exciting! On Wednesday we went with Juan, the father of the family that we are teaching, to the municipalidad(i have no idea what we would call that place in English because it isn't the municipality) But ya anyway we went and talked to the dude that's in charge of marriages and whatnot and we now know all of the requirements. Juan is super hyped to get married and he told us that on Saturday he felt like he finally really received an answer that the church was true and so now he is super decided on getting baptized with his family so we are just trying to hurry up and get them married. That was the first good thing. 

The second was that in ward council yesterday, the bishop told us that they weren't able to find any information about a girl in the ward and that she has to get baptized again. What happened was that she got baptized in Chiclayo when she was 8 like normal but there was a problem with her baptismal registry and she was never actually registered as a member of the church. Anyway they were looking for her information but couldn't find it so we have a free baptism this Saturday in between the afternoon session of conference and priesthood. 

Friday we had a district leader meeting in La Molina. It was cool I guess. All of the zone leaders went as well. It was like a huge leadership council pretty much but president presented some new software programs that he has been working on for converts and to keep track of all of the investigators and whatnot and that was pretty cool. We got free Krispy Kreme doughnuts so that was even better. 

On Saturday my companion got invited to a sealing of some of his converts that he had taught at the beginning of his mission. The parents were just getting sealed to their two children and so we got to go to that. It was pretty interesting. Elder Peterson and Elder Mayfield got invited too so that was sick to hang out with them all morning. And then we saw two white families and talked to them both and turns out that one was from Brazil but living in Utah. So they were excited to talk to us and she volunteered to send a pic of us to our moms so you're welcome, Trish. We also had a huge family home evening with the zone on Saturday night so that was cool. 

Sunday was a good day because like I said we have been visiting members and trying to work with them more and we witnessed a fetching miracle on Sunday. The super strong family in our ward whose children all served missions but are like 40 now and single, love to help us out and the daughter went back through all of her old journals and daily planners and whatnot and cut out every name, number, address etc. that she had ever written down of someone that had gone to church, or that the missionaries had visited, or that she personally had contacted. Hahaha she gave us a full bag of them and offered to contact all of them with us so that was what we were doing last night and we already have a couple of appointments scheduled with some of those people. So ya that's like the first time in all of my mission that a member has given us a reference so it's pretty sic. 

Other than that there is nothing new. Still going to the gym and getting wrecked by Hamilton(the member trainer) And just wrecking myself running a couple times a week. But ya that's about it. Thanks for everything, love you guys. 

--

Elder Mortenson

Week 85

So this was another good week! Kind of weird to think that I just started my 12 weeks over again because like in your training you have "the first 12 weeks" program that help you learn a bunch of stuff and now I have just started the last 12 weeks so that is kinda sad...

Anyway, nothing super cool happened this week. We didn't have transfers so there is no news there. On Wednesday in the district meeting we got to meet all of the new missionaries so that was fun. There are two brand new sisters in the zone and one of the elders in our room is new as well. He's from Argentina. 

On Thursday we planned a Movie Night in the chapel for the members and for the investigators to go and find friends. It was pretty cool, we watched Coco. It was a good movie. Hahah my companion cried, which was pretty weird, but he said that it reminded him a lot of his family so that was kinda awkward....But it made me just want to go Mexico even more and see a Dia de los Muertos celebration. 

On Friday nothing really happened and then on Saturday we went and did service for a member in the other Elders´ ward and it was cool. His name is Brother Bacon and we helped him like clean off his ghetto roof and stuff. There was one wall of his house that didn't have any columns in it at all and literally if you leaned against it you could see it wobble so that was super dangerous. Idk why anyone would build their house like that when they live in a place where earthquakes are super common but who am I to judge... Then, later, we went to El Augustino because my comp got invited to a baptism there and that was cool. I saw elder Hunt and got to talk to him for a while. They have a cemetery there that is sic! Well they are actually catacombs that are above ground and it is super cool and hugeeeeeeee.

But ya that is about all that happened this week. We went to the gym this week and got destroyed but it was fun. Everything is going well just chugging along. Love you guys. 

--

Elder Mortenson