Let Heavenly Father Talk A Little Bit- Email 6/24/13

Well hey there family! Its been a really good week. I don't have a ton of time today but i just have some quick short things i want to write about. Its been a very interesting week...i just feel like i have started to grow a little bit but its not a good thing. its like when you start cleaning something and you realize OH WOW this is really dirty? like the more you clean the more dirty you realize it was? kind of how i feel right now. I feel like I'm starting to clean up some of those bad characteristic traits and bad habits, and yet its just a never ending process that makes me realize i am so far from where i need to be. but thats the whole point of life, changing who we are to who god wants us to be. So, its all good! but in the process, I've learned some great lessons and we are having some great success here in victoria. really starting to feel like I'm doing better and being a lot more myself. Helps a TON that I'm with elder girsberger now too. we got put together this week and its been so fun. We are having a great time and really loving working together.

Anyway, the point of the email....i realized that in my life, i am so often just content working. Content living, hoping the spirit is guiding me, assuming its guiding me. but i realized that the last part of DyC 4 is a command. Like in english is "ask and ye shall receive". kind of sounds like a "hey if you want to ask you'll totally receive!" great stuff. but in spanish, it clarifies what that really means. it says "Pedid." which is the command form of to ask. so its like, after saying ALL these great things about missionaries, about the characteristic traits we need to have, etc, ASK. DO IT. haha and i realized thats my big problem. I'm content sometimes and thats not okay. I always assume "hey if I'm obedient the spirit is with me!" thats true, and thats part 1 of the problem. but Preach my gospel specifically states that as you are obedient AND SEARCH for the spirit, it will guide your work. So its like i having been using this minimal portion of the spirit and it kind of made me sad to realize it. I have SO much more work to do in really LOOKING for the spirit to guide me. Pausing for a second, listening without planning my response, letting silence take over the lesson for a second, being receptive at all times to it. a ton more to do. I am excited to fix that though, because its something ill need my whole life. We can be satisfied just having the gift of the holy ghost, or we can ask that heavenly father blesses us in every moment with it. He even commands us to ask him. i think thats why humility is necessary as a missionary, because you have to be humble enough to ask all the time. Thats always been a big problem of mine, and maybe why people like president monson are so humble and so spiritual -  because its interrelated. You HAVE the spirit as you be humble enough to realize that you need it every second, and ask for it every second. Anyway, I'm excited to let god talk a little bit more. it would suck watching someone else counsel your children when you know EXACTLY what they need, and them being too dumb to let you talk. Realized thats kind of what i do...just let him stay there and listen to me teach his children, and then say amen and call it a day. aha no..let him talk. So thats my new goal!

Anyway, sweet success here in Victoria. Really starting to be happy. We had 2 baptisms this past saturday (they count for my sector but i only taught them a few times, it was a couple that elder girsberger had taught with elder miyasaki for a couple months), then we have 2 this saturday and 3 more for the 6th of july. We have a goal to baptize every week this cambio...but not because of our pride or because we think we can. we just know god has put the people and we are so excited to give him the chance to work this miracle and let it happen.

Pray for karla and mayerly for this weekend and then carolina and cony and Camilla for the 6th!

LOVE YOU ALL! Thanks for a great support and all you do. I sure love you lots. Photos next week!

Elder Tengberg

semana de milagros, y un cumpleaños tambien- Email 6/17/13

Wow. I am just sitting here so amazed looking back on this week and looking back at how DIFFERENT my life is from a year ago. Like its just insane. I have done nothing to deserve this type of life and this type of blessings, i don't get it. I haven't read a single one of your emails yet because i want to send a longer email and pictures too, so ill print them all off and figure it out later. but thank you for sending them all!

