January 23, 2012
hola familia

It’s good to get to hear from you guys. It is good to hear that everything’s been going so well back home. It’s been a busy week here in Mexico. We had 3 baptisms this week, two 9 year olds (Omar and Samantha) whose dad (Isaac) is a convert but had something’s happen between his wife and him and they separated. The wrong was with her so he got to keep the kids. I have to give it to him, for what he is doing for his two kids.

Isaac is kind of broke for money. He’s self employed, selling tacos out of a smaller store that he’s renting, and that is where he lives, just the 3 of them. They sleep on the floor of his taco shop when he closes. I think he uses a mat or a blanket to put on the ground, they don’t have beds. He really is trying hard to give his kids a good life. Saturdays are the best nights to work selling tacos, because that when everyone is out and about. He’s open from 2ish till 11:30-12:00 at night on Saturdays and it’s only him. Every Sunday he’s at church 5 - 15 min before 8:00am. I don’t know how he does it. He’s happy too, so he is doing something right. I have to admit that his tacos are really tasty.
Our other baptism was Mario, he actually doesn’t live in our area but he works all day everyday in our area and can come to church in our area (the chapel is literally one block away) so our bishop let us baptize him.

 

Mouro had a cool baptism to, his boss called and told him that he needed to work more on Sunday, which has never ever happened. He told us but he worked like crazy and got to church in time for the last talk, and come back at 5:00pm ready to be, baptized. We had about 4 elders from the Elders Quorum there, not much but it was enough for it to be special, my comp baptized him and told me that after he came out of the water he told him that he just felt clean, just really clean.

It’s been interesting to see what happens right before a baptism, because there’s almost always a trial right before, and they all are different. Some come in a form of a sickness, or extra work, everything. Most of them punch through but some don’t.

We had interviews this last week with the president. I have to admit i was a little nervous, but everything went fine. My prez told me that my job was to learn the atonement, live the atonement and teach the atonement, that’s all. And he gave me some great advice. It was a great interview.

I also got to work with my old comp Elder Figueroa Thursday. It was cool. He did some interviews in my area for us. It was fun to get to work with him again and nice to get to actually talk to him without much of a language barrier.

My Spanish is really coming along; I can just talk now, which is nice. I conducted my first baptismal service and confirmed someone a member of the church this Sunday. So thank you for all your prayers.

Love you forever.
Elder Sorensen

January 16, 2012

Elder Sorensen and Elder Beltran at the baptism of Cesar, Alredio, Patricia, and Jasmine. 

It sounds like everyone is doing great. It really is good to hear that everything is going well.

We had 4 baptisms this week, Cesar, Alfredio, Patricia, and Jasmine. They went well, and we have been blessed to have 4 more baptisms this coming Sunday. Cesar is the one that I told you about last week. He’s 27 years old, and I found out that he knows Latin. He can read it, write it and speak it.

I’m so glad that they ended up going through. Cesar and I have become more friends than anything. Last Saturday we were talking with him in a lesson and I related the ¨I found my friend story with him¨; it really does apply with us. I can tell we meet before we came here and he can to. Cesar has had many trials. While we were teaching him lesson 1, his boss sent him a text telling him essentially that he didn’t have a job any more. So he’s managed to make it through that. At the baptism he got sick in the stomach from a bad taco or something, and had to leave to by Pepto-Bismol, then he got a text from one of his friends saying that she (a famous Mexican singer) wanted him to come do a show with her (a gig) and that the flight left at 1:30 if he wanted to go. But he stayed and made it through and had a great experience in his baptism.

I just received the banner from the ward last Tuesday, it’s really cool. Make sure you thank the bishop for me.

We had another busy week and have taught a ton of people. We had 32 lessons this week and have 12 new contacts. It’s good to be busy. I’m defiantly learning a ton of stuff from my comp Elder Beltran. We are definitely different; he has a really different teaching style and has a lot of experience, although sometimes I have to admit that he doesn’t share his wisdom very well at times. But I’m learning a ton from him and we are getting along.

I should finish the Book of Mormon this week. I’m in Moroni 7 as of today. It’s taken me about 3 and half months, but I’ve about read it all in Spanish. I can about understand it all. I’ve found its easier to pray in Spanish than in English also. It was weird I tried to pray in English and I found myself using Spanish words without knowing it.

Thanks for all your support and prayers they’ve helped a ton, their being answered.
Love you forever
Elder Sorensen

Jan 9, 2012 
Hola Familia!!
It’s been a crazy week this week I will have to admit. We have taught over 36 lessons this week, and we had 5 investigators come to church with us this last Sunday. It was a Sunday that I’ll never forget. We had one baptism with a Sister named Rosario she’s real cool. She had a awesome experience, she started crying about 40 sec after she came out of the water, saying that she just felt so clean. But that’s not what had the biggest impact on me this week.

