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. 

Christmas week!

Decorating our little Christmas Tree

So this was one heck of a week. We had 2 exchanges this week. One on Wednesday. I got to go to a place called Lucerne Valley. Its comparable to Glenwood and Hill Spring .... or Vauxhall. hahahah. In all sorts of ways: people, location, population, smell, geography hahah it was super cool. We had some awesome lessons with investigators.

At our Mission Christmas devotional

Then on Christmas Eve we had a bunch of shenanigans delivering packages (christmas gifts) to everybody in the zone. We completely filled our poor corolla... Like the whole trunk we packed tetris style and the whole back seat to the roof and I had a box of letters to be sorted and delivered on my lap and we still didn't have enough room. So we had the office elders deliver the two closest companionship's their packages. Then in the evening we saw an amazing miracle with our investigator, Taylor, in the YSA ward. We hadn't been able to get a hold of him and he wouldn't text us back. But at 8 in the evening he texted us and asked if we could meet that night, with a specific member. He lives in Victorville and we were in Apple Valley, so we weren't going to go because we realized would wouldn't have a lot of time and would probably would be late getting home and we didn't want to bug anybody on Christmas eve night. But we prayed about it and decided we needed to go, but we didn't take a member. We drove from the far end of AppleValley down a road we will call Bear Valley road( because that is what it is called) to somewhere in the middle of Victorville in 15 minutes( normally that would take somewhere along the lines of an hour.) We managed to only hit 2 red lights (there like 20-25 not even joking... its worse than Mayor Magrath in Lethbridge) on the way to his house without getting tiwi (our little car monitor that doesn't let us speed) mad at us! We had an amazing lesson with him. We then traveled home and were in before curfew. It was truly a Christmas miracle.

Christmas was awesome... we brought a companionship to our house and us and our roommates and them opened Christmas gifts and had Christmas breakfast. then we went for second breakfast with the members. then we delivered thank you's to people and skyped... then we had christmas dinner ... it was ham and potatoes and candied yams (so good) and pecan pie... so good! then we went for second dinner.. this time prime rib! so good!!

At the devotional with Elder Gunnerson

Then on Boxing day I was on exchanges with Elder Neilsen in my area. We were supposed to have a bunch of lessons... but they all fell through. So we used up a lot of backups and alot of time was spent trying to find people... and at last at 7:30 at night on the last planned backup we got in with a guy we had talked with over a month ago. We managed to teach him the restoration, even with his bird flying around the house. hahah it was great.

Elder Markham and our tree

Love

Elder Jensen

The tie I skinnied

Pretty nice now eh?

CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

WELL it was an interesting week... while everyone else goes on Christmas break... we as missionaries keep working...

But we still managed to have a good week. We found a new investigator. Her name is Tracy and  she has already been to church in a different town!... she has some really interesting views of Mormons... but she has it in her mind that she wants to be a Mormon already... so it should be a pretty easy win!!! We also taught Mario and Liz again... We were actually on exchanges with the AP's when we did. So a year ago Elder Findlay was my zone leader in Hesperia... and a year Dec 19 ago I was on exchanges with him...well exactly a year later we are on exchanges again with each other! so that was cool. Anyway... we were on exchanges and we got to teach Mario and Liz...they were out in their garage while their neighbors were having a birthday party so it was really noisy, but we did manage to teach them. They hadn't read from the book of mormon because their life is hectic. But we read with them and testified of how it would bless their lives. They commited to read and they promised to be at church on the 3rd of january. So we are hoping... 

sorry kinda rushed!

Excited for Christmas!

Love

Elder Jensen