So, first off happy birthday to me haha. I got your packages! Well everyone but Mary. Sorry mary....or maybe you just hate me and didn't send it? Nah just kidding the chileans are probably just taking all those knock off rolex watches you sent me...wishful thinking? haha it'll come soon. We had an emergency conference with the zone leaders on thursday and president basically said "Why aren't you doing milagros?" Go get them. So....we did! Haha maria Castillo got baptized this weekend! There had been a couple complications but she quit smoking almost on the dot and thats a huge miracle that i had kind of been overlooking. Also the best birthday present ever. but the point is that i got the packages on that conference and that was the 2 from you mom (but not the manilla envelope) and also i got the one from you sister moody! You all are so nice and i loved the cards. I think my favorite quote was from President moody...something along the lines of "The stars and odd colors on this card reminded me of you." Well talk about making a man blush! But in all seriousness, it was so thoughtful of you. it had peanut butter (I've already eaten 16 of the 32 reeses cups that i got...is that bad?), nutella, little missionary action figures, you all are the best. Everything a missionary could want! And mom, i LOVED your package. Superhero theme was golden. Those pajamas are crazy comfy and i am just loving having them all. Really great. The peanut butter, reeses, pillowcase, pajama pants, socks with capes (story coming, so amazing), it was all PERFECT.i was one happy camper on june 14th (what are you all going to do, it was birthday eve and i declared in china it was already the 15th so i opened em anyway). But seriously, thank you SO much. Its rare to feel so loved and taken care of so far away. It was nice because i didn't tell anyone here about my birthday minus my companions because i just wanted a tranquilo day and to work normally, because we had a ton to do and baptisms and stuff. So it was nice having that little reminder from home and it made me feel awesome. So  great works and thanks SO much! I love you all!

But one funny story from my birthday...i was actually with elder miyasaki on my birthday because my comp and elder girsberger were both sick in the house. that morning it was raining a ton but we had a game scheduled with some investigators at the cancha at the church, so we went there anyway. Anyway...since we had to "wait for the investigators" who were "likely to come any minute",  we took advantage and played futbol for about 30 minuets in the pouring rain. so fun. Except for these are super slick courts because you're meant to slide on them and be able to slide tackle, so in the rain it was a disaster. i fell SO hard, straight onto my back. like you know when cartoons fall on banana peels? like that...but worse. haha it was miserable, and then elder miyasaki won too. But it was just hilarious because we were both wearing our cape socks (i was batman) we looked RIDICULOUS. like imagine walking around chile and seeing two large white kids playing int he rain with CAPES like superheros but on their socks. so funny. Anyway that was probably a favorite mission memory so it made the birthday awesome. And the fact that i got brand new Zebra F301 pens....made the birthday end up great too. Haha i was probably most excited about that #missionlife

The baptism was awesome. We had to do the baptism and confirmation both on sunday because her husband was going to be there, so thats how it worked out. oh MAN it was awesome. she was just so happy, and so was her husband. He came to church obviously and good thing i brought my gospel principles book, because he literally asked a MILLIon questions. He is super inquisitive and very intelligent, so it made it a fun church day. Like asked all about the sacrament, priesthood, sustaining callings in church, why people sit on the stand. haha it was like playing "but " with little kids. never ended. but he is amazing and will probably follow her next month. He travels north every 9 days and is only home for 3 so its rare that we get to teach and bring him to church. Anyway, we had a member do it (the mission goal now is for the elders not to baptize, but to let the members do it) and i totally saw the reason why. This 21 year old member who is recently activating again did it, and he was bEAMING todo el dia. Seriously, he was so excited and on sunday practiced her name like a hundred times. i just loved it. 

LAstly, miracle with operacion alma. So this week we had the impression to go visit this member who everyone had told us to avoid because he doesn't want anything anymore. kind of dumb that we want but ended up being pure inspiration. We knocked on the door and he said, with tears in his eyes, "I knew you would come." Like....uhh....is this bad or good?? haha but it was amazing. he told us of all the things that have happened recently, everything. After his baptism 5 years ago he was 2nd counselor in the branch, progressed super fast, and that caused his wife to divorce him because she was mad about stuff. i didn't really get that part, but he went more active and more dedicated, got remarried and everything, and then for some reason a few years back fell away. is drinking now, his two daughters of 15 and 16 are both pregnant, just super sad. he told us with tears in his eyes,"i just want to come back and be the man that i know i can be". like it was so touching. then he had us sing his favorite hymn. "put your shoulder to the wheel" which he sang along and knew every word still. really awesome. two other families too who are reactivating and have baptismal dates for either spouses or kids too for beginning of july...crazy stuff. like the lord knows what he is doing and it takes some humility to accept it sometimes, but this is what he needs. 

