Bananas and Potassium??

What a week! Wow! Feels like I was just here a day ago... but it was 7 yikes!

Sorry about last week.... We had a scheduling mishap (my bad) and I was only able to email for like an hour in stead of the usual 2+.

So this week was crazy!

Tuesday- District meeting and reporting numbers in the morning. Then a lesson with Douglas... he is coming along slowly. He finished the Book of Mormon last week. It took him about 4 month to read it all... which is faster than the average member! So that is awesome! Tuesday evening started the phone calls with president....1 of 7. And we had to do a little prep for the mission broadcast.

Wednesday- Was the world wide missionary broadcast! it was awesome!! So cool to be able to learn at the feet of Apostles of the Lord! Imagine being at the Jerusalem conference with Peter! And it was all on missionary work!! So great! Afternoon 2 of 7 with president. Then just some regular proselyting. then we started an exchange with one of our district leaders. I was with the Elder he is training. Evening 3-7 with president.

Thursday- an awesome exchange! we taught a couple of lessons and I was able to help the new guy with some personal struggles! It was great!

Friday- We went over to Victorville to get supplies and we taught a new investigator in the YSA ward. His name is Diego. He is a self proclaimed atheist, but we got him to pray at the end of the lesson. That was amazing!! He has some amazing potential.

Planning and another Phone call. 4/7

Saturday- We taught Kenny in the morning. He is awesome. He has been to church twice now! On Tuesday we are taking one of Uncle Nathan's mission companions to teach him. (obviously one of Nathan's former mission companions from 20+ years ago....now living in Apple Valley area). Then we taught Lyn and Lanice with our Ward mission leader. It was a good lesson on the plan of salvation. (5/7 with president). Then meeting with President Hobbs! Not related to the phone calls thankfully. We have a Zone conference coming up. So us and the STL's met with President and Sister Hobbs to discuss what we would be training on and whats going to happen. The evening was filled with the reason for all the calls with president. Some missionaries in my zone along with their ward were putting on a musical fireside.... and somehow we got sucked in. Also they needed permission from president to do it.... so yeah... I was particularly unimpressed with it. And sick of being grilled by President about it. Saturday night 6/7 with president.

Sunday- We had Taylor and Kenny at church! It was Awesome! We also taught Taylor after church... it was kinda awkward 'cause he asked to meet with the sisters too....

Sunday evening 7/7 with Preisdent Hobbs. So in total between phone calls and our meeting I spent 4-5 hours talking with president Hobbs... thats more than like 2 total transfers.... I am slightly upset.

BUT me and Elder smith are killing it together!! we are having so much fun and success. So many inside jokes (like bananas and potassium) hahah loving life!

Also love you guys

Love 

Elder Jensen


(follow-up clarifying email)

It has been a heck of a week!! super busy! lots of shenanigans.... like i spent over 4 hours talking with president hobbs.....

 yep lol I was not impressed.... but hey its over and i am happier now!

Just to clarify. Me and Elder Smith still get along great!!! both of us were on presidents side... but it was still ridiculous! Life is great!!

Also please tell Melanie Hansen that her medley of "As sisters in zion and armies of helaman" is the best ever!

We live with the same guys as last transfer. Elder Topham ( who i trained) and Elder Hurren.

Also cool story a guy in my ward was Nathan comp in finland... like 99.974% sure... Unless there were 2 elder forsyth's or Elder healy's.

Love

Elder Jensen

Short and Sweet

My new companion is Elder Smith.  There have been 6 Smiths that have served since I have been out. I am with tall blond Smith...as opposed to star wars Smith, brownie Smith, rock climber Smith, new Smith, or hair Smith. hahahah

Life is great! We get along great! we have 4 new investigators this week! One is super solid. His name is Kenny and he has already told us like ten times that he wants to join our church! He is golden!!

Pretty much it.  We have been crazy busy!

Love

Elder Jensen

Life has been insane. So with last week being Elder Markham's last week. it has been really busy. Last Tuesday was Zone Meeting. And it was great!!!! Probably the best ever! So Awesome. Wednesday and Thursday and Saturday were like the only days we got to proselyte. I will get to those in a second.

Last weekend was transfer call weekend... so we were supposed to be called on Saturday... and we kind of were. We got told who needed to pack ..... so we were supposed to get the rest of the calls on Sunday and we didn't.  So this morning at 9! Got them!  The call was 25 minutes long and there was a companionship that need to be in a town an hour away in an hour... so after hanging up with the APs... I called them and told them to get on the road. hahah so they barely made it, but it all worked out.

I also had to relay to missionaries how to get where they needed to be. I received an 11 step instruction manual to get the sisters(just the sisters) where they needed to be. And there was like 5 other companionship's that I need to call and tell as well. hahah it was great. 