We recently found a Young Man (27) named Cesar. He lives alone with 2 dogs, his family lives about 4+ hours away, and he’s just been working. We knocked on his door and he told us through the door he was showering, so we moved on to the next door. No one after him opened up, but after about 5ish minutes he shouts at us and told us to come and talk to him. We told him we were reps. of Jesus Christ and he said “Pásense” or “get in here” in English. To make long storry short hes talked to Jehovah Witnesses, a bunch of different Christian churches, and even lived in a Catholic Seminary for a year, he’s a catholic by birth. when we taught him lesson 3 (baptism) we found out that he didn’t think that any one church is true, and that salvation was a individual thing, he even said, “if you tell me that your church is the best, what a deception” so we explained to him that we can find out for ourselves through prayer and our purpose is to teach a man to fish not give him a fish.... so that was a powerful lesson. He was one of the investigators that came with us to church. To be honest nothing seemed like it went right for Cesar to have a good impression about the church, because it was fast and testimony meeting. And as you know everyone talks about how this church is the only true church, the Prophet and the Book of Mormon. After that meeting I asked him what he thought, he looked at me with an I don’t know what to say smile and just said that he needed us to explain some more things to him and that everyone said that this church is the best. So I told him were going to explain everything that happens in church to him at our appointment at 4:00. So my comp and I somewhat got the feeling that he wasn’t feeling to great about how we do things.

So at the last class, Elders Quorum, we were talking about Saints, and what makes a saint a saint. It went ok but Cesar made a comment that really made me worry about the members starting a war of words with him. He essentially said that a saint should be humble, and that he felt that every path leads to H.F. (we hadn’t taught him about the Restoration yet). That’s a really easy thing to nail someone for saying. But there happened to be 2 RMs in the class that did a great job, normally members are new and don’t know how to respond nicely to questions like this. They essentially explained that every person can pray and receive a testimony from Heavenly Father, and another said that it’s like if you see a crash it makes you a witness of that crash, and once you receive a testimony like this you’ll want to share it with people. And the response of Cesar was really cool he said he really did like what he saw in us as a church and really complemented us Elders, he said that the only reason that he come to church with us was because of what he saw in our eyes, he called it the truth and word of God. And that he felt the peace that he had been looking for with us. And that every member should try to be like us. It was a way huge complement.

So we taught him lesson one later on Sunday and he accepted everything really well. He told us I believe you and told us how we really did have something special. That he’s always been able to see if someone is teachings are of god from their eyes. I think that may be one of his gifts to say. He hadn’t seen the truth in anyone till we came along, and that he had a thought of savior knocking on his door when we knocked on his door and that he needed to check and see who was out his door, and that he felt that somehow he already knew us from somewhere, like we were friends before we came here. The spirit was so strong.
Well it sounds like everything is going good at home, thanks for all your love and support.
Love forever
Elder Sorensen

JANUARY 2, 2012

Happy New Year!!! Its good to here that everything is going well. Things are going good here.

My new area is Roma 2, and my companion is Elder Beltran. He's cool. He has 30 more days left in the mission. Then hes off to his house. But were still working hard, its going to be tough to stay focased when I'm that close to coming home.

Elder Sorensen and Elder Beltran at  Abigail and Juan Jose's Baptism

My new area seems cool we baptized Abigail and Juan Jose Saturday. They have quite a story. First off Abigail (26) and her husband have been fighting and crap had been going on, so we've been helping them, a little. They told us that they wanted baptized. Their interviews were last Friday, and after we schedulaed them i just had the strongest feeling that something was going to happen in the interviews, I've had that feeling a few times before, but their was not anything I could have done. So we did the interviews, Abigail wantes the Holy Ghost to help her with 2 things, her relationship with her husband and to receive guidance of what to do. So her interview was good, but the husband not so much. He ended up lying about a few things and yayaya so he flat out did not want to repent, and did not want his wife to either. It was weird because he was always really nice to us to. So he worked saturday and we talked to Abigail (his wife). She told us that she was going to look for a new house and that she was leaving her husband. Which to be honest is actually good news. Its has a lot to do what it talks about in Jacob 5. If you have a tree and half is good and half is bad first thing you do is try to save the bad half, but if nothing works cut the bad half off and let the good half live. I mean don't feel bad, she married this guy to make another jealous.