Also, best part of the week was watching latinos eat peanut butter. they don't get it. at all. hahaha its so hilarious. My favorite one was having to tell my companion to spit the reeses out because he ate it with the paper. hahaha i just having been laughing so hard having them try it all and stuff. birthday benefits :)

The photos!

 Girsberger and i at our last zone meeting this zone. Cambios are tomorrow, ill actually be with girsberger now working in the baptizing sector, and the other two will be together here n mine with reactivating.

Superman pjs are legit.

Thanking heavenly father for peanut butter.

SOCKS FOR BIRTHDAYS WOOOO

"traitoria" my district this cambio, DL elder escalante and other shortie midget is elder escobar. we call him marshmallow.

Baptisms! little kid is diego, husband is pedro, baptizer is juanito

Gringo Oreos  vs chilean "toddy" the lamest replica. why gringos are fat i think....

Best shoes and socks ever after a disastrous day of rainy football. SO FUN. haha these are the shoes i bought myself for my birthday...oops

love you all! 

Elder Tengberg

Change of Heart- Email 6/10/2013

HOLA FAMILIA!

first off happy fathers day to the best dad ever and my awesome grandpa jay! Hope you know how much i love you both. 

I've read almost all of the emails, but not quite all of them. you all are so awesome! i got so many birthday emails and i appreciate it a lot. I sure am one loved missionary, thats one thing I've never doubted. Love you all so much. I don't have packages yet but I'm sure that we will have a conference end of june or beginning of july, so ill get them soon. no worries :)

THis week has been a very humbling week. I definitely had to take a bit of humble pie this week as i went to visit all of the menos activos. I know some of you think your assistance at church is bad, but wow...haha out of 690 members, we have 50 go to church. 50. haha there is quite a bit of work to do! i really like it though. As i went to visit them, i just realized there was so much that my pride had been impeding me to see in peoples lives. so many stories, so many broken hearts, so many attacking families that destroy burning testimonies. its really hard. and also the fact that so many of these people have 0 knowledge about what the gospel is. So many houses we entered into where they were baptized when they were 8 or 9, and haven't been taught anything since then. Like some people i asked what the spirit was, what the sacrament was....nothing. people told me they just don't know. like its incredibly sad. i read a talk today too that talked about "if they understood, they would do anything". really taught me a lot about our responsibility as members. true doctrine understood brings action. there are VERY few people in the world, mainly the most rebellious and people like laman and lemuel, who disobey when they understand true doctrine. The MAJORITY of members that are inactive ARE inactive because they truly don't understand the gospel. They don't know what an eternal family is. THere just some name on a registro that missionaries don't want to go by because they've been called to baptize, not reactivate. Well not anymore haha. It wasn't a week of too much success in bringing them to church because we had to just get to know a lot of them, but now we have  big group we are working with and have numbers and everything. It will be a good experience helping them out and i think it will really strengthen my testimony in the idea of the gospel being a group effort. Salvation is individual...but not unless someone helps you to get there and stay there. I mean just looking at the 35 baptisms from last 2 years, and 2 were in church on sunday? really? thats just awful. SO I've had to take some really personal repentance and realize the lord needs us to work better.

Anyway, that was the big thing of the week. Not too much else is going on. We participated in a charity event for Coaniquem, for kids with burn victims. Which i ended up seeing one two days later. I walked into a recent convert house 2 days after the event (the event we had to say the phrase "Donation for a burnt kid?" like thats the spanish translation. isn't that so harsh?! haha i was like is there anything more politically correct we could say?) i walked into a house with a kid who has down syndrome and some other problems, and he was running around naked. the family is SO poor, like the room was all smokey because their chimney pipe is broken, the couches were just infested with pulgas and everything, and this poor kid has BURNS all over his stomach because he has caught his clothes on fire so many times. THats why he runs around naked now. Nobody had cleaned him up after he had use the bathroom and he was just filthy. I felt so bad for this poor family and realized, as i taught the  15 year old son, who actually is pretty smart, i just realized if no one teaches him what potential he really has, he will think this is what his future has to be like. he wont go on  a mission, change his life, and do stuff like that. But its good, because now we have someone who is in charge of him. US! Good stuff. It'll be a good week.