Life is good. My new comp is Elder Smith. He is super cool. I am excited to work with him! I will be staying in Apple Valley in the Desert Knolls Ward and the YSA wards.

Tuesday after district meeting I had to give a baptismal interview to a lady in Lucerne Valley. She was so sweet and prepared! it was super cool

Wednesday we spent the whole day doing YSA things. Pretty much just tracking people down it was a good day we were able to scratch alot off. 

Thursday was great! we found a new investigator. His Name is Robert. We have talked with him a fair bit... but we haven't been able to teach him. So we finally got in. We had planned to knock on his door late at night... but we almost chickened out and then we did and we got to teach him. So we were glad we did.

Friday I was with our roommates for the day, while Elder Markham was at the temple. We had a great day together. While I was with them we took the pig pics... Yup thats what those are. pigs. hahah.

Saturday was the lady in Lucerne's baptism. it was good... and then I left my bag out there so we had to go back and get it... that took up most of the day. We did get to teach Mario and Liz though so that was good. They are worried about the life style change they are going to have to make. Please pray for them.

Sunday I was also with our roommates. We were expecting calls all day and they never came.... sad day...

Pretty much that is it.

Love

Elder Jensen

New Year Week!

SO this week has been nuts! We had the last District meeting of the transfer. It contained possibly the best training I have ever seen or been a part of. It was sooooo cool. So a newer missionary was asked to give a training on the purpose and power of the book of Mormon. So to demonstrate he had us do 2 role plays. The first was Elder Markham up against the district leader(Elder Neilsen). E. Markham was a basher and E. Nielsen was a missionary who could't use the Book of Mormon and could only use the bible to teach..... needless to say it didn't go well. The next one was one of the other sister training leader( Sister Wood) up against me (I had received a prod from the district leader to volunteer). I could only use the Book of Mormon to answer questions.  Sister Wood is an experienced missionary so she asked a question that is hard to answer using the Book of Mormon. Why Joseph Smith and why do we believe there are more prophets?  You would think that the founder of a religion would be talked about a lot in his scriptural book ... but he isn't.  hahahah....so it takes a little more finesse ahahah. I took a risk and used some very pointed verses from 2 Ne 29 about how god speaks to people and talked about how god loves everybody equally... it went really well. You shoulda been there!

After district meeting we had to go switch vehicles with another companionship in a different district because their truck is being sold and needed to go down the hill and we were going down on Thursday. So we had a truck for Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday I was on exchanges with an Elder Parry. It was a cool exchange. At the end I asked him what he thought and he said that I wasn't as much of a stiff as he thought..... not sure if that is a compliment or...... hahahah 

Thursday we had a missionary leadership council... so that was all day and then we brought up the new truck, but didn't deliver it because we had to be in at 6 for new years. Nothing crazy happened at night so we are counting all of our many blessings.

Friday was spent planning our Zone Training Meeting.

Saturday we managed to proselyte a little and we found a new investigator. His name is BJ and he is super cool. He just moved up here and he is looking for a church. He said he would come to ours next Sunday and he was super excited to read the Book of Mormon.

Sunday we had a meeting with the stake presidency, the high councillor over missionary work, and our mission president. It was good. Then we rushed to make it to both of our fast and testimony meetings. today we have been running getting errands done.

Love 

Elder Jensen

Ps here are the pics from Andrew's baptism.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH and I forgot about our road trip. On Friday we had to take the elders their new truck. So we drove up to a place called Big Bear. It is a resort town, but their is a set of missionaries up there. It looks a lot like Canada and I really wanted to go home after driving up there!   (Interjection from home....we aren't sure what part of these pictures remind him of Canada.....perhaps the snow and ice....he's forgotten already what home looks like :)  )

Another tie I skinnied....(Interjection from home....When I asked him if he had done these on a machine or by hand, this was his reply.) By hand, I didn't have a machine....I couldn't quite figure out how to hide the stitching, I didn't have the patience or time as a missionary. (I then replied, "look at you and all the skills you are acquiring, eh?  Nice work! I am impressed!" and this was his reply.) hahah i am beginning to acquire my wife attracting skills ahahaha (What a kid!)

 This pic is of shirts we made for our zone.  Its from some training we received from President Hobbs who received it from Richard G Maynes of the seventy. 4 things that will set a missionary on fire! The shirts are unique. everyone bought their own so they were all different colours and only our zone (Apple Valley Zone) got them!

FOUR FIRE FUNDAMENTALS!

Work Ethic

Gospel Knowledge

Obedience

Attitude

And a new version of the candy bar game I learned! The weird ball is stuffed with candy and ties and a shirt... so you roll dice and when you get doubles you start unwrapping the saran wrap  and you get the goodies that come out. we are playing it with the zone today.