For new years we went and had dinner with her. She absolutely loves us. we are stilll teaching her and she still has a lot to learn about whats really important in life, but she's starting to see. Thats why she fought so hard to get baptized. She has a pretty motivating testimony.


So I've seen some new things here in Mexico City. The city changes a ton from day to night.


Anyway don't worry about me, if the lord is with me, who can be against me?


love you forever
Elder Sorensen

December 26, 2011

Hola Familia!!! It was so good to talk to all of you. It was awesome to say the least. I will see you on Mother's day!

Elder Sorensen and Elder Barajas

Elder Sorensen and Elder Barajas in Jardines(his first area)

Like I told you we baptized a man named Miguel Sanchez Dominges. He is really cool. He accepted everything really well and wanted to get baptized, but would never let us set a date for him. We used the "hey I am leaving on Monday and would like to see you get baptized." He was like "ok! Let's do it". He was really excited for his baptism he just needed to set his mind on a day. When we went to pick him up he wasn't at his house so we waited a bit, then we heard him yell at us. We had gone to the store real quick, he was power walking to get to his house. Once we were in his house he let us in and just started running from room to room getting ready. When he was ready he said "lets go". Once we were at the church and changed into our baptism clothes he was ready to just run right into the font. we stopped him and told him about the program we had planned. It was real cool. He was way excited to get baptized. I am so glad he got baptized.

Elder Sorensen Elder Baraja and Miguel Sanchez Dominges

So I’m in my new area, its right in the middle of the Federal District or Mexico City. It’s really cool, from what I can tell it’s really kind of small, my new comp (Elder Beltrán) said that we can walk from one side to the other in 45min. but there is still a ton of people here to work with, we even have some to baptize this Sunday. It’ll be real good change.
My comp is Elder Beltrán. His house is right under California, I think. He goes home in 6 weeks or at the end of this change. He’s cool. He was a Zone leader and got taken out to be a trainer but the elder he was training went home for some reason, so I’m with him. He told me that he wants me to essentially do everything, and he’s going to act more of a guide. He said that he thinks I’ll be a trainer next transfer, which would be really cool. So I’m really excited, he talks a lot to so I should learn a lot of Spanish to.

My trip out here was really kind of interesting. We had a member take us out to a point where we all split up and went to our different areas. But the member had a moving truck that had seats for 3 but there were like 6 missionaries and 1 member that needed to go, so 4 of us got to sit in the back with all the luggage. It was kind of cool.

So a while ago I was on interchanges with the ZLs and I stayed the night with Elder Ostler and we studied to and we were talking about what we read in the Book of Mormon for personal study and it happened that I had read Alma 46. And we applied verse 12 to missionary work it was really cool. It’s the verse about the title of liberty where it says in memory of our God, Religion.... Elder Ostler made a real cool comment, he made the point that it’s really a war out here and we are at the front lines, us missionaries, and how important it is that we have our motivation in the right source. Lots of times with the wars in the Book of Mormon the Nephites are outnumbered, by a lot; it always says that the Nephites remembered why they are fighting for and in the end come out on top. So thank you guys for all your support, and love it’s good to know and a comfort that I have some much people at home rooting for me. Thanks a million.

I love you all so much, and forever
Elder Sorensen

December 19, 2011

Hola familia

Thanks a ton for sending me a SKYPE account. Its something that I need. Now all I need is the name of your SKYPE account. How can i call you if i dont have it? I will try thesorensenzoo, but I want to make sure that I have your account so I can call you. If I use your phone number it will just call your phone and there wont be any video. Thanks for making me a skype acount though. I just want to make sure that I call the right house because I only get an hour.

Thanks for the package I got everything! The candies are awesome and the root beer was even better. One of them got smashed and burst (the box was pritty beat up when i got it). So the letters got a little wet but the socks seemed to soak up most of the soda so everthing was readable. It was awesome it made my week. I went ahead and opened all the presents, thanks for the USB drive, and a Christmass tie (everyone here thinks its cool) and the stocking full of candy was really clever. I loved it all. It was a very fun box to open. Be sure to thank Scott and Missy for the socks. Thanks a million :) but i dont think you need to send any liquids for a while (like pop).

We baptized the son of Blanca, hes 8. He turned 8 while we were trying to get Blonka confirmed. So we finaly got them to church again and confirmed Blanka and baptized Jonathan, her kid.We also put a date for Miguel to get baptized, hes been to church every other Sunday for 7-8 weeks (he works every 24 hours), and heard the voice of a 70. But with all this he still, for some reason didn't want to get baptized untill January, but I'm leaving the area next Monday. So we went to teach him yesterday and retaught lesson1. When we started talking about Joseph Smith we read James 1:5 and that hit him for some reason, he just keep saying ¨wisdom¨ ¨i was lacking wisdom¨, my comp started to repeat the first vision but Miguel paid no attention to him. When my comp stopped talking to him, he started talking about some dream he had, it didn't make any sense to me (he even acted out part of it.) I asked my comp after what he said about his dream. Some how had resolved some doubt and that he's going to plan on getting baptized on the 24th.