Thanks for all the birthday shoutouts! I sure love all of you and am so grateful for all that you do for me. Im one blessed person and one blessed missionary. Victoria is turning out to be a lot different than i thought, but its good. The Lord needs us here.

Elder Tengberg

Operación Alma- Email 6/3/13

First off...haha mary I TOLD YOU!!!! hahaha i told you you would train your third cambio. I'm so proud of you. You are doing great out there in hong kong and although that is a whole new set of challenges, its so blatantly obvious how much trust the lord has in you and how good at this you are. Training a new missionary is so much fun, because what you show them becomes their expectations for the mission - obedience, work, everything. Its really fun and you'll love it. Work your butts off again and i have no doubt you'll be baptizing exactly 6 weeks from today....

So. crazy week here, like always. I got to go on my "honeymoon" this week! Haha Girsberger and I had to go to Concepcion which is like a 5 hour bus ride and it was our first big trip together so we called it our honeymoon. Fun stuff. Also, buses are so cool. They have huge super nice luxury 2 story buses here and elder girsberger made so much fun of me because i literally thought it was the COOLEST thing ever. why am i such a nerd? i was freaking out the entire day. Anyway we got to conce and there was some pretty big news there. Basically....they're changing the entire way we do missionary work. I know that sounds like a big exaggeration but its really not haha.

So we know how usually every missionary does everything - finds new people, baptizes, helps less actives, recent converts....well, not anymore. They think that we are too spread out, and they have been systematically putting 4 missionaries in every branch to prepare us for Operation Alma. Operation soul that would be? I don't know what that is in english. anyway....2 missionaries are now 100% dedicated to finding new people, baptizing, pure work with investigators. The other set of missionaries is 100% dedicated to less actives, recent converts and incomplete families. That way people can better focus on their respective things and be able to improve the quality of work in each sector. It has seemed to work in the places they have tried it in. in Lebu, a district here, the assistance has doubled from 78 to 150 in 2 months, with 9 baptisms and over 40 less actives reactivated. Its not supposedly a PERMANENT thing, but im guessing it'll be the rest of my mission. So i'm about to have a much different mission then i thought! Haha i'm like a permanent home teacher now. Cool but very interesting. Anyway, my sector is the recent convert and less active sector because we have more of them than they do. So thats our big thing coming up right now. We have to present this to the zone right now and that will be interesting, because we have a ton of fechas bautismales right now and i cant imagine people are going to be stoked having to pass of their investigators. but its all for the work of the lord and if we don't its just our own pride holding us back. Kind of a good barometer of where your faith is at, no? 

Anyway, other fun stuff. Damian has literally disappeared off the face of the planet. We have called, visited, everything. cant find him for the life of us. so....thats kind of disappointing. but we are going to keep working and not give up. Its been 10 days since we have talked to him so we are kind of worried, but oh well. Maria Castillo is doing great as well, she is set for the 15th! it will be super fun.

Other stuff...today we went to Temuco! Thats the second biggest sector in our mission besides Concepcion, and it was super fun. We went bowling and everything haha. I loved it though, we had a super good time and it was good for the zone to be together.

Last thing...so this past week it was raining a ton here so we just were playing so many pranks on each other (last p day after we wrote). Girsberger and i took some of the water balloons someone sent me and literally made the BIGGEST water balloon ever. Like the size of a normal helium balloon but with water inside. Haha i don't know what we were thinking, but it started off so well. We brought it upstairs, were about to launch it out the window to get our companions as they were coming home from buying food, and then it broke right next to the window. We have wood floor panels upstairs and we were like aw thats too bad. until i started hearing something downstairs and i rushed down and realized t was DRENCHING my desk where all of my stuff is and was just a waterfall coming through the ceiling. oops. And then thats not even the best part, it filled up a lightbulb (that luckily was off) with water (don't even know how thats possible) which then shattered in this giant explosion as we were trying to clean up the water. haha it was such a disaster. our companions had JUST cleaned the house too and were so mad at us. ahem....oops?

