Elder Torgersen: Thanks for the Happy Birthday wishes and presents

I hope you guys have fun in Hurricane this weekend. You need to send a picture of the deck so I can see how it turned out. They finished it last week and you guys are just painting it now, right? Thank you all for the Happy Birthday wishes and the presents. We opened them earlier today, and it´s a good thing too because we were running out of candy. The little Lego missionary was fun too.

There are a few things I forgot to tell you last week, so here goes. There is this worker here at the CCM, named Javier, who does a lot of the maintenance and stuff like that. He is our district´s favorite worker here and we usually see him every night at dinner. We always go up to him and give him knuckles or something and talk to him and tell jokes and stuff. He tells us that the secret to learning Spanish is in the hot sauce and beans. Anyway, when we were driving in the bus last week on our way home from the temple we stopped at a red light about 45 min from the CCM. There on the sidewalk next to us in the middle of Mexico City was our Javier. We couldn't believe it so we had to open all the windows and wave at him. I think it embarrassed him a bit but it was fun to see him out of all of the millions of people in this huge city.

At the Temple, Elder Richards and I got these matching yellow ties with little embroidered caballitos de mar (seahorses) on them. We wear them on the same day every once in a while, and its fun to see our teachers faces when they notice that we are matching!

We found out this week that the apostle, Neil L. Anderson, is coming on Saturday to give a devotional to our CCM. He also wants to greet each missionary individually. We practiced the procedure several times during our last devotional. The Presidency was trying to figure out how we could get over 500 missionaries to shake the apostle´s hand in the shortest amount of time. We got here at the perfect time. We were here for Mexican Independence Day, General Conference, and now an Apostle!

We got our flight plans the other day. Those of us going to Lima are leaving on Monday at 11am, just before lunch. We all thought that we were going to leave on Wednesday. I don´t know if I can call in the airport. I have no idea. Elder Sorensen thinks we will be able to, but I haven't heard anything about it.

Our Latinos left. We are all pretty sad. Every night was fun because we would try to talk to them. Now they are gone and the casa is a lot quieter and we now have hot water for our showers.

Today we all got another haircut. Its the rule that you have to get a haircut at least 5 days before you leave the CCM. Its not nearly as bad as I thought my first one was.

We are all happy and safe here in Mexico. We are excited to leave though. I don´t get to see Elder Holden very often, but we did get to eat lunch with him the other day.

How is the bug collection? You guys should send me a picture. And if you could, could you find the Hummingbird story that I shared at my farewell, but in Spanish. I brought a copy in English. I will probably be giving a talk in Sacrament Meeting this Sunday on the Atonement and I was thinking that that story would be nice to have.

Thanks, I love you all!

Elder Torgersen