Well my times about up, I really wish I got more time to write you guys.
Love you Forever
Elder Sorensen

ps Fire = Fuego
pps i love the food (now) and i can eat salsa like none other

December 5 2010
!!Hola familia!!!
First off we had a baptism!!! whoo hooo. It's been a while since we've had one in my area. We've had a few people get close, bet we finally got one in the water. Her name is Ester. Shes about 45ish years old. Our friends working in the other part of the ward gave her to us as a referral. Shes real cool. She lives in a house with 3 rooms (ya that is it), 1 bed room 1 bed/kitchen and what they call a bath room. There both about the size of moms bed, the house is tinny. Were glad that she has friends that go to the same church or she wouldn't have gotten baptized. She was all good with it but got a little freaked out in the interview. So we had a combined lession with her and her daughter in law (who got baptized like 2 weeks ago), and that really helped commit her her to baptism again.

Alright to the other big news! Christmas!!!! We found out last Tuesday whats going down (because its on Sunday), I'll have church for an hour in the morning 8:00 here 7:00 in Idaho. After that were going to go to a members house and we can SKYPE!! Whahooooooooo!!!! I'm not sure what time I'm going to be able to skype you. We get an hour no more no less. If i'ts any more we will lose the ability to Skype. I've talked to the ward mission leader (in spanish) and he said that we could use his lap top, the only thing is that my comp and 2 more elders are going to use it to so i'll make some plans and get back to you on whats going to happen. If you could send me all of you Skype information thats all that i'll need. Thanks a ton. I'm way exited to get to see you guy's. I'll see you in 20 days :)

Its cool that you got a letter from my Mission Prez. No one had told me I had moved up to be a senior companion, it doesn't really matter right now because my comps the District leader and has the say over every one. hahaha.

I can't believe that you didn't want a new TV. I would have been exited, haha. Being out hear really made me want to develop more talents, I might not even buy a new X Box when I get home (at least not right away hahaha).  I don't think i ever want to stop being a missionary, everyone tells me that there's no way that i can extend but i'm going to give it my best shot. If i cant, i'll get to come home with the mission president, which would be cool.

The weathers really nice here and i never am cold, with exception to a few of the mornings. My compainion is always freezing, and i'm fine in a short sleeve shirt. Its funny really, but it seams that all the Americans get use to it here in a year, so well see how i'll do next winter.

Spanish is coming, its frustrating at times because I can't express myself very well with my companion. Its helped me realize how important communication is in a relationship. All in all its getting way better. It seems that after the transfer it just jumped up a ton. I don't know why, but everything seems to work in transfers here. I can understand enough to know whats going on in all the lessons and in seat contacts and enough to understand most of the BoM, but i'm still working on the ability to speak it as well as I understand it. Everyone said that once you can understand what everyone else is saying you just take off, which is has. Thank you for all your prayers.

Last Wednesday we had a conference with a Elder Jonson (I can't remember what his first name is, but he's over all of mexico) It was really cool. I learned a lot. The first thing that he did was commit all the latino Elders to studying English for an hour a day. So the non english speaking elders are going to have a language study time for English, which is kinda funny because we don't even have a time to study Spanish.

My times up, so I got to go.
Love you forever
Elder Sorensen

November 28 2010
¡hola amado familia mio!

It sounds like everything is going great for you guys at home. It's great to get to hear from you. Sounds like you had a good thanksgiving break. Thanksgiving for me wasn't quite the same with out a huge turkey and mashed potato dinner, it was just a normal day here. It was weird, it just sipped by with out me knowing.

It was really cold here yesterday, like 2 Celsius, I think which is like 36 Fahrenheit. The only difference here is first, none of the houses have insulation and its the coldest its raining. The cold rain doesn't help us stay any warmer. So I am extremely grateful that we got that big coat for me it was a great help. Normally 36 isn't a problem but when you don't have any where to go for heat, its nice to have a sweater.

I'm learning a lot about how to work with drunks here. We have been helping a man named Luis, he's 40 years old, has a messed up passed and wants to get baptized in the church. He was all set and ready to go but after the interview we were told he was going to have to go to church for 3 months before he can get baptized. Which sucks. So we told him that and the next day we were going to visit someone who lives on the same street, and we ran into Luis, who was drunk, and his ¨wife/girlfriend¨ had left him. We had hopped that he would be sober the next day, but no he wasn't. It was kind of sad. He is an alcoholic and had stopped drinking for almost 2 weeks or more, and his life was starting to get back together.