LOVE YOU ALL! Ive learned more this cambio and this week than ever before...the lord tries our faith so much. but its all good stuff, and we can get through it if we truly trust in him. Love you all.

Les quiero mucho

Elder Tengberg

Noche in Gringolandia- Email 5/27/13

Como estamos?!

Famillia its awesome to hear from you again. this will be a short letter, yet again, but not my fault this time. some kids in the mission have been misusing internet time and were emailing their letter to president AFTER 6 pm when we should be teaching (just really? can you be that dumb?) and now he has shortened all of the missions time down to 45 minutes. so i have no time. on that note, i haven't read any of your emails. haha i don't mean to sound so rude and like a spoiled brat, but i love your emails so much, but can you maybe just write a little bit less? i don't have that much time to write and reading them takes about half my time right now. i love love love hearing from all of you but i feel bad when i don't even respond to you! so that might just be a little help.  At least I print them off and get to read them later. 

anyway, awesome week. kind of difficult in a lot of senses, but some people are making some great progress. lets get to it...

noche en gringolandia was a HUGE success. we literally spent SO much time baking for this stupid thing. we had over 200 brownies and 200 cookies, and they ate it all SO fast. we even made homemade popcorn and everything. i'm not going to lie, the cookies turned out pretty bad. like i was shocked. haha i think it was just the ingredients being different? like it shocked me how much the "cookies" turned out like little pieces of bread. crispy on the outside (like a turtle shell, not mountainy like a normal cookie) and just like a pancake in the middle. that about equates with what mary is eating there in hong kong right? chocolate chip cookies and brownies? lemon pie? i suffer so much out here. Haha no but it was great. We watched Tangled and it was just SO amazing to see how together the branch was. We had invited the other branch from our tiny little city as well and in total we had over 100 people. It was SO amazing considering average attendance in the two is about 50. there were a ton of friends and everything. i was just so grateful for that and how well it turned out. Damian and his two daughters came, as well as Maria Castillo and her husband and their little kid Diego. Everyone is  SUCH great progress. and by everyone i mean the two of them....haha our investigator pool has shrunk a TON this week. we have literally been cranking through people because its just so frustrating when people don't show interest or don't complete with their commitments. like there are thousands of people in this city that don't know about the restored gospel, so don't waste my time when i need to convert all of them! Like the time of the lord is so precious and it just breaks my heart when we don't get people all the way to the water because i know there are other children of god who are ready at that time too.

Anyway, maria castillo is doing really well. She has almost completely quit smoking. her will power is AMAZING. haha she told us (her husband is in victoria por 3 dias and then leaves por 9) that before her husband gets back, she will be done smoking. haha like uhh yeah that sounds great! and she went from one pack to 2. in 2 days. 2 cigarettes yesterday! like that is such a big improvement. She just wants to get baptized so bad and is hilarious with her husband. like he had met with missionaries in the past and stuff so its just hilarious to see how she teases him. he gets kind of embarrassed that he likes the church. like the other day when they came to a baptism, he said "drop us off in the corner" and she said "Don't you mean the MORMON CHURCH, pedro?" hahaa i love it. but he is progressing a lot too. because he has that schedule where he is gone so much it makes it really hard to teach, but i think sometime in july he will get baptized.

well thats basically all i have time for. i love you all so much.

you're my everything and the best part of my life! Dad, i had to give a talk about the priesthood yesterday and it was so cool to realize how much of who i am comes from you. I shared that the phrase "A priesthood holder doesn't do that" was permanently engraved in my mind because you had the courage and understanding of the priesthood to teach a 12 year old boy what it really meant. you've changed my life forever and i'll be forever grateful because of that.

Love you all!

Elder Tengberg