Dearest Family
Hello to all and a special greeting to my two "smokin' hott sisters". Haha! Elder Morris' family wrote him about how they met you guys and how his brother thought my greasy sisters were gorgeous. Poor Dad must have his hands full keeping those girls in line. That must have been so much fun up in Rigby with everyone. Elder Morris and Elder Blanchard have been two of my favorite companions. It will be a hoot to see that kid again. Did anyone else from the IDMM make an apperance at the homecoming?
So the mission field here is great. It was so sad to see the Talbot's go but the Jergensen's are the bomb! I was worried with President Talbot leaving. He is so amazing and has helped the mission so much. But I have full faith and confidence that President and Sister Jergensen will only help things continue to improve. My favorite part about the whole deal is that fact that I now pretty much have Dad as my mission president. No joke. President Jergensen is so similar to Dad that it isn't even funny. He has the same manurisms and the same witty sense of humor. I'm loving it! All the missionaries are loving the Jergensen's. I think what won the Elders over was yesterday when President let us take our suit coats off for zone conference because it was hot. That has never happened before. He is also the best because he is pretty chill and keeps it real. He wants us to work hard and be obedient but he isn't obsessed over the little things.
My new comp, Elder Forsyth, is all worried about defining every little rule in the white hand book because our missions had some different interpretations of the rules. But President calms him down and says that we just stick with the white hand book. I love it! It seems like the Illinois mission obsessed over obedience and the little rules. Obedience is absolutely important but the moment you become preocupied with that is the moment you stop being a missionary. If you are so paranoid about breaking a rule and spend all that time focusing on yourself you loose sight of your real purpose which has nothing to do with you.
Speaking of which, I really do like Elder Forsyth. He is a good kid and everything but he doesn't quite measure up to when we had Elder Blanchard here with me and Elder Morris. That was the greatest week ever! We picked the little tike up Monday in Nauvoo and even got to do a temple session there. It was wierd meeting in Nauvoo. Elder Forsyth's comp went to the St. Louis mission so he got picked up by those AP's at the same time. So we had 6 AP's meet in Nauvoo for the switch. That certainly was a lot of self righteousness in such a small area.
Now that we have Elder Forsyth I realize how many differences there are between missions. There are so many mission terms that are different from mission to mission that it's almost hard to communicate. They have different rules, different ways to keep track of numbers, transfers are different, etc. I'm not even sure if the church is true in Illinois at this point! Haha, jk. So you take that confusion and add that to the fact that President Jergensen doesn't really know anything about the mission and it adds up for a grand time. We have had some meetings with us and President and it's like we are all speaking different languages. No worries though, we'll all survive and hopefully the mission can benefit from all these different ideas coming in.
I was so stressed at first though. I felt a huge responcibility for the missionaries since I'm the senior AP but then I also felt a huge responcibility for the Jergensen's since we are family. So I felt like if anything went wrong on either end that it was my fault. But after Zone Conference in Ames yesterday I have no worries. President and Sister Jergensen did amazing! And surprisingly enough I was very impressed with our missionaries. President wanted all of the missionaries to be in their seats and silent 15 minutes before Zone conference started. That has never happened since I've been out here but by some miracle it happened yesterday. We had to make some threatening phone calls but it got the job done.
The Zone Conference training was phenominal! President has so many good ideas that I feel will really improve the mission. I guess the church is even changing a lot of things with the missionary work. There are a lot of changes that will happen in the mission in the next month but P. Jergensen swore me to secrecy so unfortunetely I can't share them with you all :). So overall Iowa is grand! I love you all!
Love
Elder Jergensen
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