Here you can buy a 250ml bottle of 100% alcohol for about 5 pesos or less than 50 cent's. So he would buy that and mix it with water and drink it to get (and stay) drunk. Hes drinking only to get drunk really, and for hardly no mony either.

So we visited him Sunday. That was a really interesting lesson, considering that I could understand him a ton better than the first few lessons we had with him. He invited us in and we went into his room and sat down and were as firm as possible with him. It took a little while to admit that he'd been drinking (I dont know why you would lie and say that you werent drinking - it was obvious). After that we explained to him that we were here to help him change his life.... and that we would help him but he can't be drunk when we help him. So I hope he got the message, well see today if he actually stopped drinking or not.

Drunks are weird, I'm so glad that none of my friends have ever drunk. The mission is the best plase to learn how to help people with this kind of stuff, smoking, alcohol, drugs (i haven't taught any druggies yet, but I've seen tons). Mainly because missionaries are protected if we are obedient and have the spirit with us really strong all the time.

The other day, Thursday, we had interchanges so we could have some interviews done in our area. When all was said and done we went to the area of the ZLs to end the the inter changes. But at the same time my comp and the other ZL went to our area. So we called and found out that there weren't any buses to take me back to my area. So we went to the house of the ZLs to sleep, but we didn't have the keys. So we tried to break in (with permission) and my temp comp couldnt do it, so I did it. It was cool.

Love you forever
Elder Sorensen

 

We went to the temple mayor last week here are the pictures. It is a somewhat destroyed azteck temple.

OK Jardines is the name of my area, and the name of the ward. So if you went to lds.org you could probably look it up and find my area. I don't know how well the areas for Mexico is on Google earth but the church has all of the churchs marked, so you should be able to find it. I normally work in ¨Colinas de San Mateo¨, ¨Tejocote¨, ¨Casas Vejas¨ and ¨San Meteo Nopala¨.

In the interview with the President we just talked about my numbers first, if me and my comp are being obedient and... and let me ask all the questions i wanted. It was great I learned alot in that 5 min.


Sounds like your haveing fun with missionary work, let me tell you its a blast. Some advice about inactive members, 1st theres got to be a reason that there not going to church, in PMG capter 10 it talkes about finding peoples needs. It would help a lot if you knew how to find why they don't like church. Then you would know how to help them. 2nd the president here has a ¨3 step plan¨ to keep people in church. 1. Get them excited to read the Book of Mormon every day, 2. Help them get used to praying every day and when they need help. 3 Going to church, because if they falter in one (when they are doing all 3) It'll help keep them strong. Just some quick advise I'm sure youre doing an awesome job.

Email first thing when angela gets her call, or even better video tape her opening her call and email me the video. She's going to absolutly love the MTC, I know I did, and it shounds like Zach is right now. Just make sure you send her some care packages. But ya, I really want to know where shes going to go. She should get home about the same time I do.

So we didn't have any baptisms this week. It is kind of a bummer, we almost did. Saturday at about 12:00 we contacted a sister on the street and turns out that she had already met (like 2 years ago or more) with missionaries. At 3:00 we taught her lesson #3 real fast and at 5:00 she had an interview for baptism. She passed and was all set, and commited to be baptized the next day. But her daughter was really sick with a fever and she said that she will next week.

We had 3 people in Sacrament meeting this week, which is awesome and a convert was there, its really hard to keep people coming. The words are trying, and their starting to catch on but the church here really has a lot of work to do, we just dont have time to help them out that much. Its expected for every companionship to baptise 1 or more every week, and right now the ward members are taking a while to figure out that they need to get going.

We finaly had Olga and Nancie at church. They are really just really die hard christian that have an endless list of doubts and everything has to backed up in the bible. They are really cool and they love us but it can be really frustrating because the littlest thing can take forever to talk about, we had a lession go way over an hour about the god head. We explained it like 15 times with different examples

The other one in the church was Miguel, he's a cop here and he showed up on his own to church which is rare for an investigator, but he insisted that we didnt come and pick him up. It was funny! We didnt see him in the chapel so we called him and he said "I'm here waiting for you guys," we actually called him twice before we found him, he was sitting right next to the door. He's cool, he's way exited every time we come talk with him. He talks really fast tho so some times its hard to understand what hes saying.


 
Thanks for everything.
Love
Elder Sorensen